Epic Fight turns into Epic Farce

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, now you know why he's laughing.

And being undead, it's pretty amazing he can laugh at all!
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0097.html

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I never saw the big issue with save-or-die spells. Most of the time you go up against them, you have saves high enough for them not to be a huge worry, and even if they aren't it's still pretty dang easy to give them a boost up when you need it.

 

[Fifth Element]

I never saw the big issue with save-or-die spells. Most of the time you go up against them, you have saves high enough for them not to be a huge worry, and even if they aren't it's still pretty dang easy to give them a boost up when you need it.

The big issue most people have (among those who have an issue) is that a single die roll can kill your character, regardless of level or what have you. Even if you buff your saves, a roll of 1 will always fail. And dying puts you out of the game, possibly for a significant amount of time while the other players deal with the issue at hand. D&D is a great game, but it's not a good spectator sport. It can be hours before you get back in the game. All from a single die roll.

 

[pemerton]

At the end of the day though, the GM just has to ask themselves a few simple questions... what happens if everyone fails their saving throw? Is that an outcome I'm fine with? How can I fix it so that failure doesn't equal a TPK.

To be honest, this seems an awful lot more a matter of GMing style than system.

I have to agree with Fifth Element that this is definitely a system issue. It is the system that sets the parameters as to the possibility and consequences of a TPK or near-TPK.

 

[Keith Robinson]

The big issue most people have (among those who have an issue) is that a single die roll can kill your character, regardless of level or what have you.

Whereas, I don't see that as a flaw at all, but an element that adds some real edge to the game that a DM can utilize on occasion. The problem is when that 'occasion' turns into a regular cycle, and that isn't a flaw in the game, but rather an issue with the DMing style.

I'm not a fan of systems where death is unlikely, as IMO this adds to the enjoyment factor of succeeding. It's the losses along the way that make your successes so much sweeter.

We play the game with dice in the open, and have had our fair share of character deaths along the way for one reason or another, but never because of the system. Player error, DM error, or just through having a bad dice day. But never because the system. It is my experience that all too often people would rather blame the system for their own errors rather than acknowledge their own mistakes.

 

[Hussar]

The problem becomes though, the chances of dying or being taken out of the encounter become extremely high given the number of saving throws.

Take a party of 4 facing two harpies. That's 8 saving throws EVERY round. Someone's going to fail and very, very often.

Yes, I agree that there should be a chance of dying. But, should that chance be 100%?

 

[Branduil]

I never saw the big issue with save-or-die spells. Most of the time you go up against them, you have saves high enough for them not to be a huge worry, and even if they aren't it's still pretty dang easy to give them a boost up when you need it.

Not if it's your bad save.

 

[Ander00]

Towards the end of our 3.5 adventures, anything that let you reroll a saving throw was exceedingly popular with our group.

What I really don't like are effects like the holy word/blasphemy line of spells. The caster is of a high level (like random encounters on the way to the final area in a popular adventure path, or the BBEG therein)? The party is dead, no save. The caster's level isn't quite that high? Someone might still fail their will save and get sent to another plane.

That is not my idea of fun, though I would agree that 4E has possibly gone a few steps too many in the right direction, in this regard.


cheers

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Towards the end of our 3.5 adventures, anything that let you reroll a saving throw was exceedingly popular with our group.

What I really don't like are effects like the holy word/blasphemy line of spells. The caster is of a high level (like random encounters on the way to the final area in a popular adventure path, or the BBEG therein)? The party is dead, no save. The caster's level isn't quite that high? Someone might still fail their will save and get sent to another plane.

I remember such a scene from a Shackled City adventure. It was a nice example of how you can break things just by applying rules (Half-Fiend Template applied to a high HD monster, IIRC). It was devastating for our cohorts in that adventure...

 

[cangrejoide]

The big issue most people have (among those who have an issue) is that a single die roll can kill your character, regardless of level or what have you. Even if you buff your saves, a roll of 1 will always fail. And dying puts you out of the game, possibly for a significant amount of time while the other players deal with the issue at hand. D&D is a great game, but it's not a good spectator sport. It can be hours before you get back in the game. All from a single die roll.

Well thats from the POV of a player, but its even worse from the POV of the GM. Consider my ealier Shackled City post in this thread. It took us more than a year to reach the last epic encounter. And on the first round of combat my players lost miserably. It was so demoralizing that even with divine intervention my characters ( and me as a GM) did not want to continue playing, just because the momentum of the action, and even the sense of the epic moment was lost.

All those months setting up for an encounter, all the time spent preparing encounters and prepping NPCs was lost. Heck if we would have died after 5 or 6 rounds of heavy combat would have been an acceptable loss, but just lossing the first round to bad rolls sucked the fun out of the campaign.

And yes I could have told the players that it sucked and they could have re-rolled, but how is that any different from just saying okay you guys are the heroes just narrate how you beat the bad guy and lets forget rolling dice for this session?

In the end I would just quote what one of my players said the next session we had :

"Why are we even playing D&D again, we wasted a whole year on that lets do something else were we can really feel epic", and to my dismay all of my players agreed and so did I.