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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 6157689">I don't recall how 3E handles it, but in 2E, a basic rattlesnake isn't explicitly statted. They give several types of snake poison, that cover a range of results on a failed save (everything from no damage, to a little damage, to a lot of damage to instant death, to death in a bit of time). I suspect the more deadly venoms were assumed to belong to things like cobras. A rattlesnake may belong to the death in a bit of time grouping. But we should remember before we paint the game with too big a brush, even in older editions, save or die was not always the case with poison. If you run snakes as written, there is a very small chance the snake you encounter even has venom that is SoD.I think you raise a good point here. The question is whether someone feels a run of the mill the rattlesnake should be able to kill a heroic character. Everyone will answer that differently. And this also raises the issue of how much plot immunity PCs ought to have (which also varies considerably from group to group). Personally I am fine with a highly poisonous snake killing my high level character on a failed save (I think a run of the mill rattlesnake maybe shouldn't be SoD, just potentially lethal---a cobra I am fine being SoD). I do want the chance of failing the save to go down over time, though. But then, I also really have no problem with my character dying from any number of causes along the way. One thing I would like to see them address in the rulebook is approaches to character death. Because people do handle this differently and emotions around it can be quite high. That would probably be a bit useful, and I think it is fair for them to include a dial on stuff like saves to either crank up or down the lethality. I see this issue come up again and again on these boards, where its clear folks have very different expectations around how often PCs deaths should occur.</blockquote>

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