Save or Die: Yea or Nay?

[Holy Bovine]

If you fall in lava, you die (no save).

This is an immutable law.

It's the exception that proves the rule (that save or die sucks! )

*ahem* I'm primarily a DM (although I am hanging up my DM hat for the time being) and I *loathe* save or die.


I just make the PCs wish they were dead!

 

[Ahnehnois]

Should there be instant death effects? Yes.
Should there be a save? Maybe.


It's bizarre that an rpg could get to the point where you aren't constantly at some risk of death during combat, but it shouldn't happen. Magic should absolutely have common save or die effects. If anything, nonmagical attacks should be more lethal than they usually are in hp-based games (vp/wp systems are a great way of making sure a lucky crit could kill almost anyone). Magic certainly doesn't need to be less lethal. The threat of death is essential for verisimilitude, game balance, and drama.

That's not to say, that PCs should die every battle, merely that they should have to make some decent rolls and some decent choices to avoid it (and I am in favor of action points and similar mechanics).

Incidentally, I'm more DM than player.

 

[I'm A Banana]

All this talk about literary characters in general are interesting, because protagonists in general don't die in books, at least not until the very end climax. If they do die before then, they're typically brought back to life. Having a group go through dozens of characters falling like rats doesn't fit any literary tropes.

...which is part of why it's basically impossible to permanently die in FFZ.

You could fail. Oh, boy, could you ever fail. But you will be around to right that failure.

FFZ is a heavily narrative game, though, and I wouldn't expect D&D to be quite that ardent about character continuity.

You're right, though, every edition leans a bit more in that direction than the last did.

 

[Abraxas]

Not worth it

 

[Hussar]

I don't even know what this post means.

[Threadjack]"What Doug said! I'm not sure you got the point of the "Do Polls prove..." thread... :-/"

I understand the point of the "do polls prove" thread - but given that it is a joke poll does anyone think someone is taking the time to stuff the ballot box - given that over half the votes are anonymous?? That's why I selected it. Why assume that people are doing it in any other poll with your first post in a thread? Not that you or Doug made that claim... it just boggles my mind, all the "The first thing I'm going to do is assume the worst about anyone who disagrees with me" type posts I've been seeing[/Threadjack]

Umm, well, when one choice on a poll has 30/75 (currently as I post this) anonymous posters, and the other choice has 12/100 anonymous posters, what should we think? It's just pure coincidence that over half of the poll responses for a particular answer happen to be anonymous?

Given the predilection of some people to absolutely, 100% refuse to believe that their position could possibly be a minority one, yes I am going to presume the worst. This is the second poll in as many days where the "old school" response has been stuffed.

 

[Ainamacar]

Umm, well, when one choice on a poll has 30/75 (currently as I post this) anonymous posters, and the other choice has 12/100 anonymous posters, what should we think? It's just pure coincidence that over half of the poll responses for a particular answer happen to be anonymous?

Given the predilection of some people to absolutely, 100% refuse to believe that their position could possibly be a minority one, yes I am going to presume the worst. This is the second poll in as many days where the "old school" response has been stuffed.

I have some lies, damned lies, and (internet) statistics for you, because I'm actually kind of curious. I will apply a classic test of proportions, with null hypothesis that the proportion of anonymous voters from each group should be equal.

At the time I carefully counted, there were 75 pro votes with 30 anonymous, and 101 anti votes with 22 anonymous. I'm only looking at the DM votes, incidentally.

Let n=75 and x=30. Similarly, let m=101 and y=22.
So the sample proportion of anonymous voters for each group is p_pro = x/n = 0.4, and p_anti = y/m = 0.218.

