It won't be hard to put insta kill back into the game, will it?

[bowbe]

Another thing...

Insta kill things may not be too necessary in the new rules. If Star Wars saga is the model it seems from talking to several of my friends who play saga that the RAW make it pretty stinkin easy to TPK a party who uses their by the encounter "rechargeable" resoures foolishly. Far easier to TPK with Saga than standard D20 or 3.x edition D&D rules from what I understand of their explanation.

I cannot vouch for the truth of that since I don't play Star Wars.

Case

 

[Celebrim]

*sigh*

Let's get up front with the two things that I think are unarguably true.

1) Save or condition effects, and particularly the most famous 'Save or Die', are inarguably a problem in that they bypass hitpoints completely and result in the random death of NPCs (bad, but endurable) and PCs (really bad). While it is true that often times a player who is rolling 'Save or Die' has screwed up, that isn't always true (especially when the save is provoked by an active attack) and no player should lose his character to pure blind bad luck and most especially not a single dice throw.

2) You can't just remove save or condition effects from the game without making it something other than D&D. Literal 'Save or Die' situations are much less rare than, 'Save or Lose' situations. Paralysis, polymorph (including petrification), mental domination, and unconsciousness (including sleep) all basically amount to 'Save or Die' in alot of cases. While this is most true in the case of PC party vs. single powerful NPC (again, bad but endurable), its very often true for the PC's as well. Versus a ghoul pack, the 'Save or be Paralysed' can amount to a save or die in many situations, as the victim is very likely to be Coup de Graced by any DM playing with a reasonable degree of ruthlessness.

There are a variaty of things that can be done about this. One of the more obvious is what 3rd edition did with poison - turn the 'save or die' situation into attribute damage. The problem with this is that attribute damage is essentially maiming the PC, which in terms of game flow may not be an actual improvement. Anyone that has dealt with 3e poison and disease knows that they have a nuisance factor. Unless the attribute damage can be quickly healed, it basically takes either a player out of the game or else calls a 'time out' for the whole party while the character recovers. So, while its a useful solution some of the time, its not a good solution all of the time.

Limitations like 'the spell only works if you have less than X hit points' are clunky, and tend to create wierdness in my opinion. I'd rather that they don't go there.

An alternate approach is the one I have some slender hope that they'll actually take: 'Save or change your condition on the condition track'. This is far superior methodology than anything we've had in D&D before. Unfortunately, I would have thought that they would have leaked hints of a big change like this if it was actually in 4e, and better though it may be than what we have its still very flawed. For example, 'Save or be Dominated' is equivalent to 'save or die' in many cases, and its role in 'save or change your condition on the condition track' isn't obvious.

There is a better solution that uses a tried and proven existing mechanic which I think is balanced and well liked, but I've very little hope that the design team is thinking in the right direction based off what we've seen from Bo9S, SW:SE, IH, etc. Oh well.

 

[Rechan]

*sigh*

Let's get up front with the two things that I think are unarguably true.

1) Save or condition effects, and particularly the most famous 'Save or Die', are inarguably a problem in that they bypass hitpoints completely and result in the random death of NPCs (bad, but endurable) and PCs (really bad). While it is true that often times a player who is rolling 'Save or Die' has screwed up, that isn't always true (especially when the save is provoked by an active attack) and no player should lose his character to pure blind bad luck and most especially not a single dice throw.

Except that the mage being hit by a critted arrow or an enemy spellcaster's critted fireball is splattered.

Granted, that happens with less frequency than 'spell, save or die'.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Except that the mage being hit by a critted arrow or an enemy spellcaster's critted fireball is splattered.

Granted, that happens with less frequency than 'spell, save or die'.

I think the operative phrase is "bypasses hit points completely."

There's a big difference between an attack that drastically lowers a PC's ablative defenses, and an attack that may kill the PC or not simply depending on a single roll of the dice. Moreover, even in 3e, it has been acknowledged that allowing an appropriate-CR monster to deal enough damage to kill a PC with a single hit is poor design (note the swapping out of greataxes for falchions in the orc description between 3.0 and 3.5). 4e tightens this up further by giving 1st-level PCs some more hit points, meaning that a single swing shouldn't be enough to drop a PC.

Save-or-dies, as Celebrim said, disrupt encounter design by bypassing the ablative mechanic of hp entirely. A single roll (and, currently, it is almost always a single roll) suffices to kill a PC in the case of stuff like finger of death, slay living, or even hold person. It would be nice to provide a means to not make lives hinge on a single roll of the dice in Round 1 of combat in a large variety of situations. Should encounters be tense and provide the potential for PC death and critical turnabout? Sure. Should the PCs (or the villains) be subject to random one-shot kills with no tactical buildup? IMHO, no.

And I prefer defenses against death, whether they be modifications to the save-or-die effects, fate points, or whatever, to death + resurrection. Getting whacked and coming back from the dead repeatedly is, well, [Godwin's Law]too videogamey[/Godwin's Law] for my tastes.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Except that the mage being hit by a critted arrow or an enemy spellcaster's critted fireball is splattered.

Granted, that happens with less frequency than 'spell, save or die'.

