Save or Die: Yea or Nay?

[pemerton]

But sooner or later, the gang always has an off day and the players do not, in fact, play well.

<snip>

when the party does something that should result in a PC dying--and they always do, sooner or later--one has to be ready to follow through.

I see your point.

An interesting feature of Rolemaster, which runs contrary to its reputation for deadliness, is that many critical results leave a character incapacitated (and often dying) rather than dead. Furthermore, even after a character dies physically there is still several rounds (for anyone but an elf) before soul departure. So the off days may produce situations in which PCs need serious healing magic to recover, with the potential (given RM's healing rules) for very long ingame recovery periods. But at mid to high levels, when characters have the resources to exploit the gaps between dying, bodily death and soul departure, deaths may actually become very infrequent.

The functional analogue of this in D&D is probably Raise Dead - bad days produce resource expenditure and recovery times, but do not necessarily take a PC permanently out of the game. Anyway, even if the upshot is more like this and less like actual, permanent PC death, I agree that the GM needs to be prepared to follow through if a credible fear of death is to be created.

 

[Ariosto]

Ariosto, you feel free to have the last word.

I will recommend again dropping that paragraph out of the 3.5 gaze rules and thus bringing the gaze back closer to the original D&D model.

That should put an absolute cap (typically 1 per round, I think) on how many player-characters it can petrify or whatever.

Otherwise, you leave open the fluke that is only more a matter of "pure random chance" for happening only (let us say) once in a thousand player-years. (If there are 300,000 players around the world, that's almost a daily event!)

With an absolute cap in place, you can tinker with "save or Z" or "save or X, then save or Y, then save or Z" -- or whatever else looks good. (Setting DCs is in your bag of tricks, too.)

I will also note again that adopting tactics that are actually effective is good for monsters and players alike. Ambush, and you might get the basilisk. Mind those intervals, and the basilisk might not get you (and at least won't get you all).

 

[Raven Crowking]

I find the idea of telegraphing encounters to be very cliche and trite.

I can see where having a consistent and self-referential world (another way of describing "telegraphing encounters") might seem very cliche to you. After all, you live in such a world, and have had daily experience of one for however many years you have been alive.

That's certainly more than a "thousand year old cliche".....It has undoubtably been true for as long as there has been life to experience anything, anywhere.

Forests predate the legends of the medusa. So does agriculture. I certainly hope your campaign milieu avoids those trite cliches.



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

A couple more things.

Yet, I'm told, that the way to use a medusa is to make sure that her presence is detectable by a party.

Careful there. Just about anything's presence is "detectable by a party" in a world in which divination magic exists.

Apparently the medusa, despite being pretty smart, will always leave her used tools out where wandering people can find them and will only be encountered shortly after turning someone else to stone, thus giving the party a chance to hear her breaking apart the statue.

I think that (1) you underestimate the laziness of creatures in general, and (2) you underestimate how long it takes, as well as how much effort is required, to reduce a stone statue to unidentifiable rubble. The very industrious medusa in our example doesn't have to have recently petrified anyone -- she is still working on the statues from months ago.

Never minding the medusa who might have a maedar consort who can turn stone bits back to meat and EAT the evidence. Naw, can't do that, because we apparently need giant neon signs advertising the presence of particular monsters.

Who said anything about giant neon signs except you? That is an obvious straw man.

The medusa who has a maedar consort obviously has the edge up on our industrious medusa. Yet, even so, the maedar is unlikely to eat everything that ever happens to get within close proximity of the medusa. Does the maeder eat vermin, for example? Rats?

Does he eat the bones, the pelt?

RC's evidence is the presence of litter in a public park. Try going to places where you get beaten with a cane for littering and see how much litter you find in parks. (hint, Singapore parks are EXTREMELY clean) If I'm going to give up my presence to everyone around me who is then going to send their biggest, and strongest to come and kill me, you'd think that the average medusa might, oh, I dunno, DIG A HOLE. Put the evidence of her activities DEEPER into her lair so that people don't stumble onto it.

