Introduction
In February 2021, I had the idea of doing a Battle Royale with some of the players of Champions of Runeterra Campaign 1 in order to push the limits of character design and try to break the system that was early in development at the time. While the map leaves much to be desired, as it was one of the first I put together, I still believe the general idea behind the Battle Royale’s design was highly effective. The battle included 5 characters and took nearly 4 hours because we made our characters so complicated, but it was a blast to play. Below you will find the preparative work that was done so that you, too, can play your own variation.
The hook was really simple. We wanted to test characters and fight each other. This was also really early in the game’s life, and we wanted to show some of the cool features to the public by streaming it. The image to the right was our stream announcement. This was about 4 months into into us playing Runarcana.
The Rules
I wanted to keep the rules really simple, as I wanted to encourage crazy builds that pushed the limits of the game. However, I was less interested in testing magic items, as those can easily be tested in a normal adventure, which was the logic behind minimal magic items despite the character level being so high. Another important consideration was not allowing runes that exhausted other characters, because there was one specific rune we all thought we wanted to take that applied several points of exhaustion to a target, and it seemed better to just remove it. This immediately increased the rune diversity, and didn’t bog down combat with everything being done at disadvantage.
“Make 1 level 12 character only using what is in Runarcana. No default starting gear, but you have a 2500GP gear budget, with a limit of 150GP being allocated to consumables. No runes that effect Exhaustion are allowed. Players are allowed to have 1 uncommon and 1 rare item.”
The Map
The Map was the thing that took the most time. While it is quite messy, given that I had not yet gotten used to using Inkarnate at the time, I really stand by the core design. The big considerations for my map design were the following: various lines of sight and obstacles to break those up, various object and position heights, and environmental hazards to prevent camping and make people think about where they end their turns. I gave the information below to my players before we begain.
The white numbers are height of different structures. The four towers in the corners are hollow except for a spiral staircase leading to the roof. Aside from that, you’ll just have to play to find out what things are.
As mentioned, keeping people moving and on their toes was important in my design. I also didn’t want things to end up just being two character stand next to one another rolling attacks. So I came up with the environmental hazard system described below. I did tell my players that there were randomly selected environmental hazards so that I did not have too much of an advantage as both a player and the designer, but to keep some level of surprise, I did not explain them until they occured.
The Hazard Table:
At the bottom of the round, Roll 1d4. The following effects occur depending on the number rolled.
1 – Fire Wave – Braziers emit a massive wave of flame. All creatures in a 15 foot radius must succeed a DC15 DEX save or take 4d4 Fire Damage, taking half on a success.
2 – Acid Swell – Blue Acid Pools swell up and overflow for one round. All creatures on the ground within 10 feet take 2d6 Acid damage. (No save because movement is locked at that point).
3 – Energy Core – The Energy Core in the middle of the map surges. All creatures with line of sight to the coil or within a 15 foot radius must make a DC 13 DEX save or take 3d6 lightning damage, taking half on a success. On a failure, creatures must also make a DC10 WIS save or be temporarily “shocked” losing their reaction for the round.
4 – Gravity Surge – Any creature in the two outer rows/columns of the map experience a surge of gravity. Creatures must make a DC 15 CON OR STR save or take 1d12 Force damage, taking half on a success. Those who fail lose half of their speed on their next turn. Those who succeed only lose 1/4. Both are rounded down. Those in the air have their altitude reduced by 1/2 rounded down.
Reflection & Recommendation
Looking back on this nearly 5 years later, there are a few things I would change, but the core philosophy would definitely stay the same.
I think the environmental effects are great, but I would add some that affected certain heights, so that those atop obstacles were not completely immune to them. As far as I recall, few players utilized the various towers, but design-wise, it seems wise to have a wider range of effects. Similarly, I think the DCs and damage were too low. I think instead DCs ranging from 10-15, they should range from 13-18. These effects should not be the deciding factor, but they should be a more serious threat to make players move around more. Similarly, for level 12 characters, 2d6 is nothing. I would also increase the damages to average at roughly 12, and I would add status effects for the fire and acid. Perhaps the burned status for Fire Wave and a temporary AC deduction of 1 for the Acid Swell, as the acid starts to damage your armor. These are just ideas.
I would also increase the gear budget. 2,500 Gold is a lot, but there are so many awesome weapons you can get for 3-5,000, and I would like to open those options up more. If players don’t need the money, that’s totally fine. But starting at 5,500 gold would allow for a seriously cool weapon or armor. Another option could be assigning gold values to the different rarities of magic items and giving a larger gold budget and no limit on specific magic items.
Overall, I highly recommend a Battle Royale for you and your friends to try new mechanics and features of Runarcana. We did a second one at a lower level, but I’ll post about that another time.
Champions of Runeterra 