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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6156915" data-attributes="member: 22779">BRG - take the following example.AD&D PC with 10 HP is successfully hit by a snake which has a SOD poison attack (pretty standard in AD&D) three times.  The PC has a 50/50 chance of making his save.  This character now dies 7/8 times or 87.5% of the time.  And the chances actually don't significantly change even if you double his chance of saving.  If he saves 75% of the time, he still dies 60% of the time in this scenario.Now, the same PC his hit three times by a monster that does d8 points of damage.  The chances of this PC outright dying are 12.5% (three hits doing either 7 or 8 points/hit to drive the PC into -10), gets dropped into negatives about 60% of the time and walks away about 20% of the time.So, yes, save or die significantly reduces the randomness of an encounter.  To the tune that the same encounter is now EIGHT TIMES more likely to kill the PC.Now, multiply this by a save or die area attack, like a medusa or a bodak, and the chances of a PC dying in any given round are about 80% (give or take).  It actually makes more sense for the party to retreat and face the medusa one at a time.  Actually this is only really true of "caster" monsters and it's because high level casters are far, far more broken than anything else in the game.  Any high level monster which doesn't have high level casting abilities is not all that likely to kill PC's.Note, Epic rules are part of the SRD now and are core.  But, beside that, I'd point out that an Elder Wyrm Red (the largest creature in the MM) is CR 26.  Not impossible for a 20th level party of 4 PC's, although extremely difficult.  The solution here would be to have outside assistance - henchmen or NPC's, to bring the party up to power to take on the dragon.  And let's be honest here, no DM worth his salt is going to bomb an elder wyrm red dragon on the party before they are ready to take it on.  Might as well declare "rocks fall everyone dies."</blockquote>

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