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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3839532" data-attributes="member: 2268">Now you make it sound like the players have no choices at all, and cannot influence the course of the game up to the moment of that single die roll over the course of the game.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? And the players have no opportunities to choose how much their characters risk every step of the way?Sounds like a rigged game to me. Nothing I experienced in d&D, though. I wonder what makes you think it serves as a better analogy for a D&D game with included save-or-die effects.Maybe you are talking about what the rules should be. I'm talking about what I think the rules that are offer the game, and why I think they do it, and why I assign some value to them. This specific point of the discussion is the question if D&D is getting soft by the exclusion of save-or-die mechanics, and the question was raised what they add to the game. One of my responses was that they can create a thrill equal to that a gambler gets from betting all on one die roll. One reply to that was that while a gambler chooses to take that risk, a player does not choose to take the risk of betting his character's life on a single die roll. I say that, if that option is in the game, and the player joins anyway, he is prepared to gamble the life of his character on a single die roll now and then. Thus, free choice. Not sure where I'm missing the point here, I'm simply elaborating on a point I tried to make and others try to refute.Okay, where are they off?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.As for the wizard, he either is alone or the group is surprised/out-initiatived...why? Because he was singled out by that bodak in your example, which means it either met him alone, or got initiative/surprise and decided to stare at the wimpy wizard. Likewise, I set my stone giant up to single out the wimpy wizard for his first attack instead of the beefy fighter. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> Common? Nah. Prominent? Yeah. Except if the DM adapts the CR of his world to the group's advancing levels. And it still is a signifier of great power when a high-level character can simply snuff out another life by waggling his fingers or by screeching. That 5th level wizard hearing of those characters being able to do so will certainly agree.</blockquote>

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