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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zappo" data-source="post: 702692" data-attributes="member: 633">Bah. Bah. And bah again.I've made a thread on the same topic, with even the very same subject line, a few months ago, and it didn't get nearly the same attention. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" />Anyway, save or die spells are the one and only sacred cow of D&D that I would gladly see removed. They run against the heroic style of the game. Why use a hit points system designed to make anticlimactic insta-deaths impossible - and then put in a lot of insta-death magic?From the POV of game balance, they are offset by the availability of Raise Dead and Resurrection spells, ok. But still, they just don't have the right style.Consider a huge final battle: the party wizard casts Polymorph, and one of two things happen. Either the battle is over at round one, or nothing happens and the wizard made a fool of himself. Neither of the two alternatives are very enjoyable I think.In that other thread, a solution that came up was the use of ability damage for save-or-die spells, with the full effect of the spell going into effect when the ability score reaches zero. For example, a disintegration spell would deal 3d6 CON damage, save for half, if it reaches zero the character is disintegrated.Another idea was that of having the spells reduce abilities over some rounds. For example, a hold person would inflict a 1d6 dexterity penalty; if the character fails the save, he keeps taking an additional 1d6 dexterity penalty each round. When the spell is over, all penalties vanish. This way the spells are overall about as powerful (because having the first die be applied regardless of save makes them more reliable), but they have less extreme effects because the character has a chance to flee, or dispel, or just keep fighting until the magic completely gets him. It makes for nice dramatic scenes too, as the fighter is slowly petrified...Yet another alternative was the one suggested in an article by... was it Monte Cook? Can't quite remember. Anyway, it suggested that spells such as disintegration, finger of death and the like, instead of killing on a failed save merely dealt a humongous amount of damage. If the character reached 0 hit points from the attack, it would be slain/disintegrated/whatever.  This was to be applied to epic levels, though, so it wouldn't work as well in normal play.</blockquote>

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