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Over the past few days I’ve been describing all the ways in which dissociated mechanics suck for a roleplaying game and why I dislike the fact that 4th Edition is using them.

However, dissociated mechanics can also be quite useful for roleplaying games. It’s all a question of what you do with them. Specifically, dissociated mechanics can be useful if the reason they’re dissociated from the game world is because they’re modeling the narrative.

This can be a little bit tricky to understand, so let’s break it down and then look at some examples.

ROLEPLAYING vs. STORYTELLING

There’s another long discussion that can be had about stances and goals that a player can have while playing an RPG, but I’m going to simplify things a bit for the purposes of this discussion and talk about just two broad approaches:

First, you can play a role. In this approach you get inside your character’s head and figure out what they would do.

Second, you can create a story. In this approach you are focusing on the creation of a compelling narrative.

The division between these two approaches can get pretty muddy. Not only because people can switch, mix, and blend the two approaches in various ways, but also because we have a natural desire to turn sequences of events into narratives: If someone asks us about our day, we’ll tell a story about it. Similarly, even if we approach the game by playing a role, the events that happen to our character will be almost immediately transformed into a narrative of those events.

The difference between the two lies not in describing the result of what happened (which will always be a story), but with the approach by which you decided what would happen. Another way to think of it, perhaps, is to consider the difference between an actor (who plays a character) and an author (who writes a story).

Since this is probably still confusing, let’s break out an example.

SCENE-BASED RESOLUTION

Traditional roleplaying games, like D&D, are based around the idea of players as actors: Each player takes on the role of a particular character and the entirety of play is defined around the player thinking of themselves as the character and asking the question, “What am I going to do?”

Because of this, resolution mechanics in traditional RPGs are action-based. In other words, the resolution mechanics determine the success-or-failure of a specific action. The player says, “I want to do X.” The resolution mechanics determine whether or not the player is successful. Can I climb that wall? How far can I jump? Will that gunshot wound kill me?

But there is another option: Instead of determining the outcome of a particular action, scene-based resolution mechanics determine the outcome of entire scenes.

For example, in Wushu players describe the actions of their characters. These descriptions are always true. Instead of saying, “I try to hit the samurai”, for example, you would say: “I leap into the air, drawing my swords in a single fluid motion, parrying the samurai’s sword as I pass above his head, and land behind him.”

Then you roll a pool of d6’s, with the number of dice being determined by the number of details you put into your description. For example, in this case you would roll 4 dice: “I leap into the air (1), drawing my swords in a single fluid motion (2), parrying the samurai’s sword as I pass above his head (3), and land behind him (4).”

Based on Wushu‘s mechanics, you then count the number of successes you score on the dice you rolled and apply those successes towards the total number of successes required to control the outcome of the scene. If you gather enough successes, you determine how the scene ends.

In practice, it’s more complicated than that. But that’s the essential core of what’s happening.

BENEFITS OF DISSOCIATION

Clearly, a scene-based resolution mechanic is dissociated from the game world. The game world, after all, knows nothing about the “scene”. In the case of Wushu, for example, you can end up defeating the samurai just as easily by carefully detailing a tea ceremony as by engaging in flashy swordplay. The dice you’re rolling have little or no connection to the game world — they’re modeling a purely narrative property (control of the scene).

The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we’ve established, is that it disengages the player from the role they’re playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a different way (through the narrative instead of through the game world).

The advantage of a mechanic like Wushu‘s is that it gives greater narrative control to the player. This narrative control can then be used in all sorts of advantageous ways. For example, in the case of Wushu these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences: Since it’s just as easy to slide dramatically under a car and emerge on the other side with guns blazing as it is to duck behind cover and lay down suppressing fire, the mechanics make it possible for the players to do whatever the coolest thing they can possibly think of is (without worrying about whether or not the awesomeness they’re imagining will make it too difficult for their character to pull it off).

Is this style of play for everybody? No.

