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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anthtriel" data-source="post: 3839537" data-attributes="member: 13764">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 tough 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.And we should already have established that Save or Die effects are horrible for balancing, and as a direct result, play pretty badly, so there are no other merits either.Sure, in theory it's always better to have more options available, but with the same logic, you can defend any number of completely broken, stupid or downright useless monsters or abilities, as you never have to actually use them, or can make them work, if you are a skillfull DM. Before we get the Flumph back, and a subsystem for playing baseball in D&D, we don't need Save or Death either.Why have an ability with bad mechanics, when you can have the same flavor with sound mechanics?Death Effects are really just another antiquated absolute, much like Fire Immunity. Just as a Fire immune creature plays better, and makes more sence when it has a very high amount of Fire resistance instead, a Death Effect plays much better when it does large amounts of negative damage, (or whatever other flavor you want), instead.And much like this allows Red Dragons to be hurt by extreme fire damage (like Hellfire or the like) without any silly additional rules, it also allows an easy way to make a creature become more resistant to Death Effects without becoming immune to all of them. Like an Undead Hunter, or maybe just a Paladin in general. 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.</blockquote>

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