L&L 3/05 - Save or Die!

[Savage Wombat]

In the specific case of the medusa, it would need more details.

1) Targets <25 HP turn to stone.
2) Targets 25> HP take damage each round. (HP as fatigue/luck.)
3) Targets attempting to attack the medusa are at a massive penalty to attack her, since by the intent of the power, they are using their superhuman combat training to avoid looking at her. Circumstances may make this easier or harder.
4) Targets who are unable to look away, or who for some reason forgo the looking away part, turn to stone.
5) Specific mechanics exist to fight/look at a medusa without suffering from the gaze.

... since I presume most people throwing a medusa at their party don't want the party's fighter to just ignore the medusa's gaze and hack at her toe-to-toe.

 

[FireLance]

The beauty of the hp threshold system is that it's easy to adjust. If you want save or die to occur more often, raise the threshold. If you want a save every round or with every hit, make the threshold some ridiculously high number.

Behold the modularity inherent in the system! When presented with a dial, why not just be happy that you can set it to what you want instead of complaining that it can be adjusted to a setting you don't want?

 

[gloomhound]

I think a medusa's gaze should have a different mechanic than other examples of save vs death.

 

[gyor]

First save or die mechanic I liked and I bet the assassin uses it alot as well.

It makes sense. When your at full health you immune responses are much stronger and you are going to be more preceptive against dangers. So with the Medusa when your attacking by looking in your shields reflection and if you briefly catch her gaze your body is better condition to fight the effect. When your down to 25 hp your hurting, bleeding,or exhausted, and so you make mistakes, look directly at the target more often, and you immune system is surpress. It also scales better. Also Demigods and Gods should be immune to lethal/puterfying Save or Die effects like they were in most editions.

 

[Dausuul]

I think this is a good and useful mechanic, but beware of Hammer-Dependent Nail Observation Syndrome. In the context of the medusa, I strongly dislike it. It makes no sense to me that a medusa's petrifying visage only works on low-level characters or those who've been through a fight. Why is it that a high-level fighter can look a medusa in the eye with impunity? Or if it's some kind of abstraction where the fighter isn't actually looking the medusa in the eye, what exactly is the fighter doing? It gets way too metagamey, way too fast.

On the other hand, where ghouls are concerned, the idea seems just fine. It makes sense to me that a ghoul's paralyzing touch is more effective on a weak or wounded combatant.

If there's one thing Wizards should have learned from 4E, it's that any proposed mechanic--no matter how elegant in a system sense--needs to pass a narrative "smell test." If you have to stop and scratch your head and think about how to reconcile the story with the mechanic, the mechanic isn't going to work as written for a large chunk of people. I'm scratching my head over the medusa. I'm not scratching over the ghoul.

 

[Zaran]

I like 3 saves or die. I think we wouldn't have to drastically change the petrifying gaze of a meduse at all. It just takes a bit of time to turn completely and heroes and nasty monsters can overcome such a thing. If they want to do save or die powers vs minions go for it.

 

[Hassassin]

25 hp seems like a kludge. Maybe SoD if bloodied or something like that would work better.

An alternative way would be to roll damage. If that's enough to kill the target, your get kill/petrify otherwise either no effect or a secondary effect, depending on spell.

Example Medusa: If the target fails a save and XdN damage would be enough to take it below 0 hp, it is petrified. Otherwise, the target takes no damage.

Example Disintegrate: The target takes YdM damage (save halves). If the damage is enough to take it below 0 hp, the target is reduced to dust.

 

[KidSnide]

On the one hand, Monte's idea seems OK. But when I imagine how it works, I feel this would mean a Medusa has a gaze field that says "all characters within the gaze have -25 to HP." Not the same "feel".

What? The proposal is that characters under 25 HP have to save or die, not that they just die.

Anyway, the medusa example (and other gaze attacks) needs to account for the fact that it's a gaze attack, not an aura attack. The aura effect is really an approximation of characters trying to fight the medusa without looking at it directly. Effectively, the rule is saying that you need to have 25 hp to do that. I'm not sure I would ever get to that rule by thinking about "avoiding a gaze attack", but the justification seems plausible enough if that's the rule you want.

