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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Puddles" data-source="post: 8259235" data-attributes="member: 7026093">Fair point indeed. I shouldn't presume that all players dislike Save vs Death mechanics!With regards to my "hook and levers", I don't make any of them as obvious get-out-clauses, nor do I have any intention or idea on how the players can use any of them to their advantage. I just find the more stuff I put in an encounter environment, the more harebrained schemes the players can concoct when things go south.When a battle is being fought in a plain stone corridor of a dungeon, you are basically saying "the only avenue to success is for the players  to roll above average", and inviting the chance of bad-luck to ruin their time, whereas once you start filling that corridor with things that can be interacted with, you promote many more avenues that the DM or players would never consider until the heat of the moment. It doesn't mean the players can't fail. Everything must be reasonable, and has dice rolls attached to it. It just puts more dice rolls between the player and death and makes it more likely that bad-luck will not prevail right to the very end.The classics are a chandelier to swing on, or a cart to knock over whilst fleeing. It would be DM ex machina if the DM suddenly announced their presence mid-battle, but not if they have been there right from the start. So I make sure I put lots of work into the terrain and the dressing of encounters as they give the players the tools I am talking about.Other levers I like to use are one-off magical items given far in advance. For example, I have just given a player 1 crossbow bolt which detonates with the effect of a Fireball. I don't know when or how, they are going to need this, but having it in their back pocket means that one encounter down the line that might take a turn for the worse might instead be overcome.</blockquote>

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