NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5277116" data-attributes="member: 61155">Yeah, that's... not true. If I enter the epic fight with the evil wizard who has plagued the land, and he wins initiative and kills me with his first spell, that's a very different experience than if my soul starts with wither away, and I fight on through the pain for several rounds before perishing on a third failed save. In that instance, I still get to contribute to the fight - and I have choices to make on trying to fight off the creeping death or do what I can before it claims me.  Yes, there is a final roll that ends things, but one informed by prior rolls and actions, as opposed to a single roll disconnected from everything else.  Well, yes, to an extent. But I'm talking about more immediate decisions and their impact. Yes, a rogue that peers in the window and dies to a bodak made choices that resulted in his death - he chose to play a rogue, he chose to go on an adventure, he chose to be the party scout. But could he have made a decision that would have saved him, short of playing a different character? None were presented to him, and that was what was frustrating about the experience.  Whereas the deaths that people are saying are acceptable are ones that come after a good deal of action. You are in a fight, and it starts to go badly. At that point you have choices - do you try to retreat, or fight it out? If you get low, do you back up and try to get healed, or keep the enemy busy? Do you try and engage the caster if it leaves you open to being surrounded? If a companion falls, do you try to save them, or focus on finishing off the enemy before another friend drops?  Those are decisions you have to make. And when someone does die, it is usually as a consequence of those choices. Whether for good or ill, people feel it was the result of choices they made, rather than just random chance at the start of an encounter.  Luck can still be a big part of it, sure, and you can still have SoD encounters where choices help or hinder you - but in many people's experiences, they have perished to Save or Die and it has felt like something they had no control over, as opposed to dying during an ongoing battle when they could feel as though decisions they made led to their death. Without Save or Die, when luck starts to turn against you, you can try and do things to mitigate this - whether it involves retreating outright, or drawing on more resources to try and turn the tide. With Save or Die, one bit of bad luck and it is already too late.  That isn't something you can deny - that is the experience people have had, and a reason for their feelings on Save or Die effects!  I have no idea what you are saying here. We aren't "limiting the acceptable narratives", I'm explaining the personal preferences of certain gamers. Yes, for any individual gamer, some elements will be satisfying or unsatisfying. In this case, for some gamers, SoD deaths fall into one category or the other. Those who find them unsatisfying and lacking in drama will obviously thus not be a fan of the mechanic. There is nothing to debate there.   No, look, you still don't get to declare what my objections have to do with. Yes, any group of gamers could say that they hate all deaths from fireballs, or find any death unfun, or only want to die from falling from cliffs. That doesn't change the fact that a large number of gamers specifically object to death from instant-kill SoD mechanics.  Regarding the third point, about disruption - yes, any death has the potential to disrupt the game. But my point was that, in my experience (and others, from what people have said in this thread), Save or Die has more potential to disrupt things, because it can happen before any action at all.   Dude, I'm... really confused here.  I'm not making an argument here. I am sharing a preference. I'm not sure why you feel the need to try and logically prove to me that my preference is wrong, or comes from "deeper problems than whether or not the game includes SoD".  Some people have had the experience that Save or Die effects feel random and arbitrary, minimizing the character's ability to determine their own fate.  Some people find that Save or Die effects result in less satisfying deaths than deaths that come from a greater amount of action.  Some people find the disruption caused by Save or Die effects more significant than that of most character deaths.  This isn't something you can disprove. These are opinions. It isn't a treatise on why Save or Die is eternally flawed, it is an explanation of why some people don't like it.  Similarly, you still don't get to explain why I feel the way I do. For me, this isn't about narrative and letting players die only if and when they choose to do so. This isn't about presenting them with lesser challenges. This isn't about us having some "deeper flaws" in my game or playstyle that render me incapable of using Save or Die effects 'correctly'. This is about those things I have mentioned above, and not preferring them as the default in most of my games. It's perfectly fine to feel differently, but it is definitely not cool to either try and 'disprove' statements about how I feel, or imply that it is the result of crappy DMing on my part.</blockquote>

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