I might say something like: "Characters attacking or attacked by a medusa must save or be petrified if they have 25 or fewer hit points after the attack." Or maybe the medusa has an aura that forces a save if you target or are targeted by a creature in the aura?

It's OK if the "avoid gazing at the medusa" rules are a little complicated. After fall, if you're fighting a creature with a deadly gaze attack, what makes the encounter interesting is fighting creatures while avoiding looking at them directly. The rules fail if they don't capture that dynamic.

-KS

 

[KidSnide]

I think this is a good and useful mechanic, but beware of Hammer-Dependent Nail Observation Syndrome. In the context of the medusa, I strongly dislike it. It makes no sense to me that a medusa's petrifying visage only works on low-level characters or those who've been through a fight. Why is it that a high-level fighter can look a medusa in the eye with impunity? Or if it's some kind of abstraction where the fighter isn't actually looking the medusa in the eye, what exactly is the fighter doing? It gets way too metagamey, way too fast.

The idea is that a non-injured/exhausted high-level character is able to reliably fight the medusa without gazing at it directly, while less experienced or more wounded/exhausted characters are not.

I agree that the mechanics need a stronger "avoid the gaze" aspect, but using hp threshold as part of those mechanics seems plausible to me.

-KS

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The beauty of the hp threshold system is that it's easy to adjust. If you want save or die to occur more often, raise the threshold. If you want a save every round or with every hit, make the threshold some ridiculously high number.

Behold the modularity inherent in the system! When presented with a dial, why not just be happy that you can set it to what you want instead of complaining that it can be adjusted to a setting you don't want?

Exactly. Having a good lever to move the system one way or the other is what is crucially missing from traditional SoD. The only lever you have with traditional SoD is to adjust the roll itself--thus the proliferation of bonuses to saves in AD&D through 3E. But at some point, that simply removes the danger to a 5%, auto fail on a 1. It's important for them to get the numbers close to right, but it is more important to have the lever in the first place. If you don't like medusas in such a system, you can always adjust the threshold or remove it altogether.

People objecting to it on contrary grounds for that point in particular are really stating that they don't want to be bothered to do even that minimal work--or that they want the "official" version to back them up when they decide to be use the harder options. Heck, it would be easy to include in the mechanics two or three stages of lethalness. Once the lever is in place, we are only talking a single number for a threshold. You could just as easily include three number, with the most lethal one often replaced with a "-" for "Sorry Charlie, you're dead." Pick your column univerally or by monster, and off you go.

I think this is a good and useful mechanic, but beware of Hammer-Dependent Nail Observation Syndrome. In the context of the medusa, I strongly dislike it. It makes no sense to me that a medusa's petrifying visage only works on low-level characters or those who've been through a fight. Why is it that a high-level fighter can look a medusa in the eye with impunity? Or if it's some kind of abstraction where the fighter isn't actually looking the medusa in the eye, what exactly is the fighter doing? It gets way too metagamey, way too fast.

That's an easy one too. For effects nasty enough to have this objection, when the threshold is not met, the attack does hit point damage. The hero can look her straight in the eye if he wants. Then he has abandoned his threshold and gets to attempt the save like everyone else. Or he can lose the required hit points in order to not need to even try the save.

Of course, once you go there, you might choose not to have the threshold at all, so that you don't have to worry about tracking them. Instead you have a "HP amount required to avoid a Save" -- or "Heroic Avoidance" cost. For any SoD, pay the HA cost or attempt the save. If the medusa's HA is 25, then anyone with 25 or less hit points is kind of stuck.

(The HA method doesn't have quite the range of flexibility of the threshold system, but if you want to build a penalty in for avoided attacks, it might be worth the trade to keep from worrying about when people hit thresholds or healers trying so hard to avoid them.)

If it were up to me, I'd go with the HA method for most such effects, and then tack on the previously suggested requirement of Death Saves (three strikes and you are out) as a rider on the really nasty ones. That's simple, and the rider on top of hit point damage is not something that will be easily ignored.