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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Malacoda" data-source="post: 3739564" data-attributes="member: 6345">Reductio Ad AbsurdumI cannot help but think that these arguments often become exercises in reductio ad absurdum for some people.Personally, as a player, I hate save-or-die style spells, traps, encounters, and so on. I dislike single die rolls determining my fate, until such time as it becomes appropriate. In turn, I dislike them determining the fate of my opponents.As a gamemaster, I dislike such mechanics as well.This does not mean I dislike risk, or threat of death or failure in a game. In fact, for typical “dungeon crawl” D&D, I demand it! But, I demand it in a manner I believe is more gratifying for myself, either as a player or a GM. This includes…1. I like encounters where a series of dice rolls that I have at least a reasonable chance of succeeding at can lead to death. The most obvious example is combat. I am OK with the chance for my character to die because of a series of good rolls on the part of my opponent, especially when my options and party tactics come into play.2.  I am OK with my character being worn down and eventually killed in encounters that there is a reasonable chance I could have otherwise succeeded. 3. I am OK with occasional encounters that seriously tax the abilities and skill of my character and the party, that stand a fairly reasonable chance that someone will die. This is especially true when it meshes well with the story. The obvious example is the “final boss” fight.4. I am OK with occasional surprises that lead to #3, as long as they are rare enough to be true surprises that mix things up a bit, without becoming the SOP of the game.5. I am OK with failing at an endeavor as long as I feel I had a reasonable chance of succeeding in the first place, either from a series of rolls, or from player/party tactics, choices, and forethought.6. I am OK with being presented with a series of equally poor choices, or with no-win scenarios, when they are rare and narratively interesting.7. Eventually a character can arrive at a point where a given successful attack from a foe, or a missed saving throw, will result in death. I am OK with this.8. I am OK with a given encounter requiring either excellent tactics or some measure of forethought based on provided info (even if such info has to be sought) in order to have a good chance of success. I prefer such encounters to be common enough to keep the game interesting; to many or not enough of such encounters can be either boring or draining.9. Finally, I might OK with situations that take all of these into a more extreme level if such situations are rare, the result of poor decision making on the party’s part, or in a campaign where the GM has indicated the style beforehand (e.g. a gritty campaign).What I do not like…A. I do not like having the life-or-death fate of my character being determined by a single die roll, when there was little else I could do to avoid it, and it comes at any given time, rather than at the end of a struggle.B. I do not like having the life-or-death fate of my foes being determined by a single die roll, when there was little else they could do to avoid it, and it comes at any given time, rather than at the end of a struggle. Excluded from this is foes of minor importance or met in waves (to a typical goblin, an attack from a fighter is likely to be a single-die-roll affair)C. I dislike single dice rolls taking me out of encounters for extended periods of time, with any regularity.D. I dislike A & C being solved via a rock/scissors/paper approach to spells and magic items.E. I hate having to give so much thought to shoring up my character’s weak points, because at higher levels they become not just a nuisance, but a deadly liability. Note that this is not the same thing as wanting to have no weak points.Do my two lists seem unreasonable? Am I asking for an I Win Button? I don’t think so at all.And, to be honest, most of what people seem to be posting is arguments similar to mine. Perhaps not as codified or extensive, but still very similar. The funny thing is, given a certain span of levels, D&D tends to play mostly as I am asking. I wonder if anyone engaged in the reductio ad absurdum arguements skip these levels because they are namby pampy effortless monte haul games.</blockquote>

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