Save or Die: Yea or Nay?

[GregChristopher]

I don't think, deep inside, I want to agree with Greg here, but I do, with exceptions.
If the players are going after BBEG, then they should probably be expecting an SoD. Likewise, if they are in someplace that is totally, hugely dangerous you should encounter a SoD.
However, if you're headed back to town, or just wandering around, I don't think an SoD random is totally appropriate.
That said, I probably do it anyway and don't realize it.

That logic could quickly cascade into anywhere in the game world if you are not careful. Isnt the whole point of most games to be placing yourself in inherently dangerous locations? I dont think anyone is dungeon crawling in downtown Des Moines. Unless they are vampires.....

 

[Ariosto]

By the book, it could be as high as nearly 100% that a single PC will be killed in the encounter. Is that just the way the cookie crumbles or would you want to do something to ameliorate that percentage?

That chance is specific to 3e, and within 3e to particular effects.

Doing something to ameliorate that percentage is always an option for players. One can use strategy and tactics! For instance, if an effect has a range of 30 feet, then a small vanguard ahead of the main body might survive and give warning. If this were 1st ed. AD&D, then in my experience an elf or halfling would typically be at least 90' in advance.

The sleep spell in 1st ed. AD&D has a range of at least 40 feet, affects a 30-foot diameter, and usually permits no save if it affects subjects at all. It takes out on average 10 (minimum 4) 1st-level or 5 (minimum 2) 2nd-level creatures. It is a 1st-level spell. Humanoid tribal shamans and witch doctors normally do not have access to it, but humans and elves often do, and it appears on scrolls.

 

[GregChristopher]

That chance is specific to 3e, and within 3e to particular effects.

Doing something to ameliorate that percentage is always an option for players. One can use strategy and tactics! For instance, if an effect has a range of 30 feet, then a small vanguard ahead of the main body might survive and give warning. If this were 1st ed. AD&D, then in my experience an elf or halfling would typically be at least 90' in advance.

The sleep spell in 1st ed. AD&D has a range of at least 40 feet, affects a 30-foot diameter, and usually permits no save if it affects subjects at all. It takes out on average 10 (minimum 4) 1st-level or 5 (minimum 2) 2nd-level creatures. It is a 1st-level spell. Humanoid tribal shamans and witch doctors normally do not have access to it, but humans and elves often do, and it appears on scrolls.

And if it was 1st ed. AD&D, you can just throw away your character and reroll it up on a piece of toilet tissue. There is no attachment.

 

[Ariosto]

Tiamat does not belong on a normal wandering monster table

What is a "normal" wandering monster table?

although she's on some of the older school ones.

For example?

Your opinion as to what "doesn't belong" someplace is your opinion in any case, to which you are entitled. However, it is hard to know just what that opinion actually is without the answers to these questions of usage and fact.

 

[Ariosto]

Or C) you customize the game to your taste.

I have raised no objection to that practice, in which I have engaged in myriad ways since 1976.

Believe it or not, it was people "customizing D&D to their taste" who produced Rolemaster -- and Palladium, and Arduin, and many other games called by their own proper names. By however many generations, every RPG today traces its lineage back to D&D.

(Since the introduction of Character Law, it has been utterly silly to insist that people are "just playing D&D" when in fact they need no more reference to another game than D&Ders do. Rolemaster is a perfectly legitimate and distinctive game in its own right!)

So, cut out that nonsense about someone being against tinkering with D&D just because he's in favor of there being D&D to tinker with in the first place. It was there from 1974-2000, and that did not prevent heaps of different games from being played. I'm pretty sure you knew damned well how absurd your baiting was before you engaged in it.

(this is why the idea of doctrinally pure D&D seems ill-supported by the actual text of the game)

I don't see "the idea of doctrinally pure D&D" coming from anywhere but you. That's your problem, bub.

 

[Reynard]

And if it was 1st ed. AD&D, you can just throw away your character and reroll it up on a piece of toilet tissue. There is no attachment.

