The ethics of ... death

[Hussar]

Getting hit three times succesfully is not a forgone concusion, particularly with a low hp creature like a snake. And even though 1E and 3E do let you go down to -10 for death (for 2E death is at 0 HP), you do start to die at -1 hp (so that probability also needs to be factored in). A 10 hp character has a pretty good chance of being knocked down to -1 hp after three succesful hits. Against a snake, a full party will most likely take it out before it has a chance for even a second attack (assumingit wins initiative).

Also, i am not disputing that SoD significantly raises the chance of death. That is what it is supposed to do. That is why I like it. I am just questioning the claim you made that it means one character dies nearly 100% of the time it is introduced (this will vary considerably dopending on party level, the characters and the encounter itself----in 2E, a 1st level priest has a death save of 10, but at 20th he has a 2). Also, as the party increases in level, their number of resources to del with such threats (particularly poison and petrification) go up considerably.

No, of course it's not a foregone conclusion. Failing your saving throw isn't either. However, you're also presuming a single snake vs an entire party. This being AD&D, normal snakes appear in groups of 1-6.

But, that's the point - it's rocket tag. Either we kill the snake before it gets a chance to make some hits, or we almost guarantee a fatality. Whereas with a normal monster, given the EXACT same setup, the chances of fatality are far, far less.

Put it another way. Single hit is still about 50:50 PC death. Single hit with a d8 weapon cannot even drop the PC into the negatives. How's that for being overpowered? Your PC's best chances of survival are 50:50.

It's interesting though, that you bring up 2nd Edition D&D, in regards to poison. Here's what the 2e PHB says about Poison:

The strength of different poisons varies wildly and is frequently overestimated. The bite of the greatly feared black widow spider kills a victim in the United States only once every other year. Only about 2% of rattlesnake bites prove fatal.

At the other extreme, there are natural poisons of intense lethality. Fortunately, such poisons tend to be exotic and rare...

Yet, according to the rules, any poisonous snake that bites a PC has about a 50/50 chance of instantly killing that PC. The text doesn't match the rules. Sure, while the priest might have a bit better chance of shrugging off poison, everyone else is worse than 50:50 until 9th (for fighters - everyone else is worse until well into double digit levels), so, in most parties, almost everyone has worse than a 50:50 chance of dying from any poison effect.

So, spread it out over time then if you don't like it in a single encounter. Hit by three poison effects between 1st and 5th level and you're almost guaranteed (about 90%) of dying. And you don't get neutralize poison until 7th.

Oh, and against the medusa, no one gets better than 50:50 until the fighter at 9th level. So, again, party of 4 PC's faces a medusa and the chance of PC fatality is very, very close to 100%.

See, this is why I don't buy the "oh, it's all a matter of personal preference" argument. The math just doesn't work. It doesn't do what proponents want it to do - ie. make combat more random - all it does is yank the chance of PC death way too high.

You'd get exactly the same effect by tripling the damage output of any monster.

 

[Guest 85555]

On IPhone so will leave the 2E issues for another time (since I can't look up the poison entry now). But the issue here is SOD not 2E poison rules and descriptions.

Hussar, I think these numbers are still pretty questionable. The only times you would confidently be able expect a 90- 99 percent chance of a party death is with a sod effect that targets the whole party and all their saves are around fifty-fifty. But like I said earlier, let us assume those numbers: a 90 percent chance or greater one party member dies and we don't know who it will be? Talk about a thrilling combat! That is exactly the kinds if stakes I hope to occasionally face in a campaign. This is entirely a matter of preference.

 

[N'raac]

I would think that a death ability that is pretty much the creature's definitional attack would be the first thing revealed under most circumstances. And there are DCs on the book, but a lot of wiggle room for DMs in how to interpret these things.

RAW is one factoid for success, and one more for every 5 you succeed by. About the only wiggle room is which one to reveal first.

I'm not really seeing how (in-game or out), you could tell a player the monster was a banshee (or Medusa, or whatever) without making them aware of its main ability. I think that falls under common sense for both parties. That's like knowing that if you see a dragon, you should watch out for a breath weapon, or knowing that vampires suck your blood.

Then why do we have knowledge skills to determine the monster's special abilities? The PLAYER knows the enemy has petrification gaze and snakes for hair once we say "Medusa" if he has knowledge of greek mythology. Of course, he would also know there is only one Medusa, and that her sisters the Gorgons have the same abilitied, and cannot be killed (and are not metal cows that breathe out a petrifying mist). A Banshee by lore neither kills instantly with its keening nor attacks with a terrfifying negative energy touch. It is a harbinger of death, not the cause of death, in folklore. It seems like your "common sense" is more "all players and PC's have read the Monster Manual" than anything else.

Once you know the enemy is a Medusa, you pretty much know not to look at it. And, many of these precautions/tactics are things that make sense even if you are not 100% sure what the enemy's abilities are. If it's a scary looking undead that doesn't move that fast, you don't need to know that it's a bodak to know that ranged combat might be a good idea.

