Make the Beast Great Again

[McPunchins]

Can we get old beast back that could permakill characters and had actual good rewards for the risk involved? And as part of it can we get a similar option for surface characters that is more "Honorable" than fighting in slave death matches in the underdark? Like maybe Old Beast finds his soul eating strength again because he heard that Cordor has reopened their arena for Gladiatory where warriors come to fight it out and earn glory and this has made him angry. Then just give the good rewards again and maybe the final fight for the Cordor Gladiatory stuff is something crazy also that gives the exact same rewards.

This could also be mutually exclusive and if you've fought in one the NPC for the other refuses to let you fight because either he thinks you are dishonorable and cruel (Cordor) or he thinks you're too "honorable" and doesn't want to hear about your moral high ground (Andunor). This would stop people from doing both (though if they give the same rewards there wouldn't be a point) and would mean we don't have paladins coming into Andunor like the old days and just blatantly taking part in slave deathmatches which makes no sense for a paladin to ever do.

It would also give that content revitalized life and bring back a reason for people to come together with their respective cities like when everyone used to go watch someone fight the beast and we'd all take bets on whether they lived or died back in the days of the permadeath. Plus it was nice being able to earn a couple decent feats that might be overlooked by a lot of builds but were a nice little thematic bonus for a character having made a name for themselves.

I guess the main issue I have with current beast is that it has completely lost the atmosphere it once had, very few people care about it in character these days and very few bother watching others do it. This is a massive change from before where people would literally schedule their beast fight like it was some kind of prime time pay per view content so that as many people could be present as wanted to and you'd get large crowds either betting for or against them like mini events. It would be nice to have that back and the rewards maybe don't need to be as good but honestly they weren't that broken either except on some specific builds which were already broken (lookin at you pre nerf barb). The belt could even be toned down to maybe +3 intimidate/disc and 2 strength instead of 5 intimidate 3 disc 2 str and it'd still be a good belt worth some risk. As for the feats, Epic Rep is used for something now I've been told but I'm sure there is something that could be done on that front also, hell even just Luck of Heroes would be a nice little perk and worth some risk.

[The GrumpyCat]

My only intiail thought on this (and I don't feel I have the viewpoint to entirely deny or approve) is that if we did this, it couldn't be a case of 'drop new monster down and walk away'
It'd be something we'd probably want to revisit every few months- giving an entirely new challenge now and then. Otherwise people would work out some 'trick' or build how to defeat the new Beast and it'd become less 'this is a true test of strength!' and more 'ok here's how you get 100k gold and a nifty bit o'jewlery'

And no - just random cycles wouldn't work as people would proably figure that out quickly too. It'd need to be a project regularly revisited. Which may be... fine? But is worth keeping in mind imo.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

The cage pit could be moved to its own area too. The placeable method looks okay but is a bit buggy sometimes.