The Gaming Den

Parthenon wrote:I always wonder how Death Ward is expected to be mandatory. It's only 1 minute per level to a single character- how are you supposed to have Death Ward up for the whole party throughout a dungeon?

Probably some DMM Persist shenanigans or something similar.

Wands could work, too, but that costs a lot of money and eats up valuable actions if you don't have advanced warning.

Parthenon wrote:I always wonder how Death Ward is expected to be mandatory. It's only 1 minute per level to a single character- how are you supposed to have Death Ward up for the whole party throughout a dungeon?

There are ways to extend it, but more importantly they later put out trigger items that gave you short bursts of death ward a few times a day or something. It's in the Magic Item Compendium IIRC. In late period "optimized play" for 3.5, player characters at high level could and did rely on having access to death ward whenever they needed it in dungeons.

However, I'm just not sold on save or lose being a bad thing. At low levels, a big hit from an enemy weapon will drop you. At high levels, getting turned to stone will drop you. How are these things different? A save or lose effect advances the battle towards a conclusion without taking up a lot of time doing accounting. Seems like a win/win.

You can make a very reasonable argument that stone to flesh is too much of a pain in the ass to cast, but I don't see the problem with making some rolls and either having one of the characters drop out of the combat or not have anything happen to them. Either way you don't have a bunch of accounting to take care of and the battle can stay fast and exciting and be over quickly.

I think it's really weird to equate grinding accumulation of small damage effects with fun.

-Username17

Parthenon wrote:I always wonder how Death Ward is expected to be mandatory. It's only 1 minute per level to a single character- how are you supposed to have Death Ward up for the whole party throughout a dungeon?

You put Soulfire from BoED on a pair of Bracers of AC.

FrankTrollman wrote: However, I'm just not sold on save or lose being a bad thing. At low levels, a big hit from an enemy weapon will drop you. At high levels, getting turned to stone will drop you. How are these things different?

(a) An attack from an enemy weapon on an unharmed PC produces a range of possible results from doing nothing (not very interesting) to doing a little, some, or a lot of damage (interesting to a greater or lesser degree) to killing the PC instantly (boring); note that the boring result is rare most of the time (in my experience, at least). An all-or-nothing save or die has exactly two results, neither of which is interesting.

(b) As you have noted before, if your D&D group has a mix of creatures with some doing HP damage and some spamming save or die effects, then they're not cooperating with each other; it's like playing poker and roulette at the same table.

FrankTrollman wrote:I think it's really weird to equate grinding accumulation of small damage effects with fun.

And I think it's really weird to equate having one player wander off and play Super Smash Brothers as having fun playing D&D. And, as I noted, I don't have problems with spells that produce debuff effects.

FrankTrollman wrote: I think it's really weird to equate grinding accumulation of small damage effects with fun.

4E should be enough to show everyone that HP attrition D&D isn't fun.

If anything, I think D&D would be a lot better off if it went with Mutants and Mastermind's damage system where even damage effects are save-or-drop style.

FrankTrollman wrote:However, I'm just not sold on save or lose being a bad thing. At low levels, a big hit from an enemy weapon will drop you. At high levels, getting turned to stone will drop you. How are these things different? A save or lose effect advances the battle towards a conclusion without taking up a lot of time doing accounting. Seems like a win/win.

...

I think it's really weird to equate grinding accumulation of small damage effects with fun.

-Username17

Certainly a lot of people feel that way, but then again there are a lot of people who only start 3.5 campaigns at level 3 precisely because of what you described. And many people also stop playing games around level 10~12 before rocket tag becomes the standard fight mode.

I think the worst fight I ever ran as a DM was against a Hezrou in a dungeon- it teleported in and all the PCs failed the save against stench (the dragonfire adept who only failed on a 2 or below rolled a 2) which meant they couldn't perform any actions other than crawling away. At that point it was an instant TPK, since the players couldn't scatter far enough away to escape the stench and regain their actions. It was basically the lamest thing ever- "the bad guy teleports in, none of you can do anything, you all die."

There's something similar in I think the Return to Castle Ravenloft module put out by WotC- one of the fights has a guy starting out by using a scroll of circle of death, which resulted in a TPK when I ran it. Really, killing players at the start of a fight is boring for everyone involved because those players either go play smash bros until they get revived or they stop playing to make new characters. Either way, that player showed up to play Dungeons and Dragons and now can't play Dungeons and Dragons, which is a bad thing. Character death should be rare and dramatic, not something likely to happen with every wandering monster you fight. Especially if you want people to become attached to and invested in their characters.

Cyberzombie wrote: 4E should be enough to show everyone that HP attrition D&D isn't fun.