Well, the medusa with a maedar consort may indeed use such a middens....Not "DEEPER into her lair" but some reasonable distance from it, so that the stench of rotting remains doesn't bother her. Our industrious medusa, however, is either going to be dragging heavy stone statues, or at the very least breaking them down into smaller chunks on-site. This is going to require more than one hammer, even over a relatively small span of years, because handles will break (if nothing else).

The middens is also not likely to be a hole dug by the medusa. Digging holes, especially in stone, is hard work after all.

It is also rather curious that, one one hand, we cannot use the medusa because it is party insta-death, and on the other hand the medusa is cringing in hiding from that very same party, "their biggest, and strongest to come and kill me". Not wrongbadfun, but very inconsistent.

Can a medusa with a maedar consort subsist simply by converting stone tunnels to flesh, then eating the flesh, bothering nothing? That might be an interesting encounter for the PCs. The medusa would have no reason to use her gaze attack on anyone. Perhaps they could even grill a stone steak and break out the ale. If the PCs agreed to continue to supply ale, the medusa might even make them favoured guests.

Most medusas, though, seem to be played as though they enjoy the suffering of others. They turn people to stone from spite or malice. They enjoy it. Such a creature is simply not going to hide in a hole eating cave tunnel steaks. It needs the means to lure victims to its grasp.

Or, in the case of the classical Medusa, she is hidden away from the world, and wrathful toward those who seek her out.

It would be interesting to play in a dungeon like Singapore's parks, where monsters get beaten with a cane for littering. I imagine that the PCs would get beaten fairly early in their explorations (assuming leaving dead bodies around is considered littering), and they might have the chance to ask the guards about what repeat offenders are in the area!

But, since this is now turning personal, with people telling me that I'm apparently a hack at the table, despite having no actual experience with how my games run, I guess it's time to bow out.

Hussar, we all post here, and as we do so, people are able to get an idea of what we are like as players and DMs. We have a "footprint" here just as monsters do in the campaign milieu. You have made statements in the past about how you think others run games, based on your experience and their statements. That's human nature.

Maybe I missed the post where someone said you were a hack at the table, but I don't think it exists. I don't see anyone else taking things personally instead of trying to actually discuss.

That doesn't mean that we aren't going to or shouldn't examine your arguments, though. Nor should it mean that you won't or shouldn't examine ours.


RC

 

[MrMyth]

I can see where having a consistent and self-referential world (another way of describing "telegraphing encounters") might seem very cliche to you. After all, you live in such a world, and have had daily experience of one for however many years you have been alive.

Again, RC, the issue at hand isn't the idea of having signs of a monster's presence available. It is that your argument seems to take that to the extreme expectation that there are never situations where PCs don't come across those signs or find themselves without the knowledge to interpret them correctly.

Such as the comment about Maenar leaving vermin bones behind. Plenty of things eat vermin - does the expectation of the PCs identifying the Maenar rely upon them having a ranger with an incredible Nature skill?

Similarly, is it that unreasonable to assume that some encounters may happen without tons of advance warning?

You keep presenting this as an either/or situation: Either all encounters contain a reasonable footprint that the PCs will have the opportunity to discover and knowledge to decipher, or a game lacks any internal inconsistency.

I don't think it breaks down that easily. I think many outdoor encounters will have warning signs, whether physical tracks or rumors heard in town. I think others could come upon the PCs before they have the opportunity to obtain such knowledge. There are also plenty of reasons why there might be false or misleading rumors, there could be tracks that aren't always easily decipherable, there could be combat elements that there are no real way to predict. (Such as the exact list of what spells an enemy Wizard might possess.)

Sure, there could be reasons and explanations for most such things - a DM could certainly leave as many clues in advance as they desire. But there could also be reasons not to have such things, and I don't think a game lacks consistency if some encounters come without complete warning of what the PCs will face.

We're not saying, "No creature should have a footprint." We're saying that it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that every creature's has one that the PCs stumble upon in advance, and that while the DM can contrive to arrange that as the case, the game - or even the desire for a realistic setting - doesn't require that to be the case.

