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="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5279482" data-attributes="member: 58197">Okay, having argued the anti-SoD side to the point of moderator warning, I'm now going to turn around and argue the other way.To a certain extent you are right; it's not reasonable to expect the PCs to take extensive precautions purely on the basis that a given creature exists somewhere out in the world. However, foreshadowing should be much more useful than that.Let's take the typical case: The PCs are headed off to the dungeon of the week in order to rescue the hapless Prince MacGuffin, who is desperately hoping that they both arrive in time and don't start quoting Monty Python when they do ("I'm sorry, I thought your son was a lady." "I can understand that!").The PCs do some investigating and discover clues pointing to the existence of bodaks in said dungeon. They don't know exactly where, and it's not positive proof, but it's a strong possibility that going to that dungeon is going to entail facing bodaks.This is the point where the PCs should be taking extensive precautions. Look around each corner with a mirror. When opening a door, face away from it and hold up a mirror to see over your shoulder. Avoid facing doorways into areas you haven't cleared and secured, in case a bodak steps out of one. Pay special attention to unexplained, unmarked corpses.If the PCs take these precautions, they should be fairly safe from insta-death. Of course, there will be other risks involved... if you face away from all unsecured doorways, for example, other monsters might sneak up behind you. So these precautions are not no-brainers and there are tradeoffs.All in all, I think I'd say that the big issue with save-or-die is treating it as a common mechanical element rather than a truly extraordinary threat. I think DMs and game designers are often misled by the existence of the save into supposing that it's no big deal if PCs are occasionally targeted out of the blue with these effects. Hence you get the situation described upthread, where the party rogue goes to scout out an area, happens across a bodak with no warning, and drops dead.IMO, if one is going to design or use a critter with a save-or-die attack, one should think of that attack as an auto-kill and plan accordingly. The saving throw is just a tease, a last shred of hope for a sadistic Dungeon Master to dangle in front of a dying PC. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />[size=-2]Note: This is not intended as any kind of criticism of sadistic Dungeon Masters. Quite the contrary.[/size]</blockquote>

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