Players, DMs and Save or Die

[pemerton]

Avatar's are more or less the sum of their character sheets. They are stats, nothing more. They are easily replaced, mourned for no length of time, and rarely more interesting than the one or two defining traits their race/class combo gives.

I don't dissent too much from the overall tone of your post, but I did want to pick up on this passage, and express a small disagreement.

To me, this passage expresses a slighly narrow view of what the "character sheet" means. Suppose we ignore the fact that character sheets have not only mechanical information but lists of the PC's friends and contacts, in-game history, enemies, etc. And suppose we ignore those games in which much of that sort of information is expressed mechanically, such as HeroWars, or arguably in AD&D 1st ed (via the henchmen mechanics).

Even just looking at the mechanical aspects of an attribute, skills and talents game like 3E or RM, the character sheet can contain information that is not easily replaced and subsitutable: area knowledge skills, for example (which only make sense in the context of a particular PC's history), or the character in one of my RM games who had maximum ranks in juggling (which only made sense in the context of that PC's history of begging for money on the streets of Greyhawk's Old City).

I'm pretty sure the game paragrim on a whole is shifting from "Avatar" to "Personality" and has been since 1e's twilight years. Certainly, WotC seems to be taking that shift beginning in 3e (more or less) and really ramping it up in 4e.

To an extent. But my impression is that the 4e character sheet will actually take a turn away from "personality" to "avatar", because (I gather) many of the sorts of mechanical entries on a character sheet that only make sense for a personality (craft, profession, obscure performance skills, etc) will no longer exist, being handwaved away into character background.

I think that as far as D&D is concerned, 3E may represent the zenith of the notion that the mechanical aspects of a character are a total picture of that character.

 

[pemerton]

If your DM sets up an encounter which involves you randomly stumbling upon a bodak without warning, that's basically no different than an encounter which involves you randomly stumbling upon some monster which has an incredibly high attack bonus and does enough damage to kill your character in one blow. It's just called "having a killer DM,"

Except that the bodak is CR 8, and so is (according to the game's mechanics) a roughly appropriate challenge for a party of 8th level PCs. So a GM who uses one against such a party isn't "breaking the rules of the game" in the way that deploying the monster you describe would be.

So you play games where you always know when your PCs and NPCs are going to die? :/ Sounds pretty boring to me.

There are other ways of "losing" - generally, by the PCs not getting what they want. And if all they want is to stay alive, such that dying is the only form of loss, then it sounds to me like a slightly shallow game.

 

[Remathilis]

Sorry, got to disagree here, simply because that negative connotation you give save-or-die effects is entirely yours.

::Looks up at the poll:: Well, not entirely...

And even if Sirius Black and Dumbledore were "only" NPCs/Mentors...it's still the closest method of replicating those effects. And really, if we HAD a Harry Potter RPG, should there be a clause to the Avada Kedavra, saying "Only to be used by NPCs against NPCs"? Because I can remember Harry and his friends dodging quite a few of those in OotP.

Take the alternative: Harry and his friends "made" every one of those saves. What if Harry had failed a save? What if Ron did? What if (and this is complete ludicrous, bear with me) J. K. Rowling had NO control over whether Harry lived or died?

 

[Remathilis]

To me, this passage expresses a slightly narrow view of what the "character sheet" means. Suppose we ignore the fact that character sheets have not only mechanical information but lists of the PC's friends and contacts, in-game history, enemies, etc. And suppose we ignore those games in which much of that sort of information is expressed mechanically, such as HeroWars, or arguably in AD&D 1st ed (via the henchmen mechanics).

True, "character sheet" was meant to imply the characters mechanical elements. Some Players write more than that on a char-sheet. However, even some of that can be used to further my point: who were those henchmen he hired? Why did he hire them? Those things tell the story. The raw numbers "2 henchment, ftr2) do not (but they do imply them, I concede your point).

 

[pemerton]

True, "character sheet" was meant to imply the characters mechanical elements. Some Players write more than that on a char-sheet. However, even some of that can be used to further my point: who were those henchmen he hired? Why did he hire them? Those things tell the story. The raw numbers "2 henchment, ftr2) do not (but they do imply them, I concede your point).

And I wan't meaning to be combative at all. It's just to me that this is an important issue - the main reason I have played RM for so many years, despite its (in many respects) clunky action resolution mechanics, is because of the richness of a RM character sheet - just the distribution of skill bonuses across so many categories of human endeavour paints a picture of the PC which is intimately bound up with the campaign history. And when a new PC is brought in at high level, one of the things you want to do is look at that mechanical information and work out what sort of backstory it implies, and how that fits into the rest of the campaign. It's not just plug-and-play.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

::Looks up at the poll:: Well, not entirely...