4E fights are boring for the same reason getting targeted by a save or die effect in 3E is boring: For me as a player, combat is boring when I don't have to think about what I'll do next.

In the former case, I can set my PC to auto-attack with his favorite at-will power, which requires no thinking. In the latter case, if my PC dies it obviously requires no thinking from me for the rest of the combat, and if he survives, then probably not much has changed from the previous round.

hogarth wrote: 4E fights are boring for the same reason getting targeted by a save or die effect in 3E is boring: For me as a player, combat is boring when I don't have to think about what I'll do next.

In the former case, I can set my PC to auto-attack with his favorite at-will power, which requires no thinking. In the latter case, if my PC dies it obviously requires no thinking from me for the rest of the combat, and if he survives, then probably not much has changed from the previous round.

Save or drop aren't exciting for the guy who gets hit by them obviously, but they're exciting for the rest of the group, who now find their numbers reduced and what seemed like an easy win is now a fight for their lives. People stay interested because there's real weight in the monster's actions.

One of the main things that made 4E boring was that there were no swingy abilities. It would be fine if the two sides are even, as in a wargame, but in an RPG, where the PCs almost always have an edge, it was very boring, because the underdogs never had a shot to win. Even if the monster got a lucky shot or two, you always knew that you were one minor action heal away from popping right back up into the action. You never felt at risk.

That's not to say you want the 3E style of instant death saves, but a failed save removing someone from combat is fine. In fact, you need that type of effect to avoid the game from turning into 4E style drudgery where every fight looks exactly the same. You want some battles where the wizard and barbarian drop and the cleric and rogue have to win the fight themselves.

hogarth wrote:

erik wrote:Put the pain meds back, Mearls doesn't raise any good points. The party is level 11. Death does not necessarily equate new character.

No, Mr. Mearls is right -- save or die (as opposed to "save or debuff") effects are boring. They either do nothing (which is boring) or they bring someone's play experience to an abrupt halt (which is boring).

Yeah ok, this attitude fucking sucks.

What about attacking with a big sword. It either does nothing if the attack misses, which is boring, or it brings someone's play experience to an abrupt halt if it hits, which is boring.

Clearly, the only solution is 4e, where people have like 10 million hit points and attacks do diddly shit. THAT IS OBVIOUSLY THE OPPOSITE OF BORING.

SoDs or SaWs are the opposite of boring, because the stakes are high and stuff actually happens when they work.

RPGs don't need battles where people wail on each other for five hours. They need fast, decisive battles that get people pumped up.

EDIT: someone else basically said the same thing so my post is about 93% pointless. Oh well.

One group I used to GM for came up with a really weird countermeasure against a beholder. I forgot one of them had a Mirror of Life Trapping; they whipped it out during a battle with a beholder and I thought "Hmmm... what's it gonna do, avert it's gaze? With every single eye?" I had to admit that was clever. Shenanigans ensued... they ended up with a Mirror of Life Trapping and a freakin' captive beholder inside it. Not my best day as a GM, really.

Doesn't the Beholder have a directional AMF for that?

Save or drop aren't exciting for the guy who gets hit by them obviously, but they're exciting for the rest of the group, who now find their numbers reduced and what seemed like an easy win is now a fight for their lives.

You know, I have an image I made for that line of argument way back.

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Anyway, boring and samey fights vs. save-or-die is a false dichotomy. It is entirely possible to have a game system wherein things can be interesting without instantly removing characters from the fight completely at random. For example, you could deal half of someone's hit points in damage and have a system where healing forces people to rotate out of the front lines for a turn, requiring everyone to scramble to keep things from going to hell.

name_here wrote: Anyway, boring and samey fights vs. save-or-die is a false dichotomy. It is entirely possible to have a game system wherein things can be interesting without instantly removing characters from the fight completely at random. For example, you could deal half of someone's hit points in damage and have a system where healing forces people to rotate out of the front lines for a turn, requiring everyone to scramble to keep things from going to hell.

Having randomness is essential to keep things exciting. D&D isn't like chess, in that you have two equal sides fighting it out. In almost every battle, the encounter is handicapped against the monsters. This is important so the PCs survive, but you need some randomness so that team monster can threaten an upset. If the PCs don't believe that team monster can beat them at all, they become very bored. This generally means you want a system that's relatively swingy.

Also, the MMO tank/healing model is a terrible one to try to convert to tabletop. Heal spam is largely what made 4E as long and tedious as it was. I wouldn't want any system that was going to feature combat healing as a major part of it. You want your combats to approach a rapid resolution in a tabletop game, not a steady grinding state. Healing is a de-escalation mechanic and that's not a good thing.

