Players, DMs and Save or Die

[Remathilis]

IF the chance of winning initiative, hitting, and doing enough damage to kill you, is equal to the chance of your losing initiative and blowing your save, THEN the odds are equal, no matter how many dice are rolled.


RC

Wanna take me up on that $100 wager then?

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Kinda, except an assassin's death attack has a fortitude save to negate, requires three rounds to use (so worthless unless you have ambush), must be a melee attack, and must meet all the prerequisites of a sneak attack.

So, in other words, not really all that much in common after all, since a death attack is WAAY harder to use in standard combat.

The idea was a melee equivalent to finger of death.

Finger of death's casting time is 1 standard action. So is the feat's use.

It deals huge damage (as opposed to a death effect) to make sure death ward isn't the obvious answer. (since only deities have 1000s of hp, no mortal could withstand it) My original draft had damage = opponents hp +10, since it didn't matter the opponent's hp total, if this hit, he was going to die.

No-crits creatures are immune to death effects (like undead and constructs) so I thought the feat should do the same.

There is no real restriction on learning Finger of Death or Slay Living, so the feat requirements are token, (mostly to keep it toward fighter types) and the penalty to hit is a formality to deal with how easy it is to outscale Bab to AC.

Oh, and 1/day, most casters don't usually have more than one SoD per day, but I guess tying it to an ability score (int? Int's good) would work (and better represent a sorcerer's ability with SoD effects)

Okay, see, I agree with a most of your reasonings you put up here...and incidentally, you put forth a good example of what I'd like the 4E "preview books" to be like.

Standard action...check. Wasn't 100% sure about the full-round attack myself, since it would have precluded movement, and always doing it with ranged weapons wouldn't fit with all fighter concepts.

The damage thing...I don't know, I'd still go with "kills the target" instead of huge amounts of damage. May be silly, but as soon as you bring up hit point damage, there's plenty of things that come into play...damage reduction being one of them. Also, can you actually reduce a character to more than -10 hit points? And what's with abilities that kick in at negative hit points? And no worries about Death Ward...from what I gather from the text, it won't really work against this feat, even if you don't define any hit point damage. From the spell...
"The subject is immune to all death spells and magical death effects. The spell does not protect against other sorts of attacks, such as hit point loss, poison, petrifaction, or other effects, even if they might be lethal." So since this feat doesn't make the user's attack magical in any way, it won't be affected by this spell either.

I just noticed, maybe limit it to a certain range for ranged attacks...maybe 2 range increments? Or the full "maximum" range of 5 increments? Just pondering.
The rest of your reasoning...I can live with that. Thanks for that feat idea.

Just one more point...since a spell provokes an AoO when used in melee, how would you replicate that in the feat use? Maneuver with AoO risk? Just curious.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

IF the chance of winning initiative, hitting, and doing enough damage to kill you, is equal to the chance of your losing initiative and blowing your save, THEN the odds are equal, no matter how many dice are rolled.


RC

But then, who says that this is actually something the Anti Save or Die crowd likes, either?
I certainly don't like it. I think it also indicates that something is wrong with the monster (at least if used against the party) and that it wasn't balanced that well.
But I think few melee monsters have such a high odds at killing you outright. It still happens (and it still sucks), but with Save or Die spells, it's still more likely to have a sudden Death nobody could do something about (within the encounter).
And more importantly - weaker monsters basically never have a chance to reach this effect with mere melee attacks. That works only for Save or Die effects.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The number of dice rolled doesn't, IMHO, matter one whit -- what matters is (1) the % chance of dying that those dice represent, and (2) whether or not you can take action in between those die rolls.

OMG, yes it does. Want proof? Let's make a $100 wager. I give you 1d20, I'll roll 3d20 and take the highest number. Highest roll wins. deal?

I hope you realize that "I give you 1d20, I'll roll 3d20 and take the highest number. Highest roll wins." is not the same % chance of result.

If there is a series of three die rolls, and there is a 50% chance that the sequence of rolls results in death, and there is a single die roll with a 50% chance that the result is death, the result is still 50%.

