Save or Die: Yea or Nay?

[Theo R Cwithin]

Look, there is absolutely room for Save or Die in certain games and certain styles of play, and I'm not begrudging anyone the right to prefer it. But I don't think the comparisons to mythic stories really works - they operate on a completely different scale than the assumptions of a D&D game, and while you can pattern the occasionally really cool one-shot after that scenario, you can't make the assumption that it should be part of the default game.

Eh? I was an assumption of the default game for 3 editions and 30 years before now.

We all did just fine, either adjusting it or ignoring it as needed.

 

[Plane Sailing]

As for save or dies, kill them. Get rid of them. The 4e mechanic is drastically better and introduces not just more fun but more dread, and I've adopted it to my non-4e games. D&D has always grappled with horror and how to implement it, and here's a big major awesome tip to DMs (Seriously you'll thank me for this, it's the best advice for horror you'll see about the game) - horror is not "Hah hah you failed your save, you died." That's not scary. It's annoying. It's irritating. It's stupid. It's frustrating. It's not scary.

Scary is "You're body is slowly solidifying into stone; at this rate, you won't be going much longer." And then in the next round, "You feel your arms and legs creak and slow, and cracks begin to fade away on your now grey skin as it spreads even farther." And then in the next round, "You kill the medusa, and the march of petrification across your body begins to reverse. You've survived."

That's awesome, dramatic, and scary as hell. It's the difference between a slow building tense scariness, and some guy in a closet jumping out and yelling "Boogity boogity boo!" In the first example, when are you going to be scared? There's no moment of fear. Just "Welp, you're gone." In the second example, there's lots of time to be afraid. A slow death is drastically scarier then a sudden one.

I first saw this mechanism appear in a WotC product pre-4e; it was in one of the "arcane supplements" (I forget which), and a number of the spells were ones which took a number of rounds to complete their effect. One was a druid spell, and if you failed your save it started turning you to stone, and after IIRC 3 rounds you were rock. That gave 3r worth of opportunities for other participants to take action to rescue you from the effect before it finally happened.

I remember thinking at the time that it was a great solution to the 'save or die' scenario.

The other thing which I believe was quite a common houserule (perhaps based on d20 moderns fail of a massive damage save rule?) was that 'save or die' became 'save or dying' - knocked to -1hp and starts dying process. Again, something that has the dramatic potential for other party members to leap into action to keep them alive and/or bring them back into the fight.

Regards,

 

[MrMyth]

Eh? I was an assumption of the default game for 3 editions and 30 years before now.

We all did just fine, either adjusting it or ignoring it as needed.

? Are you sure? The assumption I'm referring to is not the existence of Save or Die, but the idea that a game plays out like Perseus's tale. Are you telling me that every character you had for thirty years went and had 2-3 epic encounters and then immediately retired?

Or was the assumption that these characters would be around for months or years of play, level up many times, and have many, many encounters over the course of their lifespan?

That's the default I'm talking about, and the one at odds with trying to make the game perfectly mirror specific myths from history.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

? Are you sure? The assumption I'm referring to is not the existence of Save or Die, but the idea that a game plays out like Perseus's tale. Are you telling me that every character you had for thirty years went and had 2-3 epic encounters and then immediately retired?

Or was the assumption that these characters would be around for months or years of play, level up many times, and have many, many encounters over the course of their lifespan?

That's the default I'm talking about, and the one at odds with trying to make the game perfectly mirror specific myths from history.

Ah, I woefully misunderstood your point! Apologies!

And I largely agree, for the same reason many others do: a game is not a myth, though we all hope it reads like one when the campaign is done.

Many characters, though, do only have a handful of epic encounters... and a whole mess of little encounters that don't live on in song. In other words, both of the assumptions you put forward are valid; they're not mutually exclusive. Perseus surely had many, many encounters that didn't make it to "legendary" status: the bandits slain, the bar brawls, the wild animal hunts. But just because we don't hear about those things doesn't mean they didn't happen. He had to earn his XP somehow!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Eh? I was an assumption of the default game for 3 editions and 30 years before now.

We all did just fine, either adjusting it or ignoring it as needed.

Just because it was doesn't mean it should have been. I can think of plenty of examples from the history of medicine (like bleeding) where things were done that should not have been. And THAC0 was part of the game for many years - I don't miss it in the slightest.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

The problem with removing save or dies is it makes any dm who wants to use them look like an ass. If they are in the game by default, removing them is a hell of a lot easier than adding them. WTF? save or die? that's not in the rules, killer dm!

 

[Mallus]

I'm primarily a DM and I vote: nay.

Save-or-die effects are certainly one way to create tension. But they're equally certainly not the only way to do it, and I find the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits.

 

[Hussar]

It is a constant source of amazement for me that no one EVER seems to make their saves.

Party of 5 PC's meets a creature like a medusa or a bodak that forces save or die on the group. Fight lasts four rounds. That's twenty saving throws. Odds say that someone is going to roll a one (and that's assuming that you only fail on a one) and dies.

It's not that no one ever makes their save. It's that no one ever makes ALL their saves.

The problem with removing save or dies is it makes any dm who wants to use them look like an ass. If they are in the game by default, removing them is a hell of a lot easier than adding them. WTF? save or die? that's not in the rules, killer dm!

If using them was groovy, then why would the DM look like an ass? Could it possibly be that the players have a point? That SoD isn't actually all that scary, it's just an instant death sentence, for the reasons outlined above?

Why not just have a monster that rolls randomly through the party and kills one PC before the end of the encounter? After all, it's pretty much the same thing. Is it a well designed monster?

I think that's the entire point in a nutshell. SoD isn't well designed. It's entirely random. Poof, Bob, your character dies in this encounter. No, there's nothing you can do about it because you didn't have the Automatic Immunity Counter. If you had the AIC, then this encouter would be a laughable joke. But, you don't, so, sorry, you die.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The idea that if you are in a fight, and someone happens to chuck a disintegrate at you and you aren't protected against it, and this means you messed up and deserve to die... ok, I'll accept that might be fine for some styles of play, but certainly not as an absolute rule.

To quote Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it." and "We all have it coming, kid."

From The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint gives us some more advice:

"Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is."

Because sometimes you can't shoot all those men down before they shoot you, you have to consider the Missouri boat ride as an alternative.

& most importantly, "To hell with them fellas. Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms."


RC

 

[Reynard]

Party of 5 PC's meets a creature like a medusa or a bodak that forces save or die on the group. Fight lasts four rounds. That's twenty saving throws. Odds say that someone is going to roll a one (and that's assuming that you only fail on a one) and dies.

It's not that no one ever makes their save. It's that no one ever makes ALL their saves.

Again, you're ignoring all the possible mitigating actins that PCs can take (frex, the cleric casts darkness to protect everyone else from gaze attacks, or whatever). And what makes SoD andthe like valuable is how it motivates actions and causes sudden shifts in tactics. This isn't to say that other kinds of abilities don't also inform action, but the SoD is very particular, and then the exact type is more particlar (gaze attacks versus poison stings versus AoE doom).