Personally, I tend to think of it as a matter of trade-offs: There are advantages to focusing on a single role like an actor and there are advantages to focusing on creating awesome stories like an author. Which mechanics I prefer for a given project will depend on what my goals are for that project.

TRADE-OFFS

And it’s important to understand that everything we’re talking about is about trade-offs.

In the case of Wushu, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game.

So why can I see the benefit of the Wushu-style trade-off, but am deeply dissatisfied by the trade-offs 4th Edition is making?

Well, the easiest comeback would be to say that it’s all a matter of personal taste: I like telling stories and I like playing a role, but I don’t like the tactical wargaming.

That’s an easy comeback, but it doesn’t quite ring true. One of things I like about 3rd Edition is the tactical combat system. And I generally prefer games with lots of mechanically interesting rules. I like the game of roleplaying games.

My problem with the trade-offs of 4th Edition is that I also like the roleplaying of roleplaying games. It comes back to something I said before: Simulationist mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the game world. Narrative mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the story.

Games are fun. But games don’t require roles. There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn’t actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you’re playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes.

To put it another way: I can understand why you need to accept the disadvantages of dissociated mechanics in order to embrace the advantages of narrative-based mechanics. But I don’t think it’s necessary to embrace dissociated mechanics in order to create a mechanically interesting game. There have been lots of mechanically interesting roleplaying games which haven’t embraced dissociated mechanics.

In other words, I don’t think the trade-offs in 4th Edition are necessary. They’re sacrificing value and utility where value and utility didn’t need to be lost.

Continued tomorrow…

Go to Part 1

Yesterday I talked about marks in 4th Edition, focusing particularly on how one particular mark — the war devil’s besieged foe ability — was dissociated and the problems that dissociation causes in terms of game design.

Today I’m going to talk about the dissociation of the marking mechanics in general. To understand the problem, let’s start by looking at the marked condition in 4th Edition:

MARKED: A particular creature has marked you. You can only be marked by 1 creature at a time. If another creature marks you, you lose the old mark and gain the new one. If you attack a creature other than the one marking you, you suffer a -2 penalty on your attack rolls.

The problem with this rule is that it forces an association between two mechanics where it wouldn’t otherwise exist.

Let’s look at three of the marks I listed yesterday: The warpriest’s challenge; the paladin’s divine challenge; and the fighter’s challenge.

The warpriest’s challenge allows them to take a free attack on the marked target if the marked target moves away or tries to attack somebody else. The fighter’s challenge causes the target to suffer a -2 penalty if they attack anyone other than the fighter. The paladin’s divine challenge is a magical compulsion that similarly causes the target to suffer a -2 penalty if they attack anyone other than the paladin and also deals damage if they do so.

Individually, all of these abilities can be explained: The warpriest issues a challenge and pays particular attention to one target. If the target doesn’t pay attention to the warpriest, the warpriest can take advantage of that and make a free attack.

The fighter uses his martial prowess to engage with someone, using his own attacks to distract them and interfere with their ability to attack other characters.

The paladin uses their connection with the divine to create a magical compulsion, forcing the target to either attack them or face the consequences.

The dissociation happens when these abilities start affecting each other. Take a simple sequence like this one:

1. The fighter puts their mark on an opponent.
2. The paladin puts their mark on the same opponent, causing the fighter’s mark to come to an end.

Imagine trying to explain what happened there to the characters involved. It’s impossible. There’s no reason why the paladin’s magical compulsion should prevent the fighter from using their martial skills to interfere with an enemy’s ability to attack their allies. It makes even less sense for the fighter’s martial skills to somehow dispel the magical compulsion. Yet this is what the marking mechanics say.

Why are the mechanics like this? Primarily game balance. Imagine two paladins coming up and both laying down a divine challenge on a single opponent. Now, no matter who this opponent attacks, they’ll be suffering at least 8 points of radiant damage each round. And if they attack anyone other than the paladins, they’ll be suffering 16 points of radiant damage each round.

