No save or die spells?

[CmdrSam]

You folks are the first people I come to seeking D&D advice; I'm not very experienced with the system yet and there's a huge amount of knowledge here...

So, my campaign doesn't use Raise Dead, Resurrection, Reincarnation, etc., since they (in my opinion -- your campaign may differ!) ruin the consistency of the setting as well as the drama and many plotlines.

But, if life actually matters, and dying isn't just a minor temporary setback, I don't want my players to lose their well-developed characters in one fell swoop and a bad saving throw.

In short, I think I probably want to eliminate save or die spells (disintegrate, slay living, finger of death, etc.) Is this going to be a balance problem? Are wizards going to be underpowerered without them? Should I replace the insta-kill effect with some amount of damage or just remove the spells entirely?

Thanks a lot for your help,

--Sam L-L

 

[Thresher]

So, my campaign doesn't use Raise Dead, Resurrection, Reincarnation, etc

Well thats the first problem
If youre going to take the arcane and divine spells out of the game then dont forget to look at things like assassin's, rogues, poisons and death from massive damage. All of which will drop people on their back just as quick.

If the milieu of the game dosnt have a chance of resurection then thats a call for you to look after and if people playing there know this then I'd hope they tread very carefully. I play a lot of systems that dont allow for a person to be 'rasied' and most of the characters there are tend to be a lot more cautious, dont know if it suits D&D though to have PC's running away all the time when they should be getting stuck in.
Also being someone who cant roll their way out of a wet paper bag with dice to save my skin literally the chance to maybe come back after a run of bad luck, is factored into the risks my characters will take.

If they run like hell a lot I wouldnt be too harsh on them.

 

[Ravellion]

Well, using the WotC rules for Epic level play will at least increase survivability in the really high levels (Save or Die spells do 20d6 +1d6/level damage. If you drop below 0, the effect described in the spell happens, such as disintegration).

On lower levels however, that is most likely still just as lethal.

What you also could do is make those spells slightly weaker instead of taking them out entirely. Make them have 6 seconds casting time (ie. spell doesn't go off untill the beginning of the caster's next initiative). That way the party wizard can say "He's casting disintegrate!" and everyone knows that that is a very Bad Spell(tm) so they will try and disrupt the caster.

Rav

 

[Alchemist]

I'm not really a big fan of save-or-die spells since they reduce a character's career in no-raise dead worlds to a single random roll, so I'm gonna can them in my next campaign and see what falls out. I'm keeping the raising spells, bu they'll be hard to come by if you aren't a worshipper and willing to do a quest for the boon presented.

I don't forsee it being a huge gamebreaker though. I'll just have to adjust some monsters' (beholder, for example) special attacks to something slightly different, but that's hardly the biggest challenge one could attempt.

 

[Drawmack]

Here is the house rule I use concerning this.

Bringing back a dead person takes a lot out of the cleric and the god. A god will not raise someone of a different faith then they are, therefor a cleric cannot bring back someone of a different faith. This means that when a character dies a church of their god must be found to reincarnate them. This can be an adventure in and of itself.

This being the case I've increased survivability like this.

1) No ista-death no saving through spells exist. Reaserching them causes insanity. Long befor the knowledge comes to fruition.

2) Save or die spells do this. When cast on a character their damage equals that characters hit dice plus their con bonus. For Example a 3rd level cleric with +4 con gets hit with a save or die spell it does 3d8+16 damage.

3) No death from massive damage, instead the carachter is unconscious for a number of days equal to the damage they took and there is no way to awaken them.

4) All other instadeath things work the same as the spells.

 

[Oni]

Rather than drop such spells you could change them a bit to make them more suited to your campaign. For instance allowing disintegrate to only work on nonliving targets (darn spell is overpowered anyway ought to be taken down a notch). Let Finger of Death rule the roost as the necromantic kill spell, but on a failed save instead bang your dead, say it drops the target to -1 (or dead if the damage from a failed save would have killed them), that way there is a window of opportunity to save the victem. Just some up way to late, incoherent thoughts.

 

[wolff96]

Actually, Oni hit on the solution I used in one game.

I removed all of the Raising spells other than True Ressurection. To balance that, I made all "Save or Die" spells drop the target to -1HP on a failed save. If you made the save, the damage couldn't take you below -1HP.

It made the spells very powerful, but not instantly lethal. (Note that I also use the variant rule where you die at a number of negative HP equal to your CON score, rather than -10HP).

 

[CmdrSam]

I removed all of the Raising spells other than True Ressurection. To balance that, I made all "Save or Die" spells drop the target to -1HP on a failed save. If you made the save, the damage couldn't take you below -1HP.

That's very clever. I like it! (And the party has a fair amount of healing and Cure Minor Wounds, so they hopefully shouldn't let anyone bleed to death...)

--Sam L-L

 

[seasong]

Nice ideas!

I like the (your HD + CON bonus damage) idea... although a kill spell should probably be at least a bit more than that. Maybe (your HD + twice CON bonus damage).

I also like the "change target to -1 HP" rule.

For raise dead and company, we haven't reached that point in our campaign, but my tentative plan is to charge 1,000 XP to the caster of any spell which brings the dead back to life.

 

[Anubis]

The best solution, however, is to not take any of the spells out. I simply limit the spells. Basically, most clerics will not raise people without a hefty price, something akin to 1000-10000 per level of the person being raised, depending on which spell, adding components, and differences in religion. Once the party gets their own spells, they can raise dead at will, although I FORCE all PCs who play clerics to be EXTREMELY selective as to who they raise in order to prevent them from raising too many people. I know it limits player selection, but that is the single best way to keep everything in the game while limiting the use.

Also, the Constitution variant doesn't work anywhere near as well as the Constitution+Level variant, which not only works better, but is also more realistic. (There's more to it, but that's the basic idea.)

Basically, the death happens at Constitution+Level, but only half the Level is counted for Middle Age characters, half of that for Old characters, and half of THAT for Venerable characters. Full Constitution is always used, though. Also, the Toughness feats increase the "death's door" range. Toughness through Dragon's Toughness all increase the range by 5, Epic Toughness increases it by 10, Impoved Epic Toughness increases it by 20, and Immortality increases it by 100. (Those last two are custom built, and the entire chain is greatly improved to make them all useful.)

This gives characters more time to save their friends, and adds to the heroism of the game by making things a bit less lethal in the first place. In true epics, the main characters do not die so easily.