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Message: <blockquote data-quote="keterys" data-source="post: 5779252" data-attributes="member: 43019">The petrifies and paralyzes and such are a tricky question in general, but I'm not sure why some of the effects listed are obviously save or die, instead of a bucket of damage.For example, disintegration. Reduces stuff to dust. Okay.What makes it more special than a superhot blast of flame... that reduces stuff to ash?Poisons feel like easy candidates to deal damage, instead of just killing you.Why does one big necrotic attack just deal damage, and another strike you dead?I feel like things that bypass hit points should do so for a reason, and that reason should largely be because they need to in order to work at all. If we're already assuming that a strong individual can fight off the (insert deadly effect here) for a round or two as they succeed at saves, you can justify it dealing hp damage until they drop.I've seen a 3e game that changed save or dies to buckets of damage, and it worked fine. I think it was an optional rule in the epic handbook or on the website that made death effects do like 20 + level d6 damage or something similar. Still scary, of course.Anyhow, so... save or suck (Medusa) I can understand a heck of a lot better than save or die. Sure, a bodak kills any peasant it sees. They've got like 4 hp. They almost have to save when they see a 1e house cat <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Random Idea, totally separate from SoD: more stuff should specify what happens if it reduces you to 0 hp. Like even if disintegrate did damage, it could still have a Special line about destroying people it reduced to 0 hp, bypassing the "dying" stage and making healing a heck of a lot more difficult.</blockquote>

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