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Is it fair to cast save-or-suck spells on the players?
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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7149383" data-attributes="member: 97077"><p>Once upon a time, I was agin' save-or-suck. It's boring for the player to essentially be out of the action, at least compared to mixing it up with Team Monster. I know it's annoying for me when I'm sidelined as a player. It was particularly bad in D&D 3.Xe as I recall and D&D 4e made some improvements that made it better in my view. D&D 5e steals quite a bit from D&D 4e in this regard in my experience.</p><p></p><p>When I started running more games online, I noticed that it wasn't an irregular occurrence for some folks to just observe the game without playing. For my regular games, I have a pool of 10 players from which only 5 can play in a given session and, for one-shots, I recruit 5 players and 2 alternates (who can jump in if someone's character dies). So for like 4+ hours, players of that game or just lurkers would happily watch as we did our thing, throwing a few comments in here and there especially when a particularly timely dick joke needed to be interjected. I ran a D&D 4e one-shot recently and one of the observers (a pick-up player I didn't know) had a character ready to go in case someone died, an event that came close about four times that session. At the end, I apologized to the player that he didn't get to play but his response was along the lines of "Not necessary, that game was super exciting to watch even if I didn't get to play. Next week, same time?"</p><p></p><p>I also noticed that there seems to be something of an unspoken agreement among my regular players that nobody should be forced to be in a suck situation for an unreasonable amount of time. For example, when Corbet was restrained by the feython summoned by the lizard shaman, who was somewhat away from the action in which the rest of the PCs were engaged, a special effort was made to break away from what they were doing to attack the shaman and disrupt its concentration. When Amyr had fallen to Mojo Risen and was making death saves (the ultimate in save-or-suck, right?) while being dragged away by a giant crocodile, Corbet broke away to save him at a personal cost. Nobody seems to want anyone else to be out of the action for very long. These are just two of many examples. I've read about plenty of groups who <em>don't </em>do this, who choose the tactically superior option to the one that best benefits the play experience.</p><p></p><p>So it seems like the mitigating factor for save-or-suck in these cases are players that are looking out for other players and a game that as fun to watch as it is to play, or at least approaches that. That tells me that if a player is complaining about save-or-suck (personality issues aside), there may be issues with these two factors if not other things. To that end it may be helpful to look at the overall play experience and how the players interact with each other and make improvements where necessary. And just like you ideally have a plan in place for when a PC dies, if save-or-suck happening to a player is a known issue, you need a plan for when it comes up. Some suggestions were made upthread.</p><p></p><p>As to whether such effects are fair, the answer as far as I am concerned is "yes." Provided the DM has telegraphed the possibility of such effects in advance and the players had a choice whether or not to face them. As to whether they're fun, that's going to depend on a lot of other factors as I note above. Rather than get all "get off my lawn" about these damn kids today with their short attention spans, it might be worth taking a good hard look at the play experience that is being produced at the table. If it's not fun to observe for a bit while you're out of the action, then it probably needs some work.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7149383, member: 97077"] Once upon a time, I was agin' save-or-suck. It's boring for the player to essentially be out of the action, at least compared to mixing it up with Team Monster. I know it's annoying for me when I'm sidelined as a player. It was particularly bad in D&D 3.Xe as I recall and D&D 4e made some improvements that made it better in my view. D&D 5e steals quite a bit from D&D 4e in this regard in my experience. When I started running more games online, I noticed that it wasn't an irregular occurrence for some folks to just observe the game without playing. For my regular games, I have a pool of 10 players from which only 5 can play in a given session and, for one-shots, I recruit 5 players and 2 alternates (who can jump in if someone's character dies). So for like 4+ hours, players of that game or just lurkers would happily watch as we did our thing, throwing a few comments in here and there especially when a particularly timely dick joke needed to be interjected. I ran a D&D 4e one-shot recently and one of the observers (a pick-up player I didn't know) had a character ready to go in case someone died, an event that came close about four times that session. At the end, I apologized to the player that he didn't get to play but his response was along the lines of "Not necessary, that game was super exciting to watch even if I didn't get to play. Next week, same time?" I also noticed that there seems to be something of an unspoken agreement among my regular players that nobody should be forced to be in a suck situation for an unreasonable amount of time. For example, when Corbet was restrained by the feython summoned by the lizard shaman, who was somewhat away from the action in which the rest of the PCs were engaged, a special effort was made to break away from what they were doing to attack the shaman and disrupt its concentration. When Amyr had fallen to Mojo Risen and was making death saves (the ultimate in save-or-suck, right?) while being dragged away by a giant crocodile, Corbet broke away to save him at a personal cost. Nobody seems to want anyone else to be out of the action for very long. These are just two of many examples. I've read about plenty of groups who [I]don't [/I]do this, who choose the tactically superior option to the one that best benefits the play experience. So it seems like the mitigating factor for save-or-suck in these cases are players that are looking out for other players and a game that as fun to watch as it is to play, or at least approaches that. That tells me that if a player is complaining about save-or-suck (personality issues aside), there may be issues with these two factors if not other things. To that end it may be helpful to look at the overall play experience and how the players interact with each other and make improvements where necessary. And just like you ideally have a plan in place for when a PC dies, if save-or-suck happening to a player is a known issue, you need a plan for when it comes up. Some suggestions were made upthread. As to whether such effects are fair, the answer as far as I am concerned is "yes." Provided the DM has telegraphed the possibility of such effects in advance and the players had a choice whether or not to face them. As to whether they're fun, that's going to depend on a lot of other factors as I note above. Rather than get all "get off my lawn" about these damn kids today with their short attention spans, it might be worth taking a good hard look at the play experience that is being produced at the table. If it's not fun to observe for a bit while you're out of the action, then it probably needs some work. [/QUOTE]
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