The Colosseum (PvE)

The colosseum is a chance to test your mettle as a team or solo against monsters and baddies! Pick a team or be randomly assigned one, and one of our Arena Masters will select a fight to DM you against in straight combat. Win, and leave with XP and gold!

Guidelines

  1. The difficulty of the arena will always tend toward the deadly end of the spectrum. We will not supply difficulty ratings or allow players to choose a DM. We want to try and maintain the same experience for every player - testing their skills in a challenging encounter.
  2. We have re-evaluated the xp rewards across all tiers of play and have made some modifications to find a balance between quests, difficulty and the arena to bring about a more 'fair' experience to our players. All encounters will yield the full XP for the monsters in the encounter.
  3. We will be officially allowing surrenders with some conditions. You will be allowed to surrender from a match if the entire team agrees to do so. In order to prevent gaming the system, players will be allowed two surrenders for every three months. requests to surrender more often than that will be denied.
  4. To reduce disparity, players should queue in groups of similar power-level. First in a tier that spans levels 3 to 5, and then in groups that are no more than three levels apart. If you do take someone outside of the recommended range, understand that the risks of death are increased.

Rules

  1. Keep in mind that no encounter is created with the intent to kill a character. However, death is a possibility.
  2. Make sure to let us know your interest in #arena-queue and remember to only do so once between matches. 
  3. When you enter you designated arena. Please roll your initiative and post it along with your health and AC and level.
  4. No pre-casting of spells and or abilities. Except mage armor.
  5. Players who have used up their surrenders cannot surrender again until 3 months have passed.
  6. People may sometimes be skipped over in order to facilitate more level balanced group for single rider lines.
  7. Most in-game issues can be resolved through better communication. If you have any concerns, questions or clarifications, you can bring them up with your DM in a post-fight debriefing. Unless absolutely necessary, we recommend that you bring up your concerns at the end of the encounter and not during it.
  8. A DM will ask if the group they're about to take will be dealing with different/new mechanics. The team has the option to say no, and wait for the next DM available if they decide to do so.
  9. The Arena runners will be running encounters with specific exp caps in mind. They will be keeping the encounters within those caps, and will be providing full exp for the fights offered.
  10. Arena DMs will be reviewing homebrew monsters before using them in any fights.

Joining the Queue

To join the colosseum queue, simply head to #arena-queue and type "Check" with your character level. It's that simple!

When your name is called, you will be tagged and given the name of an arena. Head to #arena-overview to select the appropriate role, and you'll have access to three new channels for RP, out-of-character, and dice. (See the Beginner's Guide for more information on these channels).

Fighting in the Arena

Combat in the arena is much like combat in a quest. Begin by placing your stats and character token in the dice channel (!token) and wait for your DM to post an arena map if they have not done so already. Select a starting position as requested, and roll initiative if and when asked. Make sure to pay extra attention to the DM rules, as they may change from Arena to Arena.

Lore

On the outskirts of the town resides an unscalable mountain cliff face, surrounded by a bog and marsh, large mosquitoes and flies are constantly buzzing around. As you pass through you would randomly catch glimpse of a black life-like silhouette dancing in the water and zip around your legs, but you don't feel anything other than the bog. You would eventually see a large archway with a huge detailed beetle resting on top it's right piece is missing, their are two smaller beetles on either side of it. The majority of the town typically stay away from here, except for the most adventure thrill seekers. Inside there are said to be unknown monsters conjured by mischievous spirits that prey on life.

In front of the main entrance of the Colosseum would be a newly commissioned statue of three somewhat familiar adventurers. On the right side of the statue would be a stout dwarf adorned in sturdy armour with a mighty dwarvern hammer draped over his shoulder, both of which would be adorned in crisscrossing accents. Her would be lifted into the air by his companion by a one armed bear hug. To his far left, the recipient of the other one armed bear hug would be a taller man with straight hair tied back in a loose ponytail and a tightly braided beard. His smile is a charming one, as though he has been having the time of his life; as all bards should always present themselves. In the centre and culprit of the warm hugs would be a slender woman wearing plate armour, would have her arms wrapped tightly around her companions, with a wide grin on her face and her short hair flowing to the left. Just off to the side would be a tall tabaxi donning loose breeches and a long cape, leaning on a light spear, with a slight smirk on his face. There would be a plaque situated at the bottom of the statue with cursive golden script shimmering in the sunlight

Here stands Baern son of Bronn, Illian, Anaya of Ironspur and Silent Leaf. The first champions of the Colosseum! Slayers of paintings and gnomes alike

A string of characters would appear etched into the top of the archway for all to see, their colours burning a deep red. The characters would be continuously changing, flowing from one script to another, to some it would be elvish, others infernal while it would all translate to
Let the games begin