Save or Lose and PCs

[Demonic Spoon]

My party was fighting a group of guards behind an enchantress (Sorceress specializing in enchantment spells, including spell and greater spell focus). The party was level 4. Encounter consists of her, a friendly swashbuckler, and some level 1 warriors in support.

The party consists of two mages, a fighter, and a bard. Swashbuckler was about to be flanked by the fighter, so the enchantress casts Tasha's Hideous Laughter on the fighter. Fighter barrels over and pretty much stops being relevant for the rest of the fight.

I'm curious about how people feel about 'save or loses' vs PCs that take them out of a substantial portion of a fight. I understand they're fairly important for balance and certain character types, though at the same time I don't like condemning someone to not really do anything for a decent chunk of time if at all possible. What are all of your thoughts on this? Is it something you worry about? Do you give the character something to do like manage an NPC?

[ryu]

Things like this exist mainly so that people have reason to buy effective defense against them. D&D would lose a lot of fantasy credibility if this sort of casting archetype wasn't a thing you could do. Luckily they also provided the kind of counters an economically inclined magical world would invent and put to sale. In this case? Why don't the PCs have a relatively cheap magic circle against evil item? That's early priority with the sheer number of bad things it prevents from happening. If they can't afford one for the whole group yet getting a personal one for cheaper still should help the guy with the worst will save.

[Angelalex242]

Using Save or Lose on PCs is how you teach the party wizards and bard what spells they should take and memorize. Remembering how useful those spells were against their friend, they should absolutely have that spell in their spell books and bardic spell list.

See, if you don't use save or lose on PCs, eventually they come up with dumb ideas like fireball is the best spell ever. It's the sort of thinking you should strive to prevent by using save or lose yourself.

I'm a firm believer in every wizard and sorcerer I make having Color Spray handy, for example. They never leave home without it and an 18 in their casting stat, no matter what.

[jedipotter]

I don't worry too much.

Sure being ''taken out of the game'' is no fun, but that is the whole point. The idea that the players must have fun every second of the game is just silly, and if the player does not have fun all the time there is something wrong with the game.

With a normal group of five players, you will typically get two players that play all the time, two that play some of the time, and one player that keeps a seat warm. It is rare to have every single player intensively immersed in die-hard role playing every second of the game. Some players love to play a role and talk to NPCs, some players just like combat, and some players just like to do little more then sit there and watch.

Most people understand that ''no fun'' things are just as important as the ''fun'' things, especially in games. It is no fun to loose money in poker, but that is part of the game. It is no fun when your favorite football team looses, but that is part of the game. It is no fun to ''go to jail'' in Monopoly, but that is part of the game.


You can remove ''save or loose'' things easy enough. Just make your spellcasters evoker types. Then they will just do damage. And if you don't like '''save or loose'' you might also do things like ''lots of hit points, lots of healing, plot armor, and it is but a flesh wound'' that are standard in many games, so damage does not really matter. For example if you give maximum hit points per level or have each character have tons of ways to heal, then damage hardly matters. So when your evil wizard ''just'' does ten points of damage, the player can just say ''oh, I drink a potion of healing and i'm back to my full hp''. That way the player is never out of the fight. Or you can go for the more penalty type effects, like giving a -2 to something.

[pwykersotz]

Just two weeks ago my group encountered an Aranea. She webbed and replaced two party members with Silent Images without the other two knowing. When they failed their saves, the group members got notes saying "Don't speak IC or OOC, you have been magically put to sleep and replaced with a Silent Image." You should have seen the giggling from the players of the helpless characters as the others wondered why they weren't interacting anymore. :smallsmile:

So yeah, Save or Lose isn't always bad. Those two had 30 minutes of non-play time, but they also got to know something the others didn't and had fun watching them figure it out.

[TuggyNE]

This was a topic of considerable debate during the drafting of the Gentlemen's Agreement in my sig; the basic principle agreed on was that occasional use of "cheap" wins like this (save-or-lose against a PC with a low save) are fine, but the PCs need to try to defend themselves in the various ways available, and the DM needs to have a light touch with such effects until the PCs have had enough chance to build those defenses. That makes a reasonable compromise between strict verisimilitude and a good challenge on the one hand, and sportsmanlike conduct and general session fun on the other.

Occasional clever hacks like pwykersotz's are also good if and when you can make them work.


Things like this exist mainly so that people have reason to buy effective defense against them. D&D would lose a lot of fantasy credibility if this sort of casting archetype wasn't a thing you could do. Luckily they also provided the kind of counters an economically inclined magical world would invent and put to sale. In this case? Why don't the PCs have a relatively cheap magic circle against evil item? That's early priority with the sheer number of bad things it prevents from happening. If they can't afford one for the whole group yet getting a personal one for cheaper still should help the guy with the worst will save.

While I agree in general, neither magic circle against evil nor protection from evil offers the slightest protection against something like Tasha's hideous laughter: it provides the caster no sort of mental control or influence over actions taken. It just makes the target laugh. Really hard.

