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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3856590" data-attributes="member: 2268">You know guys, discussions like this will end up in a "it's great" vs. "it's crap" line of arguments sooner or later anyway, this one is a good example of it. People ask for examples from other media where a main character is simply dropped by something like a death effect, because to them D&D shouldn't invalidate the "plot sanctity" of their character. They are provided, and suddenly it's either "those are only NPCs" or "those are not save-or-die but author fiat" (which makes me wonder how that reflects on all the DM fiat discussions), and only one of two examples is actually addressed (I wonder what you'd come up with for the second...Arren not being a main character, or the spell not being save-or-die?). You try to discuss how that death effect killing that "NPC" could impact the main characters then if it had been a scene in an RPG, and you get told how much it must have sucked for the player if that NPC had been a PC <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> ...or that the current save-or-die mechanic would have killed the main characters off randomly and without meaning when in other places you get told that they are useless and unrealistic because even John Commoner has at least a 5% chance of surviving them no matter how bad his Con score. People prefer to throw "but it's RANDOM and ARBITRARY and totally ANTI-CLIMATIC" in the fray when the point brought up is that save-or-die effects are a DM tool to be used to make certain encounters and NPCs have a very special significance (one poster arguing that, when the PCs are high enough level they should be encountering hundreds of 9th level clerics still sticks out in my mind), which just makes me wonder what kind of game trauma they must have experienced to get to the conclusion that, as soon as save-or-die effects are in the rules, DMs start killing PCs left and right. Some even insist it SHOULD be that way per RAW, which is kinda weird, looking at the population percentages in the DMG for the "default" setting, where a cleric of high enough level might turn up in a Large Town or higher...and that would be one of 9th level, not hundreds.So for the time being, I'll simply assume this discussion having reached another impasse, and bow out for a bit. Maybe it'll be worth coming back to it in a few days or so. Seeing as 4E is finished in its basic structure anyway, it's nothing I can change by trying to keep this side of the fence up anyway. And whatever happens in my games isn't depending on the discussions here either. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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