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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3840318" data-attributes="member: 2268">Not that I'm aware of..otherwise, Negative Energy Protection would help against spells such as Slay Living, Finger of Death, Destruction or Implosion and Cloudkill, the gaze of a bodak or the wail of a banshee. It doesn't, because those are all Death effects, not negative energy damage.Hmhmm, but that "little" mechanical difference is not so little to begin with. If you start using damage to hit points as main mechanic to simulate death effects, you'll run up against a host of trained player minds who are used to explore every rule to increase their hit point total and reduce damage they take from any source, which will turn the whole thing into just another arms race exercise between damage dealers and damage resisters. Also, that difference has huge flavour differences between an effect that is no different from being stabbed by a sword, only that the damage is a lot higher (and from what I've seen, there are PC and monster builds out there that would scoff at an output of a palsy 100 points of damage), and an effect that will kill you immediately no matter how high and mighty you are, except for some really specific protection, in 5% of all cases.By the way, how DO you get 20 save-or-die effects into play against a level 50 Paladin who has Death Ward as a 4th level spell? 20 death clerics who all jumped him in the middle of the night while sleeping? Just interested how contrived such a scenario would have to be to end up with a paladin of THAT magnitude with his pants down and surrounded by 20 opponents of that caliber.No, what doesn't make sense is insisting on something very silly like that, when nearly every deity supplement in D&D history had a simple mechanic to make sure divine magic was different from mortal magic, be it Power Points or simply no-save divine effects, with reminders to the DM that gods simply work different from normal mortals. I don't know if that is different in the games you experienced, but in all of my games, gods play a completely different playing field...they don't use the same rules mortals use. If the God of Death wants somebody dead, and he has to come around in person to make it so, that person winds up dead, period.The same goes for a high-level character being struck by a falling star, by the way. <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=";)" /> YMMV, and it obviously does.It's interesting to note, by the way, that this auto-success/failure rule for saving throws came up with 3.5 as a response to high-level characters having no real failure chance otherwise, which in turn gave low-level characters a slight chance to make even impossible saves.Apples and oranges, two very different effects represented by two very different rule systems creating two very different flavours. And yes, I want to have a system in place that still can strike down even a high-level character if used right under the right circumstances.He does...if he manages to continue casting his spell while I'm trying to lop his head off, and doesn't fumble his spells all the time, he can try to cast multiple Death Spells at me...he'll probably stop after the second, and maybe rummage for scrolls, though. And since one casting doesn't increase the chance of the second to work better, he'll still only have 5% chance to kill me with each single spell. Since we're playing d20 and not d100, 5% is the smallest chance you can get. But that's system inherent.I must say that such examples always look a little contrived, out of any imaginable context, and most likely don't come up in 95% of games anyway, since they usually require the high-level character to be completely and utterly surprised and outperformed on initiative, and without ANY protective measures. Which is why it's so hard to give them a fully serious contemplation. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />EDIT: Got to correct myself here about the whole thing of divine abilities. After quite a bit of page turning, I can say that D&D 3E treats saves against divine spells/abilities like any other save..albeit with extremely high DCs, which coupled with the no auto-success of 3E back then means you have to be damn good to make it. The old Immortal Set doesn't talk much about attacking mortals at all, except for the Aura attack, which allows a save with your basic save modified by the immortal's Charisma.One of WotC forst products, Primal Order, uses Primal Energy to power divine abilities, which ignores anything a mortal can bring up as defense or save. Of course, it's not D&D proper. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I've yet got to check AD&D 1E and 2E for their respective treatments of divine spells used against mortals, and what they have to say about the topic. Check in for more enlightenment soon. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /></blockquote>

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