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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4991575" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, it isn't totally irrelevant. It kind of supports the contention that having situations where you can't succeed or can't fail aren't necessarily major impediments to the actual play of the game. It may also point up something else though. There is a different attitude towards 4e defenses than previous-E saves. It actually DID kind of feel different. For one thing saves were never a guaranteed thing that you got against every spell/effect/whatever. I always felt like when I got a save it was sort of a perk. Like, "wow, I actually get to try to avoid some of this damage/horrible fate/whatever, that's nice!" Its not especially rational and not in essence different from someone having to hit you in the NADs in 4e, but it still FELT different. In 4e when the DM says "the monster hit you" its like "Oh oh" and when it hits you 6 times in a row it does start to evoke a negative reaction. I think saves were just psychologically different and so needing a 20 to make a save was less of a "problem". And lets face it, there were a LOT less saves required (at least before 3e, I'm not really qualified to comment on 3.x) back in the day. MOST monsters simply did HP damage, a lot of saves were for damage reduction, and a lot of stuff simply didn't even grant a save at all. I don't seem to recall very many whole nights of gaming where my character in 2e had to make more than a handful of saves and loads of times it would be <2 in a session. I don't have an actual breakdown on the ratio of monsters that impose conditions in 4e and attack NADs but its a pretty significant number and you can expect it to happen to your character pretty close to every encounter. Sometimes a LOT. For instance I ran an encounter the other night vs my 7th level player's with 2 phase spiders, a blade spider, a Neldrazu, and a bloodweb spider swarm (there were some traps too). Its a pretty reasonably themed encounter, terrain was good, it played out OK, but man were the PCs making saves left and right. None of the conditions for failure were too dire (phase spider knocked out the wizard on round 1 and she failed 3 saves in a row was as bad as it got). That's maybe on the high side even for 4e, but it does illustrate how prevalent conditions are. Admittedly these were all attacks vs AC, so its not quite germane to the NAD discussion, but does illustrate the importance of not getting hit in general.</blockquote>

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