Saves and 4th Edition and Jim Darkmagic *SPOILERS*

[AbdulAlhazred]

Question: Is it more fun to get to roll once and then die/be dominated, or is it more fun to be able to keep rolling to get out of a bad situation? This is a request for an opinion, obviously, so no one can have a "right or wrong" answer on this, but if I were to DM a game, I would obviously want to go with the option that would be more entertaining.

Note: The "one save or die" could be implemented into a 4e game, and the "give a saving throw each turn" could be incorporated into a non-4e game, so it's not a question of which ruleset as a whole is "better", understand.

Right, we finally finished mopping up Phandelver in the 5e game my sister is now running, and the very last action in the whole module was running into the wraith. Our cleric turned it twice and we used the time to bomb it with ranged attacks each time, so we pretty well maximized what our 3rd level party of 5 could do to the thing, but it still caught up to us (I guess they have real fast movement, and of course can just go through any obstacle). The wraith came for the cleric, hit, instantly knocked the character from 100% hit points to below 0 and then apparently they kill you outright with a single save, so the character was insta-ganked with a single hit by a monster that there was just literally no escaping (and for which we had no foreshadowing, though we probably would have still attacked it if we'd known).

Its not a big deal, character's die. OTOH it seemed like a somewhat pointless and arbitrary death where the mechanics of the creature and its placement in the module conspired to make it pretty much a gotcha! death trap sort of situation. Once the cleric died we quickly offed the beastly thing, so it really was a pure 'luck of the dice' thing, if she'd made the DC13 CON save she'd have survived.

I'll note, I also didn't feel like the fighting of the thing itself was all that dramatic. We didn't have any really clever tactical options, just basic obvious tactics (keep falling back and turning the thing so it stays at range where it couldn't attack us). I hankered for the 4e version of wraiths, which when I sprung them on a 5th level party were QUITE memorable.

Honestly though I still go back to the writing of the module. The SOD effect would have been a lot more interesting and dramatic if the wraith had been plot relevant vs being basically just a random room-filler and if we'd been say hunting it and building up tension. Then having the thing swoop in and gank the cleric would have been TERRIFYING and fun. It was OK as is, but it was a waste of a good insta-gank really.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I generally dislike effects that instantly kill characters or make them unplayable for a long time. Honestly, I dislike any effects that kill characters without it explicitly being put at stake by the player (including the assumption that it is at stake in every combat).

On the other hand, I like mechanical long-term consequences, as long as they restrict the character without taking away player's control or penalizing all actions so much that they are ineffective.

Thus, I want domination-type effects to either be very temporary (a couple rounds) or to be a consequence of a lost high-stake conflict (instead of death). On the other hand, charm-type effects may and should last long enough to be usable in extended social interactions, not single encounters.

This made me think that maybe the answer to SOD/SOS is to always offer a trade. For instance the less dramatic ones like "oops I got bit by a giant spider" might be overcome by spending a resource and taking a lesser consequence (IE you spend an HS and instead of the phase spider venom knocking you unconscious you automatically save but you take a -2 on all attack rolls for the rest of the encounter).

For harder core stuff, like say the gaze of the medusa's petrification effect the it would work essentially the same way, but the consequence would be much more interesting and less trivial. Maybe the character is cursed with a petrifying touch until he can get the curse removed!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I also agree that disease-track-like mechanics could be used for some of these situations. However I still would like to incorporate the player's setting the stakes in there. So maybe a 'curse' could work like you can simply stay at the level of the curse you are at now, perhaps needing a save do so, OR you can attempt to break the curse, but if you fail you immediately go to the next worse stage.

 

[cavalier973]

Honestly though I still go back to the writing of the module. The SOD effect would have been a lot more interesting and dramatic if the wraith had been plot relevant vs being basically just a random room-filler and if we'd been say hunting it and building up tension. Then having the thing swoop in and gank the cleric would have been TERRIFYING and fun. It was OK as is, but it was a waste of a good insta-gank really.

13th Age has a house rule (in the rulebook!) that says a character cannot permanently die except by the hand of a named opponent.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

13th Age has a house rule (in the rulebook!) that says a character cannot permanently die except by the hand of a named opponent.

That might feel a bit gamist put that way, but fundamentally I sure agree with the sentiment. In a sense that was one of the big aims of 4e. You can die, but its very unlikely to happen as it did to the cleric in our 5e game. It happens when you get to the 5th encounter of the day and the nice solo boss monster comes calling. At that point I'm OK with a SOD in a dramatic sense, though there's still the "ouch, the cleric got knocked out in round 1 of the hour long climactic battle" which to some extent is probably not a completely solvable issue.

I guess one answer would be for the player to make the choice, die dramatically now, or accept the consequences of avoiding fate. Another option would be the 'lingering death' possibility, which 4e did do to some extent with things like the medusa. I think it could be more spectacular though, maybe the character's demise is certain but they have a few rounds to keep fighting. Maybe its even avoidable if they can get rid of the BBEG in time.