How to incorporate insta-kill abilities.

[Shinizak]

Through some totally legal story shenanigans, my player has gained the permanent ability to disintegrate things 5 times a day on top of the normal things a 12th level ranger can do.

How do I work around this ability without outright taking it away or nerfing the power? I want to be a fair and good DM while still providing challenges.

[Nifft]

D&D 4e had a neat mechanic whereby some deadly insta-kill effects only worked on "Bloodied" targets, which means targets that have already lost half their max HP.

Making it so the rest of the party needs to beat the BBEG down to half still presents a party-wide challenge, which is nice.


D&D 5e has a neat mechanic whereby some important BBEG foes can choose to make any failed saving throw 3/day. This is neat because it says your party needs to impose enough conditions that the BBEG runs out of these "Legendary Resistance" uses before you can land a save-or-die on the BBEG.


Use both of these and any insta-kill powers require a whole-party effort to get it to land on an important enemy.

[EggKookoo]

In 5e, reaching 0 HP doesn't kill you. You then make death saves, one per round, until you get either three successes and stabilize, or three failures and die.

You could make an insta-kill ability simply deal damage, but auto-kill anyone it reduces to 0 HP without giving them the option to make their death saves. This keeps it mostly balanced -- you still need to reduce the target's HP to 0 -- but it bypasses the chance of the target somehow managing to pull through.

Keep in mind, most RPGs that use HP systems aren't really meant to allow for instant-health-to-dead mechanics.

[NigelWalmsley]

Can you expound on what you mean by "disintegrate"? Is it just the spell? Also, what edition are you talking about?

One thing you can do, beyond just nerfing the ability, is having larger encounters. If you can one-shot the BBEG, that's an issue if the final boss is one BBEG. But if it's a council of people, with various minions and summons, killing one of them is a lot less impressive.

[martixy]

SoDs or NSJD (no-save-just-die) abilities shouldn't concern the DM. At least not on the level they concern the players.

A PC being targeted by an ability like this usually just sucks for the player. Or he saves and nothing has changed. Too binary, and very undramatic. Fixing that requires addressing those characteristics, but that's beside the point here.

On the DM side, you should not care, until the ability can break an encounter. Then its a matter of designing encounters that can't be broken by that ability - e.g. objectives that either can't be targeted by it or are an inefficient use of it. (This can mean anything from puzzles to time pressure to having to put things together instead of destroying them. Bonus points for having to put together the thing they used this ability on.)

[Shinizak]

Can you expound on what you mean by "disintegrate"? Is it just the spell? Also, what edition are you talking about?

One thing you can do, beyond just nerfing the ability, is having larger encounters. If you can one-shot the BBEG, that's an issue if the final boss is one BBEG. But if it's a council of people, with various minions and summons, killing one of them is a lot less impressive.

Yes. Pathfinder. So it's just the spell "disintegrate" 5/day.

The player effectively got an item VEEEERY similar to the hand of vecna. A magical arm that the villain was trying to attach.

[Zarrgon]

It's only five targets a day. A 12th level ranger could just hack through that many with a sword. The vast majority of level equal encounters will be with creatures that can make the saving throw too. So that takes it down to like five minions a day to insta kill.

[NigelWalmsley]

Yes. Pathfinder. So it's just the spell "disintegrate" 5/day.

Honestly that's probably just not as big a deal as you think it is. Having a single-digit number of SoD effects per day is something 12th level PCs could already do. It's definitely a power spike, but not that big of one when you consider the action economy (and the fact that Disintegrate isn't even really a SoD). If it does end up being a problem, just tweaking your encounter design, and maybe allowing creatures to make a save for half, should solve any problems. The big thing I would be worried about is the internal party dynamic. Does the Ranger getting this ability make other players feel overshadowed?

[Mastikator]

Swarms of minions is a hard counter to single target insta-kill.

I believe some (or all) golems are immune to magic (even spells that otherwise affect constructs and objects). That would be a hard counter.

Other than that I'd say don't work so hard to curtail your players totally legal shenanigans after you've allowed it to happen. It's a buzzkill to do so, either stop it before he has invested time and effort into this or not at all.

Actually now that I think about it: construct obstacles specifically FOR him, obstacles that are best dealt with by casting disintegrate on them, combine these obstacles with other obstacles so that the disintegrate isn't curtailed but USED in a satisfying way while also allowing the other players to be useful dealing with the other obstacles.

[Spore]

This sounds like a job for the drawbacks of a Faustian pact. If such power comes from the story/background, the cost must be from the background too. ie. it costs his lover/parents/whatever a year of their life span and/or curses them to an eternity in servitude to the dark masters that provided this gift.

Other than that, dont worry too much. it is a fort save (monster's best save) is resisted by spell resistance, things immune to fort saves could be at risk depending how youu judge construct's and undead's immunity to the save and if you treat them as nonliving.

[Quertus]

SoDs or NSJD (no-save-just-die) abilities shouldn't concern the DM.

It's only five targets a day. A 12th level ranger could just hack through that many with a sword. The vast majority of level equal encounters will be with creatures that can make the saving throw too. So that takes it down to like five minions a day to insta kill.

Honestly that's probably just not as big a deal as you think it is. Having a single-digit number of SoD effects per day is something 12th level PCs could already do. If it does end up being a problem, just tweaking your encounter design,

The big thing I would be worried about is the internal party dynamic. Does the Ranger getting this ability make other players feel overshadowed?

