What's your opinion on "Save or Die" effects?

Jonathan Tweet · Apr 19, 2019

Save or Die effects aren't great for monsters because there's too much riding on a single roll. They're not great for player-character powers because they invalidate the way most characters bring down enemies: hit point attrition. In 13th Age, we picked up a rule from Dave Hargrave's Arduin Adventure game. Save-or-die effects have a hit point cap. The death lord PC in our game uses the "Sever Spirit" power, which is an instant kill, but only against an opponent with 60 hit points or less. Likewise, my cleric's fear spell works only on enemies with 75 hit points or less. That way, other characters can contribute by knocking a monster's hit points down, and then one of us can finish it off with a power.

TaranTheWanderer · Apr 19, 2019

Satyrn said:
Y

I have a suggestion for the OP: instead of making the petrification instantaneous . . . er, instantaneously permanent, have it work someone like this: on a failed save the target is petrified and begins turning to stone. At the end of the target's following turns, he must make a Constitution save. If successful, the effect ends. On a failure he suffers 1d10 damage (or whatever value makes sense). If the target is reduced to 0 hit points, the petrification becomes permanent.

Why not reskin it dropping to 0 Hit Points. Don't Banshees already do that? You are petrified and start making death saves. If you fail, the petrification is permanent and if you succeed, you fight off the effects and are back to normal and normal hit points or, as [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION] suggests, give them damage.

I think that's what the '3 saves' are supposed to recreate with the spell version of petrfication. I dislike that you need concentration.

I always found level draining monsters to give a bigger sense of 'something to lose' than save or die. Dying meant starting a new character which was only fun if you were done with the character you playing. Getting level-drained and permanently losing your abilities was terrifying. But at least you could still play your character.

Maxperson · Apr 19, 2019

My opinion on them is to use them sparingly as death is very hard to come back from in my game. When I do use a save or die effect, I have some way for the party to find out about it. That doesn't mean that they will find out about it, but only that there is a reasonable way or even multiple reasonable ways to come up with the information ahead of time. So long as I give them a reasonable way to find out about it, I don't feel bad about using the save or die effect.

Flexor the Mighty! · Apr 19, 2019

Save or Death and I go way back. We are tight and nothing will change that. I like that a 1HD monster in my game can kill a 15th level fighter with a single failed save. Poison is feared greatly in the current game.

ParanoydStyle · Apr 23, 2019

Imaculata said:
That's a shame. Allowing players to one-shot your big bad is pretty important in my opinion. Sometimes even a boss can get unlucky on his crucial roll, and that can make for a very memorable moment. Like the time when my players successfully used a destroy-undead ability on my big bad ghost pirate captain. He was gone in an instant, much to the joy of my players. It is probably a moment they'll never forget, as an almost impossible battle suddenly swung in their favor due to their quick thinking.

And that is another thing I should probably stress: You should always be consistent in your rules. There are various mechanics that put the players at a big disadvantage, but which can also affect the bad guys just the same. I like the idea that everything basically obeys the same combat rules, even if some monsters have their own resistances. But cast a Banishment on an extra-planar creature no matter how tough, and you have a good chance of sending it back where it came from. Save-or-die is not a problem if it works both ways.

Because I actually agree in general with what you're saying about consistency, I want to clarify or maybe even amend my original post. A boss monster for a boss fight dying to a bad save is FINE and I would not fudge unless the players actually felt like they'd been cheated out of a good boss fight...which knowing every group of D&D players I've ever met basically means I just plain would not fudge.

THE BIG BAD(s) i.e. the antagonist or antagonist(s) that are driving the story with their actions as much as or more than the players... THOSE are the guys I would fudge for, if I had to (unlikely). But not just boss fights.

Roadkill101 · Apr 23, 2019

With care. When using save or die or level drain and other "save or suck" effects, frequency is kept to a minimum, usually as an ability for a BBEG encounter.

Imaculata · Apr 23, 2019

ParanoydStyle said:
THE BIG BAD(s) i.e. the antagonist or antagonist(s) that are driving the story with their actions as much as or more than the players... THOSE are the guys I would fudge for, if I had to (unlikely). But not just boss fights.

For this I use the rule: Don't introduce a villain, unless you are willing to have him die that very moment. I have two big bads in my campaign, neither of which have directly confronted the players yet. The trick to keeping those big bads alive, is to simply not have step them onto the stage until it is that time. But as soon as any bad guy steps forward, that means that he could die at the hands of the players. And that's fine.

They are villains after all; their purpose is to lose. I will not however force them to lose, or force them to win. That is up to the players. But if they lose, I will not share a tear over it, nor shield them from harm.

Fauchard1520 · Apr 23, 2019

TaranTheWanderer said:
Why not reskin it dropping to 0 Hit Points. Don't Banshees already do that?

Banshees are a good example. I made a "wail of the banshee" trap at the end of a Tomb of Horrors style crawl. It was a hard save or die though, and actually kicked off a pretty fun resurrection quest.

I guess that my opinion is that they're situationally appropriate, so long as they're crazy rare. Knowing that they're in the game, however, makes a big psychological difference.

Gadget · Apr 23, 2019

Jonathan Tweet said:
Save or Die effects aren't great for monsters because there's too much riding on a single roll. They're not great for player-character powers because they invalidate the way most characters bring down enemies: hit point attrition. In 13th Age, we picked up a rule from Dave Hargrave's Arduin Adventure game. Save-or-die effects have a hit point cap. The death lord PC in our game uses the "Sever Spirit" power, which is an instant kill, but only against an opponent with 60 hit points or less. Likewise, my cleric's fear spell works only on enemies with 75 hit points or less. That way, other characters can contribute by knocking a monster's hit points down, and then one of us can finish it off with a power.

This is a very astute point, but I fear one that requires most of the game to be structured around it. With 5e and its "bounded accuracy," monsters tend to have much more hp than PCs, which can lead to "DM spells": spells that are only effective when used against the PC's by monsters & NPCs. 5e has a few of these type of spells, and the result is very mixed. Sleep, as the classic first example, is very effective at low levels, but fades once the monster hp rise enough to make it more risky, and--imho--is not really used much as a 'finisher' due to the ambiguity of current monster HP and the need to use that first level slot for another shield spell or utility.

At higher levels, the Power Word spells are even less useful, as monster hp rise very fast and players don't want to spend their one and only (9th or 8th) level slot on something that may have zero effect; or to take out a mook. Even if monsters have a hp counter appearing above their heads, you've probably already whittled their HP down quite a bit by the time they reach the threshold and at that point, you're probably better off doing 100 hp of damage to a monster and using your precious slots on something more effective.