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

[Grog]

Because that one die roll in the SoD example is not the only roll that matters, assuming any kind of context at all.

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

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I'm curious, what precisely is the flavor difference between "Save against Fortitude, DC 20, death on failure" and "100 negative damage, Fortitude Save DC 20 for half damage (or no damage, if you want)"?

In both cases, you have an ability that will kill the ordinary guy if it hits (the second one is even more deadly in practice!), but somehow allows heroic characters to survive, as long as they are though and/or lucky enough. As it should be.
If HP would directly represent wounds, then you would have a case. But since they represent the heroes' ability to escape serious harm, I don't see any difference whatsoever in flavor.

That's mainly because I prefer to see HP as they are described in most editions of D&D I know, namely as the ability to withstand physical damage of one sort or another, and are mostly associated with getting hit with a weapon or a spell that causes physical damage. As such, I have no problem with them not helping with poison or other such effects at all.

Flavour reasons simply mean that you can have rumors of monsters that kill with a single glance that way instead of having monsters that rip apart/cut to pieces/explode with a single glance. Mind you, I don't mind THOSE varieties either, all very flavourful...but all different.

 

[Grog]

So an encounter with a (for example) bodak doesn't net the characters anything but the right to continue adventuring? And they occur every 10 (or whatever) encounters?

Making a save against a save-or-die doesn't net the character anything but the right to continue adventuring. And as for the frequency, change it to twenty, or whatever you like. It's still not how craps (or any gambling game that I'm aware of) is played.

And the players have no opportunities to choose how much their characters risk every step of the way?

No, they don't. The players don't control the enemies they face or the abilities those enemies have. That's under the control of the DM, or if they're using a published adventure, the adventure writer.

Okay, where are they off?

25 hit points is rather low for an 8th level wizard; with a 14 Con he could easily have around 40 or so with pretty average rolls. He could also have a +2 Con item for even more HP. But like I said, it's pretty telling that even in your very slanted example, a stone giant, which is built for high meele damage, only has a 4.75% chance of killing the wizard in one attack, compared to a 35% or higher chance for him to be killed with a save-or-die. (And it's also worth remembering that the giant has to get within ten feet of the wizard to have that chance, while save-or-dies generally work at range).

Common? Nah. Prominent? Yeah. Except if the DM adapts the CR of his world to the group's advancing levels.

Fine. Instead of "common," say "commonly encountered by high-level PCs." Doesn't change anything.

 

[shilsen]

Read http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3836361#post3836361 and decide for yourself.

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

 

[Lanefan]

And it makes sure that the great, incredibly dangerous Death Spell of the God of Death doesn't get completely negated by a silly Death Ward casted by a random Level 7 Cleric. And at the same time, the greatest, toughest hero on earth, who wrestles with Balors for fun, the demigod of toughness, who shrugs of thousands of arrows, sword blows and meteor swarms with ease, doesn't get killed by a mere Slay Living casted by a random Level 9 Cleric.

One of the things that's appealed to me about D+D even before I started playing it is that there's always the chance that the little guy *can* bring down the big guy, much like Merry brings down the Nazgul leader in the battle of Gondor.

While such things obviously shouldn't become the norm, removing the chance for them to happen *at all* is a terrible idea.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

Also note that those 4.8/4.5% are for critting, which in this case are a complete overkill. It's enough to have a 90% chance to send that wizard to a dying state. Sure, is not the same as dead, mechanically, and a dying character certainly creates his own tension among the group as well. But it shows that there's enough stuff that can take out a character of a fight at best, of a game at worst. Taking out one flavour is not really that necessary in my opinion.

In my experience there is a big difference between dying and dead. I GM a lot of Rolemaster, and while "dying" is a very common result in RM combat (due to its notorious crit charts), PC death is comparatively rare, because (under the RM rules) soul departure does not occur until several rounds after physical death, and there are various spells, many of which are reasonably low level, that can be cast during that window to prevent soul departure. The existence of those spells, plus the reasonably widespread availability (under the RM rules) of self-healing abilities, means that "dying" results introduce a lot of tension and thrill into the game (and don't even necessarily take the player out of it, if s/he is able to make decisions and rolls pertaining to self-healing).

