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Message: <blockquote data-quote="beej" data-source="post: 5780563" data-attributes="member: 62869">The last time I saw save-or-die, Cedric Diggory turned into Edward Cullen.</lame joke>Certainly, the threat of death should be present in D&D. But save-or-die isn't the only way to do it. I liked the slow, soul-draining death caused by Ashavona (4E demilich, free from WotC <a href="http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4tut/mmdemilich#74834" target="_blank">here</a>). Massively damaging powers are cool, too. I also like the elegance of Power Word Kill, in that it's an instadeath but requires the target to be below a certain amount of hitpoints first (indicating a few rounds before it can be used).And it also goes both ways. As a DM, one of my pet peeves in 3.5 is when you are caught off-guard and an important NPC is attacked by a PC's save-or-die spell.4E's a strange thing. It got rid of save-or-die's and at the same time, granted epic PC's in particular to cheat death 1/day. On the other end of the stick, what do epic monsters get? Just higher numbers, apparently, and the occasional stun effect (and even that has been toned down).Basically, my opinion is that monster lethality (or pure badarserry) should be directly proportional to the survivability of PCs on the same level. I don't want save-versus death in levels where a spiked pit trap can kill the characters anyway. I want save-or-die's in levels where it can be circumvented by PCs.</blockquote>