Similarly, take the war devil’s besieged foe ability (granting their allies a +2 bonus to attacks against that opponent). Now, imagine an encounter with 6 war devils all dumping this mark on the same character. Suddenly all of the war devils have a +12 attack bonus against their chosen opponent.

This type of synergistic stacking is an issue and needs to be dealt with. In 3rd Edition, for example, the same ability wouldn’t stack with itself and bonuses or penalties of the same type wouldn’t stack with each other, either.

Another solution to this problem, however, would be to make it so that the ill-effects of a mark could be avoided as long as you targeted any of the characters currently marking you. Of course, this still leads to dissociation — if the paladin places a magical compulsion on me that requires me to attack the paladin, why does the fighter’s fancy footwork negate that?

Plus, the other reason the mechanics work like this is an effort to minimize complexity: There are apparently going to be lots and lots of marks in the game, and by limiting them so that only one mark can be in effect on a creature at a time you limit the amount of bookkeeping that needs to be done.

But all of this demonstrates that, at a fundamental level, 4th Edition is completely dissociated. The only way the PCs could possibly understand why their abilities interact with each other in this fashion is if they understand that they’re actually just characters in a roleplaying game suffering the consequences of the marking mechanic.

Breaking the fourth wall in Order of the Stick is pretty funny, but do we really need to turn D&D into a punchline?

Continued tomorrow…

Go to Part 1

This is a cheap shot.

Let’s take a more complex example of the dissociated mechanics cropping up in 4th Edition: Marks.

The effect of placing a mark on another character depends on the mark you’re using, but here are a couple of examples:

Warpriest’s Challenge (16th level)
When you hit an enemy with an at-will melee attack, you can choose to mark that enemy for the rest of the encounter. The next time that enemy shifts or attacks a creature other than you, you can make an opportunity attack against that enemy. If you mark a new enemy with this feature, any previous marks you have made with this feature end.

* * *

Divine Challenge (Paladin Feature)
You boldly confront a nearby enemy, searing it with divine light if it ignores your challenge.

At-Will * Divine, Radiant
Minor Action Close burst 5
Target: One creature in burst
Effect: You mark the target. The target remains marked until you use this power against another target. If you mark other creatures using other powers, the target is still marked. A creature can be subject to only one mark at a time. A new mark supersedes a mark that was already in place. If the target makes an attack that doesn’t include you as a target, it takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls and takes 8 radiant damage. The target takes this damage only once per turn.
Special: Even though this ability is called a challenge, it doesn’t rely on the intelligence or language ability of the target. It’s a magical compulsion that affects the creature’s behavior, regardless of the creature’s nature. You can’t place a divine challenge on a creature that is already affected by your divine challenge.

* * *

Combat Challenge (Fighter Feature)
When you attack you may mark the enemy, giving a -2 to attack targets other than you.

* * *

Besieged Foe (minor; at-will)
Ranged sight; automatic hit; the target is marked, and allies of the war devil gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls made against the target until the encounter ends or the war devil marks a new target.

There are two levels on which these mechanics dissociate.

First, just like any other mechanic, the basic mark itself can be dissociated. Look at the war devil’s besieged foe ability, for example: The war devil marks the target and the war devil’s allies gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls made against the target.

Mechanically quite simple, but utterly dissociated from the game world. In point of fact, no explanation is given at all for what these mechanics represent in the game world.

Let’s return to our example of the fireball spell again: If you’re the DM and you want to describe what happens when a fireball spell goes off, you can easily give a description of what the character sees. A wizard casts the spell, a bead of fire shoots out of his fingertip, and then explodes into a ball of flame.

But if you’re talking about this besieged foe ability, what would the DM describe? What is the war devil actually doing when it marks an opponent? What happens that causes the war devil’s allies to gain the +2 bonus to attack rolls? Is it affecting the target or is it affecting the allies?

(The name of the ability, of course, gives you no guidance here at all. The use of the term “besieged” would imply that the target is being overwhelmed by multiple opponents… but there’s no such requirement in the actual ability. In fact, the war devil doesn’t have to be anywhere near the target and the bonuses apply even if there’s only one guy whacking on the target.)

