SoD, how can we accommodate everyone?

[BryonD]

I definitely agree that my example was cheesy, but you still got what I was driving at.

Yes, and as I said, I buy your larger point.

The mythological Medusa should be a much higher level monster that isn't meant to be taken on lightly. It doesn't even make sense that there is a saving throw at all unless you have some sort of heroic magical protection to aid you or the characters know about the powers of the medusa already. Like, maybe they notice the writhing snakes in a shadow on the wall as the hood comes off and have a chance to look away, etc. At higher levels, maybe some kind of resistance save might make a little more sense.

This is a matter of style. For me D&D is always a bit more WAAHOO so the save mechanics works fine for "didn't look". I wouldn't argue against "no save" in general. But I'd suggest some other system.

Sadly, it actually suggests that a medusa likes to fool victims into looking at her by dropping her cloak, right in the Basic D&D description (really, was medusa even a good monster to have in a book for levels 1-3 anyway?) Oh, and her snakes dealt SoD poison too... yeah... definitely a good match for low level characters there.

Meh, I'm not advocating wholesale slaughter and hopeless odds. But old school D&D had some different presumptions. Nine go in and one comes out sounds harsh, but if you are up for it you just might be the one telling the stories about the time you came back out. And if you don't face those odds you can never ever have the chance to be the guy that beat them.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The problem with a slider for each effect is that you wind up spending a lot of space in the Monster manual adjusting each creature. I'd rather have a single mechanical model that adjusts everything.

Well, that and if you have to put a slider effect on each single thing, that isn't actually "modular" at all. That's just saying that each discrete thing has multiple but fixed options that go with it.

For something to be modular, there has to be the possiblity that you can swap out something else that wasn't there before, possibly wasn't even anticipated before. To get that, you need several things to swap out to prove that it works, but if your swappable things all have to be set ahead of time, it isn't very modular. (Nor does this mean that just anything could go there. Of course there are limits. But if you can't put anything new there, it isn't modular.)

 

[Blacky the Blackball]

I can see two answers to the issues raised so far.

The Easy (and rather glib) Answer

Some monsters have save-or-die attacks such as poison or petrification. Some situations (such as falling into lava) may even be die-no-save.

There's a side-bar or paragraph in the DMG talking about save-or-die monsters and die-no-save situations. It suggests that they aren't everyone's cup of tea and should only be used if the group enjoys that sort of game. If the players don't enjoy that sort of game, the DM should simply avoid using those monsters and situations.

The Complicated Answer

This answer is inspired by similar mechanics in the Rolemaster game.

All sentient creatures have a Grace Period. When a they die, their soul doesn't leave their body immediately and go to the afterlife. Instead, it hangs around the body for a couple of minutes (12 rounds).

If whatever killed the creature is healed before the soul has left, the soul may re-enter the body and the creature returns to life. They weren't completely dead, only mostly dead (cue Princess Bride jokes) or "clinically dead" as we would call it in modern terms.

So if you're killed by being reduced below 0hp by normal damage, getting a normal healing spell or first aid before your Grace Period runs out will revive you - this can be an alternative to using negative hit points or death saves.

If you're killed by a save-or-die poison, getting a Neutralise Poison spell before your Grace Period runs out will revive you.

If you're killed by some kind of die-no-save situation such as being crushed by a falling block or burned by lava, providing your remains can be recovered before your Grace Period runs out then getting a powerful healing spell (Cure Light Wounds probably wouldn't be enough) will revive you.

If you're turned to stone, then you're not dead at all. You're just unconscious until someone casts Stone to Flesh on you (or until someone smashes your statue, killing you).

If you're killed by a "special strike" from an Assassin that bypasses your normal hit points, being magically healed before your Grace Period runs out will revive you.

And so forth...

Basically, this mechanic allows there to be save-or-die situations (or die-no-save situations) while giving fellow party members a chance to rescue the victim afterwards. It still keeps an element of risk - the character who is killed may be separated from their comrades who can't get to them in time; or the rest of the party may have to run away from whatever killed one of them to avoid also dying, and therefore be unable to revive them. However, it should usually avoid the "you made a bad roll, now go create a new character" issue that many players dislike.

Of course, there could even be spells or items that extend the Grace Period, keeping someone on the edge of death and preventing their soul from leaving until you can get them to a healer capable of healing what's wrong with them.

 

[Ratskinner]

The main problem with save or die is that if the PC is not brought back from the dead, it takes an hour or more anymore to create a new PC, especially at higher levels.

That might not be relevant anymore. I'd guess from some of the things we've heard that you could whip up a "simple" character in <15 minutes, and then "complexify" it later.

Monte Cook: "For example, the basic game fighter might have specific level-bases abilities. Things that every fighter has. If you decide to get more customized, you can swap standard abilities for more complex, optional abilities. These are the kinds of things that feats do now. But the complex stuff is balanced with what's in the core. One character is more complex, but not necessarily more powerful."
​

and

• Character creation 15 mins for experienced players, 30 mins for a new player.
  • "What we're really getting at is that character creation should take as long as you want. If you want to jump into a game quickly, you can put together an easy character and not worry about too many of those options. But if you want to build the more complex character and go through the options and tweak it to be exactly what you want, then you have the time and options for that."

One can always hope.

 

[Ratskinner]

I have to admit, the KISS approach here appeals to me.

The problem with a slider for each effect is that you wind up spending a lot of space in the Monster manual adjusting each creature. I'd rather have a single mechanical model that adjusts everything.

