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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9414294" data-attributes="member: 6799660">It is certainly part of the problem that so many save-or-penalty effects are 'lose all of your action(s),' which is uniquely debilitating to boss monsters*. As well, oftentimes the effect still leaves the sufferer vulnerable to attack*, without** ability to then test again or spend resources, or are only able to being addressed by a subset of opponents****. If more status effects were closer to '-4 to certain actions,' or the like, the need for workaround 'nopes' for high-value targets would not be so great.*Also blindness and silence, which through quirks of the rules are devastating to spellcasters**and excepting Sleep/Hypnotic Pattern, no negative to doing so.***such as Banishment****ForcecageSR, MR (1E and 2E), as well as the basic-classic 'immune to spells of level X or lower' all helped keep BBEGs alive in the face of PC spells (back when it was save-or-dies as well as save-or-sucks). They each had their own limitations*, nuances, and incentivization structures, though -- and I'm really not sure that these were strictly better so much as a different set of problems.*on top of, well, only working on magicBasic-classic D&D and AD&D 2E were pretty straightforward -- you just didn't cast against many boss monsters -- immunity or an unchanging % fail chance on top of existing good saves just made it not worth it. You fireballed the minions or caste haste for your party, dispel whatever whammy the BBEG put on your party, or the like. In AD&D (1E) you could overwhelm MR if you were in the upper teens of levels, so maybe this strategy shifted at endgame. Only 3e really had a lot of interesting choice in that you did have the fork tetrasodium mentions where you can do the wipe-minions/buff-martials game or (preemptively) have a build based on punching through SR. That's an interesting little dance (frustrating that the decision hinges so much at the build level, as opposed to just which spells to select in a day or the like), but honestly not really more or less nuanced or more or less gamist than trying to get the 5e BBEG to burn 3 LR on your 2nd-4th best spells so you can drop your 1st best on them.</blockquote>

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