EXPLAINING IT ALL AWAY

Of course the argument can be made that such explanations can be trivially made up: A ruby beam of light shoots out of the war devil’s head and strikes their target, afflicting them with a black blight. The war devil shouts horrific commands in demonic tongues to his allies, unnaturally spurring them into a frenzied bloodlust. The war devil utters a primeval curse.

These all sound pretty awesome, so what’s the problem? The problem is that every single one of these is a house rule. If it’s a ruby beam of light, can it be blocked by a pane of glass or a transparent wall of force? If it’s a shouted command, shouldn’t it be prevented by a silence spell? If it’s a curse, can it be affected by a remove curse spell?

And even if you manage to craft an explanation which doesn’t run afoul of mechanical questions like these, there are still logical questions to be answered in the game world. For example, is it an ability that the war devil can use without the target becoming aware of them? If the target does become aware of them, can they pinpoint the war devil’s location based on its use of the ability? Do the war devil’s allies need to be aware of the war devil in order to gain the bonus?

If the mechanic wasn’t fundamentally dissociated — if there was an explanation of what the mechanic was actually modeling in the game world — the answers to these questions would be immediately apparent. And if you’re slapping on fluff text in order to answer these questions, the answers will be different depending on the fluff text you apply — and that makes the fluff text a house rule.

(Why would you want to answer these types of questions? Well, some trivial possibilities would include: The war devil has used magic to disguise himself as an ally of the PCs. The war devil is invisible. The war devil is hiding in the supernatural shadows behind the Throne of Doom and doesn’t want to reveal himself… yet.)

THE PROBLEM WITH HOUSE RULES

So now we’ve established that any attempt to provide an explanation for this mechanic constitutes a house rule: Whatever explanation you come up with will have a meaningful impact on how the ability is used in the game. Why is this a problem?

First, there’s a matter of principle. Once we’ve accepted that you need to immediately house rule the war devil in order to use the war devil, we’ve accepted that the game designers gave us busted rules that need to be fixed before they can be used. The Rule 0 Fallacy (“this rule isn’t broken because I can fix it”) is a poor defense for any game.

But there’s also a practical problem: Yes, fixing the war devil’s besieged foe ability is relatively easy. But these types of dissociated abilities have been scattered liberally through the 4th Edition promo material we’ve seen. We can safely assume that they’ll be similarly found throughout the core rulebooks. This means that there will be hundreds of them. As supplements come out, there will probably be thousands of them.

And every single one of them will need to be house ruled before you can use them.

Now you’ve got hundreds (or thousands) of house rules to create, keep track of, and use consistently. Even if this is trivial for any one of them, it becomes a huge problem in bulk.

These massive house rules also create a disjunction in the game. One of the things that was identified as problematic in the waning days of AD&D was that the vast majority of people playing the game had heavily house ruled the game in various ways. That meant that when you switched from one AD&D group to a different AD&D group, you could often end up playing what was essentially a completely different game.

In the case of AD&D, this widespread house ruling was the result of disaffection with a fundamentally weak and inconsistent game system. House ruling, of course, didn’t disappear with the release of 3rd Edition — but the amount of house ruling, in general, was significantly decreased and the consistency of experience from one game table to the next was improved.

But now we have a 4th Edition which, due to its dissociated design principles, requires you to create hundreds (or thousands) of house rules. And, of course, as soon as you switch game tables all of those house rules will change.

ACCEPTING YOUR FATE

Of course, you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever.

At that point, however, you’re no longer playing a roleplaying game. When the characters’ relationship to the game world is stripped away, they are no longer roles to be played. They have become nothing more than mechanical artifacts that are manipulated with other mechanical artifacts.

You might have a very good improv session that is vaguely based on the dissociated mechanics that you’re using, but there has been a fundamental disconnect between the game and the world — and when that happens, it stop being a roleplaying game. You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook.