Since I was referencing your specific post...yeah, that is your personal negative connotation I was talking about. I'll readily agree that there are plenty who also don't like save-or-die, for various reasons, and that the connotation of "meaningless" and "random" pops up in other posts as well, though. That okay?

Got to say, though, it surprises me that there is a 2:1 ratio. Judging from the volume of anti-save-or-die posts, I was expecting a bigger difference.

Take the alternative: Harry and his friends "made" every one of those saves. What if Harry had failed a save? What if Ron did? What if (and this is complete ludicrous, bear with me) J. K. Rowling had NO control over whether Harry lived or died?

Then it wouldn't have been an author-controlled book indeed. It would have more in common where there is an element of chance involved in every scene that features the heroes...something like a 20-sided die, for example.
And if it had been an RPG scene in the Ministery of Magic instead of a book/movie scene, and all the kids had survived, it would have shown that a) they were DAMN lucky with their saves and b) those death eaters were damn unlucky, or lousy shots. And after the Sirius Black scene, all the players would have been sweating like hell at every saving throw.

 

[Grog]

And if it had been an RPG scene in the Ministery of Magic instead of a book/movie scene, and all the kids had survived, it would have shown that a) they were DAMN lucky with their saves and b) those death eaters were damn unlucky, or lousy shots. And after the Sirius Black scene, all the players would have been sweating like hell at every saving throw.

But that's not what would have happened. If the Harry Potter series had included D&D style save-or-die, what would have happened is that Harry would have encountered a random Death Eater, it would have pointed at him, and he would have dropped dead right there. It would have been a crappy ending to the story, and the "players" wouldn't have been sweating anything except what their next characters were going to be.

 

[WarlockLord]

Speak for yourself. I hate Harry Potter. Whiny, teenage, angst-ridden...sorry. But I see the point Grog is getting at.

What if we included save or dies, but...

We had a system of "coolness survival points" that recharged everyday, and each could be spent to gain 1 reroll on ANY roll you make (or force an attacker to reroll an attack). Not too many, around 1 or 2 a day. (This is what I was getting at with my earlier post. I'm sorry if I sounded snarky and dismissive, the only game I play is D&D and I thought the Eberron points the same as the UA. No idea how Spycraft, Saga, or Conan work.) This way one could still have the kills, but you would have less of a chance of dying, and BBEGs could also have these? Sure, it's liable to spamming, but SoDs would probably be 1/day spells, and I suspect casters will have very few of those.

Also, these spells could require sacrifices. If, every time you cast Finger of Death, you took 1 point of Con damage because the spell is so difficult, one would probably see less spamming of BBEGs, especially if a difficult escape is required. And a BBEG would be extremely careful about using this thing, and ue it only as a last resort, rather than spamming phantasmal killers (which would require the sacrifice of 1 point of Wis as you tap into the insanity of the Lovecraftian entities that populate your gameworld). And with this system, there should never, ever, EVER be anything like the soulmeld Strongheart Vest.

 

[Remathilis]

And if it had been an RPG scene in the Ministery of Magic instead of a book/movie scene, and all the kids had survived, it would have shown that a) they were DAMN lucky with their saves and b) those death eaters were damn unlucky, or lousy shots. And after the Sirius Black scene, all the players would have been sweating like hell at every saving throw.

Which is great if your PC is Harry, Hermonie, or Ron, and really disappointing if you PC is Sirius...

 

[KarinsDad]

And even if Sirius Black and Dumbledore were "only" NPCs/Mentors...it's still the closest method of replicating those effects.

Nope. Totally false.

The curse effect in Harry Potter is "save if the author wants you to save".

The save or die effect in DND is not "save if the DM wants you to save". Instead, it is "save if you roll high enough".

Two totally different mechanics and nowhere near each other except for the potential result.

To 100% emulate the curse in Harry Potter, a spell would have to read "Saving Throw: Death if the DM decides, Life if the DM decides, player does not get to roll". That's not save or die. Not even close.

If the DM wants the player to save after he has an NPC cast a save or die spell at the player and the player rolls a 1, the DM has to go through hoops (i.e. make crap up) to suddenly figure out a way to prevent insta-death.

So, the literary examples are all totally invalid because all of the literary examples are totally controlled by the author whereas DND is not totally controlled by the DM. The players and the dice do have a say in DND results, not just the DM.