Anthtriel said:
But the way SoD works, Hercules would actually get killed in at least 1/20 of those tales. In Heroic fantasy, the heroes (certainly the central ones, comparable to PCs) always survive those encounters. So a less deadly system would work better for modelling heroic tales or fantasy.
You cannot seriously tell me that it's somehow a good thing if the BBEG dies in the first round of combat. No matter how you do it, it's still just about the most anti-climatic experience possible. Maybe in a comedy campaign, but everywhere else, it will feel really out of place.?
There's something I consider a basic rule of gaming: don't allow any die roll to be made unless you're willing to work with the outcome. If you absolutely, absolutely don't want your BBEG to fall to some attack the PCs have, it's easy enough to give the BBEG whatever combination of magic and defenses and insanely high Saving Throws that are required to make them immune to it. After all, you're the DM -- you know exactly what the party is bringing to the table, so it's up to you to make the right challenge.
And if the BBEG rolls a 1 on his save and didn't have "Death Ward" up, or whatever... roll with it! For the most part, the players are probably gonna be *happy* that they defeated the big bad guy, even if some of them feel cheated out of the fight. Then, later that session or the next session, you can have the BBEG's ally come busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man and attack the party. Or you can have the fortress explode around them and collapse on them and they have to run out. Or you can have some evil cleric come back and resurrect the BBEG and now he's *really* angry. You have to admit that element of randomness into your games. You must looooove the randomness.
This is the whole reason why fights where the whole party gangs up on one monster are very "swingy." I used to construct adventures like that when I was younger but later on I learned that it is generally much more satisfying to have the PCs fight a bunch of foes at once. This is something that the designers of 4E seem to understand, too ("one monster for each PC, instead of one monster for 4 PCs").
In response to your first point about Hercules -- the reason Hercules always survives is that he is the only central character in his legend. Hercules dying is the equivalent of a fictional TPK. A better D&D~fiction model is some series of books that features a *team* of characters, like the Iliad, or Lord of the Rings or Band of Brothers. A few of the heroes can die, and the story continues. If you're running a 1 player-1 DM game, then yes, save-or-die is probably a bad idea. But if you're running a game with a bunch of players, then what is more dramatic than seeing your friend horribly cut down in front of you! *sob* And then you can avenge them and, if you're playing a Berserker in Iron Heroes, you can get a bunch of Rage Tokens and scream "Nooooo!" and... you get the idea.
So, in short: there's no real comparison between D&D and heroic fantasy which is centered around one solitary dude. There is a more valid comparison between D&D and heroic fantasy which is about a *team* of people. And frankly, just like the way I like my D&D, I prefer fictional series where the characters are mortal and fallible and die occasionally (even at inappropriate and shocking times -- "Oh my god! A sniper with Finger of Death just took Raoul's head off!"), rather than series where, at Book 80, the same guy from Book 1 is still "narrowly" outwitting danger. *snore* @_@ I'm going to have to part ways with a lot of people here by saying this, but -- I play D&D for fantasy adventure, not necessarily heroic fantasy. Sometimes heroic fantasy, yes, but sometimes just chaos and bloodshed and grittiness and mayhem. Mmm. That's what I like. And yes, I'd still much rather play D&D than Warhammer FRPG, all other things being equal.