How many of our group have ranks in Knowledge: Nature? You can't use it untrained for anything above DC 10, so not to ID monster abilities. If the player rolls a '1', does that not mean that, regardless of whether he can recite the MM entry, word for word, the character remembers nothing about a Medusa? I don't think you can have it both ways - either the Knowledge skill governs knowledge of monsters and their abilities (so it can be used to determine Monster X has a deadly SoD ability) or it does not.

That I don't know, but by banshee levels, you should be able to teleport away or move faster than that. You should also have death ward or the equivalent in items, as it is now five levels lower than your max level spells. And possibly Foresight. Banshees have some impressive abilities, but they are hardly the greatest threat a 17th level party should be worried about.

Agreed - they are CR 13, IIRC, so they should be pretty much no threat at all. Yet it seems they are, and they are because of that SoD mechanic.

By your logic above, though, whenever our brave, bold L17 team sees a monster, we should all join hands and Teleport away (or we should all be fast enough to flee at better than 60', and should clearly do so). Then we should upate our entire repertoire of spells so we are specifically defended against this one entity, at which time we return. It, of course, will have done nothing in the interim. And we always have a full day to retreat, review and revise our repertoire - never any time pressure, of course.

D&D does count both Lovecraftian fiction and its games as significant influences.

D&D had been around quite a few years before there was a Call of Cthulhu game. They did manage to get sued for including a Lovecraftian chapter in their first edition of Deities & Demigods, though.

What do you expect to happen when a venomous snake bites you three times? Frankly, if the venom is at all deadly, I'd expect to die. Yet, via the saving throws in the game, some PCs manage to survive certain death. What this indicates is a fundamental difference in expectations. Some of us seem to expect a little more verisimilitude in our game environments. Deadly creature in real life that kills you via methods other than simply battering you = deadly creature in game life that kills you via methods other than simply battering you.

I'll grant that save or die may be a bad mechanic if you expect every challenge you might face to whittle you down via hit point ablation. But that's actually a terrible mechanic if you expect some effects to be able to bypass hit point ablation like charms, transformations, or stun settings on phasers and blaster rifles. There's no objective reason either makes for a better game - rather just better fits to certain types of expectations.

I find it interesting that, in all the Great Snake Debate, no one has mentioned the change from 2e to 3e where poison stopped being SoD and went to the new Ability Damage mechanic. Clearly, someone decided that the SoD was excessive, whether for comparison to real world poisons or for game design reasons.

 

[Greenfield]

Depending on which Save you're calling for, we can take a really good guess as to who's going down.

Will Save? Bye-bye fighters, and probably Rogues.

Reflex Save? Rangers will make it, but Fighters, Wizards and clerics are going away.

Fort Saves? Bet that those Wizards and Sorcerers wished they'd protected themselves better, eh?

There isn't any one Save that will be a 50/50 for every character, unless you have some very unlikely builds on the table.

 

[Guest 85555]

It's interesting though, that you bring up 2nd Edition D&D, in regards to poison. Here's what the 2e PHB says about Poison:



Yet, according to the rules, any poisonous snake that bites a PC has about a 50/50 chance of instantly killing that PC. The text doesn't match the rules. Sure, while the priest might have a bit better chance of shrugging off poison, everyone else is worse than 50:50 until 9th (for fighters - everyone else is worse until well into double digit levels), so, in most parties, almost everyone has worse than a 50:50 chance of dying from any poison effect.


.

Again it is a side issue, and i would prefer not to spend time away from other things to look stuff up and post it, but you ought to re-read the snake entries in the 2E monsters manual:

POISONOUS SNAKES
All poisonous snakes deliver toxins automatically through their bite. Roll on the table below (or choose) to determine what type of poison is present.


Die Modifier Onset Result of Failed
Roll to Save Time Saving Throw*
1-4 +3 1-4 turns Incapacitated for 2-8 days
5-6 +2 2-5 rounds Death
7-11 +1 2-12 rounds 2-8 points of damage
12-14 None 1-6 rounds 3-12 points of damage
15-17 -1 2-8 rounds Incapacitated for 1-4 days
18-19 -2 1-4 rounds Incapacitated for 1-12 days
20 -3 1 round Death

So this basically takes care of the isue of some snakes having deadlier venom than others. Some of these only incapacitate or do just 2d4 damage. Only two are death.

 

[Umbran]

But like I said earlier, let us assume those numbers: a 90 percent chance or greater one party member dies and we don't know who it will be? Talk about a thrilling combat! That is exactly the kinds if stakes I hope to occasionally face in a campaign. This is entirely a matter of preference.

I think, in this, we thus prove the only point that can be proved on the notion - there's no one style that suits all people.

Me, I'd not think of that as a "thrilling combat". Thrilling combat comes from an interesting and tense give-and-take between the combatants. Like having a sporting contest in which good players on both sides keep the score close to a tie until the last playing period - that's thrilling to me. Adding, "And we'll kill one of the players - you don't know which one!" doesn't add to it. Tension comes from events we can at least attempt to influence. Mostly forgone conclusions, in and of themselves, are not interesting.