 

[Umbran]

Such as the comment about Maenar leaving vermin bones behind. Plenty of things eat vermin - does the expectation of the PCs identifying the Maenar rely upon them having a ranger with an incredible Nature skill?

Ecologically speaking, vermin exist largely to be food for other things - pretty much any land-predators wolf-sized and smaller are apt to partake of rats, squirrels, rabbits, or what have you, so this would hardly be a marker for a particular beastie unless there was something very specific about how it ate vermin.

We're not saying, "No creature should have a footprint." We're saying that it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that every creature's has one that the PCs stumble upon in advance, and that while the DM can contrive to arrange that as the case, the game - or even the desire for a realistic setting - doesn't require that to be the case.

And we should note that most of the time the DM and players are not forensic specialists. What the GM thinks is a telltale footprint may not seem so to the players, unless the GM is explicit about it. The three-clue rule would seem to have to apply.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

I'm about as "new school" as it gets in what I look for in most of my games--that is, involved character creation, balanced combats which ultimately favor the players, no "fantasy vietnam syndrome", plots and encounters tailored to my character, etc. Simply put, I don't want to play some guy who lives in a fantasy world. Nor do I want to play "a hero". I want to play THE hero, the guy who, were the game a novel, would be considered the main character (or one of them, at least). If the world doesn't revolve around my character, I don't generally have a huge interest in the game.

Main characters die, sometimes. But almost never randomly or in a way that feels insignificant to the plot.

As such, I normally really, really dislike SoD, because its a mechanic that lends itself to random and/or insignificant death. I fact, I dislike it *so* much, that I usually won't play in games that include SoD.

However...

I have played in a few games that made use of save or die mechanics in a way that didn't feel random or arbitrary.

One involved a wizard who used a spell that was basically power word: kill (except this is 4e). However, the spell had a "casting time" of 2 rounds, during which he was unable to take other actions, and dropped to the bottom of the initiative order. If the PCs hit him while he was casting, the spell would be disrupted, and he'd have to restart the process. Of course, he had some minions and a few brutes defending him and getting in the PC's faces.

It created a really interesting tactical dynamic. The wizard was doing zero damage round to round, and the brutes were in our faces wailing on us, so ignoring the brutes really hurt. But if we didn't make sure to land at least one hit on the wizard every round or so, he'd get off a save or die, and we could be killed instantly if we rolled badly.

Ultimately, one party member did die. But it didn't feel "random" or "insignificant". It felt like a completely fair result of the battle, one that, had we been smarter with our tactics, we could have avoided. Moreover, because that spell took a couple rounds to get off, it felt bigger and more dramatic than an ordinary attack, almost like a plot device. Somehow, while a hero croaking because a Medusa glanced his way never felt sufficiently "heroic" to me, a hero dying because of a dark ritual painstakingly cast by an evil mastermind did feel more satisfying on a narrative level.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Again, RC, the issue at hand isn't the idea of having signs of a monster's presence available.

I think that depends very much on who is "speaking". It may not be your issue at hand, but some of the posts on this thread make it seem to be.

Nor is it my argument that "there are never situations where PCs don't come across those signs or find themselves without the knowledge to interpret them correctly" -- that is Hussar's interpretation of my argument.

I merely require that it be possible. Whether or not the PCs actually come across those signs, and whether or not the players interpret them correctly, is besides the point. I only require a "footprint" that is "consistent and self-referential".

Such as the comment about Maenar leaving vermin bones behind. Plenty of things eat vermin - does the expectation of the PCs identifying the Maenar rely upon them having a ranger with an incredible Nature skill?

You misunderstand -- is the maedar of the "all flesh must be eaten" variety, or are there some things not worth turning back to flesh to eat? If the medusa encounters a giant spider, does the consort turn it to flesh to be eaten? Or are there some things that are simply left stone?

If we are to assume that the medusa is smart, she would surely know that a stone spider attracts fewer wandering monsters than a rotting flesh spider. And, assuming that one is using the wandering monster tables provided, she would know that some wandering encounters may well cause her harm.

