Is 4th edition getting soft? - edited for friendly content :)

[Geron Raveneye]

And there is still no difference, because, as is, the most common death effects all do negative damage when the target makes the save, so the association with negative damage is there anyway.

Not that I'm aware of..otherwise, Negative Energy Protection would help against spells such as Slay Living, Finger of Death, Destruction or Implosion and Cloudkill, the gaze of a bodak or the wail of a banshee. It doesn't, because those are all Death effects, not negative energy damage.

And the ability does treat heroes and ordinary guys different to begin with, because the better a hero gets, the higher his saves become.

The one and only difference between Death Effects and lots of damage is mechanical: Death Effects, no matter how weak they are, no matter how tough the opponent, always kill at least with a 5% chance. So no matter what you target, be it the Level 50 Paladin, the Level 200 Fighter or whatever, will most likely get brought down by twenty of those, even though the same characters can survive thousands of sword hits, rocks falling on them, fireballs burning them, or whatever.

Hmhmm, but that "little" mechanical difference is not so little to begin with. If you start using damage to hit points as main mechanic to simulate death effects, you'll run up against a host of trained player minds who are used to explore every rule to increase their hit point total and reduce damage they take from any source, which will turn the whole thing into just another arms race exercise between damage dealers and damage resisters. Also, that difference has huge flavour differences between an effect that is no different from being stabbed by a sword, only that the damage is a lot higher (and from what I've seen, there are PC and monster builds out there that would scoff at an output of a palsy 100 points of damage), and an effect that will kill you immediately no matter how high and mighty you are, except for some really specific protection, in 5% of all cases.
By the way, how DO you get 20 save-or-die effects into play against a level 50 Paladin who has Death Ward as a 4th level spell? 20 death clerics who all jumped him in the middle of the night while sleeping? Just interested how contrived such a scenario would have to be to end up with a paladin of THAT magnitude with his pants down and surrounded by 20 opponents of that caliber.

At the same time, Bob the Commoner, with Ability Scores all in the 6-8 range, no experience whatsoever, will survive the greatest, strongest Death Spell of the God of Death 5% of the time.
Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

No, what doesn't make sense is insisting on something very silly like that, when nearly every deity supplement in D&D history had a simple mechanic to make sure divine magic was different from mortal magic, be it Power Points or simply no-save divine effects, with reminders to the DM that gods simply work different from normal mortals. I don't know if that is different in the games you experienced, but in all of my games, gods play a completely different playing field...they don't use the same rules mortals use. If the God of Death wants somebody dead, and he has to come around in person to make it so, that person winds up dead, period.
The same goes for a high-level character being struck by a falling star, by the way. YMMV, and it obviously does.
It's interesting to note, by the way, that this auto-success/failure rule for saving throws came up with 3.5 as a response to high-level characters having no real failure chance otherwise, which in turn gave low-level characters a slight chance to make even impossible saves.

Sure, as long as it is pretty low. You wouldn't accept it if your Level 30 Fighter would have a 5% chance of dying whenever he gets hit by a sword (even though it is pretty realistic), so why would you want to have a 5% chance of dying whenever something casts a Level 5 spell on you?

Apples and oranges, two very different effects represented by two very different rule systems creating two very different flavours. And yes, I want to have a system in place that still can strike down even a high-level character if used right under the right circumstances.

That random Level 9 Cleric should have a chance to kill you with Death Spells, he only should have to casts multiple of those, so that your chance to die is not 5% (or higher, if he can cast more than more before you kill him), but more like the chance a Level 9 Fighter has of killing you.

He does...if he manages to continue casting his spell while I'm trying to lop his head off, and doesn't fumble his spells all the time, he can try to cast multiple Death Spells at me...he'll probably stop after the second, and maybe rummage for scrolls, though. And since one casting doesn't increase the chance of the second to work better, he'll still only have 5% chance to kill me with each single spell. Since we're playing d20 and not d100, 5% is the smallest chance you can get. But that's system inherent.

As is, a group of ten Level 9 Casters with Death Effects will often bring down a Level 10^10^10^10 Character, which is completely and entirely stupid, and not like the rest of the system works at all.

I must say that such examples always look a little contrived, out of any imaginable context, and most likely don't come up in 95% of games anyway, since they usually require the high-level character to be completely and utterly surprised and outperformed on initiative, and without ANY protective measures. Which is why it's so hard to give them a fully serious contemplation.

EDIT: Got to correct myself here about the whole thing of divine abilities. After quite a bit of page turning, I can say that D&D 3E treats saves against divine spells/abilities like any other save..albeit with extremely high DCs, which coupled with the no auto-success of 3E back then means you have to be damn good to make it. The old Immortal Set doesn't talk much about attacking mortals at all, except for the Aura attack, which allows a save with your basic save modified by the immortal's Charisma.
One of WotC forst products, Primal Order, uses Primal Energy to power divine abilities, which ignores anything a mortal can bring up as defense or save. Of course, it's not D&D proper.
I've yet got to check AD&D 1E and 2E for their respective treatments of divine spells used against mortals, and what they have to say about the topic. Check in for more enlightenment soon.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I see my Will Save is higher than yours, since I considered making precisely that post but resisted.

My Will save is even lower, because I've engaged in that sort of "argument by ridicule" myself.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Yes it is. That's the whole point of save-or-die. You save, or you die. One roll.

Does this mean that you beleive on the final move in chess matters? Or does the lead-up to that last move have anything to do with the outcome?

Are your characters in the habit of waking up with bodaks? Or does the lead-up to that encounter have anything to do with the outcome?