The pooled probability estimate (OK since I'm testing the evidence that the proportions are equal) that a vote comes from an anonymous voter is p_pool = (x+y)/(n+m) = 0.295

The z-statistic for this test is (p_pro - p_anti)/sqrt(p_pool*(1-p_pool)*(1/n+1/m)) = 2.62, and associated p-value = 2*normal_distribution_CDF(-|z|) = 0.0088. As with most hypothesis testing the level of significance is up to the investigator, but a p-value this small is strongly suggestive that the null hypothesis is implausible. Likewise, a two-sided confidence interval with 99% confidence for (p_pro - p_anti) is (.002, .362). The result consistent with the null hypothesis is just outside this range. Anyway, if all the assumptions of the method hold the evidence we have suggests there is less than a 1% chance that the true proportion of DMs who are pro-save-or-die and vote anonymously is the same as the proportion of DMs who are anti-save-or-die and vote anonymously.

What assumptions are made? The basic ones are that the sample we have is representative of all DMs (or possibly all DMs at Enworld, or all DMs reading this particular thread, etc.) if they were required to vote (and implicitly the assumption of no vote stuffing), and that the distribution of these proportions is normally distributed. The latter is probably decent given the sampling size and observed proportions, and the former is laughable because, well, internet poll.

Still, taken seriously, what alternate explanations might be plausible? It isn't necessarily that vote stuffing occurred:
1) Enworld does not attract the pro and anti people equally strongly (correlated with "old-school" vs. "new-school"?), but those who are attracted more strongly are more likely to sign up.
2) The proportions for non-voters (e.g. people such as myself who both play and DM enough not to have cast a vote in either category but might have if the questions were asked more carefully) is different for some reason, even if the overall proportion if we had to vote is basically equal.
3) Any of a bajillion other forms of self-selection related to signing up for a hobby board, and then voting on a particular poll.

So, it isn't ridiculous to think vote-stuffing occurred given the numbers, but it isn't exactly a foregone conclusion either. It is what it is.

On topic, I prefer save-or-die to be used sparingly, without losing it entirely. Dying like a chump sucks, but save or die can be awesome if foreshadowed or hinted at. The threat's the thing. Creeping in the tunnels where Medusa lurks, knowing she lurks there? Every corner could mean death, but we must press on! Running into her at the gas station because the wife sent you out to get some milk? Chump death. Your wife is also a medusa, and you forgot her sister was in town? OK, you might have deserved it. Demonstrating save-or-die vs. hapless NPC, just in time for the boss fight? The fight might be like waiting for the dragon to breathe, and hoping you can make it -- totally nerve-wracking. But springing a slow-burn kill on the PCs by surprise gives 'em time for the dread, and time to do what it takes to overcome.

But if you have to use them, hopefully even the rattiest rat-bastard DM remembers he should be screwing the PCs, and not his buddies. Genre matters. Verisimilitude matters. The table matters most.

 

[MrMyth]

It'd be better if you actually read and responded to the actual example. Verdande didn't say a medusa jumped out of a closet and boom! killed the PCs with its gaze. he said the fighter was going toe to toe with the medusa without precautions. There's no "gotcha" -- there's a player who either doesn't understand the potential consequences, or doesn't care. In either case, they're stone.

Except the game exists outside of a single context. Sure, some DMs will give warning that the players are coming up against Medusa and they get to take precautions. But other times, a group might come up against one with no warning - and bam, by this logic, one player is out of the fight for no reason.

The idea that if you are in a fight, and someone happens to chuck a disintegrate at you and you aren't protected against it, and this means you messed up and deserve to die... ok, I'll accept that might be fine for some styles of play, but certainly not as an absolute rule.

You can set up these sort of punishments as part of a legitimate style of play, where the PCs need to have the right answers or they lose - and that can be very rewarding to figure out what they need to do and how they need to overcome each combat. But that is so incredibly dependant on the DM that if you just freely put these scenarios out there, many groups will just come away with a bad experience - they turned a corner, and turned to stone, and nothing they can do about it.

Or, in a different style of play, it turns into a game of one-upsmanship, with players and DM each trying to have counters and counters to the counters until someone 'loses'.

The only instant death my PCs have run into in my 4E game has been getting immersed in lava, which they've managed to do. They recently came close, when one angelic PC flew out over some lava to smite his foes... and then realized the ongoing damage was going to drop him in it on the start of his next turn. None of the other PCs could get to him in time - and so one of them chucked a hammer at him to knock him backwards through the air, knocking him out in the process... but over safe ground.

