L&L 3/05 - Save or Die!

[BryonD]

I'm not sure I see that distinction.

Again the point, as raised *by you* was a question of comparing the deadliness of knives vs. the deadliness of Medusa.

If not being afraid of death by a single knife attack equates to not being gritty, then I'd like to know how you consider 1E gritty.

And yet Medusa was SoD in 1E. And the potential for character death was quite high in 1E.

Whether or not you see it, the dichotomy you have challenged was there.

Why would you even want a game with high probability of character death that is not gritty?

Well, I don't know where "high probability" came from, but I'll just presume you misspoke and meant "high potential".

My Pathfinder game is pretty WaaHoo. I've run gritty in the past. Pathfinder, not so much. I find these days I just like the high fantasy stuff. That is nothing but personal taste. If the gritty mood strikes me I lean toward GURPS and/or Warhammer (2E).

And yet the current campaign I'm running has seen quite a few PC deaths. Four of the starting five PCs are deceased and a handful of replacements have fallen as well. I think the total is 7 deaths in 16 sessions.

Also I think "We always used to do it like this" is not the best argument for anything

I agree 100%. Of course blindly abandoning things that have worked before is at least equally as foolish.

That is why I prefer to actually look at the merits and flaws on a case by case basis.

, especially if the last edition of the game works just fine without it.

Big "if" there.

 

[Hussar]

Well, as far as setting the "standard" for the medusa, we have 40 years of D&D medusas where you can have staring contests with them all day long, in every single version of the D&D medusa, and not turn to stone.

How is that not a standard?

 

[BryonD]

What I find interesting is this discussion is currently all swirling around the proper representation of Medusa in DnD.

The history of Medusa and monsters in DnD has historically been quite varied.

I think it is highly important to maintain a distinction between mechanical representation and narrative.

It is true that Medusa of legend is a unique character. As is the minotaur. As is Pegasus (though in that case there were others of that breed)

In D&D with a race of minotaurs they are half bull and half man. A half-pig and a half-squirrel called "minotaur" would still be wrong.

You can home brew your own world and lift the Medusa out of the MM and say that she is a unique creature because that fits the myth. Or you can home brew your own world and say that in THIS fictional world there are millions of "medusa".


If an instance of "medusa" functions as Medusa then it is ok. If an instance of medusa doesn't function like Medusa then you just have a pig/squirrel minotaur. The functionality of these statements have no reliance on whether or not your home brew has stayed true to the uniqueness in the myth or has taken the myth as a template for an entire race.

It is simple enough to just as the question "If I make this a unique creature in my home brew, does it now match the myth?" You may be completely offended by the idea that someone would want more than one in their setting. That is fine. But if you can't answer the first question with an affirmative, then you are already lost.

 

[BryonD]

Well, as far as setting the "standard" for the medusa, we have 40 years of D&D medusas where you can have staring contests with them all day long, in every single version of the D&D medusa, and not turn to stone.

How is that not a standard?

I reject that claim.

And we have had this exact conversation before.

If you run YOUR games in such a way that you describe making a save as looking at Medusa and not suffering the results, then I don't think anything in the rules is going to matter from there for better or for worse.

In every (Pre-4E)version of D&D I've ever played the rules were 100% compatible with "If you look at Medusa you turn to stone". Period.
If a player were to ever say they look at Medusa, they would turn to stone. No Save allowed.

The presumption is that the characters wish to avoid looking.


Now, anyone who wants to just say that a save means staring her in the eye and telling her to get bent is free to do so. The rules don't DEMAND anything of the players. The rules also do not prevent you from being Wolverine with a machine gun in Camelot.

But they have always completely supported the ability to get Medusa right.

 

[Hussar]

I reject that claim.

And we have had this exact conversation before.

If you run YOUR games in such a way that you describe making a save as looking at Medusa and not suffering the results, then I don't think anything in the rules is going to matter from there for better or for worse.

In every (Pre-4E)version of D&D I've ever played the rules were 100% compatible with "If you look at Medusa you turn to stone". Period.
If a player were to ever say they look at Medusa, they would turn to stone. No Save allowed.

The presumption is that the characters wish to avoid looking.


Now, anyone who wants to just say that a save means staring her in the eye and telling her to get bent is free to do so. The rules don't DEMAND anything of the players. The rules also do not prevent you from being Wolverine with a machine gun in Camelot.

But they have always completely supported the ability to get Medusa right.

