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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3858372" data-attributes="member: 18280">I honestly don't see any difference between having an X% chance of dealing enough damage to kill you in one melee round and having an X% chance to killing you with one spell.  Nor does the damage have to be 1,000 hps.  The damage simply has to pass the threshold of any given character.So, if I am 1st level, and I face an ogre, I am facing a death effect.  I can tell you with great certainty that I have had PCs while I was DMing face ogres at levels where one blow provided an X% chance of death.  I have faced the same sort of things as a player.  No one cried bloody murder.In 3e, this scales upwards to nearly all levels.  There is almost always a monster of appropriate CR who has an X% chance of killing you in one round.  If it wins initiative, that means an X% chance of killing you before you can take any action at all.  Again, both as player and DM, I can say that no one cries bloody murder in my group when facing such creatures.IMHO, there is no difference between a monster that has a 10% chance of dealing 40 hp damage each round (when you have 30 hp) and a spell that has a 10% chance of killing you.  Except, perhaps, that the monster might last longer, and thus have more chances of killing you.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.As such, there are many, many melee encounters that are already equivilent to Finger of Death in 3e D&D.  At least, IMHO there are.  As such, I doubt very much that the feat you describe would be more than a blip on the radar for my group.....and it seems to me from the playtest reports like some of the 4e fighter abilities might be (to some degree) similar to what you describe.4e might remove "SoD", but I very much doubt it will remove the SoD effect from the game.  As 3e disguised THAC0 by flipping it around, I very much expect that 4e will disguise SoD by making you roll more dice to gain the same effect.  And it will give PCs Action Points so that they can fudge their saves.RC</blockquote>

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