Geron Raveneye
Explorer
Try not to let this thread slide into the "badwrongfun" direction. A lot of posters in this thread worked hard to keep that from happening. 
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Players, DMs and Save or Die
- Thread starter Remathilis
- Start date
Remathilis
Legend
Question: why is death the only acceptable form of "losing" in D&D? Why does an encounter have to have the threat of death for it to be meaningful?
Lets say your playing a hypothetical RPG where your character cannot "die". If he is reduced to 0 or lower hp, he's out of the battle, but not dead. He'll recover in 8 hours. However, during those 8 hours, you could have your all gear stolen, be sold into slavery, be ransomed back to your family, or simply imprisoned in the evil mage's dungeon.
Is that less meaningful than a game where death is a real, viable, and constant threat?
Lets say your playing a hypothetical RPG where your character cannot "die". If he is reduced to 0 or lower hp, he's out of the battle, but not dead. He'll recover in 8 hours. However, during those 8 hours, you could have your all gear stolen, be sold into slavery, be ransomed back to your family, or simply imprisoned in the evil mage's dungeon.
Is that less meaningful than a game where death is a real, viable, and constant threat?
howandwhy99
Adventurer
I'm glad D&D works for you. I'm hoping they leave it functional enough that it can work for me. This carcass has been kicked around a lot that last few years.hong said:
howandwhy99:
Posts like yours boggle my mind. You toss out a bunch of good things about D&D, things I like, things I agree the game should strive to contain, and then you claim that save-or-die represents these things and I choke on my drink.
If you want to encourage strategic offense, a spell where a single die is rolled and your enemy either lives or dies right there is NOT the way to go about it.
If you want to encourage strategic defense, there's a million ways to do it other than a clunky game mechanic.
Nobody is saying that the game shouldn't include monsters that are hard to defeat, or which pose a threat to your character. The question is how they should pose that threat, and save-or-die, all or nothing effects are one of the worst possible ways to create a threat in a game built around combat by attrition.
Save-or-die effects are one of the biggest origins of simplistic, one dimensional combat. They do bypass slugfests, true, but combat by save-or-die is worse than a slugfest. It has all the aspects of a slugfest that are bad, such as the way players stand and toss deadly shots back and forth until someone falls down, and none of the good parts, such as the possibility that someone might do something even minimally tactical, like flank.
What strategy does save-or-die add to the game? The strategy of guessing this enemy has a weak will save, and that enemy has a weak fortitude? The strategy of casting your spell before the other guy? That's really it.
Caveat to preempt the inevitable response: I know, I know, the pro save-or-die people will now leap in to claim that the strategy is in avoiding having to make the save. I call shenanigans. You can create strategic challenges where the goal is avoiding having to fight on the enemy's terms without save-or-die. howandwhy99's example combat with the orcs is actually a great example. He didn't need save-or-die to make that work. The orcs didnt' have it, neither did he (poison isn't SoD). And if you DO use save-or-die to create that sort of strategic challenge, the challenge of avoiding having to face an enemy's deadly attack, save-or-die is a really bad way to go about it! It turns what SHOULD be an exercise in creative lateral thinking into an exercise in waiting until the next morning and memorizing Death Ward, or whatever the applicable spell might be.
Posts like yours boggle my mind. You toss out a bunch of good things about D&D, things I like, things I agree the game should strive to contain, and then you claim that save-or-die represents these things and I choke on my drink.
If you want to encourage strategic offense, a spell where a single die is rolled and your enemy either lives or dies right there is NOT the way to go about it.
If you want to encourage strategic defense, there's a million ways to do it other than a clunky game mechanic.
Nobody is saying that the game shouldn't include monsters that are hard to defeat, or which pose a threat to your character. The question is how they should pose that threat, and save-or-die, all or nothing effects are one of the worst possible ways to create a threat in a game built around combat by attrition.
Save-or-die effects are one of the biggest origins of simplistic, one dimensional combat. They do bypass slugfests, true, but combat by save-or-die is worse than a slugfest. It has all the aspects of a slugfest that are bad, such as the way players stand and toss deadly shots back and forth until someone falls down, and none of the good parts, such as the possibility that someone might do something even minimally tactical, like flank.
What strategy does save-or-die add to the game? The strategy of guessing this enemy has a weak will save, and that enemy has a weak fortitude? The strategy of casting your spell before the other guy? That's really it.
Caveat to preempt the inevitable response: I know, I know, the pro save-or-die people will now leap in to claim that the strategy is in avoiding having to make the save. I call shenanigans. You can create strategic challenges where the goal is avoiding having to fight on the enemy's terms without save-or-die. howandwhy99's example combat with the orcs is actually a great example. He didn't need save-or-die to make that work. The orcs didnt' have it, neither did he (poison isn't SoD). And if you DO use save-or-die to create that sort of strategic challenge, the challenge of avoiding having to face an enemy's deadly attack, save-or-die is a really bad way to go about it! It turns what SHOULD be an exercise in creative lateral thinking into an exercise in waiting until the next morning and memorizing Death Ward, or whatever the applicable spell might be.
howandwhy99
Adventurer
Actually poison is Save or Die in our game, so we used it. And it's been used against us too. How would you choose to fight a giant spider if you knew his stinger could kill you with one sting? toe-to-toe is not your best option, let me tell ya.Cadfan said:
Death, equipment loss, permanent level loss, permanent hit point loss, permanent blindness/deafness, permanent ability score damage. There are tons of things that just are not "fun" in this game. Who wants to play a game where your character can get killed? We play where all new characters start at level 1. Of course, the combat statistics and XP charts are designed so 1st level (even 0-level) characters can adventure side by side with 10th level allies. Not to mention the fact that you'd reach 10th about the same time they reach 11th.
