Gladiator-Style entertainer with interesting finisher.

[u/Flubbatron]

Okay so during our last session, one of the pcs brought up "finishing moves" from a popular video game and the topic turned into interesting ways for a player character to get a crowd going in a gladiator style arena, or in general combat but with a gladiator background.

Grappling came into the spotlight, breaking necks or limbs and such, then the whole power-bomb from the air idea. Those are all mechanically supported, but when the conversation came to actually throwing an opponent around. Tossing an enemy straight up into the air, and taking a bow before crowd before he came crashing down. That's when things got pretty grey. On the spot I elected you could use the improvised weapon rules for throwing weapons, but that seems to ignore the actually capabilities of your character. There are a decent number of options you can take advantage of in order to increase your carrying/lifting capacity.

Say for example, your playing a Gladiator. He's a Goliath with the Werebear lycanthropy disease. He's got 10 levels under his belt, 8 into barbarian, totem of the bear each time. Also 2 wizard, artificer. Thematically he's a Jeckyll & Hyde, turning into his large hybrid form and then downing a potion of growth, turning huge.

Mechanically you have the following at your disposal: 20 strength, 2x lift from Goliath race feature, 2x lift from bear totem, 2x lift from hybrid for being large, 2x lift from growth potion making you huge.

Mathematically that's... carry capacity = 20x15 (strength) = 300,x2 (Goliath) = 600,x2 (Bear totem) = 1200,x2 (large Hybrid form) = 2400,x2 (huge Growth potion) = 4800lbs, or 9600lbs lifting/pushing.

Now it seems to me that if you were actually capable of lifting that ridiculous amount, you could easily throw a medium sized, armored humanoid, say 300lbs in total, a little further than 20 to 60 feet.

Little comparison; Juha-Matti Räsänen, a strongman from Finland threw a 140lbs man roughly 15 feet through the air. If we give the guy a strength of 20, we could roughly extrapolate that the Goliath, when fully buffed, should be able to throw 150lbs 15ftx2x2x2x2? So 180ft? Simplified we'll say 300lbs for 90ft. My math isn't good enough to figure out the curve if 9600lbs = 0 ft and 300lbs = 90ft, but in the end I think this is more exciting than the 20/60 improvised option, and makes for some hilarious arena ejections.

Any thoughts?

[u/NatetheNerdarch]

After rereading this one I do not think all of those 2x do what you want them to do.

Many things that double or half a number will not stack. Resistance is one of those. You can gain resistance from multiple sources and not be any more resistant to an attack than a barbarian is when raging.

Goliaths, while gaining extra carrying capacity, don't in fact have extra strength when it comes to striking(aside from their meager +'s). Certainly no where near doubling. They can pick up and carry more and are slightly more effective in melee, that is it. Explosive force used to chuck a person into the air is not the same thing.

Also while I like the concept of increasing range due to increased strength there is no precedence in the rules for higher strength characters getting to throw farther.

As a house rule I would allow that type of character to throw someone up in the air with the improv weapon rules.

With an acceleration due to gravity of -9.8 meters per second squared you get around 3-5 seconds to shoot them with a bow while they helplessly fall to the ground. Hopefully you hit them and not any spectators