In short, you can simply accept that 4th Edition is being designed primarily as a tactical miniatures game. And if it happens to still end up looking vaguely like a roleplaying game, that’s entirely accidental.

Continued tomorrow…

So the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons is coming down the pike and people have recently been asking me what I think about it.

Well, I’ve written up some of my thoughts in the past. Those thoughts are largely unchanged: The design team at Wizards of the Coast has decided to design a really amazing tactical miniatures game. (Their motivation for doing so probably has more than a little to do with the reports that the D&D Miniatures game is the most profitable part of the D&D brand.) In order to design that game, however, they have apparently decided that:

(1) They are going to fundamentally alter the gameplay of D&D. (The short version: Yes, the game has changed considerably over the years. But playing a basic fighter in 3rd Edition was still basically the same thing as playing a fighter in 2nd Edition or a fighter in 1st Edition or a fighter in BECMI. Playing a wizard in 3rd Edition was still basically the same thing as playing a wizard in previous editions. And so forth.)

(2) It’s not particularly necessary for them to actually make a roleplaying game. (Don’t believe me? Go ahead and read my previous post on this. WotC’s designers are on public record saying the only thing that matters in the game is what happens during combat.)

One of the most pernicious results of this design philosophy, in my opinion, is the prevalence of dissociated mechanics in 4th Edition.

When I talk about “dissociated mechanics”, I’m talking about mechanics which have no association with the game world. These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations.

Now, of course, all game mechanics are — to varying degrees — abstracted and metagamed. For example, the destructive power of a fireball spell is defined by the number of d6’s you roll for damage; and the number of d6’s you roll is determined by the caster level of the wizard casting the spell.

If you asked a character about d6’s of damage or caster levels, they’d have no idea what you’re talking about. But they could tell you what a fireball is and they could tell you that casters of greater skill can create more intense flames during the casting of the spell.

So a fireball spell has a direct association to the game world. What does a dissociated mechanic look like?

A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Here’s a sample power taken from one of the pregen characters used in the Keep on the Shadowfell preview adventure:

Trick Strike (Rogue Attack 1)

Through a series of feints and lures, you maneuver your foe right where you want him.

Daily – Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee or Ranged weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: +8 vs. AC
Hit: 3d4 + 4 damage, and you can slide the target 1 square
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, each time you hit the target you can slide it 1 square

At first glance, this looks pretty innocuous: The rogue, through martial prowess, can force others to move where he wants them to move. Imagine Robin Hood shooting an arrow and causing someone to jump backwards; or a furious swashbuckling duel with a clever swordsman shifting the ground on which they fight. It’s right there in the fluff text description: Through a series of feints and lures, you maneuver your foe right where you want him.

The problem  is that this is a Daily power — which means it can only be used once per day by the rogue.

Huh? Why is Robin Hood losing his skill with the bow after using his skill with the bow? Since when did a swashbuckler have a limited number of feints that they can perform in a day?

There’s a fundamental disconnect between what the mechanics are supposed to be modeling (the rogue’s skill with a blade or a bow) and what the mechanics are actually doing.

If you’re watching a football game, for example, and a player makes an amazing one-handed catch, you don’t think to yourself: “Wow, they won’t be able to do that again until tomorrow!”

And yet that’s exactly the type of thing these mechanics are modeling. Unlike a fireball, I can’t hold any kind of intelligible conversation with the rogue about his trick strike ability:

Me: So what is this thing you’re doing?
Rogue: I’m performing a series of feints and lures, allowing me to maneuver my foe right where I want him.
Me: Nifty. So why can you only do that once per day?
Rogue: … I have no idea.

Continued tomorrow…

Let’s talk a little bit about save-or-die effects.

If you participate in any kind of discussion around game design and D&D, the term is probably familiar to you. If you’re not familiar with it, then here’s the short version: As the name suggests, a save-or-die effect is any spell or ability which requires the target to make a saving throw or die. More generally, the term can also be applied to any spell or ability which requires the target to make a saving throw or be effectively removed from play.