If this is not clear and obvious to you, there is little I can do to bring this discussion forward.

(Likewise, if we were rolling X and Y dice, respectively, with the same % chance of either your total or mine being higher, then the odds of either of us winning such a bet would be 50%......not good enough odds for me to take you up on it. Like my players, when I gamble I prefer to hedge my bets.)

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

But then, who says that this is actually something the Anti Save or Die crowd likes, either?
I certainly don't like it. I think it also indicates that something is wrong with the monster (at least if used against the party) and that it wasn't balanced that well.

Since I postulated earlier that quite a bit of anti-SoD is really anti-D, I certainly wouldn't say that this is something the anti-SoD crowd necessarily likes. OTOH, I think it is worthwhile to point out that finger of death and its ilk are not the only things that have this effect in the game (a point that at least some of the anti-SoD crowd seems to be unaware of).


RC

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Well, it's definitely interesting to see that some people actually equate Sleep (and probably Hold Person and similar spells) with save-or-die effects. I guess in that context, we'd have to eliminate save-or-be-helpless spells as well.

At some point, the "magic is SOOO overpowered" complaints tend to encompass half the spell list in the PHB...we're on a good way there already.

 

[Grog]

Huh, you're serious with that? It's so amazing how people on an internet message board, who are usually able to read between the lines of the most simple and unambiguous posts like there is no tomorrow, suddenly want verbatim quotes for a concept that suffuses the whole game we're all discussing about. Are we even talking about the same game here? Let's make a deal, shall we? You read the DMG, especially the first chapter about being the DM, and then you quote me the section of the rules that says that a DM cannot, under any circumstances and at any time, with or without player participation, use or change every frelling rule in the game after some consideration in a way that he believes will result in a better game experience for everybody, or that he believes will fit his campaign or campaign setting better than the RAW. If you can quote me that, I'll get back to you.

So in other words, there is absolutely nothing in the rules that says that "save-or-die effects are a DM tool to be used to make certain encounters and NPCs have a very special significance." Thank you for admitting that, even if it was in a very roundabout way.

Now, given that we've established the fact that there are no special rules governing the use of save-or-die effects in the game, and given the fact that as PCs rise in level, the level-appropriate NPCs and monsters they encounter will have access to these abilities more and more often, we can conclude that barring either house rules or the DM intentionally restricting his or her use of certain enemies, the PCs will face an increasing chance of random and arbitrary death based on a single roll of the d20 as the game progresses to higher and higher levels.

You may think that's a good thing. I don't.

 

[Celebrim]

I hope you realize that "I give you 1d20, I'll roll 3d20 and take the highest number. Highest roll wins." is not the same % chance of result.

If there is a series of three die rolls, and there is a 50% chance that the sequence of rolls results in death, and there is a single die roll with a 50% chance that the result is death, the result is still 50%.

If this is not clear and obvious to you, there is little I can do to bring this discussion forward.

"Which is heavier, 50 pounds of gold or 50 pounds of feathers?"

"Why the gold, obviously!"

 

[Jack99]

On a completely unrelated note:

@Grog

Does the name E'ci ring a bell to you?

 

[Geron Raveneye]

So in other words, there is absolutely nothing in the rules that says that "save-or-die effects are a DM tool to be used to make certain encounters and NPCs have a very special significance." Thank you for admitting that, even if it was in a very roundabout way.

Now, given that we've established the fact that there are no special rules governing the use of save-or-die effects in the game, and given the fact that as PCs rise in level, the level-appropriate NPCs and monsters they encounter will have access to these abilities more and more often, we can conclude that barring either house rules or the DM intentionally restricting his or her use of certain enemies, the PCs will face an increasing chance of random and arbitrary death based on a single roll of the d20 as the game progresses to higher and higher levels.

You may think that's a good thing. I don't.

Sorry, apparently we ARE talking about different games. Doesn't have much use discussing it with you, then. Happy gaming.