[Pathagaron]

While I agree in general, neither magic circle against evil nor protection from evil offers the slightest protection against something like Tasha's hideous laughter: it provides the caster no sort of mental control or influence over actions taken. It just makes the target laugh. Really hard.

Well, the +2 resistance bonus on saves if the caster is evil does help a bit.

[TuggyNE]

Well, the +2 resistance bonus on saves if the caster is evil does help a bit.

That's true, I guess. It's not much, especially with the other ways of getting resistance bonuses, but eh.

[Amphetryon]

Using Save or Lose comes down to basically one thing: Know Thy Players.


There are some Players who legitimately believe SoL should never, under any circumstances, be used against PCs because it puts them in the No-Fun-Allowed zone
There are some Players who optimize Saves such that the 'excitement' of SoL comes down to "did you roll a 1? No? Nothing happens," which is often unexciting
There are some Players who legitimately believe that a DM who never uses SoL is nerfing or punishing Characters optimized to defend against them


Choose wisely, or have Players tell you what a bad DM you are.

[KillianHawkeye]

Using Save or Lose comes down to basically one thing: Know Thy Players.


There are some Players who legitimately believe SoL should never, under any circumstances, be used against PCs because it puts them in the No-Fun-Allowed zone
There are some Players who optimize Saves such that the 'excitement' of SoL comes down to "did you roll a 1? No? Nothing happens," which is often unexciting
There are some Players who legitimately believe that a DM who never uses SoL is nerfing or punishing Characters optimized to defend against them


Choose wisely, or have Players tell you what a bad DM you are.

And then there are yet other players who feel that the DM is going too easy on us when they DON'T make the most of their monsters or NPCs, who have more fun when there's challenge and a sense of danger than when everything is a cake walk.

If my party is going up against an enchantress, I'll expect her to have something that can take people out of the fight or turn the player characters against each other, because I know what enchantment spells are like. Having that NOT happen would feel the same as fighting a necromancer who didn't have any undead minions, or fighting a rogue that never even tried to get a Sneak Attack, or dueling a fighter who forgot all his weapons and armor at home.

Not only does having a challenge heighten whatever satisfaction we gain from victory (or hey, sometimes losing can be fun too), but if the opponents fail to use abilities that they really ought to have available it ruins my suspension of disbelief and takes my mind out of the game. Now, perhaps there's a reasonable in-game explanation for that happening, and discovering it will repair my enjoyment of the scenario. Not everything is always as it seems. Sometimes the DM just forgets that a monster has a certain ability; running the game can be challenging when there are a lot of distractions, and having a large group of players causes a lot of distractions. But even though I put a lot of work into my characters most of the time, I never want to feel like my victories are just being handed to me. That just makes the game hollow, and that is true of all games not just table-top.

[Amphetryon]

And then there are yet other players who feel that the DM is going too easy on us when they DON'T make the most of their monsters or NPCs, who have more fun when there's challenge and a sense of danger than when everything is a cake walk.

If my party is going up against an enchantress, I'll expect her to have something that can take people out of the fight or turn the player characters against each other, because I know what enchantment spells are like. Having that NOT happen would feel the same as fighting a necromancer who didn't have any undead minions, or fighting a rogue that never even tried to get a Sneak Attack, or dueling a fighter who forgot all his weapons and armor at home.

Not only does having a challenge heighten whatever satisfaction we gain from victory (or hey, sometimes losing can be fun too), but if the opponents fail to use abilities that they really ought to have available it ruins my suspension of disbelief and takes my mind out of the game. Now, perhaps there's a reasonable in-game explanation for that happening, and discovering it will repair my enjoyment of the scenario. Not everything is always as it seems. Sometimes the DM just forgets that a monster has a certain ability; running the game can be challenging when there are a lot of distractions, and having a large group of players causes a lot of distractions. But even though I put a lot of work into my characters most of the time, I never want to feel like my victories are just being handed to me. That just makes the game hollow, and that is true of all games not just table-top.

That reads an awful lot like my 3rd bullet point.

[Demonic Spoon]

Looks like I overreacted slightly. Maybe I'll make some +save stuff available. Thanks for the input, everyone.

[Red Fel]

Looks like I overreacted slightly. Maybe I'll make some +save stuff available. Thanks for the input, everyone.

Also, take a look at the lists of necessary magic items (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?187851-3-5-Lists-of-Necessary-Magic-Items). The list offers more than just the items itself - it lays out common (and less common) conditions, such as a lack of flight, stun or daze, mental vulnerabilities, and death effects, and the availability of items that can make up for them. These are valuable from both a player perspective, as a list of common (and less common) afflictions and ways to protect against them, and from a DM perspective, as a guideline of how easy (or difficult) it is for the players to accommodate various conditions or issues, and by extension how careful one should be in introducing enemies who use them.