For example, finger of death is a a classic save-or-die spell: Either the target makes their saving throw or they die. A sleep spell is also a save-or-die effect, however, because if the target fails their saving throw they’re knocked unconscious. On the other hand, a fireball spell is not a save-or-die effect: Although the damage from the spell might kill you, your death is not the direct result of a failed saving throw.

A save-or-die effect with practical results.

THE CONTINUUM OF SAVE-OR-DIE EFFECTS

As our examples suggest, there is actually a continuum of save-or-die effects — ranging from the minor to the severe. In generic terms, I think this continuum can be defined this way:

(1) The effect takes the character out of play, but the character itself can take actions (usually additional saving throws) to put themselves back in play. For example, a hold person spell (which we’ll talk about more later) paralyzes the target on a failed save, but allows the target to make a new save each round to recover.

(2) The effect takes the character out of play, but other characters can take trivial actions to put them back into play. For example, a sleep spell works like this — another character can simply take an action to slap the character and wake them up.

(3) The effect takes the character out of play, but other characters can put them back in play if they have the right resources prepared. For example, any paralysis can be removed if you have a remove paralysis spell available.

(4) The effect kills the character.

It should also be noted that, beyond a certain point, the difference between the third and fourth categories becomes largely academic: A paralysis effect requires remove paralysis; a finger of death requires a resurrection. From a mechanical standpoint, at least, the difference is merely one of degree.

THE PROBLEM WITH SAVE-OR-DIE EFFECTS

Save-or-die effects are widely recognized as being one of the weak points in 3rd Edition. The basic problem with them can be summed up in three words: They aren’t fun.

(1) They aren’t fun to suffer.

(2) They aren’t fun to use.

(3) They break down badly at higher levels of play.

Nobody likes to have bad things happen to their characters, but the truth is that — no matter how much we might argue about hit points — D&D combat is fun. It’s stood the test of time for more than three decades now, and people are still enjoying it.

One of the things that’s fun about it is the ablative nature of hit points — the back-and-forth dynamic of dealing damage. You may not want to get caught in a fireball, but part of the excitement of playing the game is suffering that damage. I think everyone who has ever played the game has a story about the time that they managed to save the day while only having a single hit point left to their name. That’s a story that captures the simple, pure fun that Gygax and Arneson captured in the D&D combat mechanics.

But save-or-die mechanics bypass the whole ablative damage system. As a result, when a save-or-die ability hits the table you are instantly stripping away all the tactical complexity of the combat system and reducing the entire thing to a craps game.

So when a save-or-die effect is used against a PC, it’s no fun: On the basis of a single die roll, the player is no longer allowed to participate in the game. Imagine that, at the beginning of Monopoly, you had to roll 2d6 and — if it came up snake eyes — you automatically lost and didn’t get to play that game. Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

But it’s equally true that using a save-or-die effect isn’t particularly fun, either. Oh, sure, lots of people have stories about the time they killed an ancient red dragon with a single lucky hit from a finger of death. But while that’s fun once or twice, how much fun is it in the long-term? Imagine that game of Monopoly again, only this time if you roll box cars on the 2d6 you automatically win the game. Still doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

And this leads to the breakdown at higher levels of play, where astronomical hit point totals and incredibly high saving throw bonuses turn combat into a giant game of: “Hey, who’s going to roll a 1 on their saving throw first?”

THE CHEAPENING OF DEATH

I have an aesthetic problem with D&D in general: I dislike the revolving door of death. This is a problem I’ve talked about before, but it’s one that has an impact on save-or-die effects at the gaming table.

Specifically, I don’t like cheapening death. Therefore, I’m unlikely to use save-or-die effects on my PCs. But my players have no such compunction — they’re perfectly free to use those spells and effects against their opponents. As a result, this creates an imbalance of power.

This isn’t strictly a mechanical problem, but it does highlight how a particular aesthetic desire can have a meaningful impact on game balance.