On the other hand, save-or-suffer-soul-departure effects (in RM, the spell that does this is called Absolution Pure, and the demonic ability is called Ordaining) tend just to suck, for all the reasons that are being given. Fortunately, they tend to be high level, and as a GM I tend to be able to come up with in-game logic for why NPCs prefer to use other effects: because casting a spell in RM precludes parrying (and not parrying is a good way to get hurt badly) NPC spell casters have an incentive to use their weaker-effect but AoE spells rather than their single-target Absolution Pures - because from the point of view of victory in an encounter, multiple PCs hors-de-combat is better than a single PC who has suffered soul departure.

There is only one foe in my current game who has at will, AoE Absolution Pure, and the PCs have learned quite a bit about this foe and are currently on a mission to learn more - so the final encounter with this foe will have more of the flavour that Geron Raveneye and DMRocco have talked about.

 

[Anthtriel]

That's mainly because I prefer to see HP as they are described in most editions of D&D I know, namely as the ability to withstand physical damage of one sort or another, and are mostly associated with getting hit with a weapon or a spell that causes physical damage. As such, I have no problem with them not helping with poison or other such effects at all.

Flavour reasons simply mean that you can have rumors of monsters that kill with a single glance that way instead of having monsters that rip apart/cut to pieces/explode with a single glance. Mind you, I don't mind THOSE varieties either, all very flavourful...but all different.

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.

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.

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.

One of the things that's appealed to me about D+D even before I started playing it is that there's always the chance that the little guy *can* bring down the big guy, much like Merry brings down the Nazgul leader in the battle of Gondor.

While such things obviously shouldn't become the norm, removing the chance for them to happen *at all* is a terrible idea.

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?

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.

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.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Side question: can someone please explain to me the term "negative damage"? Is there such a thing as positive damage...or is that the new term for being cured?

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.

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.

All this tells me is that a d20 isn't granular enough for saves like this. The streamliners won't like this, but maybe a secondary save is needed when a natural '1' on the primary save would still make the save by a set amount (10?) if the auto-fail rule wasn't there...

Lanefan

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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

Well, If I remember correctly, I was a bit more active in that thread than you, which probably gave me a -4 circumstance penalty or so. But even then, you're Will Save is probably higher.

Side question: can someone please explain to me the term "negative damage"? Is there such a thing as positive damage...or is that the new term for being cured

I think the correct term they mean is "Negative Energy Damage". (And Positive Energy Damage would be the opposite, and not per default be curing.)

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Making a save against a save-or-die doesn't net the character anything but the right to continue adventuring. And as for the frequency, change it to twenty, or whatever you like. It's still not how craps (or any gambling game that I'm aware of) is played.

How about I choose "Infrequent and under DM purview" instead of "Every X encounters".

No, they don't. The players don't control the enemies they face or the abilities those enemies have. That's under the control of the DM, or if they're using a published adventure, the adventure writer.

Okay, apparently you're playing a game that's different from what I'm used to play, which probably explains the different points of view.

25 hit points is rather low for an 8th level wizard; with a 14 Con he could easily have around 40 or so with pretty average rolls. He could also have a +2 Con item for even more HP. But like I said, it's pretty telling that even in your very slanted example, a stone giant, which is built for high meele damage, only has a 4.75% chance of killing the wizard in one attack, compared to a 35% or higher chance for him to be killed with a save-or-die. (And it's also worth remembering that the giant has to get within ten feet of the wizard to have that chance, while save-or-dies generally work at range).

25 hit points is a friendly estimate for an 8th level wizard (average of 8d4 being 20). If we start postulating items and spells he could have, we're not going to get any further either, because then we'd deal with a number of possible combinations that goes into the thousands, and for that I don't have time, sorry.

Fine. Instead of "common," say "commonly encountered by high-level PCs." Doesn't change anything.

And this here I don't get at all...it's like saying "Somebody wearing a crown and sceptre is impressive at lower levels only, because at higher levels it's a common form of encounter." You could have saved us both a lot of fingerstressing typing by simply saying "I don't think save-or-die adds all you mentioned to the game, and I think they should go away" instead of trying to refute descriptions that come from my own experience and attitude towards them. I'm trying to describe both towardsw save-or-die effects here, not validate them for everybody else through number-crunching.