save or die 3.5

[Celtavian]

Celtavian,

You have now reversed your position on several items. You have also made a few attempts to assign statements that YOU made to me.

So I'll just take your abandonment of your initial positions as an end to the debate.

What was the initial position that I abandoned? I was never arguing against the change to Disintegrate. I was arguing against changing all death spells to hit point damage. I have not abandoned that position in the slightest.

As far as assigning statements to you, I was just returning the courtesy. You assigned quite a few statements to me such as well, even though I stated multiple times that I did not mind the change to Disintegrate, you continued to argue under the assumption that I did.

 

[Celtavian]

Some clarifications on Save or Die effects in AU... I thought his first reply was a little cryptic ("practically none") and Monte just posted this reply...

"I wasn't trying to be cryptic. I was trying to be careful. There are no save or die spells in AU. However, there might very well be some corner case of a spell that you can use that if a save is failed, the victim ends up dying.

For example, in D&D, hold person isn't a save or die spell, but in effect, it really is.

(hold person isn't in AU for that reason, actually, but there are some higher level spells that have a similar effect that could lead to similar consequences)"

After reading Monte's design diaries I'm quite hyped over this book (we're on the same page almost across the board game philosophy-wise), maybe even moreso than the 3.5 books...


A'koss.

I'll have to see what Monte has done with death spells. If he has simply reduced them to hit point damage, then I will be highly disappointed. Greatly lessening the risk of death does not in anyway enhance the game for me.

I can understand how abuse of death spells can ruin an encounter, especially if at high levels PC's strip all magical protections off a creature and then start chain casting death spells like their in a video game. That is boring.

I don't play this way. I am not particular sympathetic when the game designers go out of their way to design mechanics based on rules abusers or one unlucky save. If the big bad guy gets unlucky when the deck is stacked in its favor, I don't see why the players shouldn't enjoy the easy victory and vice versa.

 

[Al]

And from what I've seen, the spell only physically disintegrates you if you actually lose all your hit points to it -- otherwise, it's just abstract "ouch" damage, like if you get hit by an inflict wounds or harm spell.

Well, fair enough. I can just about concede this one. Good argument

I don't know about you, but I'm changing all death spells (and some others) do deal Con damage instead of instadeath. 4d6 Con damage (say) should make most things sit up and take notice.

Well, to be fair hong, what you do in your house rules doesn't affect me nor the core rules. If you HR that death spells do Con damage, then more power to you. Just as an aside, I do see the problems that for a large number of creatures, 4d6 Con damage is virtually death anyway. The argument that disintegrate did Con damage sounds a good one, and if all SoDs did Con damage, that would be conceptually coherent. However, it just struck me as weird that they nerfed disintegrate without the other save-or-dies. Surely if one is broken, then they all are?

There's nothing special about the construct type that makes it immune to magic. Check the retriever for instance.

Not per se. However, the multitude of core constructs at high level are golems. The retriever is the only double-digit CR construct not immune to magic- and it only scrapes on at CR10. Given that disintegrate is available initially to an 11th level party, they will not see retrievers for long.

Poppycock. None of the iconic undead monsters -- vampires, liches, death knights -- are incorporeal

What happened to ghosts, advanced spectres and the like? In any case, liches usually have good touch ACs with their spells and vampires tend to be reasonably respectable in this department.

Is this more postmodern statistics I see before me?

Not this time . Even I can do a straight damage analysis, even if I once screwed up a % chance to kill. 50/50 chance to make saves in what WotC generally recommends, and if you observe the archetypal DMG characters and put them against each other, then 50/50 is probably roughly what it will turn out at. Of course, the skew would be campaign-dependent- in a campaign chock full of paladins, then this is going to fall.