Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 2019488" data-attributes="member: 545">This is actually not such a problem for the Fighter.  A 13th level Fighter PC could easily have a +16 Fort save and only a very rare NPC Cleric is going to do better than DC 22 at that level.  A 13th level Raging Dwarven Fighter/Barbarian could have a Fort save of +23 against a instant kill spell.  The front line meatshields are not good targets for death effects; the results are too unreliable.This analysis is not much comfort to the Wizard and Rogue, though.I think the solution is a combination of:(1) PCs need to aggressively & methodically boost their saves once their level hits the teens, especially in the Fort and Will department.(2) PCs need to be aware of instant death effects, and what measures help against them, e.g. Death Ward.(3) DMs should try to drop hints when instant death effects are likely to appear.  This is important both so that PCs take available precautions and that a sudden death does not seem dramatically arbitrary.(4) The DM and players should understand that higher level play in vanilla D&D involves the occasional instant death.  That is what Resurrections are for, and it is not a big deal if the bad luck is spread around.  If you are uncomfortable with that, you probably should make rule adjustments.(5)  Suck it up.  In any tough fight there is ~5% likelihood of something mortally bad happening to a PC.  That might be a critical hit.  That might be a failed save.(5) Create a feat that allows the reroll of one save per day.</blockquote>

Verification