Why is the 3.5 built on fragility?

[bloodtide]

D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder (and older editions to a similar degree) are built around the notion of, "If you fail a save or if you take a good ol' hit or two, you're dead, KO, or screwed!"  This applies to you, your partymates, and creatures out of the books.

Why?

Why this emphasis on one-shotting or two-shotting something?

For fun.

In the Safe Game a character is immortal, protected much like a cartoon character or pg-13 or below character.  They can get knocked around a bit, but nothing will ever happen to them....ever.

In the Deadly Game a character can die any time, any place and any how.  Unlike any form of fiction. 

Now lots of people like the Safe Game.  "Oh no the dragon knocked me down!  I'm like so scared!''  They like the idea that they are immortal and nothing can happen to the character...ever.  But after a time, some people get bored with this type of game.  ''Oh, yawn, more demon lords?  Oh they trip my character and do like five damage, wow!"  After a while it's just no fun to always auto win...though some players will always like the easy button auto win.  Victory without the chance of failure is hollow.

But for a different game experience, lots of players turn to a classic Deadly Game.  It's nothing like a Safe Game.  In the Safe Game, the beholder just uses it's lame 'wound' eye...but in the Deadly Game it uses disintegrate.  I've converted tons of Safety Players to Deadly games.  It's a common theme: After they play their 100th or so auto win Safe 4e game(or whatever), they get very bored.  That is where I'll get them to play in a Deadly Game, and the shock and transformation is amazing. 

[Captnq]

How does the notion of fragile characters in a dangerous environment change when characters and players do plan for what seems like everything?  (I'm not talking TO here, but a paranoid Wizard can prepare for a variety of things even if he never hides out in a genesis demiplane.)

You get my players.

[veekie]

It's not a binary, it's a gradient of lethality. There needs to be consequences for failure, but not necessarily fatal ones (because they are horribly disruptive to roleplay and pacing while one guy gets repaired/replaced), but D&D is built off tabletop wargaming, where the only consequence available IS loss of units.

Instantly lethal effects are bad because they obsolete health and durability concepts, and disrupt the abstraction system(why is a sword in you abstracted and why isn't a deathray done the same way?). They reduce the strategy layer to dumb luck and paranoia coverage, because you can't NOT have immunities or you might just nat 1 and get clocked by an under-CR save or die.

[LordBlades]

Instantly lethal effects are bad because they obsolete health and durability concepts, and disrupt the abstraction system(why is a sword in you abstracted and why isn't a deathray done the same way?). They reduce the strategy layer to dumb luck and paranoia coverage, because you can't NOT have immunities or you might just nat 1 and get clocked by an under-CR save or die.

+1. D&D allows you very little middle ground in regards to this. You're either immune and then id doesn't matter, or you're not and sooner or later you're going to randomly die to a single die roll.

[oslecamo]

It's not a binary, it's a gradient of lethality. There needs to be consequences for failure, but not necessarily fatal ones (because they are horribly disruptive to roleplay and pacing while one guy gets repaired/replaced), but D&D is built off tabletop wargaming, where the only consequence available IS loss of units.

-Loss of equipment (at a point it becomes cheaper and easier to "repair" a dead character than to replace your equipment).
-Loss of levels/exp.
-The city/guy you were trying to save got destroyed when you ported away.
-Etc, etc

After all, it's a staple of fiction for the villains to leave the characters alive, or heck, even to heal/ressurect them for their wicked satisfaction ("I didn't give you permission to die, first I'll torture you and then put you into this carboard prison muhahaha!"). Or some outsider element jumps in and offers a "bargain" of sorts to give characters another chance.

And please, plenty of great stories had the characters dying/crippled and then they coming back to life/being healed. It's not a disruption, it's just another element of the story. It's hard to grasp for some people, but "gasp" main characters do get setbacks sometimes, and it actually makes the story richer!

[ImperatorK]

And please, plenty of great stories had the characters dying/crippled and then they coming back to life/being healed.

Jesus for example.

[Halinn]

After all, it's a staple of fiction for the villains to leave the characters alive, or heck, even to heal/ressurect them for their wicked satisfaction ("I didn't give you permission to die, first I'll torture you and then put you into this carboard prison muhahaha!"). Or some outsider element jumps in and offers a "bargain" of sorts to give characters another chance.

Don't forget to tell the protagonist all about your evil schemes while torturing him.

[veekie]

Yep, it's just the wargaming roots showing itself. Other game development paths have 'only mostly dead' states lasting a good bit longer than D&D's 10 points between out cold and totally dead.

[InnaBinder]

After all, it's a staple of fiction for the villains to leave the characters alive, or heck, even to heal/ressurect them for their wicked satisfaction ("I didn't give you permission to die, first I'll torture you and then put you into this carboard prison muhahaha!"). Or some outsider element jumps in and offers a "bargain" of sorts to give characters another chance.

Don't forget to tell the protagonist all about your evil schemes while torturing him.

In other words, don't let any of your BBEGs be genre savvy?  I'd rather have intelligent bad guys act with intelligence, personally, but whatever floats your boat.

[oslecamo]

After all, it's a staple of fiction for the villains to leave the characters alive, or heck, even to heal/ressurect them for their wicked satisfaction ("I didn't give you permission to die, first I'll torture you and then put you into this carboard prison muhahaha!"). Or some outsider element jumps in and offers a "bargain" of sorts to give characters another chance.

Don't forget to tell the protagonist all about your evil schemes while torturing him.

In other words, don't let any of your BBEGs be genre savvy?  I'd rather have intelligent bad guys act with intelligence, personally, but whatever floats your boat.

Just wait until the party escapes to twarth the "evil scheme" and it then turns out they were doing the BBEG's bidding all along. That's for what that potion of glibness before starting the torture was for right?

Yep, it's just the wargaming roots showing itself. Other game development paths have 'only mostly dead' states lasting a good bit longer than D&D's 10 points between out cold and totally dead.

By all means ignore the zillion "helpless but not dead" status debuffs that D&D offers. There's actually relatively few "save-or-die" effects in D&D, most of them are "save-or-dazed/stunned/grappled/immobilized/trapped/paralyzed/holded/etc".

[veekie]

Yes, but the key, most common one is damage, and the threshold there is negligible.

[Nytemare3701]

Yes, but the key, most common one is damage, and the threshold there is negligible.

I've taken to using Vitality/Wound points lately, since you can't be instagibbed with it. You stop at 0, then start making saves.