Save or die, all those effects I listed, and plenty more are all all about not having to make that save. As you mention, that's the strategy. However, it actually does demand lateral thinking to beat an enemy or sooner or later your PCs is going to die. A game of attrition combat is a combat you don't want - not if you really want to win. Win with the least effort required, because, y'know, in the dungeon you never know what might be around the next corner. --Which is another good reason to keep spells as a diminishing resource in the game too.-- The point is, there is nothing in the game you actually want to roll a saving throw against, if you've got the choice. But it is in your best interest to choose your battles, and choose how your going to fight them. If you do, then you can get the upper hand. Deathward is the smart choice.
I think they are removing this stuff, unfortunately, because it means every battle will not be flashy, big-bang, skirmish games. When the point is to win instead of showing off, then you don't care whether or not you get to go toe-to-toe. However, if you can never be hurt, what's the point? Success without effort?
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Lonely Tylenol
First Post
I'm calling you out. Where, exactly, do the designers state that you can never be hurt in 4E?howandwhy99 said:
Lots of people are making this and similar claims. Either we decide, once and for all, that it's just baseless hyperbole and drop it entirely and permanently, or we demonstrate that it has a factual basis in something that's been stated by the production crew.
I remember a fight where, instead of taking on the enemy shaman in melee, we met him out in a city dock that we had prepped to collapse. The dock crumbled, the shaman fell into the water, and we clubbed him like a seal. It rocked.
My character at the time was an elf. I conclude from this that unless elves are in the game, this sort of cool encounter won't be possible.
Do you see the logical gap?
What made your encounter with the orcs cool was that you came up with a way to fight the orcs that didn't involve going toe to toe. You used creative thinking, and it worked. That's great.
Now lets say there was no save-or-die in the game. Your poisoned wood still works, it just does... lets say it does Con damage every round you breath it. So you do the poison wood trick, and the orcs... die just as they did in the game you actually played. Save-or-die added nothing to this fight.
Or look at a fight against a medusa. What makes that sort of fight cool is that the players have to do it with their eyes shut. Lets go the opposite way, and remove the save. Its not save-or-die now, its just-plain-die. What changes? Nothing, really. The point was that the medusa has a gaze attack that doesn't work on people who's eyes are closed. There's a million ways you could do that other than save-or-die.
If you want to set up a fight for your players that they have to think around instead of taking head on, why use save or die? Why not just add a big number to the party's average level, and use a monster of the resulting CR?
The good things people attribute to save-or-die rarely stem from save-or-die itself. They stem from the type of encounter in which save-or-die is typically found, and that type of encounter is almost always possible using non save-or-die mechanics.
Meanwhile, the negative effects of save-or-die are definitely related directly to it. It breaks the CR system by balancing ONLY against preventative spells, not against anything about the characters (DC does balance against saving throws, but considering that they scale together, it doesn't matter). It leads to a trite sort of gameplay where save-or-die spells are matched against don't-save-or-die spells. It ruins climactic fights by reducing them to "ultimate battles of the clerics' a la The Order of the Stick. And it makes encounter creation involving spellcasters an awkward, perilous process.
We can do better.
My character at the time was an elf. I conclude from this that unless elves are in the game, this sort of cool encounter won't be possible.
Do you see the logical gap?
What made your encounter with the orcs cool was that you came up with a way to fight the orcs that didn't involve going toe to toe. You used creative thinking, and it worked. That's great.
Now lets say there was no save-or-die in the game. Your poisoned wood still works, it just does... lets say it does Con damage every round you breath it. So you do the poison wood trick, and the orcs... die just as they did in the game you actually played. Save-or-die added nothing to this fight.
Or look at a fight against a medusa. What makes that sort of fight cool is that the players have to do it with their eyes shut. Lets go the opposite way, and remove the save. Its not save-or-die now, its just-plain-die. What changes? Nothing, really. The point was that the medusa has a gaze attack that doesn't work on people who's eyes are closed. There's a million ways you could do that other than save-or-die.
If you want to set up a fight for your players that they have to think around instead of taking head on, why use save or die? Why not just add a big number to the party's average level, and use a monster of the resulting CR?
The good things people attribute to save-or-die rarely stem from save-or-die itself. They stem from the type of encounter in which save-or-die is typically found, and that type of encounter is almost always possible using non save-or-die mechanics.
Meanwhile, the negative effects of save-or-die are definitely related directly to it. It breaks the CR system by balancing ONLY against preventative spells, not against anything about the characters (DC does balance against saving throws, but considering that they scale together, it doesn't matter). It leads to a trite sort of gameplay where save-or-die spells are matched against don't-save-or-die spells. It ruins climactic fights by reducing them to "ultimate battles of the clerics' a la The Order of the Stick. And it makes encounter creation involving spellcasters an awkward, perilous process.
We can do better.
Remathilis said:
It isn't. But it is an acceptable form of losing. (At least for many groups in many campaigns. Even for some people who don't like "save or die".)
Cadfan said:
No, it isn't needed. But it doesn't need to be excluded either.
Cadfan said:
No. Death Ward isn't even an option in my preferred edition. Sometimes a spell may be one way to deal avoid "save or die" in my games, but I don't think it is ever the only way.
I'll never disagree that playing without "save or die" is fine. (Because I enjoy the games I play without it.)
So, let me ask this: Do you believe that "save or die" works fine for me & my group, or do you think it is ruining my game without me realizing it?
RFisher said:
I think you could do better.
I think that if you break down what save or die is doing for your game, you will find that you can get those benefits elsewhere.
I think that the fact that dedicated DMs and decent players can avoid the pitfalls of a flawed save-or-die system is NOT a reason to keep the flawed system if a better alternative exists.
I believe better alternatives exist.