WotC’s SOLUTION

As I mentioned, the problem with save-or-die effects has been well understood for several years now. The designers at Wizards of the Coast have been trying to deal with the issue since at least 2002 (when they released the Epic Level Handbook and discovered that the save-or-die effects were causing a complete meltdown in high level play).

With the release of D&D 3.5 in 2003, this newfound awareness translated into some rather half-hearted attempts at fixing the problem. Lots of save-or-die effects were still left scattered all over the core rulebooks, but some of the most problematic examples were fixed.

The solution they came up with was, basically, to weaken the save-or-die effect and move them down the continuum we talked about earlier. For example, in 3.0 hold person was a save-or-die effect of type #3: If you failed your save, you were paralyzed until either the spell ended or someone used a remove paralysis spell on you.

In 3.5, on the other hand, hold person was turned into a type #1 effect: If you became paralyzed, you could continue making saves every round until you succeeded (and stopped being paralyzed).

In 4th Edition, this remains their solution of choice. For example, in 3rd Edition a sleep spell was a save-or-die effect of type #2. In 4th Edition, if the spell successfully affects its target it only slows them. Only an additional failed save results in them falling asleep, and then they can continue making saving throws every round until they wake up.

Plus, in 4th Edition saving throws are always strict 50/50 affairs — there are no modifiers. So you can quickly calculate that there’s only a 50% chance a victim who has been affected by the spell will fall asleep at all; and only a 0.9% chance that they’d stay asleep for even 1 minute.

You can quickly see how watering down save-or-die effects remove most of their pernicious effects. There’s only one problem, though: This watering down also tends to remove most of their utility and flavor, too.

This is part of a wider trend at WotC in which efforts to make the tactical combat portion of the game as perfectly balanced as possible cause them to offer up every other part of the game on a sacrificial altar.

A DIFFERENT SOLUTION

I think the wider problem with WotC’s solution of choice is that it’s basically like saying, “Man, this soup tastes like crap! I think I’ll try adding some more water to it.” The taste of crap is now a little less intense, but it’s still crap.

The problem with save-or-die mechanics is that they bypass the ablative combat mechanics that work so well. So here’s my thought: Instead of just watering these effects down, let’s change the paradigm entirely and tie them into the ablative damage system.

The simplest solution is to simply have save-or-die effects deal ability score damage. For example, in my house rules all death effects deal 4d6 points of Constitution damage. If the spell has a secondary effect — such as turning the victim into a pile of dust — this effect only happens if the victim is killed by the Constitution damage. Similarly, you could have paralysis effects dealing Dexterity damage.

If I was completely overhauling the system, I would — at the very least — vary the amount of ability score damage depending on the power of the effect in question. For example, death effects might vary from 2d6 to 4d6 points of Con damage depending on whether you were talking about a 6th-level spell or a 9th-level spell.

But you can also get fancier: For example, if I were redesigning hold person I would make the spell deal 1d6 points of Dexterity damage per round until the victim made a successful save. If the victim is reduced to 0 Dex as a result of the spell, they are paralyzed (as the magical energies of the spell bind their limbs completely).

Similarly, a victim of a medusa’s gaze would feel their limbs turning to stone as they medusa repeatedly inflicted them with 2d4 points of Dexterity damage.

Under this paradigm, there would be no need for a “paralysis” condition — paralyzed creatures are simply those which have been reduced to 0 Dex. Similarly, a spell like remove paralysis would just be a quick way of healing Dexterity damage.

A sleep spell would be a mental assault, inflicting 1d4 points of Wisdom damage per round until the victim makes a save or drops into a magical coma. When the sleep spell wore off, this Wisdom damage — like the damage from a ray of enfeeblement — would be restored.

Since ability score damage no longer exists in 4th Edition, this solution won’t work for that game. But if I end up making the switch, I’ll be looking for some similar means to change the paradigm of save-or-die effects — rather than just watering them down.

UPDATE: If you’re thinking about using a system featuring ability score damage, you might want to check out Super Simple Ability Score Damage.