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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StarFyre" data-source="post: 3820288" data-attributes="member: 26055">For people who like save or die...you can easily just introduce it again.Just change spells like disintegrate, etc back to their 2e or (i believe) 3E version, and redo the save roll to the appropriate value, if needed.Me, I have no problems killing players IF they do something stupid.  Based on our non-heavy combat style (but whatever battles are there (planned ones, I mean, are VERY challenging):1) if players don't recon/research enemy (assuming they have the chance to do so)2) players charge at a creature that is obviously too powerful to be taken head on3) players try something (cool or not) that is just stupid (this has happened several times)4) players do something on purpose leading to deathhowever, in my experience now, I do have an issue with death due to a dice roll. I don't mean in terms of damage from a creature, but save or die in a very random form.A loose example i would give are films with 'great endings'.  2 ones, we have discussed recently, are WAR and 6th Sense.  6th Sense, i would argue had a better ending, structuraly for the film, than WAR did...Reason; (SPOILERS AHEAD): if you watch it again, you will see that there is no point where anyone is really talking to Bruce Willis. We assume that they are, but other than the child, no one else is.  I know someone who mentioned "why isn't anyone talking to Bruce"..which indicates that she realized he may be dead very early on.  Most didn't (you can say what you want, but face it, most didn't until much later).  This is great design with a 'trick' ending, because you COULD have noticed those clues in the film with some critical thinking/out of the box thinking.  WAR, I don't remember (maybe there was) didn't have any actual clue that hinted that Jet Li is the cop...especially since I think their heights are different.  We figured it out near the end, but before it...but that was more due to watching so many films; something about the tone of it, didn't seem right; there had to be something more.  But a sudden shift in the ending, with no way for the audience to figure it out ahead of time, leans more to a "dues ex machina' style of story.The same way, a death where even if the players do the best option, seems kinda pointless; they don't learn anything from that.  (my same argument goes for DMs who allow a dice roll due to proper in character roleplaying, based on their INT and WIS, to solve hard puzzles....puzzles/riddles/logic traps I say should be solved by the players, since it helps THEIR problem solving and is an exception to 'in character gameplay') To accomodate this but still keep the risk, I've modified spells like disintegrate, and combat, to have more risk via a more detailed critical hit system, and for spells like disintegrate to cause targetted critical damage/vaporization, but with the possibility of killing the person outright (ie. if it hits the arm, it vaporizes the arm, but then the person has a new save to see if they can resist it going from arm to torso, etc).    This then goes to our detailed crit hit system (we incorporated the one from 2E Combat & tactics/Spels & magic to 3.5E), and as a DM, we have changed healing spells so that they can be targetted to heal specific injuries in place of general HP if desired.The risk is there, and no one wants to be maimed, etc BUT If it happens out of random luck, there are healing options to help.  For death, it rarely happens unless they do something stupid.   I have killed them due to, what I consider, random luck/bad DM'ing on my part..in which case, I supply a scroll of resurrect, etc at the first 'logical' place since that is my error; and not theirs.As long as 4E is made in such a way that custom house rules can easily be done for it (which any system can be, so it's not a problem), I think we can get around any changes they do, without too much hassle.Isn't the ease in the system, still modified by our respective play styles?Sanjay</blockquote>

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