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Should 5e have save or die?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 5779121" data-attributes="member: 17106"><p>I imagine most players don't want their characters to be victims of instead death. However, if players always got what they wanted or always felt like they could predict or understand what was happening, the game would seem quite stale and boring, wouldn't it? The loss of a character to sudden death hurts, but so did watching a character on 'The Wire' get shot in the back of the head by a kid while shopping at a convenience store, or watching Wash get impaled at the end of Serenity. Drama is supposed to make you feel the full range of human emotions, not just the good ones. That's the purpose to the story.</p><p></p><p>If the DM and the players prefer to run a different style of game, that's totally fine and I don't begrudge anyone for advocating it. Some people live hard enough lives and game for escapist fun. Others simply enjoy a certain style of fiction and that's fine.</p><p></p><p>It's definitely a challenge for the DM. I hold-CdGed a character once and it was definitely tough on both sides. I used a completely inappropriate cloudkill on a PC that killed him, and resurrected the character for free as an apology. That said, it's not the only element of the game that can really screw things up. I'm a firm believer that rules don't replace good DMing skills. If you've instakilled a character and it didn't go over well, you need to evaluate what happened and decide what needs to be done differently next time.</p><p></p><p>The same is true of many different elements in the game. I once had one of those "I'll kill you if you do something evil" paladins ruin a game I played on. Does that mean that the paladin class is anti-fun or that it should be removed from the game? Truthfully I banned paladins from my game after that. But I don't expect everyone else to follow suit. They're part of the game. So are petrification, paralysis, and instant death.</p><p></p><p>FWIW, I think the sheer number of save-or-die and save-or-almost-die situations is probably too large. Like anything, it uses its potency if overused. But I don't think that's enough reason to cut it or relegate it to an optional rule.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ahnehnois, post: 5779121, member: 17106"] I imagine most players don't want their characters to be victims of instead death. However, if players always got what they wanted or always felt like they could predict or understand what was happening, the game would seem quite stale and boring, wouldn't it? The loss of a character to sudden death hurts, but so did watching a character on 'The Wire' get shot in the back of the head by a kid while shopping at a convenience store, or watching Wash get impaled at the end of Serenity. Drama is supposed to make you feel the full range of human emotions, not just the good ones. That's the purpose to the story. If the DM and the players prefer to run a different style of game, that's totally fine and I don't begrudge anyone for advocating it. Some people live hard enough lives and game for escapist fun. Others simply enjoy a certain style of fiction and that's fine. It's definitely a challenge for the DM. I hold-CdGed a character once and it was definitely tough on both sides. I used a completely inappropriate cloudkill on a PC that killed him, and resurrected the character for free as an apology. That said, it's not the only element of the game that can really screw things up. I'm a firm believer that rules don't replace good DMing skills. If you've instakilled a character and it didn't go over well, you need to evaluate what happened and decide what needs to be done differently next time. The same is true of many different elements in the game. I once had one of those "I'll kill you if you do something evil" paladins ruin a game I played on. Does that mean that the paladin class is anti-fun or that it should be removed from the game? Truthfully I banned paladins from my game after that. But I don't expect everyone else to follow suit. They're part of the game. So are petrification, paralysis, and instant death. FWIW, I think the sheer number of save-or-die and save-or-almost-die situations is probably too large. Like anything, it uses its potency if overused. But I don't think that's enough reason to cut it or relegate it to an optional rule. [/QUOTE]
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