Save or Die: Yea or Nay?

[Abraxas]

It's the entire text of the SRD about gaze attacks.

I believe you are missing the point - the text of the SRD demonstrates that you have to meet the creatures gaze - but meeting the creatures gaze does not = seeing the creature. Its up to the DM to decide if your character has met the creature's gaze.

The SRD doesn't include the additional descriptive text - the descriptive text could be read your way or RC's way - how you choose to read it affects how you play the game and how you deal with these type of abilities. Which may or may not affect your attitude toward SoD effects. Mr Myths rules interpretation is only correct for one reading of the text - but I don't think that's what's being discussed. It appears the discussion is about what character choices should matter and when. One side appears to want the choices to occur during the encounter/combat - the other side wants the choices to occur leading up to the encounter.

Both are effectively SSSoD effects, the timing is just different and the mechanism of the SS is different.

If everyone just picked the game that has an SS that appeals to them and didn't try to convince others that their SS was bad/wrong fun everyone would probably be happier - not that everyone in this thread is trying to convince others of that, but some give that appearance.

 

[pemerton]

I guess that is a tacit admission that the game is no longer the same?

There's nothing tacit about the "admission". From the time some of the rules details of 4e started to be announced I have stated frequently and forcefully that it's a very different game from either AD&D or 3E. If it wasn't, I'd have no interest in playing it.

Not all 4e players agree with me. Not all see the game through the same "indie design" framework that I do. Not all are FoREs (= Friend of Ron Edwards, as coined by The Shaman). But to the extent that they disagree with me, they can speak for themselves.

More generally, I have to ask whether there is really a need to treat everyone's remarks as an attempt to score points. You've stated why you don't like a "scene" or "encounter" based game. Fine. A lot of other people do like such a game. I don't think you will persuade them (us) that this enjoyment is misguided by playing "gotcha" with everything they (we) say.

a game in which the salient field of action is so narrowed that the encounter becomes that field, so that the field allows no forewarning to even be possible, nor any choice on the part of the players as to what is encountered, and which therefore makes self-reference and consistency either impossible or moot

If you think that an encounter or scene based game makes forewarning or player choice impossible, I think you have a strange conception of such a game. In a by-the-book Forge-style encounter based game, it is entirely the choices of the players that drive the sequences of scenes/encounters. And given this, the forewarning is ample.

As for the suggestiong that consistency is impossible or moot, I have no idea where that comes from or why you think it must be so. I run a scene-based 4e game. Not only is gameworld consistency maintained, but it is essential - it is the interaction between coherent backstories of players and gameworld that drives the game (for examples of what I have in mind, see the thread I started on different ways of using setting material).

I have GMed scene-based Rolemaster games in which save-or-suck is part of the game. Resolving encounters in such a game can involve resolving the suckage. (Various features of the Rolemaster spell lists and dying rules mean that save-and-literally-die is fairly rare in anything but very high level play.) I now GM a 4e game in which there is no SoD. I prefer the 4e approach, because dealing with the suckage pre-emptively (by giving bonuses to saving throws, making heal checks etc) is on the whole more engaging play for everyone at the table, including the player of the affected PC, than is dealing with the suckage after the event.

In a scene-based game the notion of avoiding the encounter altogether through careful forewarning, or waiting for the medusa to go shopping and burgling her house while she's gone - that is, the sort of responses to save-or-die threats that make sense in exploration-based play - are simply not applicable. The point of a scene-based game is that - for whatever thematic reason - the players want their PCs to engage the medusa. The game therefore benefits from rules that enhance the playing out of that engagement. In my view, this is the rationale, in a game like 4e, for going from SoD to SSSoD.

And to conclude - as far as I know, no one is trying to steal your or Ariosto's books or make you change your game. All I'm trying to do (and this is also how I read Mr Myth) is explain why a game without SoD but with SSSoD can be a better game for a particular and highly viable approach to play.