The potential for instant death made for a tense and exciting moment, sure.

However, would it have been served if the PCs had walked into a room of lava, and every enemy immediately tried to shove them in it, and if the PCs didn't come prepared with lots of anti-forced movement abilities, they all died? I don't particularly think so.

 

[MrMyth]

In games I've played, if you're rolling save or die, then you've already done something really, really stupid and you're getting a last chance to survive. I think of it as a gift, actually. A chance that I might be OK despite doing something idiotic. I'm sure that's not the case with everyone. I'm sure many people have suffered occasions of the mechanic being abused all to hell. Time for a new DM!

Or a new system - the problem with this outlook is that it requires that Save or Dies are both rare, and that warning of them comes well in advance. But if any high-level spellcaster might have such spells in hand, than either you can never fight spellcasters without that risk, or you have to come up with a way to shut down their spells. (Death Ward). At which point they need to come up with a way to shut down your protection (Greater Dispel Magic). At which point you need to find a way to protect your protection (Ring of Counterspells).

At a certain point, it stops being about taking smart precautions, and instead becomes a battle for who has greater system mastery.

I don't want Save or Dies floating around in the base rules for that reason. I'd be all for having them as optional rules with a lot of guidance for DMs on when and how to use them - but without that, there is no guarantee that they will only exist to punish unprepared PCs.

I remember a Living Greyhawk adventure where the party was investigating a cabin in the woods. They wanted to be prepared for the fight, so rather than kicking the door in, they had the rogue sneak around to a window and peer inside.

He saw a Bodak. He died.

Rest of the party was warned. It was a funny story in later years. But not all that fun for the player who got to sit out of the rest of the slot, who died in the very act of trying to make sure the party was safely prepared for a fight.

 

[MrMyth]

In the myth, if you see Medusa you turn to stone. Not even "save or die", just do it and die. That is scary. The tension exists in the prospect of facing such a terrible threat. If you meet the gaze of medusa becoming slowed does not increase tension, to me, it just reveals that there is no simulation present here. It proves that you are playing a tactical boardgame in which getting the story right has been completely set aside.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I also think it is ridiculous overexaggeration to say that a Medusa's gaze that turns you to stone over 18 seconds instead of in 6 seconds means "the story has been completely set aside" for a "tactical boardgame".

Feel free to prefer the No Save or Save or Die, but you can probably offer your point without quite as much emphasis on how everyone else is 'doing it wrong.'

That said, I do understand your point. Less dangerous effects can feel like a less important, less mythic battle.

The problem is... in these big myths, how many fights are the heroes in? Over the course of everything they do... we'll hear about maybe a dozen battles, if that? A handful of famous monsters they fight or obstacles they overcome?

Perseus went and forced some crones to tell him where to find some famous weapons were. He collected some cool items and had the gods themselves give him awesome magic stuff. He found the Gorgons sleeping, snuck up and struck off Medusa's head, and then invisibly fled from the other ones. Doesn't sound like all that epic a career to me. A fantastic story and myth, but not the stuff that makes for a good game.

D&D just doesn't work on that scale. The game is just built around a larger framework than one or two mythic quests with one or two encounters. And while you can include those elements or pattern things after them, if every other fight runs the risk of the hero just dying, then the hero will accomplish one or two awesome things and then die and have someone else mysteriously step into his place in the grand picture of things.

Or get brought back from the dead, which can make for an awesome journey the first time, and get pretty mundane every other time after that.

Look, there is absolutely room for Save or Die in certain games and certain styles of play, and I'm not begrudging anyone the right to prefer it. But I don't think the comparisons to mythic stories really works - they operate on a completely different scale than the assumptions of a D&D game, and while you can pattern the occasionally really cool one-shot after that scenario, you can't make the assumption that it should be part of the default game.

 

[Reynard]

It is a constant source of amazement for me that no one EVER seems to make their saves.