Do I really have to go and quote every single Monster Manual again? I mean, you already admitted I was right once, so, why the sudden change of heart?

No, the presumption has NEVER been "you avoid looking her in the eye". Not once. Not one single instance of the medusa in D&D has followed this model. EVERY single version, from Basic D&D onwards (I can't speak to OD&D, I don't have access to those books) says that if you look at a medusa THEN you make a saving throw.

You can continue to present your homebrew as what the rules say all you like, but, you've always been wrong. Provably wrong. Go back and actually READ the books. In 3e, it's a FORT save, not a will save (which is what avoiding doing something is), in earlier editions, it was save vs petrification - the exact same save as if you were hit by a Stone to Flesh spell or a Gorgon's breath attack.

Now, you can certainly house rule all you like. That's fine. But, please, stop presenting your house rules as something that's always been in the rules, because never, not one single time, in all the history of D&D, has the medusa worked the way you claim it does.

 

[pemerton]

Well, as far as setting the "standard" for the medusa, we have 40 years of D&D medusas where you can have staring contests with them all day long, in every single version of the D&D medusa, and not turn to stone.

I was going to raise the same issue as BryonD - why does a successful save not represent averting one's gaze? - and then read your follow up post.

So I looked at some monster descriptions.

From the d20 SRD:

A medusa tries to disguise its true nature until the intended victim is within range of its petrifying gaze, using subterfuge and bluffing games to convince the target that there is no danger. It uses normal weapons to attack those who avert their eyes or survive its gaze​

This states that it is possible to survive the gaze of a medusa. Also, there are these rules for gaze attacks:

Each character within range of a gaze attack must attempt a saving throw (which can be a Fortitude or Will save) each round at the beginning of his turn.

An opponent can avert his eyes from the creature’s face, looking at the creature’s body, watching its shadow, or tracking the creature in a reflective surface. Each round, the opponent has a 50% chance of not having to make a saving throw.

. . .

If visibility is limited (by dim lighting, a fog, or the like) so that it results in concealment, there is a percentage chance equal to the normal miss chance for that degree of concealment that a character won’t need to make a saving throw in a given round.​

These rules very strongly imply - they more-or-less entail - that the save is required only as a consequence of meeting the gaze.

From OSRIC:

[T]heir more feared attack mode is their gaze, which petrifies any creature that looks into their eyes. The creature may attempt a save vs petrifaction to avoid this.​

The reference of "this" is ambiguous - does it refer to "looking into their eyes", or does it refer to "petrification having looked into their eyes"? There is this bit of rules text that runs your way:

A character attempting to fight a medusa without looking at her must accept a penalty of -4 on his or her “to hit” rolls.​

That implies that, if you don't take the -4 penalty then you are looking at the medusa, which in turn suggests that the save is to avoid petrificatin rather than to avoid looking into the medusa's eyes.

TL;DR: you are definitely right for 3E, and probably right for AD&D/OSRIC, although I think in this latter case there is a bit more interpretive wriggle-room.

 

[Lanefan]

Making a new PC isn't usually an option without breaking immersion. If a character dies in the middle of a fight in a dangerous area, that player won't come back into the game until the fight is over (maybe 30 min, maybe 60 min), and then after the party finds a suitable time/place to revive the PC. The remedy to this situation is for the game to have shorter fights, I would say.

Said player could easily be spending that time rolling up a replacement...but you're right about shorter fights. Revival in the field makes a big difference too; once you get to that point bringing a dead PC back becomes relatively straightforward, but before that point a temporary replacement is often the next step.

As to other options: playing assistant DM is usually more trouble than it's worth, especially since a player half-heartedly then fights the remaining PCs.

This is why you always want to keep one or two NPCs in the party: people can take them over when their own character goes down.

Having two PCs is great, unless the party already has 5-6 characters, and only if the players want multiple characters.

Having two PCs each is the answer in a high-lethality game. (says he, who has an average party size in his game of about 10)

If the game is using SoDs, this situation (a player not being able to play) happen more often. Again, I'm not talking about a character dying and not coming back--that is rare after a certain level. I just mean when a PC is knocked out of a fight due to a single bad roll--that could be death, paralysis, petrification, and (perhaps worst) domination.

Sure, it's a game, and sometimes people "lose". On the other hand, I'm not running a tournament in my dining room: these are my friends and we want to play.

Fair enough, but it also comes down to expectations. D&D is not the sort of game where one can reasonably expect to be fully involved all the time, for a whole bunch of reasons including but not at all limited to character incapacitation. Most of the time yes, but not all.