That's rather more dependent upon the player than the edition of the game, I think.

Characters live in thw white spaces of the character sheet, and at the table, and in the musings on the drive home after the session. they do not live in the mechanics that tell you how strong they are or what skills they have, or not.

 

[Ariosto]

And if it was 1st ed. AD&D, you can just throw away your character and reroll it up on a piece of toilet tissue. There is no attachment.

That is obvious hyperbole, but it reflects a fundamental fact:
Different games are ... (wait for it) ... different! The parts fit together as a whole, and the design of the whole that informed design of the parts can be very basically and comprehensively different from one superficially similar game to another.

It also reflects these facts of game-design craftsmanship (and really of life in general):
(1) Different tools often are suited to different jobs, and different routes often lead to different destinations.
(2) If you are unclear on where you want to go, it's hard to plot a course.
(3) The guy you're following might be lost, too, or he might be heading someplace you don't want to go.
(4) If you start changing stuff blindly, where you end up may be different both from where that other guy went and from where you think you're going.

 

[The Shaman]

It isnt an issue of realism (yes, these areas are dangerous) but an issue of game-fairness. People are investing a lot in these characters, they need some social contract that they wont be killed arbitrarily.

That way lies madness.

Seriously, the special snowflake attitude sucks the fun out of roleplaying games in my experience.

By the way, deciding that characters must face only challenges that they can reasonably expect to defeat is arbitrary. "Arbitrary" means a discretionary choice; it does not mean "randomly generated."

If that is not present, they are either so cautious that the game is boring or they don't invest any emotion in their characters anymore; two outcomes I think are very bad.

This is true for some players but by no means all.

In my experience, the assumption that every character is a "hero" expected to last through the entire course of a game is the foundation for the surfeit of caution you describe.

 

[Hussar]

That chance is specific to 3e, and within 3e to particular effects.

Doing something to ameliorate that percentage is always an option for players. One can use strategy and tactics! For instance, if an effect has a range of 30 feet, then a small vanguard ahead of the main body might survive and give warning. If this were 1st ed. AD&D, then in my experience an elf or halfling would typically be at least 90' in advance.

The sleep spell in 1st ed. AD&D has a range of at least 40 feet, affects a 30-foot diameter, and usually permits no save if it affects subjects at all. It takes out on average 10 (minimum 4) 1st-level or 5 (minimum 2) 2nd-level creatures. It is a 1st-level spell. Humanoid tribal shamans and witch doctors normally do not have access to it, but humans and elves often do, and it appears on scrolls.

Notice what you said there about Sleep spells - "Humanoid tribal shamans and witch doctors normally do not have access to it". Why not? After all, it's the single most effective spell they could possibly use in combat either with invading PC parties or against other humanoid groups. Nothing beats Sleep.

But, monsters almost never have it because it would suck in play. Even though it's totally realistic that they would have it, at least once in a while, they almost never do, simply because, "You enter the room, you see a bunch of orcs, roll for initiative. Oh, they won initiative, the shaman casts sleep and you all die" is not exactly a barrel of fun.

Yet, it would be totally realistic to have all sorts of mishaps happen to the PC's. Heck, dying of blood poisoning and infection should be a regular occurance. But it's not. Because it's boring.

Killing PC's is ridiculously easy. As a DM I can kill the group any time I want. I am the entire game world. "The ground opens up and swallows you, you all die."

The challenge is to make situations which are lethal enough to be exciting, without being overwhelming.

 

[Ariosto]

But, monsters almost never have it because it would suck in play.

Monsters include elves and men, and "men are the worst monsters"!

The standard chance of an encounter on the 2nd-3rd levels being with a basilisk or medusa is nil. The chance of a cockatrice is 0.35%. The chance of 2-5 characters (and men-at-arms or henchmen to bring the party up to 9) is 8.95%. Of characters, 21% are magic-users.

That's on average 18.795 magic-users encountered per cockatrice encounter.