Paid a bod yn dwp
Explorer
Your premise isn’t wholly correct. You’re overstating the impact of these rules on the game. As Xoth very clearly pointed out in his last post ,the stages you would need to go through for character death (not just zero hit points) still makes death unlikely. I’ve mentioned before, any genre elements for example “grit” are on a sliding scale. let’s say you have wfrp at one end and 5e at the other. Wfrp is in a different league of grit compared to what we are talking about here. You can sneeze in wfrp fall on your sword, and die from your wounds 3 days later. That’s more like game of thrones level of futility your describing.
The D&D hero aspect is still a central part of the game in Xoths proposals, but with a little pinch of mortal vulnerability. Steal is the ultimate weapon and no mortal can escape that.
What’s proposed is nothing like the futility of play you just described, where players are afraid of combat, that’s much more wfrp’s realm, though even that has martial characters built for battle.
let’s take this further, if we slide the scale of grit higher in Xoth’s game we could introduce other elements like more frequently achievable take-downs, or the “fumble”. With the fumble we would be getting into the lower fantasy fantasy realm which models accidental/calamitous self inflicted wounds. That would be inappropriate IMO in a game of S&S mediated through DnD 5e. That’s taking it too far on the scale of grit IMO, and to levels more appropriate to Game of thrones as you have descibed
In contrast to the fumble, critical’s (and deadly critical’s) are very much part of the flavour of the S&S genre. Extraordinary hits that can cleeve a foe, remove a sorcerer’s head before he/she has a chance to cast their evil magic. That’s the power of steal, and its fully genre appropriate.
Hero’s should have things partly weighted in their favour, to avoid many of these outcomes in the game on themselves, and Xoth has provided that with the sacrificing a weapon/shield rule, 5e has provided the other tools to safe guard most adventurers. Most people admit it’s quite a safe system for players. That’s why it can take a little slide up on the scale of grit without it turning into a different genre, as you seem afraid it will.
As has been pointed out there should be a risk of failure in any game of D&D to make it playable. The whole game is premised on chance of success or failure. If we’re sticking to the Conan stories then we shouldn’t allow those elements in our game at all - Conan shouldn’t fail his climb up the sorcerer’s tower for example.
The optional rules also serve a purpose to colour the atmosphere of the game, in-line with S&S elements. It can be a cruel world, with little moral compass for example, death is always a possibility. Our hero’s are more heroic for the risks they take in such a world.
An element of Grit is genre appropriate in S&S. I sat through 1982’s Conan, very gritty film with gory deaths, and one-shot take downs. Even lost one of the protagonists, and nearly lost Conan. But steal always has the last word.