History anyone? In AD&D, the beholder can shoot 1d4 rays per round (unless you were stupid enough to spread out). The Death-Ray is 40' but you're immune by 9th level, Flesh-to-Stone is 30' and you save on a 6+, and Disintegrate is 20' and 4+ save. It moves at 10' equivalent, so you see it a long way off, you walk away, and you ignore it. Or fill it with arrows. Whatever. It's a slow closet troll.

It also gets an anti-magic ray out to 140', to stop single Mages killing it from a distance in the open. It's never in the open, but still.


It's much the same in 2nd edition, except it's central eye now blocks all the 1d4 rays it's allowed to use in front as well as all the casters out there, and it gets a few less to the sides. Oh, ranges all tripled over 1st, but movement didn't, so the closet troll becomes a line-of-sight troll for no reason.

Then in 3e, it's suddenly every ray at once to 150' and DC 17 (hurray for standardisation!), and an area-effect magic negation that switches on after it does that. So it's a thing where you make a bunch of saves and die, because you're only rolling d20+9 or so, and the standard counter is once only.


Basically, they fucked up the conversion again. The death effects are supposed to be what you hit when you try to melee it. At range it's stuck with weak TK and Charms, which are said to be used to force you to deal when you're stronger. It's originally a trap monster, avoid heedlessly charging in and you'll be fine, while it can float up a hole and live to fight another day.

Cyberzombie wrote: Save or drop aren't exciting for the guy who gets hit by them obviously, but they're exciting for the rest of the group, who now find their numbers reduced and what seemed like an easy win is now a fight for their lives.

"Fun" is not a zero-sum quantity; there are ways to increase fun for players 2, 3 and 4 that don't involve reducing player 1's fun to zero.

hogarth wrote: "Fun" is not a zero-sum quantity; there are ways to increase fun for players 2, 3 and 4 that don't involve reducing player 1's fun to zero.

One player may not have fun 100% of the time!? *gasp*

Look. I know losing sucks, but that doesn't mean we should have every football, chess and poker game end in a tie because we're afraid that one player may not have fun. It doesn't mean every FPS game should give the player god mode because we're afraid the player may get upset at dying. Part of playing a game is overcoming a challenge.

Setbacks keep games interesting. There's nothing wrong with playing a game and having a bad session where one player gets smoked. Having some bad times can help make the good times more memorable and special. That helps keep people coming back.

It's okay to have 1 player get smoked. But it would be better if that smoking was not the result of a single die roll going badly in the first 10 minutes of a 5 hour session. That could potentially keep the player from playing for the next 3-10 sessions depending.

Right now, if my character dies in the Pathfinder game I am playing. I won't be able to play again for 2 sessions. (which are once a month) if I had died in one of the last 3 sessions, I would not have been able to play since May.

That kind of sucks, for a single die roll. If I do something crazy, then sure. But for a single die roll save or stop playing the game for the next 1-8 sessions depending how far away from a town and ressurection you are. That just sucks.

sabs wrote:It's okay to have 1 player get smoked. But it would be better if that smoking was not the result of a single die roll going badly in the first 10 minutes of a 5 hour session. That could potentially keep the player from playing for the next 3-10 sessions depending.

Right now, if my character dies in the Pathfinder game I am playing. I won't be able to play again for 2 sessions. (which are once a month) if I had died in one of the last 3 sessions, I would not have been able to play since May.

That kind of sucks, for a single die roll. If I do something crazy, then sure. But for a single die roll save or stop playing the game for the next 1-8 sessions depending how far away from a town and ressurection you are. That just sucks.

Yeah, which is why I'm advocating that death doesn't need to be the consequence. It's probably good enough that you fail a save, are permanently removed from the current combat, and require someone to stabilize you.

You don't have to outright kill the PC, but the fact that you have to sit out a combat still feels very much like a loss.

Cyberzombie wrote:Yeah, which is why I'm advocating that death doesn't need to be the consequence. It's probably good enough that you fail a save, are permanently removed from the current combat, and require someone to stabilize you.

You don't have to outright kill the PC, but the fact that you have to sit out a combat still feels very much like a loss.

Uh, you seem to be missing the point. The fact that you have to stop playing when you get hit by save-or-die effects sucks. Imagine a video game where fighting random grind-level mobs resulted in the game occasionally shutting off the game and telling you to stop playing for ten minutes to a few hours. It's even worse in boss fights, where the dramatic tension of an entire adventure is instantly destroyed for you because you failed the save on an opening finger of death from the Big Bad.

Effects that are detrimental to your character don't have to take you out of the game entirely to be impactful to the fight. Slow, ray of enfeeblement, glitterdut, ect all disable you pretty hard while letting you still actually participate in the game session you bothered to show up to.

