[hustlertwo]

It's warded to automatically cast Revivify (spared no expense). So the damage isn't non-lethal, but no one dies anyhow.

Basic rules:

-The aforementioned thing that says yes to animal companions, familiars, and something that is a class feature, and no to cohorts, followers, and anything else acquired by feats or any purchased helpers (unless it's a feat that improves your AC or something like that).
-At least to start, the matches will be one on one. First one to go down or surrender is the loser.
-500 gold to enter, the prize to the winner will be half of all the entry fees (I think the first tournament is to be 16 participants, but Plans might have to refresh me on that, so in that one it means the winner takes 4,000 gold). Second place will get a magical item of some kind, whose value is guaranteed to be more than the entry fee. XP is awarded for every match (and some even when you lose). I don't recall the numbers for that offhand. All slots in a tournament not taken up by PCs will be taken up by NPCs.
-No pre-buffing.
-Might change it later, but for this first one it is an endurance-type round. One hour elapses between rounds (during which you cannot do anything). Buffs that last longer than an hour will carry over to the next fight. Spells and power points won't be replenished, same with rages, flurries of blows, so on and so forth. Damage taken remains; you can't heal it in between matches (but can heal it in matches, of course)
-NPCs will lose random amounts of HP in each round to simulate the degradation of their matches (and NPC mages will consume spells in a similar fashion).
-If a match is being unnecessarily stalled, the current fighting ring manager will dip into his Boring Box. It contains a nasty assortment of ranged weapons and combat items to be used on whoever is ticking the crowd off. Mechanics-wise, this can be translated as anyone who either hides or runs away for five rounds or longer without taking an offensive action.

I think that's it, but if anyone else can think of something to add, feel free.