 

[josha]

I am a Dungeon Master and I voted no.
I have never found save or die fun in any way. It's not dramatic, it's not mechanically interesting, and it sucks to just have your character die without putting up a fight or even doing anything.
There are other ways to strike fear in to the hearts of your players such as brutally powerful monsters or overwhelming them with swarms of minions; but it's always more exiting to go down in a blaze of glory than instant, anti-climatic death.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If you think that an encounter or scene based game makes forewarning or player choice impossible, I think you have a strange conception of such a game. In a by-the-book Forge-style encounter based game, it is entirely the choices of the players that drive the sequences of scenes/encounters. And given this, the forewarning is ample.

Is this because the scenes are determined by player choices? And are those choices made during char gen, or play? Or perhaps both. I can see how the medusa encounter could be pre-determined because, say, one player has decided his father was petrified by her. The needs of story then pretty much demand an encounter with the medusa at some point, or at least some sort of resolution of the matter.

In the superhero campaign I previously ran, one player always liked to give his PCs an arch nemesis at char gen. His first was an Arthurian knight who had Merlin as his enemy, his second was a genetically modified Hulk-type called Strongo who had an evil Leader-type brother called Monstro. (I added a third brother, Strango, who was, tbh, rather unnecessary.)

In the D&D game I'm currently running, no one has quite such strong 'encounter drives' built in. Though there is the paladin of the Raven Queen I mentioned in another thread, who wants to destroy undead.

D&D characters traditionally start off motivated only by money, magic items and level ups. Those things can be found in lots of places, as the typical D&D world is filled with such things, so they are free to wander. Only as the game goes on would arch nemeses, such as Obmi, appear. Once such a nemesis does turn up though, one could say the game changes and a future encounter becomes fixed.

Ofc the Conan-style, money seeking approach is not the only way to play D&D. Dragonlance is a strong reaction against this - there is, I believe, no gold on Krynn - in favour of what is seen as more LotR-style motivations - the PCs in Dragonlance fight the draconians because they are trying to despoil the PCs homeland. And there's less choice there. The players aren't able to say, "Well, there's some kobolds with money, some orcs with money and some draconians with money. We could kill any of them and take their stuff and it would get us what we want."

 

[Raven Crowking]

You make it sound like it was intentional, so as to mislead. I think that's not fair. It looks more to me like RedShirtNo5 took the listing from the d20 SRD verbatim, which does not contain your passage of context.

My error, then. Another case of mistaking the SRD for the whole rules, I suppose.

However, it seems strange to me that, having been given the additional material from the book, one wouldn't make use of it. RedShirtNo5 is correct that the SRD rules follow from the context material; he is wrong if assumes the context flows from the rules rather than the other way around.

I.e., in 0D&D through 3.5 D&D, context says what the rules describe, and then gives rules that are intended to be applied within that context. This is one good reason why, when a question arises, it is almost always better to go back to the book. The context is generally not part of the SRD!

There's nothing tacit about the "admission". From the time some of the rules details of 4e started to be announced I have stated frequently and forcefully that it's a very different game from either AD&D or 3E. If it wasn't, I'd have no interest in playing it.

You just took a huge jump in my estimation, Sir.

But when you say,

If you think that an encounter or scene based game makes forewarning or player choice impossible, I think you have a strange conception of such a game. In a by-the-book Forge-style encounter based game, it is entirely the choices of the players that drive the sequences of scenes/encounters. And given this, the forewarning is ample.

I would argue instead that this is a strange thing to be calling an encounter or scene based game (FORGE-speak aside). Or, at least, a game in which the salient field of action is the encounter, as you suggested. If player choices drive the sequence of scenes/encounters, I would argue that the salient field of action is the narrative (or the sequence of scenes/encounters, if you prefer), not the encounter.

This would make the game similar to, say, Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG. Except, of course, that what one does in one encounter may well cause changes in subsequent encounters in that game, at least.

A game where the salient field of action is the encounter would contain a number of encounters, which the group may have a choice in the order they are played, but where the framework is so disconnected that there is nothing whatsoever to aid them in determining what choice should be made. The result is either a series of plotted encounters, or a series of essentially random encounters, which the PCs cannot alter prior to engagement in any way (either by their own preperation or by changing the circumstances of the encounter itself).

As written, a number of modules display this sort of frame, including some of the older modules -- even some which are sometimes considered "classics". I am sure, if you are familiar with early or current D&D, you can think of a few.