So, if we used the idea of four "settings":

• Heroic - SoD effects are commuted to SSSoD. Possibly even just becoming Save or Be Gibbled for a While.
• Difficult - SoD effects become SSSoD and there should be provisions for interupting the SSS besides just making a saving throw, but the effects are permanent.
• Deadly - SoD, standard, straight up.
• Grimdark - SoD effects are commuted to bonus damage equal to the PC's current HP+10. If the baddie hits you with a SoD, you die.

I agree. I can easily envision monsters and traps (and anything else) which provoke saving throws having a standard notation. Then the modules that modify "What does a saving throw mean?" would allow you to choose how you interpret or use that information.

 

[Hussar]

/snip


I do like my banshees really scary. But banshees are a bit more abstract as well. It is more a curse of imminent death rather than a drop dead on the spot.


/snip

But, why the double standard though? The myths don't say that you will die quietly in your bed years later if you hear a banshee. The myths say you are going to die horribly and very, very soon.

So, if your PC's hear a banshee, do they always die horribly shortly afterward? If not, why not? How do you justify the need to exactly follow one myth and not another?

Or, to put it another way, if my first level female paladin walks up to the Tarrasque with a piece of cake, do I come away with a pet?

 

[GM Dave]

Well, that and if you have to put a slider effect on each single thing, that isn't actually "modular" at all. That's just saying that each discrete thing has multiple but fixed options that go with it.

For something to be modular, there has to be the possiblity that you can swap out something else that wasn't there before, possibly wasn't even anticipated before. To get that, you need several things to swap out to prove that it works, but if your swappable things all have to be set ahead of time, it isn't very modular. (Nor does this mean that just anything could go there. Of course there are limits. But if you can't put anything new there, it isn't modular.)

If you look at the 4e Monster Vault then you will see many examples of modularity in practice.

Look at the Basilisk.

There are five different examples of Basilisk with basically Bite and Gaze. The rules for the Gaze attack on each of the Basilisk is really what changes and it would be fairly easy to swap out one Gaze attack for another.

The carrion crawler is another example of different sets of rules for the tentacles. You can choose between Stun, Immobilize, Damaging (poison or necrotic) depending on which of the carrion crawlers that you select.

The Medusa has a couple of different sets of rules on whether it slows and then petrifies after the first failed save or petrifies and kills after the third failed save.

These rule components do not seem to take up much extra space in the Monster Vault and could easily be swapped to other monsters with similar attacks.

Lethality will be more a choice of monster base and options that the GM puts on the monster.

 

[Oni]

If you look at the 4e Monster Vault then you will see many examples of modularity in practice.

Look at the Basilisk.

There are five different examples of Basilisk with basically Bite and Gaze. The rules for the Gaze attack on each of the Basilisk is really what changes and it would be fairly easy to swap out one Gaze attack for another.

The carrion crawler is another example of different sets of rules for the tentacles. You can choose between Stun, Immobilize, Damaging (poison or necrotic) depending on which of the carrion crawlers that you select.

The Medusa has a couple of different sets of rules on whether it slows and then petrifies after the first failed save or petrifies and kills after the third failed save.

These rule components do not seem to take up much extra space in the Monster Vault and could easily be swapped to other monsters with similar attacks.

Lethality will be more a choice of monster base and options that the GM puts on the monster.

The issue that I see with something like this is one of space. All those little rules widgets add up. If you have a game that is at heart modular it's going to have a lot of interchangeable pieces, it seems to me that you would want to maximize the efficiency of the interchangeable bits to avoid unnecessary bloat. So rather than having to change each thing individually, it seems more efficient to have one rules widget that can be applied to multiple monsters.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

@GM Dave , those monster vault examples are a kind of micro modularity that is about swapping out things that all serve more or less the same purpose. You can make up new ones and put those in there because they are all about the same. Critically, if you want to do change the carrior crawler, you don't need to touch the basilisk, and vice versa.

The lethalness example is not like that. This is having a few concrete choices that have to be there on every creature to work. (Well, most of them need to be on most creatures. I suppose some creatures can just not be available for certain levels of lethalness.) But the main problem is that if you want to come up with your own lethalness "plug-in" to hook into those modules, you can't practically do it.

Table top games, in printed books, have been providing micro modularity ever since they started. Macro changes that work well are more rare. Sure, we've had reasonably constrained lists (spells of a given level, classes available at start, monsters of a given power range), but those are of course handled by allowing the whole list or some subset of it. Adding to it is one thing; sometimes we might do that. Changing how everything in the list operates without having to rewrite the list, is another entirely.

So here's another test to determine if something is modular enough to work the way they say they want 5E to work: If you have to rewrite vast swaths of things to make a new option work, it isn't terribly modular. After all, if lists of lethalness options in monsters made 5E modular, you could just as easily argue that Basic through 4E were equally modular. I can rewrite all the monsters in those games to have my new lethalness mechanic, if I want. The only difference in those and having the options in the 5E manual is that the authors have done a few of the rewrites for you.

People that want to make the game their own do not want lists of pre-approved choices from the writers. They want tools to easily tweak the game into what they want without doing the rewrite.

 

[Kynn]

Did I? You said you either did not look at her, were petrified, or didn't encounter medusa.

So, a 3e Fort Save is clearly inappropriate. It just petrifies. You were looking at the woman, then she revealed her face.

If the saving throw _is_ appropriate, then so is any number of other mechanical options. You're already conceding gameplay trumps the myth.

Better mechanic!

You need to fail a Perception check or else you turn to stone.