What's your opinion on "Save or Die" effects?

[Charlaquin]

I’m alright with them as long as they are avoidable and properly telegraphed. I think save or die effects are at their best when you never actually make them. The foreknowledge that you might have to make them forces you to change your tactics so you can avoid making them - fighting blindfolded against a Medusa, for example. In this way, I think of save or die effects kind of like puzzles. The challenge shouldn’t be in rolling high enough to make the save, it should be in coming up with a strategy that will insure you never need to make the save.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

“I hate rot grub check.”

My preference is to not run with that level of lethality. Even when I was running 1e back in the day, I preferred to avoid save or die monsters and effects (as best as I could, considering how many there were).

Hit most PCs with too many save or die checks that end in failure, and the players stop caring about their characters. It becomes about beating the dang game, not playing it, with the PCs reduced to tokens on a game board. I’d much rather see the players with well-developed characters that they’re attached to, and that I care about, rather than Rolf VI, preceded by Rolfs I – V, and no doubt to be followed by Rolf VII.

 

[CydKnight]

I think a true "save or die" is better-suited for an end game encounter which the party knows is the end of the campaign or, perhaps the end of a campaign chapter. In that case they should realize this is a possibility going into the encounter and will likely come up with a strategy to counter it as @Charlaquin mentioned above.

 

[LordEntrails]

Arbitrary save or dies are no good. i.e. "you are walking down the corridor, suddenly the hallway fills with a searing light, Con save or be incinerated!"

Telegraphed and as an obvious consequence save or die are fine (assuming their is an option not to attempt the 'thing'). i.e. "Before you is a moat filled with swirling mixtures of necrotic energy. To jump across is an athletics check, failure means you are going to fall into that morass that your investigate indicates will disintegrate you."

Save or suck? Well as long as it take multiple failures for it to really be a "game over" situation, that fine.

 

[Umbran]

Save-or-die is fine if your players know that you intend to be working with that kind of arbitrary lethality, and are on board with it.

I generally keep such things to very special occasions, and telegraph that it is a distinct possibility, if I use them at all for a given campaign.

One GM I know would make a special statement of session threat level, and presence of save-or-die effects was one of the things that got him to state a session was apt to be "extreme danger".

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Save-or-die is fine, as long as it's in addition to normal precautions, and not in place of them.

If you can interact with a medusa and never be forced to roll, because you never take the risk of looking at her, then that's great. If she can force you to roll, by choosing to look at you, then that's not great.

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

It's part of the game, and applies to both sides.
So, I love it and hate it.

In 2e I played a high level bard who almost single-handedly ruined the DM's plans by disintegrating 3 of 7 liches...

Even worse are the "simply die - no save" spells... power words.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

I haven’t used them outside of ToA, and even then I wasn’t a big fan. The players knew going into that dungeon there was a high possibility of instant death, so like others have said, it was telegraphed. Informing the players about the danger is good practice so they can make informed decisions.

If I am going to use a save or die mechanic, the payoff for the players has to be big. I always like giving the players a risk vs reward scenario.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[5ekyu]

In my game, I have up front stated that PCs will not die (or de facto killed) by dice alone. Part of that includes turning *all* save-or-ko and save-or-die or no-save-just-die into trios saves (like death saves - race to three) using contagion and petrification as the model.

So most of these inflict poisoned or restrained automatically and a race to three saves is begun.

So, you get a solid and impactful effect and then a drama "what can we do to shift things" instead of a die roll for all or nothing.

Much like how deaths saves vs dead at zero turn it into an immediate red alert, this turns a dice-and-done into tension-and-fun.

I had actually done this with DnD as far back as my last 3.5 game in like the mid-late-oughts, where zero meant down and down became dead from neglect or more damage. Loved the results then.