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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Igwilly" data-source="post: 7216470" data-attributes="member: 6801225">Honestly, I’m not in the mood of discussing how much important Death should be to your characters. If you cannot see why, I’m not the one who’s going to convince you.I stand by my previous statements: Raising the dead should be costly and difficult, and if your (general case, not specific “your”) players do not fear death, something is wrong. I also am willing to house-rule the system until I get that (I’ve created house-rules far more time-consuming than changing a couple of spells).I do agree with you in two points: 1) at high-levels, there are far more serious threats than personal, physical death. At that point, though, you are conjuring meteors and travelling between the planes; life is quite different. 2) Level drain *is* worse than death, for the very nature of the game. I disagree with rust monsters, though. @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=22362" target="_blank">MoutonRustique</a> sorry for taking so long, I was busy, hehe.Well, I don’t know what are you planning or where you’ll use this, but ok.My strongest complain about “nastiness” in 4e are status effects. I’m fine with some “until the end of next turn” stuff, but I came to be extremely disappointed with “save ends” effects. At first, they seemed to be strong, but they’re pretty weak for what they should do. Save ends in 4e means 55% of chance of ending in 1 round, by doing nothing! Do the math for 2 or 3 rounds and you’ll see how much it probably lasts. These status effects should last much more. In this category, there are paralysis, blindness, sleep, deafness, confusion, etc.The second strongest complain are immunities. With the exception of undead, 4e was quite shy at giving immunities to monsters. I can get that, if a Wizard specialized with fire spells encounters a fire-immune creature, he/she will have a tough time. However, I have no sympathy for one-trick ponies. One particular example are solo monsters: 4e took some time to make them properly threatening instead of being very vulnerable to certain effects. In my opinion, that is actually easy to solve: just make solo monsters immune to status effects that simply shut them down. Contractual Boss Immunity. Give elites a resistance to that, and leave standard as it is. With the rarity of solo (boss) monsters and the number and importance of standard monsters, I don’t think we’ll end up with Useless Useful Spells – not if done right.Along with specific immunities, there are also general immunities: magic resistance, magic immunity, immunity to weapons. I think magic/spell resistance, or immunity in the same vein as old-school Golems (perhaps some things still affect them somewhat) is an interesting challenge that makes players think differently than simply shooting their spells as one wants. Things like “need silver weapons to hit” and “incorporeal monsters are not hit by normal weapons” is one thing I miss. Especially ghosts and such: no matter how much one tries to explain to me, I simply cannot accept a common sword dealing half damage to a ghost! However, I think we should reserve this sort of immunities to monsters iconic of them. There’s no need or use to give every demon and devil a “need +X weapon to hit” and “XX% magic resistance”, if you know what I mean. In addition, I think the requirement of magical items should be a separated one and used sparingly (if we ever have it): no waves of monsters with “need +X weapon to hit”; and magic does not substitute for silver, or cold iron, or whatever.(Small comment: I like these weapons immunities in good part because I love weapons and armor of different, exotic materials. Silver arrows, cold-iron dagger, mithril sword, adamant armor and weapons, golden/platinum darts, celestial bronze… It seems so flavorful and “magical” to me, and it should really matter that your equipment is made of such stuff.)I also miss gaze attacks. I think the modern concept of gaze effects is very weird (I’ve seen it in other places): it’s an literal attack, a deliberate action. Gaze effects are not that for me: I prefer the old version: if you look at his/her/its eyes, the effect happens. The actual strength is something to debate, but medusas should be feared!Energy drain: I like two things about energy drain: the concept of draining life energy, and the long-lasting nastiness of it. However, level drain specifically is not my favorite mechanic. Something else should replace it. Constitution drain is an alternative, as is permanent drain of healing surges (you don’t get them back until X).Save of Die, obviously. Save or Suck enters into status effects. I’ve mentioned ability drain/loss, so count that too. Rust monsters are fine, but not needed for me: there’s always another magical sword, waiting to be found (and if you use a metal weapon against a rust monsters, shame on you). Charm effects, yay (although there are some of them in 4e). Also, poison was overused in AD&D 1e, being all save or die, but poison should be nastier depending on the specific poison, of course. Although, since poison is so common, one needs to regulate their strength so that the game won’t be overcrowded with save or die enemies or such.Of course, the actual strength, danger and frequency of all this should be carefully chosen, but the general goal is to make them nastier than present 4e. In addition, there is highest priority to iconic monsters: some monsters have these effects but are not iconic of them. Overuse is bad and we should avoid it.</blockquote>

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