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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 4510844" data-attributes="member: 18280">Um.....Not what I was saying at all.I dismissed the complaint because it relies upon the idea that "SoD" is a bad tool, and then assumes that based upon a playstyle preference.  What I was attempting to do is demonstrate the faults in the logic that lead to "SoD = bad tool" in the first place.If you go back upthread, you will see that I have been willing to concede from the begining that "survival-guaranteed" games are completely fine by me, so long as you don't attempt to take away my "survival-not-guaranteed" game to get what you want.I am arguing that there is nothing inherently problematical in character death, not that some people don't like it.  I note that there is a difference between "statblock workload" (which 3e has in spades) and "setting up the fluff" workload, which, IMHO, must be completed in order to run a good game.....even if you are able to complete it and hold it in your head.  When people complain about the workload of 3e, I don't think that they are complaining about how hard it is to think about the circumstances that lead to their adventure setting being the way it is.  In fact, doing so drastically decreases the actual workload you must do.There is, IMHO, no difference between preferring survival-guaranteed and preferring no-paralysis-guaranteed.  It is, IMHO, a slippery slope, and one that 4e is sliding down.Rather than saying SoDs are an issue a skilled DM can work around, I would say that SoD provide a toolset for a skilled DM that, when removed, damages the game.  As I said upthread, at greater length & with examples.Agreed.  Nor do I think 100% of the changes are bad.It is inherently far, far easier to suspend your disbelief about potential risk to your character when your character actually faces potential risk. Even in serial adventure fiction, major characters can die.And, as has been pointed out upthread, the game format means that the stories are what arises from setup + decisions + outcomes of those decisions.  We are not writing fiction.  You can write fiction about your game, and you can game within a fictitious environment, but the minute you begin to plan the outcome prior to the decisions that lead there, you enter a zone where it is questionable whether or not what you are doing is actually a game, or rather some other form of recreational activity.Good to see you, Nyaricus!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Frodo dying in the novel would have been a big deal.  Frodo dying in an rpg?  Not so much.  I think most people agree that a DM who bases the whole campaign upon the decisions and/or survival of one out of nine PCs (or eight PCs if you say Gandalf was an NPC) needs some serious retraining.  <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=";)" />RC</blockquote>

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