Balancing Save-or-Die

[Frostmarrow]

The only thing different between being caught by a dragon's breath and a medusa's gaze is the first turns you to ash and the second turns you to stone. The means of reducing HP to zero dictates what the remains look like. (And what to do about it).
The HP-system does not allow shortcuts without it wreaking havoc with the rest of the rules.

Assassins can kill in one strike, provided they roll damage in excess of the target's HP.

 

[Oni]

The only thing different between being caught by a dragon's breath and a medusa's gaze is the first turns you to ash and the second turns you to stone. The means of reducing HP to zero dictates what the remains look like. (And what to do about it).
The HP-system does not allow shortcuts without it wreaking havoc with the rest of the rules.

Assassins can kill in one strike, provided they roll damage in excess of the target's HP.

What about paralyzation, sleep, hold person, et c.? In a practical sense these very often shortcut the HP-system.

 

[jbear]

Assassins ... hmm ... what is the archetype of assassin I'd like to see in the game ... let me think ... [sblock]

[/sblock]

I think degrees of success or failure on a save could be an interesting avenue to explore.

For example: Assassin's skill level and degree of preparation of the kill (situational bonus) sets the DC of the saving throw. This is added to DC roll (1d20)

A success means the attack does a minimum of damage

A fail by 1-10 means the target suffers double damage and begins to bleed
A fail by 11+ means the target is dead

There would be situational requirements to perform a kill eg. being hidden or catching target by surprise

Being prepared eg. getting to know target and habits would increase possibility of a clean kill but not required. Assassins can improvise (which is logical).

A higher level target like an important boss will have a higher save so less likely to fail by more than 10, harder to insta-kill. Mooks are more likely to be one-shotted. But even if the aren't damage might kill them, and if not bleeding will likely finish them off.

Other spell effects could have similar varying effects based on degree of failure.

Eg. Sleep: Fail by less than 5: Sleepy and confused
Less than 10: Short term unconscious
More than 10: Night Night

Too messy?

 

[Li Shenron]

Thinking about solos lead me to thinking about minions, which, I figured...are save-or-die mechanics in a different box. Hit them, and they die. This is exactly what I want the Assassin to be able to do (in certain limited circumstances).

Not sure what "balance" would mean in this case, but the first thing that come to my mind would be to give an HD limit to each specific save-or-die spell or effect.

Something either static (e.g. Finger of Death: creatures up to 10HD save-or-die, creatures above take X damage and are paralyzes N rounds) or dynamic (e.g. Assassin's Backstab: creatures with less HD that the Assassin's level save-or-die, etc...).

Some spells actually used to work like that (Sleep).

 

[Mishihari Lord]

What about paralyzation, sleep, hold person, et c.? In a practical sense these very often shortcut the HP-system.

In line with the idea in my post above, it would make sense to give a hp threshold for these. e.g. A sleep spell would only affect creatures with 20 or less current hit points. This goes along with the idea that hp are an abstract measure of ability to resist attacks. When your hp become low enough you are vulnerable to such magic effects.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The only thing different between being caught by a dragon's breath and a medusa's gaze is the first turns you to ash and the second turns you to stone. The means of reducing HP to zero dictates what the remains look like. (And what to do about it).
The HP-system does not allow shortcuts without it wreaking havoc with the rest of the rules.

Assassins can kill in one strike, provided they roll damage in excess of the target's HP.

Even if you do it through the hp system, balance issues remain. Disintegrate, for example works through damage, but I suspect irks people almost as much as Finger of Death because the damage it deals on a failed save is intentionally more than the normal that would be allowed.

Some people simply do not believe that "my character dies in one hit" is balanced, regardless of the specifics of how that was handled mechanically.

 

[Belphanior]

Even if you do it through the hp system, balance issues remain. Disintegrate, for example works through damage (snip)

Depends on which edition's Disintegrate we're talking about.


About SoD, one idea I've seen floating around is to let such effects do a certain amount of damage and then if the target is bloodied afterwards there's the SoD. If it remains healthier than that, the SoD portion is ignored.

That somewhat mitigates the anticlimax issue though there's still some other problems. How do saves work? How do hit points work? How does healing/resurrection work? These are questions that matter to SoD, and it's hard to talk about balancing a game element if we don't know what the rest of the game looks like.

 

[ExploderWizard]

In line with the idea in my post above, it would make sense to give a hp threshold for these. e.g. A sleep spell would only affect creatures with 20 or less current hit points. This goes along with the idea that hp are an abstract measure of ability to resist attacks. When your hp become low enough you are vulnerable to such magic effects.

Great idea! Can't XP you right now.

In a way, this type of effect has been part of the game since classic D&D.

The Death spell had a HD limit as did Sleep. Power Word Kill was a nasty no save spell but the target had to have fewer than 60 hit points. Similar limitations could be reasonably applied to hold spells as well.

Spells like disintigrate could have a damage rating against the living but just simply destroy nonliving objects such as corporeal undead and constructs.

Also the more powerful the effect, the lower the HP threshold could be. Also, the more powerful the caster, the higher the HP threshold for these effects becomes. This way, the sleep spell can remain useful throughout the levels AND do what the spell says it does.

 

[Frostmarrow]

What about paralyzation, sleep, hold person, et c.? In a practical sense these very often shortcut the HP-system.

Yes. I think they should stop. If 'killed' by paralyzation you are paralyzed. Same goes for sleep. Hold Person might disappear though. It doesn't fit. But what is that anyway? "I feel somewat held today." I don't get it.

Nope. What brings you down only suggest a remedy. That is all the HP-system allows for. Otherwise we get balance issues. Which we've, in all fairness, learned to live with, so it's not that big a deal.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Assassins can kill in one strike, provided they roll damage in excess of the target's HP.

I'm coming around to this perspective, and let me elaborate a little on how I got there.

If you have a functional "kill in one hit" attack, using 4e numbers, it needs to deal 8*(level+3) damage, on average (taking it from this very useful article series, needing to deal 8 normal hits).

So, at level 1, that's like 32 points of damage. Whether you actually track the points or not, the effect is roughly like dealing 32 points of damage to a single target in one round. 32 points of damage just means something to every character.

If the Assassin can only do that once, during a surprise round...that's actually, in 4e terms, a weak sauce striker mechanic. Compared to the rogue dealing 16 points of damage almost EVERY round, the Assassin is lagging behind (even though she might have the edge during the first round or so). It really demonstrates that instant death isn't really that powerful. If I was designing this class for 4e, I'd need to give them sneak attacks or poisons or something to play catch-up, even with that ability. If I was trying to balance the Assassin accross the pillars instead, I might just say "Assassins: they kill one guy, then they can't do much."

Turning these effects into "damage values" makes them kind of surprisingly easy to put into context with the rest of combat.

5e hints at a process like this, too (sleep = 120 points of damage, is, I believe, the example?).