Forum > Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion
One-Roll InstaKills: How to handle?
Stephen Tannhauser:
I was playing with how to handle super-strength in a system design I've had going for a while, and started thinking about one of the limits I wanted to impose on the system: I wanted to keep the mechanics from being able to create damage values so high that even the most grazing hit (this system incorporates degree of success into damage calculation) nonetheless amounted to a fatal blow in one shot. From this I realized what the real goal of that limit was: I have always been profoundly resistant to situations where a single failed roll, or even a single player choice made in ignorance of the circumstances, can cause character death. Hence, the title of the thread: the One-Roll InstaKill -- this encompasses more than combat, of course, and includes things like saving throws or even the classic sphere-of-annihilation-in-the-statue-mouth trap.
In terms of the "Elements of Tactics" article I so often quote from Mr. Brian Gleichman, I prefer systems where the pace of decision -- i.e. how much time and opportunity is available to recover from any specific failure, or more simply, how fast you can lose -- has at least a little room for escape or recovery, even at its grittiest. I have always thought that in practice, even among players who mostly go the min-max power-gaming route, losing a character on which you've spent a great deal of development and game time because of a single bad roll or single uninformed choice is profoundly aggravating. However, I was wondering if other people had different perspectives on this, and where and when they considered such level of instant total risk appropriate.
EDIT: I put this in the general RPG discussion forum because I wanted to get examples from what people have actually seen in play, but if this is a better fit for the Design and Development forum, I ask that it be moved there, with apologies for the inconvenience.
Jam The MF:
Whatever the Dice Decide.
Steven Mitchell:
For anyone that cares about this issue, I don't think there is a simple answer. It can be ignored and/or fudged and/or glossed over as minor. Lots of people do have fun playing that way. To the extent that it starts to bug someone, and they want to do something about it, it's tricky. So I don't think there is any particular correct answer, or even better answers, but I can say how I view and what I did about it.
In D&D, the "saving throw" or "save" got corrupted almost from the beginning. It was always supposed to be thought of as, "You done screwed up to the point that you should already be feeling the consequences, but we'll give you a free shot to get away with it, or at least mitigate the fallout." In effect, it's a built in, reusable form of "Hero Points" or "Fate Points" with no points to track! It's no accident that in early D&D, the saves start pretty crappy and get steadily better as the character advances--that is, the more time the player has in the character, the better chance they have to activate their get out of jail free card.
Of course, the GM has to run a game with that in mind. It's not "fair" to throw a horde of wraiths at the party out of the blue and drain all their levels. It is "fair" to convey that nasty things are parked in this corner of the dungeon (however that is done), that they might be wandering around, and then if someone ignores that and bites off more than they can chew, better hope that the save gives them a chance to run for it. If they keep plugging along, miss saves, die--that's working as designed.
What gets lost is that the saving throw is operational, not tactical. If you want the tactical equivalent, then that can be done, too, but it would have a different purpose, and thus a different mechanic, probably different math, and definitely needs a different name. The whole package has to be considered together.
Me, I like a bit of both, operational outs and tactical outs, but still a strong threat of tactical death. What I ended up with in my D&D-like game: Saves in the older style. A hit point buffer that was significant, started higher, scaled slower, topped out lower (e.g. less range between zero and heroes, but still a definite range). Slightly increased damage and critical hits designed in from the ground up to be more than just simple point damage. "Health Points" split in a Wound/Vitality style (named something else but irrelevant for this discussion). Falling damage has chance to go straight to "Wound". What would typically be a "save or die" effect is instead also going partially to "Wounds". "Wounds" are a lot harder to get back naturally and are a bigger drain on magical resources to cure.
Then I emphasized very hard to the players, through play, what Saves are for.
The net effect of all that is that "Save or Die" doesn't happen very often to a fully healthy character (though there is a tiny possibility). Instead, every time the Wounds goes down, the character is that much closer to having such an event. A character with one Wound left is functionally identical to a being in the Save or Die camp. In other words, "Mook" is not a binary flag on a creature. Anyone with very little Wounds (however they got there) is headed for Mook country. Other parts of the system put operational pressure on players to sometimes risk adventuring while wounding, but that's a sliding scale too. Everyone a little banged up, it's worth it to push. A couple of people clinging to only 1 or 2 Wounds, probably not. I just set up the gauge. It's the players that make the call.
Now, possibly none of that is directly useful to what you want to do. In my case, there's nothing particular special or novel about any mechanic I chose. It's how they work together, how they are named, how they are presented, and how they work with the rest of the system that makes it work as it does. I hope it helps a little.
David Johansen:
It depends a bit on medical technology and magic. "Head vaporized" can be instantly lethal or a short term set back. As the doctor says in Fifth Element, "There's a hundred live cells in there, it's more than I need."
ForgottenF:
I'm also not a huge fan of "Save or Die" type mechanics, as I tend to find them anti-climactic. I would pretty much always prefer a player be killed by poor decision making, or tactics, rather than by simple RNG. For things like poison, curses, etc. I prefer the concept of a building status effect (such as the way things like that work in Dark Souls). It's not often implemented on the tabletop, but it could be through something like an effect that deals a percentage of the player's HP per round, rather than rolled damage. That puts the player on notice that they have X number of rounds to remediate the problem before they die, and at least gives them some chance at clever problem solving.
For combat on the other hand, I do think that one hit kills should be a possibility. If your players can never one-shot even a weak enemy, they're never going to feel like their character is truly powerful. At the same time, there are lots of narrative situations (the classic being the city guards holding a player up at crossbow-point) where being able to be instantly slain by an attack is necessary for the verisimilitude of the game. The issue of the players running up against an enemy that can one-shot them I see as being more of a problem of poor GM-ing, rather than system design. Such enemies should be clearly signposted, and the players given reasonable opportunity to avoid fighting them. If a GM chooses to drop a max-level dragon on a low-level party, with no warning, and no opportunity to escape, the flame-breath should have a chance to instantly vaporize them, but the party has every right to consider the GM is being a dickhead.
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