Actually now that I think about it: construct obstacles specifically FOR him, obstacles that are best dealt with by casting disintegrate on them, combine these obstacles with other obstacles so that the disintegrate isn't curtailed but USED in a satisfying way while also allowing the other players to be useful dealing with the other obstacles.

Pretty much agree with what's been said.

This isn't a big deal, except insofar as how the rest of the party feels about it. If the party Mage or Barbarian feels overshadowed, work with them to design a quest for them to get cool toys, too. If your encounters always fall over to this ability, that's on you, and it's time to learn to build better encounters. But, usually, if anything, you should be tailoring encounters to let him make good use of the ability (without necessarily soloing the encounter).

Let muggles have nice things.

[False God]

Sounds like you have been given leave to include 5 more targets in every encounter!

[Quertus]

Sounds like you have been given leave to include 5 more targets in every encounter!

That's not how math works!

[Jay R]

There are several possible paths you could follow.

A. Go read the stories of King Midas, and the Monkey's Paw.

B. Add five more enemies to each encounter.

C. Give the same encounters, but if they were no threat, then there are no xps.

D. From my Rules for DMs: "24. When a PC gets a great new ability, there needs to be an encounter in the next session for which that ability is devastatingly effective. Otherwise it doesn’t exist. There should also be an encounter in the next session in which it is useless. Otherwise, the rest of that character doesn’t exist."

But my actual recommendation is this:

E. The touchstone for fair dealing is whether or not it still feels fair in the opposite direction.

Tell the players that next week, one of their enemies will have the same ability. Then ask them how the ability should be modified.

[icefractal]

Tell the players that next week, one of their enemies will have the same ability. Then ask them how the ability should be modified.

X/day for a foe is usually stronger than X/day for a PC though.

I don't think this ability needs any special drawbacks. It's just giving a spell that a caster of the same level could use, like a very limited form of multiclassing. It's a nice ability, don't get me wrong, but if this "breaks the game" then it would already be broken by having any Sor/Wiz in the party.

BBEG types are already resistant due to high Fort saves and potentially having enough HP to survive it.

[Quertus]

B. Add five more enemies to each encounter.

That's still not how math works.

A) First, his power is 5/day, not 5/encounter.

B) Even if it were 5/encounter, that's not how saving throws work. The encounter would not be the same difficulty, because not all 5 will guaranteed fail their saves.

C) Even if it was a NSJD ability, it *still* wouldn't result in an encounter with the same balance, because that's not how action economy works. The ability would need be to be usable 5/round, *in addition to* his usual actions.

D) Even then, it *still* wouldn't guarantee parity, because that's not how initiative works. The additional foes could go first. It would need to be usable before anyone else goes, like Nerveskitter. So, it would need to be used 5 times during the roll for initiative.

E) at this point, you'd think you'd finally have balance… except the PCs aren't balanced. So Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, would likely show up to study the artifact, and offer to make copies for everyone in exchange. So, just copy that (new and improved) artifact to everyone, and add in (party size * 5) extra opponents, and you're golden.

F) except… that's not how XP works

D. From my Rules for DMs: "24. When a PC gets a great new ability, there needs to be an encounter in the next session for which that ability is devastatingly effective. Otherwise it doesn’t exist. There should also be an encounter in the next session in which it is useless. Otherwise, the rest of that character doesn’t exist.".

I don't particularly *like* this contrived style of play… but, other than my own personal dislike, this is good advice.

E. The touchstone for fair dealing is whether or not it still feels fair in the opposite direction.

Tell the players that next week, one of their enemies will have the same ability. Then ask them how the ability should be modified.

So many things wrong with this. But, most of all? Yes, please, give the party more copies of this artifact, and the foreknowledge necessary to buy a Spell Blade keyed to Disintegrate. As a player, i would wholeheartedly encourage this course of action, and maybe even ask if you can add one to every encounter, at least until the party has a complete set.

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OP, if, for some perverse reason, you feel the need to maintain encounter balance, the best you can do is add some number of foes *per day* that is *less than* the expected number who will fail their saves. Given how action economy works, and the fact that this ability is about on par with expected characters at this level, I would recommend "0".

[NigelWalmsley]

X/day for a foe is usually stronger than X/day for a PC though.

Save-or-dies are also inherently more problematic in the hands of enemies than PCs, as there's an aspect of iterative probability that isn't present when going the other way.

BBEG types are already resistant due to high Fort saves and potentially having enough HP to survive it.

It's not even that much damage. 3e Disintegrate is 2d6/level. Someone with a d10 or d12 HD and a decent Constitution score has a reasonable chance of surviving it, and that's before you consider that many monsters will have HD>CR.

[Xervous]

What even is the CL of the disintegrate in question? Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if it output less damage than semi optimal beatsticking in some circumstances.

[Quertus]

What even is the CL of the disintegrate in question? Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if it output less damage than semi optimal beatsticking in some circumstances.

Maybe, but the Ranger can only swing his sword 14,400*3(?)=43,200 times per day, whereas this artifact is usable 5 times per day.

Really, though, at minimum caster level 11, you're looking at, what, 22d6, average 77 damage, with a save for practically none? At artifact caster level 20, that's 40d6, average 140 damage, which is pretty respectable… but save DC 19 for "none" is not so hot at 12th level.

[Unavenger]

My personal preference? Don't, in any way, incorporate insta-kill abilities.

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Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named

*Drinks*

[Quertus]

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named

*Drinks*

I just want you to know, you triggered an uncontrollable giggling fit that lasted for a good 30 seconds.