IOW, PCs wander down to Level 7 perhaps once in her lifetime ( ) but she has to worry about wandering monsters down there 24/7. What makes more sense? Leaving rotting piles of uneaten flesh around, or allowing some statues to remain statues?

Similarly, is it that unreasonable to assume that some encounters may happen without tons of advance warning?

Again, you seem to be reading too much of Hussar's "What you are saying is...." and not enough of what is actually being said.

My argument is, basically:

If a game world is to have internal consistency, all creatures that can be encountered should have a "footprint" which is consistent with their effects on the environment. The greater the environmental impact, the greater the chance that the PCs will encounter some element of that footprint. They may or may not actually do so, and they may or may not have the knowledge to determine what the footprint actually indicates.​

Some may disagree with this, but I note that even Hussar's arguments are not that the medusa wouldn't have a "footprint" per se, but more about how she might be able to reduce the opportunity to discover that footprint and/or interpret it correctly.

As you say, there can be all kinds of reasons that the PCs don't encounter warning signs prior to an encounter, or misinterpret what signs they do encounter. After all, warning signs are part of the environment, not part of the encounter.

It is only when one begins to think of GMing as making a series of discrete encounters, as opposed to the creation of a continuous environment in which various encounters may (or may not) take place, that these problems arise. IMHO, and IME.

Nowhere have I said that the PCs must stumble upon a creature's footprint in advance. Each time that others have tried to claim that this is my position, I have attempted to clarify that this is not my position. Indeed, the player's knowledge that they might have missed/misinterpreted clues is vital for the game to remain interesting, IMHO, and as I said upthread.

Take it away from SoD creatures, and the same point is vaild to exactly the same degree.

Example 1: The game includes powerful monsters, which are capable of handing low-level PCs their tushies quite easily. You can (1) make a world in which it is impossible to encounter such creatures at low levels, (2) allow the PCs to simply randomly encounter such creatures at any level, or (3) create a self-referential world in which it is possible to learn that spiders dwell in Mirkwood, goblins in the Misty Mountains, and Smaug in the Lonely Mountain, and let the players choose what they feel up to dealing with.

They might discover trolls, and stone giants, and eagles, and wargs, and Beorn, and elves, and Gollum as well.....that choice doesn't mean that there is nothing to learn. The people in Laketown might believe that the dragon is a myth, and Gandalf might tell them to take a road that goes nowhere (good thing they left the path after all!) -- not all advice is good. Even Elrond was unaware that the goblins had opened a door on the "safe" pass.

But all of these things could, potentially, be learned prior to being met. And, for many of them, Tolkein makes certain to tell the reader what "footprints" they had (even if the dwarves and Bilbo never learn of it). The trolls are stealing sheep from local farms (or worse), and Elrond's folk know that trolls have come down from the mountains (and warn Gandalf). The goblins know something foul is down by the lake, even if they never impart that to Bilbo before he meets Gollum. The goblins are also well aware of the great eagles of the Misty Mountains....as is Gandalf, who once rendered their king a service. Etc., etc.

Example 2: The Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing.

This monster (originally from Expedition to the Barrier Peaks) almost never works for DMs, because most DMs forget the necessity of providing elements of the natural world with a viable "footprint". Bunnies are never encountered, ergo, if bunnies are encountered now, they must not really be bunnies.

Similarly, the DM never mentions ravens normally, ergo this must be a wizard's familiar.

----

Providing "footprints" is, IMHO, just part of good GMing. If you do it well, players will engage with the world you offer because it is interesting and profitable to do so. Fail to do it, and there is little wonder that things just seem to pop out of the woodwork, or that the players never mistake that Guardian Familiar for a normal cat.

------

EDIT: On further consideration, the problem Hussar describes with SoD monsters is rather similar to that he has described for so-called "gotcha!" monsters in the past. If one assumes that a creature exists merely to appear in a discrete encounter, no wonder it seems to be some form of "gotcha!" When we discussed the rust monster, for example, I was able to describe uses I've made of that creature within actual play, which he seemed to believe required some unusual convolution of thought, whereas I considered that normative for what I call "good GMing".