Lan-"everybody must get stoned"-efan

 

[Sunseeker]

Said player could easily be spending that time rolling up a replacement...

Which really isn't a lot of fun. If there's an expectation of death in the game, it's probably better to come prepared with an alternate character. But there's still an underlying issue of dispensability here, and a tactical issue.

This is why you always want to keep one or two NPCs in the party: people can take them over when their own character goes down.

This works if we assume that players are familiar with the classes of those NPCs. If the guy who only plays fighters suddenly has to take over a sorcerer, or a cleric, it may result in even more death due to their lack of knowledge. Plus, there's a growing tactics issue.

Having two PCs each is the answer in a high-lethality game. (says he, who has an average party size in his game of about 10)

For players who are skilled enough to run two characters yes. This gets progressively more difficult and turns become more time-consuming as players advance to higher levels. If you have players who are VERY fluent with the game and capable of taking quick turns, that's great, this works, but there's also the tactics issue here.

The one that I've been leading up to is basically this: D&D is a team game, in most situations you're working with and cooperating with other players, players who you have to communicate with. Sometimes effects remove those modes of communication(deafen, blind/darkness). Without metagaming, you basically now can't communicate with your party. Problematically, you can't NOT communicate with yourself, and as it's been said, attempting to not metagame is the height of metagaming.

Not to mention that D&D is supposed to establish a system of co-dependence within a party(that's why they're sticking it out together and not alone), if every player is their own party, then we're wondering, "why is this group of people together?"


Even if I wanted to run a high-lethality game, there's no way I could follow your suggestions. Character creation is more than just rolling stats and picking powers/feats, it's an investment. Making multiple characters because they're all going to die next week makes them meaningless. Why put the love and effort into creating, developing, role-playing a character you're going to replace in a week? Secondly, I'm a slow player, I take time to consider my options, and there's no way I could run multiple characters, or just jump into an NPC.

I'd like to see ways to run a high-lethality game without filling the dumpster with dead characters every week. The THREAT of lethality is what's important, not actual death. Expecting to die, coming very close to death, seeing a single character die and knowing you could be next, that's what creates tension. Throwing characters into the meat grinder is more a war-crime than a tension builder.

 

[Mattachine]

Said player could easily be spending that time rolling up a replacement...but you're right about shorter fights. Revival in the field makes a big difference too; once you get to that point bringing a dead PC back becomes relatively straightforward, but before that point a temporary replacement is often the next step.

This is why you always want to keep one or two NPCs in the party: people can take them over when their own character goes down.

Having two PCs each is the answer in a high-lethality game. (says he, who has an average party size in his game of about 10)

Fair enough, but it also comes down to expectations. D&D is not the sort of game where one can reasonably expect to be fully involved all the time, for a whole bunch of reasons including but not at all limited to character incapacitation. Most of the time yes, but not all.

Lan-"everybody must get stoned"-efan

I have been in games such as you describe, Lanefan, and I have even run them a couple times. This is especially true for a one-shot game, or a short campaign designed to only play a specific series of adventures. In such games, players don't make the same investment in creating a story, a personality (as in my current campaign), because they know the PC may die. In fact, they fear SoD and death much less, since they aren't committed to their somewhat disposable characters. If the new PC is lower level, and with less gear (or even level 1), a couple deaths means that the adventure is over, because the party isn't tough enough to continue--well, time to start a new game. That has happened to me as a DM three times over the years, and to me once as a player. Yay.


My current group (and my group from back in the 80's) prefer a campaign with ongoing character development. That means PC deaths are rare and usually permanent, and players control one PC at a time (perhaps one plus a backup). By limiting (or eliminating) SoD, PC deaths come as a consequence of at least a few actions, not single instances of bad luck.
Even when a PC dies, that makes for a more memorable and satisfying experience.

 

[Dausuul]

Regarding the medusa, the pre-4E rules don't explicitly say you can look at the medusa and survive, but they push in that direction. (Correction after reading a few more posts: they do explicitly say this.) In 3E, for instance, you make a Fort save to not turn to stone. If the save is to avoid looking at the medusa, this makes no sense--it ought to be Reflex. Fortitude is for when you're "toughing out" something, which implies that you are in fact "toughing out" petrification. Likewise, AD&D made the saving throw "Petrifaction or Polymorph," implying that you were resisting the transformation into stone rather than avoiding ever meeting the medusa's gaze in the first place.