Dealing with the consequences may be interesting. But, "I'm going to kill a character so we get to see how they respomd," seems a pretty storngarm way to influence the drama. Shocking people just for the sake of shocking them is a tool, but one often used unwisely.

 

[Guest 85555]

I think, in this, we thus prove the only point that can be proved on the notion - there's no one style that suits all people.

Me, I'd not think of that as a "thrilling combat". Thrilling combat comes from an interesting and tense give-and-take between the combatants. Like having a sporting contest in which good players on both sides keep the score close to a tie until the last playing period - that's thrilling to me. Adding, "And we'll kill one of the players - you don't know which one!" doesn't add to it. Tension comes from events we can at least attempt to influence. Mostly forgone conclusions, in and of themselves, are not interesting.

Dealing with the consequences may be interesting. But, "I'm going to kill a character so we get to see how they respomd," seems a pretty storngarm way to influence the drama. Shocking people just for the sake of shocking them is a tool, but one often used unwisely.

Sure this probably where a good many people are. My point isn't to disuade folks who dislike SOD that it is good. Only to point out there are those of us out there who find this kind of combat very enjoyable. Just want to clarify though, I find it more exciting for the most part when the GM adds in these sorts of things randomly not simply deciding to throw an encounter at the party that will kill one member (and again as I stated, I think that is far from certain with most of these, but once in a while a SoD beast that has a good chance of killing a single member of the party really keeps my interest and makes the game more exciting for me). This is one reason I am a huge fan of random encounters and random encounter subtables.

But your mileage may vary, and I have no expectation that my preference here is shared, or even that SoD will end up in 5E (I think a dial so people can scale it would be handy). Should SoD make it into the next iteration of D&D? Maybe, maybe not. I do hope though that the designers understand some of us really enjoy them, and that the precise numbers of how they play out can be tweaked to make them less lethal overall if that is an enormous concern (much of this depends on saves of course). I was just disputing the claim someone made that SOD are objectively bad design.

In terms of what encounters people find exciting, that is all preference. Your preference for something more like an evenly matched sporting event is entirely valid. I can see why some like that. To me it gets a bit boring and predictable if combats tend to always play out that way. But everyone has their own feeling about what makes for an exciting night of fighting in D&D. I guess for me, long drawn-out evenly split matches can be really exciting, but only if they are more on the rare side. It is a bit like boxing for me. Epic battles between two truly well matched opponents can be a treat, but so can first or second round knock outs if they are spectacular. I think what really keeps things fun is variety. I guess for me, risk is a huge part of thrilling combat as well. If one of our players got turned to dust by a terrifying monster last adventure, that really hammers home for me the danger and helps keep me on my toes and my blood pumping next time we face threats.

 

[Umbran]

Just want to clarify though, I find it more exciting for the most part when the GM adds in these sorts of things randomly not simply deciding to throw an encounter at the party that will kill one member

To me, rather than being opposed, those are pretty synonymous.

But, really, I'd rather it be a choice by the GM for its impact rather than devotion to a table. "Hm, the table says I should kill someone today? Okay!" Tables don't know from dramatic pacing.

To me it gets a bit boring and predictable if combats tend to always play out that way.

Well, it doesn't always play out that way. I was merely talking about that which is thrilling. It then follows that I don't expect (or want) all combats to be thrilling. However you evoke it, adrenaline is a limited resource, and should be invoked sparingly, or it loses it's punch.

 

[billd91]

I find it interesting that, in all the Great Snake Debate, no one has mentioned the change from 2e to 3e where poison stopped being SoD and went to the new Ability Damage mechanic. Clearly, someone decided that the SoD was excessive, whether for comparison to real world poisons or for game design reasons.

I certainly only used snakes because Hussar did in his example. I would suggest not reading too much into it vis a vis 3e poisons. That said, I think the shift to ability damage was a pretty good one for things like natural venoms which often aren't instantly deadly (though again, 3 bites from a deadly venom and I'm still expecting to die whether it's because I simply died outright or suffered enough Con damage in those 3 doses of venom to expire). The model had, in my opinion, become better in 3e and still had the advantage of not directly involving the ablation of hit points to cause the target of the venom problems.

However, I still stand by my statement that hit point ablation is a terrible mechanic for adjudicating effects that reasonably bypass beating the target into submission. In those cases, I prefer a hit point bypass mechanic whether it's turning a creature to stone, conquering its will, knocking it unconscious (the old stun blast thing in Star Trek or Star Wars), or killing it outright.

 

[Guest 85555]

To me, rather than being opposed, those are pretty synonymous.

But, really, I'd rather it be a choice by the GM for its impact rather than devotion to a table. "Hm, the table says I should kill someone today? Okay!" Tables don't know from dramatic pacing

.

That is fair, and I think this just points to how different preferences are. I really like the unexpected aspect of random encounter tables and am not so worried about dramatic pacing (I just want excitement and to be suprised by an evening of play).