Perhaps this is an artifact of following the DMing advice in the 3.x books, where the "unit" of an adventure is an encounter. I recommend instead consideration of the whole, and then, when writing individual encounters, trying to imagine how what is written will affect the whole. Do the inhabitants of the ruins know that there are intelligent otyughs living in the Filthfall Middens? If so, do they talk to them? Are the Middens a neutral truce ground, because everyone needs to dump their trash, or are they the site of constant skirmishing? In either case, what do the otyughs know as a result? Etc., etc.

When placing wandering encounters on a table, it makes sense for the GM to consider what effects those encounters have on the environment. A dungeon level with wandering gelatinous cubes looks very different than one without. Wandering rats will leave rat droppings (which become part of the dungeon dressing). Rust monsters consume the hinges from doors, knobs, pull rings, and so on. Again, etc. etc.

RC

 

[Lanefan]

I'm about as "new school" as it gets in what I look for in most of my games--that is, involved character creation, balanced combats which ultimately favor the players, no "fantasy vietnam syndrome", plots and encounters tailored to my character, etc. Simply put, I don't want to play some guy who lives in a fantasy world. Nor do I want to play "a hero". I want to play THE hero, the guy who, were the game a novel, would be considered the main character (or one of them, at least). If the world doesn't revolve around my character, I don't generally have a huge interest in the game.

With an approach like that, you'd last less than ten minutes at my table.

What happened to the idea of getting out and doing the necessary in-game legwork to make the world revolve around your character (or preferably, party)? Why should anyone care about you before you've done the Great Deeds that make you a hero?

A good analogy is a pro sports player. He (or she) has to put in the time and score the goals/hit the home runs/whatever to show they are the best; only after doing that do they get into the Hall of Fame. You seem to want to start out already in the Hall.

About the only story types that suit what you want are the "child of prophecy" sort of things e.g. David Eddings' Belgariad series (one of my all-time favourites, by the way); and while that works wonderfully for literature it sets up to fail dismally in a game - believe me, I've tried it - unless the DM makes you death-proof, at which point the game becomes a farce.

Lan-"around here, 10 adventures gets you in the Hall of Heroes"-efan

 

[MrMyth]

About the only story types that suit what you want are the "child of prophecy" sort of things e.g. David Eddings' Belgariad series (one of my all-time favourites, by the way); and while that works wonderfully for literature it sets up to fail dismally in a game - believe me, I've tried it - unless the DM makes you death-proof, at which point the game becomes a farce.

I think you're misreading what he's looking for. He's not asking to be the 'Hero of Prophecy', he's just asking to be the protaganist.

At least, that tends to be my take on it. A player looking for the world to revolve around them isn't asking to be the most important character in the setting - rather, they just want the plot to be in front of them, and accessible, and something that they can influence and affect by their own actions.

Rather than being, instead, immersed in a huge sandbox setting with tons of other stories going on, and the plot being driven by powerful NPCs of the DM's creation. Now, there is certainly room for campaigns like that, or with some of those qualities, and working your way into such stories can be a thrilling experience.

But not necessarily one preferred by everyone. I know I've been in games of that sort, and while I like the idea of a sandbox environment, the actual experience was incredibly frustrating. What plot thread should I be chasing? Who do I ally with? Where do I go from here? What decision does the DM expect me to make?

Now, in a good game, there are many roads to success, and the DM can provide guidance for players to make enlightened decisions without feeling like they are stumbling in the dark. But it's also all too easy to feel like it isn't a question of challenging the character, but instead the player, and the skill they need to master is predicting how the DM thinks.

Having a game where you can involve yourself in the plot without playing a guessing game? There is plenty of room for a character to still rise to the occasion and prove themselves worthy of being a hero. Preferring a game where you are the protaganist, and deeply immersed in the plot rather than watching it as a bystander, is a very far cry from wanting to simply be spoon-fed the life of a hero.