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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anthtriel" data-source="post: 3840866" data-attributes="member: 13764">Or just go all the way and make it damage instead of a save.Oh please. You know just as well as any of us that there is no such thing as a PC Wizard with Constitution 10. The Player Handbook specifically tells you that Wizards need high Con, so they have. (Which is pretty bad by the way, they are way too dependant on that attribute)Sorry, my bad.During all my years of playing 3E, my groups have always treated it as negative damage. Not as a change we were aware of, we actually thought Negative Energy Damage for Death Effects were in the RAW, because it just feels right.Necromancy (and by extension pretty much all Death Effects) has always been defined as harnessing Negative (and before 3.5, also Positive) Energy. So it seems really weird to me, that they don't do Negative Energy Damage. I suppose it effectively doesn't matter, because immunity to Death Effects usually implies immunity to Negative Energy, but it still looks incredily weird to me.(To no one in particular) How exactly do Death Spells actually work, if they are not supposed to work with Negative Energy? I certainly don't, and I believe such moments are very anti-climatic. Just the same as PCs rolling a 1 on a Save or Die and dropping dead round 1 or 2. ^^If a randomly rolled enemy, or a minion, casts Slay Living on you, then you either die, or you don't. There is no warning, no preparation, nothing you can do, except hope you roll well.Min-Maxing is an entirely different problem that is pretty much independant on the system you use. As is, Min-Maxers just boost their Fortitude Save through the roof, or get outright immunity to Death Effects, to make them nearly irrelevant, just as they could make damage nearly irrelevant.When you are Level 50, Level 9 clerics are mooks, which can be encountered in dozens, if not hundreds at once. Unless you have Death Ward active all day (which makes all Save or Death effects useless, even of the Level 60 Necromancer), you are going to get hit by twenty of the them over the course of a day at most, and drop dead. If the PCs roll badly enough, any Epic group can be slaugthered by a couple of random Level 9 Caster in one round.But why is it okay that a spell can immediately kill anyone, no matter how much more powerful, yet a normal attack (or any other spell) cannot? Why should the systems be different? And here we see why the whole "Save and there's no negative effect, don't save and drop dead"-system doesn't work well in game terms. So Bob the Commoner can survive the Death Spell of the God of Death. Or of the Level 30 Necro, if you like that one better.And if Gods had a different spell system, it would be just another silly emergency rule like the dozens or so of "Hellfire" rules. Much better to make the entire thing scalable.I don't think we'll get any farther, both of our positions are pretty resolute.My problem with your position (after this discussion) is this: Save or Death effects in the RAW are commonplace. After some time, any caster can do it multiple times, and even mooks can do it. If you play the RAW, then you will necessarily have multiple cases of PCs dropping dead in the first round of combat for no other reason than rolling badly, simply because some random (as in, not outstanding) opponents are supposed to have them. Something that the game is designed to avoid most of the time, because it is one of the least fun, and therefore game-destroying things that can happen at all.You seem to use Save and Death very differently, and to great effect, apparently. But that's not the way it is in the RAW. Usually, all mid-level casters have access to it, and will use it. There isn't supposed to be any warning.By now, I can understand that it is good and appropriate for your group, and likely for some others as well. But I believe to have proven that is problematic for much more others.And as you cannot really make it optional (once one spell like it is out there, it is in the system), so cutting Death Effects seems to be the right choice for the game, even if it is not the right choice for your campaign.</blockquote>

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