Because, from where I sit, nearly any sort of "context" means that more than that one roll matters. If you are a DM and don't allow your players the means to gain adequate information to make decisions intelligently, then I have little respect for you. If you are a player and don't make use of the means to gain information available to you, I have little pity for you. Head into The Hopping Tower of Incalcuable Doom without at least making a Gather Information check and you might encounter something unexpected. If the Hopping Tower only appears for one week every 500 years, and you don't know that, and it disappears, you might be lost in the aether without a save.

Personally, I run a world where the players have to make choices about what their characters will do. Just because an old man in a bar tells you something is a good idea, doesn't mean it is.

YMMV, and obviously does.

RC

 

[Cadfan]

Hence, neither of the situations I described indicate that the monster was a "glass cannon" or a "melee monster". It simply has a death attack with a save DC of 20, that's about it.

I inferred that from the fact that you created a monster that can kill up to one player per round but dies in 2 to 3 rounds in a fight with 8th level characters and is appropriate for use against 22nd level characters.

That's awfully glass cannon-ish, in both combats.

I view the rest of your commentary as basically answered by what I had to say regarding the balancing problems of a monster which is intended for sure against characters of either 8th or 22nd level. I think my explanation of alternate glass cannons that accomplish the same tasks without the drawbacks of an absolute death effect holds up.

 

[hong]

Does this mean that you beleive on the final move in chess matters? Or does the lead-up to that last move have anything to do with the outcome?

Are your characters in the habit of waking up with bodaks? Or does the lead-up to that encounter have anything to do with the outcome?

Is there a reason? You have decided? To post with rising inflections?

Because, from where I sit, nearly any sort of "context" means that more than that one roll matters. If you are a DM and don't allow your players the means to gain adequate information to make decisions intelligently, then I have little respect for you. If you are a player and don't make use of the means to gain information available to you, I have little pity for you. Head into The Hopping Tower of Incalcuable Doom without at least making a Gather Information check and you might encounter something unexpected. If the Hopping Tower only appears for one week every 500 years, and you don't know that, and it disappears, you might be lost in the aether without a save.

Personally, I run a world where the players have to make choices about what their characters will do. Just because an old man in a bar tells you something is a good idea, doesn't mean it is.

... of course, you would be that d00d who saw nothing wrong with reducing an entire combat down to a single die roll, yes?

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think my explanation of alternate glass cannons that accomplish the same tasks without the drawbacks of an absolute death effect holds up.

Assuming that you believe that SoD effects are a "drawback" to begin with.

While I agree that there are many cases where "Save or Effect" is better than "Save or Die", I don't believe that this is absolutely true in all cases.

RC

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I inferred that from the fact that you created a monster that can kill up to one player per round but dies in 2 to 3 rounds in a fight with 8th level characters and is appropriate for use against 22nd level characters.

That's awfully glass cannon-ish, in both combats.

If you quote me, do so correctly please. What I said was...

Depending on the HD/combat ability of that monster, the resulting melee can take 2-3 rounds, making it an interesting encounter for an end fight, and one the group will be HAPPY to end quick, too.[/b]

Depending on the HD/combat ability, the same combat could as well take 15 rounds and 4 hours of real-time. I used 2-3 rounds combat time because that's the amount I personally prefer for a combat of a group vs. a single monster. A glass cannon is a monster that goes down in the first round without much trouble. That's the problem with not detailing it more before setting the challenge.

I think my explanation of alternate glass cannons that accomplish the same tasks without the drawbacks of an absolute death effect holds up.

Sure, if you assume a drawback of that ability, your method is valid, practical, and easy to implement. We simply don't share the same opinion on it, that's all.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If the Hopping Tower only appears for one week every 500 years, and you don't know that, and it disappears, you might be lost in the aether without a save.

So you're arguing in favour of D, not SoD?

SoD is very different as a player could have made every single mistake imaginable and yet still make his save at the end of it, ending up no worse off than the player that did everything right. That's what SoD is all about. The chain leading up to it is truly irrelevant, it all comes down to a single die roll.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Well, that seems like a "who cares" issue. Except that unfortunately it has terrible implications, because it suggests that they are going to nerf life-or-death effects, because otherwise it'd be too annoying to hear the DM go "The beholder gets a 30 on his death gaze effect. You die. No, you don't get to roll. Sorry."

And removing life-or-death effects is just a way of making the game easier and more nerf-y in general. The primary effect on play of removing life-or-death effects is to make the game easier and more monty-haul pat-on-the-back make it harder for PCs to die. Which means, less drama. Which sucks.



No, I've never been envious of fighters rolling critical hits. I'd rather have a robust list of spells and a tremendous variety of spellcaster options, like in the 3E PHB, thanks. (Anyway, what about the fun of rolling a fireball and coming up with a bunch of sixes?)

I play a spellcaster because I DON'T WANT TO play a fighter class. Fighters and spellcasters should be different. "Narrowing" and "simplifying" spellcasters is the single lamest, most unappealing thing about 4E. To me. As someone who never plays fighters.



I don't understand what the deal is here, as this is one of the easiest things to calculate imaginable.

Um, hello, I never said those things in any of my quotes. You are taking peoples quotes from the anti SoD crowd and putting my name on them.

That is not cool.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So you're arguing in favour of D, not SoD?

It seems to me that some arguments against SoD are really arguments against D.

SoD is very different as a player could have made every single mistake imaginable and yet still make his save at the end of it, ending up no worse off than the player that did everything right. That's what SoD is all about. The chain leading up to it is truly irrelevant, it all comes down to a single die roll.

We disagree as to this point. In the simplest case of the bodak, as has been discussed previously, if the chain leading up to the encounter includes the ability to determine that one might be facing a bodak, the end result can be very different. Averting one's gaze, closing one's eyes and fighting blind, or even that oft-mentioned (in this thread, anyway) spell, Death Ward, can make a very, very significant difference.

RC