You sure it's less frequent? Only certain types of attack have save or die effects, but I get the impression that just about every attack in 4E is going to have a crit capability -- everything from the orc with a dagger to the archmage with his fireball.

 

[Rechan]

I don't like Save or Dies either. I've had NPCs taken out early in the fight due to a bad roll.

But, taking things like Hold Person/Sleep/Color spray away from the PCs (and NPCs) is also reducing your options to 'Just hit it/blast it until it stops moving'. A lot of the 'Save or be taken out of comission' works for crowd control or neutralizing a threat without killing it.

Sleep on the guards in front of the castle, for instance. Or an enemy NPC Sleeping a party because they want to take them in alive.

If they change it so that you have to be half your HP before Save or Die works, that's fine by me. Then the game becomes 'don't get hit'.

An alternative option for the "Save or be taken out of commission" spells: Give a save every round. You're hit with a Hold? Roll a save every round to break out. This creates tension when 'quick, everybody cover the fighter!' to avoid a coupe de grace. It also gives your BBEG reason to have minions (especially a friendly mage off to the side with a Dispel Magic on hand).

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm with the OP on this.

For one, I like bodaks. Without the "save or die" mechanic, bodaks are just high-HD zombies.

For another thing, I like some poisons and diseases to be fatal. Getting bitten by a rattlesnake or black widow spider should be terrifying, not annoying or inconvenient.

And another, I like medusae. I realize that getting petrified is not the same as getting killed, but my point is still valid. Save or die, save or get turned into a pigeon roost, whatever.

Anyway. I don't see why this is even a big deal given the availability of raise dead spells and effects. People returning from the dead happens more often in the typical D&D campaign than in all of the books of the Bible combined. If they remove "insta-kill," they should make resurrection far more difficult/expensive.

I don't think it will be that difficult to "revert back" to the instant-kill effects, from what we have heard of the 4E rules so far. If balance becomes an issue, it sounds like you could just bump up the level of the ability or spell.

 

[Celebrim]

Except that the mage being hit by a critted arrow...is splattered

To a certain extent, point taken. I've held the opinion for a long time that crits are bad for the game. If you do make them part of the game, you should minimize thier occurances and make them heavily favor the PC's. Various sorts of 'threaten a critical' mechanics are there to make sure that crits are fairly rare and that low level NPC's won't tend to generate them.

However, on the other hand, even a critted arrow doesn't bypass hitpoints completely. Above a certain level, a single arrow shot, even a critical one, is unlikely to simply outright kill a healthy character. In fact, even at first level, a healthy mage will on average survive a critical hit from an arrow - although he'll get dropped and need immediate healing.

...or an enemy spellcaster's critted fireball is splattered.

One of the many new 'improvements' that 4e brings to the game. Let's just hope it doesn't bring critical area of effect damage with it, because if it does, I can see the DM rolling a 20 on an area of effect attack (say dragon breath) being the new 'every one in the party make a save or die' situation - only without the saving throw.

Granted, that happens with less frequency than 'spell, save or die'.

Well, it used to.

Sometimes I think the 4e design team sat down around a table and said, "Lets list all the changes we could make to the game to make it subtly worse." When Monte and company released 3e, my immediate responce was, 'This is the set of rules I'd been trying to make for years, only its better than anything I could have done.' With 4e, my gut feeling is, 'I'm not sure I could have made an update to the game this bad if I'd tried.'

I'm beginning to feel I should just avoid the 4e forum for a while.

 

[Aloïsius]

bypass hitpoints completely

What's so bad about bypassing hitpoint ? It means that, for certain special circumstances, the dwarf barbarian can be killed in one shot. While, most of the time, he is runing around screaming, atop his 150 HP. On the other hand, the elven wizard, with his 38 HP (same level than his friend) lives in terror. Why ? Because the DM has to adjust the strength of the opponants to the HP of the tank. This means that one (critical) or two hit will drop the wizard below -15 hp.
The various instant "save of die" or "save or suck" allowed some kind of equality (well, fort saves do favor tanks, anyway) and they added a lot of tension in the game.
I have lost (temporarily, ok...) far more characters because of massive amounts of damage (what about beeing sneack attacked three times in a round by a high level assassin ? It hurts !) than because of save or die. And, you don't have more control of your destiny facing a (4x 2d4) + (4 x power attack penalty) + (4 x 2 scythe wielding orc blackguard's STR bonus).

 

[Szatany]

Instakills are bad design in team-based game. Why? Well, when a wizard casts a kill spell it has two possible outcomes:

Outcome 1: He kills the target. At that point it doesn't matter how much work the rest of the party put into weakening the monster, it just dies. It's the "wizard doesn't need the party" option.

Outcome 2: He doesn't kill the target. Now it matters how much work other PCs invested, but on the other hand the wizard did pretty much nothing (some instakills deal damage on successful save so it's not that bad). It's the "party doesn't need the wizard" option.

Both outcomes are undesirable in the game of D&D (unless there is only one player and one DM, which D&D isn't designed for). It's better from the party POV for the wizard to deal some damage instead of die/nothing and be a team player like everyone else.

And that's why instakills should be in the game.