Players, DMs and Save or Die
- Thread starter Remathilis
- Start date
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Arkhandus said:
moderator/
Please do not attempt to pick holes in other peoples games or play styles. You might have handled a particular situation differently, and bully for you.
Saying 'obviously nobody bothered' is a put down, and we don't like people issuing put downs to other posters.
Thanks
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
hong said:
I can think of at least one good reason, by putting it in reverse:
A bunch of kobolds bursts in on the adventuring party. Does the wizard unleash disintegrate on one of the kobolds as his first action? Probably not, since he doesn't know how much of a threat they are yet, and he doesn't know what else is going to come up later in the day.
If the BBEG is in his throne room with his horde of demonic guards outside and the party stride in covered in demon ichor but otherwise unharmed, then sure - start with maximum effectiveness spells (although the most effective things to start with are often 'even the playing field' spells, to obscure vision or control the battlefield in some way); however, there will probably be many cases where the BBEG doesn't have as much knowledge as the DM about the PCs capabilities... and shouldn't be acting as if he does either!
Cheers
DM's are usually more deeply interested in the game (thanks to the fact that they tend to spend quite some time with it all on their own), so they are a lot more likely to visit forums.Lanefan said:One bizarre side-effect of this poll is that it shows how many people here are (or claim to be) "usually DM" as opposed to "usually player".
As of right now it's 150 DMs vs. 29 players vs. 100 who do both. Looks like a player's market from here!
Lanefan
Few players I have met actually cared about design.
Merlin the Tuna
First Post
This. Very this.Anthtriel said:
It's true that a lot of good DMs can deal with massive screw ups in their games. And if that makes you a good DM, more power to you. But good design prevents those massive screw ups from happening in the first place, and I've yet to see any reason not to cut this problem off at the source.
Geron Raveneye
Explorer
Anthtriel said:
But you know, the fun part about those myths is that hero always survives because he first researches the weakness of the monster, and then uses that against it. Like Perseus getting himself a mirror shield to turn the gaze of Medusa against herself. Or Hercules knowing that he had to cauterize every neck of the Hydra in order to keep more heads from growing. The basilisk was supposed to be killed instantly by the scents of weasels. Stuff like that is why the heroes survive the confrontations with monsters like that, not the fact that those monsters have only moderatley deadly abilities. That's why I like save-or-die effects, as long as they aren't used willy-nilly. But listening to some posters, it seems that giving the heroes a chance to research and prepare for the abilities of a monster is equal to making the abilitiy worthless and fit to be taken out of the game entirely.
Which always makes me wonder if they'd say the same about energy attacks, dragon breath, poison, and similar abilities that can be researched and countered with a little time and preparation.
Geron Raveneye
Explorer
Jhulae said:
So because you get to make a few more dice rolls before you get critted, that is less arbitrary? Save-or-Die is simply taking the risky nature of D&D, represented by the survival of a character hanging on a die roll, to the edge, while stuff like Death Ward takes it to the other extreme of 100% certain survival.
I keep wondering why there is so many people that want to cut off the two ends of the spectrum of survivability in D&D completely out of the game? It's not like they aren't viable possibilities in a game where humans research magic. I don't know about the rest, but I'm sure the first things mankind would research (if magic was available) would be how to instantly kill any opponent without risk to yourself, and how to protect yourself from such an attack. I'd like a tool in the game to represent that. I'd also like a tool to represent the "instantly dead" effects of mythical monsters. And I'd like not to sound like a stressed-out beginner DM who declares "The bodak overcomes your Fort Defense, you suffer 5000 points of damage from the bodak's gaze". Number inflation only makes the game sound silly.
And no Mega-Damage either, please.
Li Shenron
Legend
I'm equally a Player and DM and I support Save or Die.
BTW it's weird how according to the poll there are 5 DMs for each player
BTW it's weird how according to the poll there are 5 DMs for each player
Fieari
Explorer
ENWorld demographics differ from the rest of the population of D&D players. It's been said that WotC forums get mostly players, while ENWorld gets mostly DMs/Independent Developers.Li Shenron said:BTW it's weird how according to the poll there are 5 DMs for each player
As for me on the poll? Well, I voted DM + Support, but I have to clarify that it's less Save or Die that I support, and more Save or Incapacitate. Petrification, for instance. I can't really see a system for gradual petrification, and I don't want petrification to go away. Likewise for magical sleep, blindness, and other similar things.
Save or Die is unneeded, because we have HP for that purpose. You want SoD? Just make the damage much higher than what that CR should be able to normally deal.
Petrification in particular seems to work well with gradual Dexterity drain, either a relatively large amount at once, or a certain amount per round over time, depending on flavor.Fieari said:
And if you drain the 4E level adjusted Dexterity bonus, you even get easy scaling for free (to ensure that a Medusa can petrify a commoner instantly, but won't randomly instant-kill a demigod.)
Blindness can stay as it is, as far as I'm concerned, the real problems are the abilities that completely take a character out of combat, unless they can be freed relatively easily.
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