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="awesomeocalypse" data-source="post: 5302529" data-attributes="member: 85641">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.</blockquote>

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