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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenmarable" data-source="post: 3818388" data-attributes="member: 40359">Not quite sure how "liberal" = "soft", but we won't get into that discussion. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Personally, I do think it is getting a bit softer if it is removing Save or Die, and I like that. I want them to look for ways of making the game more fun for everyone, and this is one step in that direction. In my experience, Save or Die isn't fun. As a DM and a player, I hate PC death. It takes the player out the game and either stops or at least greatly diminishes their fun. In most of my "recent" campaigns (as in last 8 years or so after getting back into it from a lapse), we've had very few PC deaths. As a DM, I've had two "real" PC deaths. One was someone wanting a new character doing their best to kill off their current one. Another was thankfully high enough level so that the PC could be raised rather quickly - and it became a life altering event for the PC and the campaign because death was so rare. There were also several in a very high level climatic battle (19th level, 3.0, I think?), but we had a demiplane that operated on a different time speed and we had several deaths/resurrections/get back into fight moments. But in that case, it played out more as super healing rather than death.Contrast that with a campaign I just joined as a player. That DM is definitely out to get the PCs and in my 3rd session I died on the first round of combat. Two others were dead in the 2nd round, and the 3 of us sat around for 2 hours watching the last surviving PC struggle to survive the battle. And since it's high enough level that returning from the dead is trivial, I'm planning on rolling up a new PC rather than spending half of another session sitting around waiting to be raised.So for me, Save or Die and even PC death is not fun - at least when it is easy and common. I don't feel the players need a fear of PC death to have fun or be challenged. And what fear they have doesn't have to be instilled by having insta-death just a die roll away. In fact, I've found that being widdled down in hit points can be more fun and fear-invoking than "they cast a spell and you are dead".On the flip side, I've found few players often use those spells. The other ones are usually more interesting. They have tended to go with area of effect that harms many for medium damage, than insta-killing a single enemy. There's also the sheer joy in rolling the stack of d6's for damage rather than passively telling the DM to save or die. (As an aside, I'm hoping that even if fireball isn't d6/level, it is still a bunch of d6's. That joy of dropping a handful of d6's has been some of the funnest moments in every edition of the game.)</blockquote>

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