And I'm confused as to why people are stating that No SoD=4e fighting system. Have you guys never played things other than Dungeons and Dragons? There are tons of game systems that make hit point fighting fun. Weapons of the Gods has amazingly fun combat where you take turns using flashy martial arts moves to beat on each other for a few rounds before you fill your "river"- basically a repository for storing good rolls- and bust out a really powerful attack that ends your opponent. Fuck, even 3.5 has fun combat without SoD moves popping up if you use shit like the Book of Weaboo Fightan Magic. If you're just playing a fighter using full attacks, yes it'll be boring, but for the love of all that is holy there are more options.

spongeknight wrote:Uh, you seem to be missing the point. The fact that you have to stop playing when you get hit by save-or-die effects sucks. Imagine a video game where fighting random grind-level mobs resulted in the game occasionally shutting off the game and telling you to stop playing for ten minutes to a few hours.

And you are missing the point that combats will not last very long if everyone is throwing around quick effects.

If you get turned to stone on the very first round, then you have to wait 1-10 minutes for everyone else in the fucking party to turn the enemy into stone, and then turn you back.

I mean, I appreciate that you have downgraded your complete batshit insanity to only a few hours of not playing instead of multiple sessions, but it is still batshit insanity that no one is fucking talking about.

Kaelik wrote:And you are missing the point that combats will not last very long if everyone is throwing around quick effects.

If you get turned to stone on the very first round, then you have to wait 1-10 minutes for everyone else in the fucking party to turn the enemy into stone, and then turn you back.

I mean, I appreciate that you have downgraded your complete batshit insanity to only a few hours of not playing instead of multiple sessions, but it is still batshit insanity that no one is fucking talking about.

I never stated that you'd miss multiple sessions, and that is a crazy assertion to make. Is his DM some sort of asshole who wouldn't let the guy roll a temporary character? I have no idea.

Anyway, combats only lasting a few minutes is little consolation for not getting to play. I honestly don't know why you're arguing for effects that literally stop you from playing the game you have shown up to play. And unless effects that take you out of combat are trivially easy to heal- like, you can't ever not have the healing effects- there are times where that player will be waiting hours to play again. If your game prevents people from playing your game, that game has failed.

Edit- it should be noted that I am referring to effects like this being common. Occasional character death is necessary to preserve tension during fights, but systems that commonly feature save-or-dies go way too far in that direction and make deaths arbitrary and just put players out of the game without increasing tension, just frustration and boredom.

spongeknight wrote:Weapons of the Gods has amazingly fun combat where you take turns using flashy martial arts moves to beat on each other for a few rounds before you fill your "river"- basically a repository for storing good rolls- and bust out a really powerful attack that ends your opponent. Fuck, even 3.5 has fun combat without SoD moves popping up if you use shit like the Book of Weaboo Fightan Magic. If you're just playing a fighter using full attacks, yes it'll be boring, but for the love of all that is holy there are more options.

I'd like to hear more about weapon of the god's combat system.

Wikipedia has this to say:

Weapons of the Gods uses a custom-designed ruleset called the "Wuxia Action System". The player rolls the number of specified dice equal to the character's skill. The player then looks for matching dice. For each match, the player multiplies the number of matches by ten and adds the value of the dice in the match. For example, a roll of five dice showing 3,3,6,8,0 is a 23 (or 18, 16, or 10, should the player want a lower result).
The Wuxia Action System is also notable for the concept of the River, a small stock of dice that can be saved from any sets of matches for later use; this models the aspect of wuxia stories in which a badly battered combatant can summon a hidden reserve of strength later in the battle, even when badly wounded.

From the description, I take it that the pair of threes is considered 2 matches (not 1) so 2 x 10 +3 = 23. And all the other dice are considered 1 match (10 + die value = result). Not exactly intuitive calculations, but I'm curious about the River, as well.

Weapons is Borgstromancy. If you like that, you will like it.

spongeknight wrote: Uh, you seem to be missing the point. The fact that you have to stop playing when you get hit by save-or-die effects sucks.

It's supposed to suck.

Getting your ass beat in combat is supposed to be something you try to avoid. While the number of rolls it may take to knock someone out can be debated, the fact that you can get knocked out of combat is something people need to accept as a consequence. Whether it takes 1 attack or several, at some point, you're going to reach a state where you're sitting out, because the end result of combat in RPGs is hitting someone until they can no longer take actions.

In football, the quarterback isn't playing when his team is on defense. In baseball, you have to wait for your turn at bat. This is the nature of games played with others. You must share the spotlight. The game isn't all about you. At some point you are going to have to stop playing, and if you want to play D&D, you need to be okay with that.

Nitpick:
Sentinels of the Multiverse doesn't make you stop taking turns when you're dead.