That can be fun in a fast-paced game, if that is what you are into, but on the whole I think a more robust framework makes for a better game. YMMV and all that.



RC

 

[RedShirtNo5.1]

If you don't see "any indication...in the rules" that "it requires both eyes to actively meet and acknowledge the presence of the other" you are simply failing to read the rules.

1. Since an ethereal creature can be affected by a gaze attack, it is clearly not a requirement of the rules for "both eyes to actively meet and acknowledge the presence of the other". That the flavor text gives an example in which eyes do actively meet does not negate the counter-example.

2. Since an ethereal creature can be affected by a gaze attack, I conclude that, within the fictional game space, whatever the supernatural mechanism that is taking place, is does not require that the creature with the gaze attack even be aware of its opponent. For the fictional game space, I typically describe the creature as having glowing or sparkling eyes, and all that is required is that an opponent look into the eyes. This is completely possible for a hiding opponent.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Since an ethereal creature can be affected by a gaze attack, it is clearly not a requirement of the rules for "both eyes to actively meet and acknowledge the presence of the other". That the flavor text gives an example in which eyes do actively meet does not negate the counter-example.

Likewise, the existence of an exception to the general description does not imply that the general description itself is wrong.

In earlier D&D, it was specified that certain gaze attacks functioned in the "near ethereal", and that creatures with those attacks could see into as well as be seen from that plane. This was specifically a function of a creature being able to meet the gaze of an ethereal being.

It seems far more likely to me that, in 3e, the designers considered that, were invisibility a fact (due to etherealness or otherwise), there exists a unique situation in which I can both meet your gaze and you not be aware of it.

However, that does not mean that, where invisibility (due to etherealness or otherwise) is not a factor that I can both meet your gaze and you not be aware of it. AFAICT, invisibility and etherealness are not real-world concerns. It is not unreasonable for the designers to have assumed that most of the people reading the manual would be somewhat familiar with meeting a gaze.

One may argue that 3e offers an absence of information on why ethereal creatures are subject to gaze attacks, but an absence of information merely means that any consistent interpretation is equally valid.

I.e., if "must meet gaze" is a house rule, so is MrMyth's interpretation. It is certainly not a case of "MrMyth has the correct rules interpretation" .... or of "RedShirtNo5.1 has the correct rules interpretation" because he happens to have the same interpretation as MrMyth.

Finally, there is no consistent interpretation of the RAW that I am aware of which negates both that the creature's attack must be active ("Gaze Attack" refers to the creature's active gaze, as described in the book) and must be seen by the victim. Gaze attacks eminate from the creature's eyes (hence "Gaze Attack" and not "Face Attack"). The victim must meet that creature's gaze to be affected, by the book, and so there must be a line of sight from the victim's eyes to the Gaze Attack monster's eyes.

And please note that, according to RAW, an invisible or ethereal creature is not affected automatically by meeting the attacker's gaze; the attack must be "turned on". The gaze must be active.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

BTW, I hope that, for consistency, those of you who rule that gaze attacks don't actually require a gaze to be met also allow breath weapons when it is impossible to take a breath. I mean, I don't think that the rules actually say you have to be able to breathe to use a breath weapon......

In general, I would say that, given more than one possible reading of a rule, if you choose the reading that least favours the players, especially if it flies in the face of common sense and common usage, that is bad GMing.

It might be an error; all GMs are guilty of giving a subpar performance from time to time.

If that is one's modus operandi, however, I would say that person was also a bad GM. YMMV on that, of course, but I certainly wouldn't be interested in what that person was bringing to the table.


RC

 

[The Shaman]

It isn't about them seeking him out and becoming heroes by proving themselves against the bad guys of the setting, it is about them exploring their own personal stories as they connect to the plot of the game.

"Proving themselves against the bad guys of the setting" in no way precludes "exploring their personal stories."

The difference is that the adventurers' "personal stories" are a result of what happens in actual play rather than a meta-duscussion. Develop-in-play accomplishes the same thing that develop-at-start does out out-of-game, but I prefer DIP because for me it's more organic and - dare I say it? I dare, I dare! - real because it comes out of shared events passed through the mechanics of the game and experienced first-hand by the players and their characters.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Interesting that more DMs prefer not to use it than players.