Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 30 - Save or Suck

Episode Date: July 19, 2020

How viable are spells that give the victim a single saving throw before taking them out of a fight, campaign, or existence?  Should you use these spells against PCs?  What alternatives are there?  In this episode we discuss these questions and much more about the spells and abilities where you make the save or it sucks to be you.

Thank you for tuning in to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 30, Save or Suck. Our sponsor this week is Wireless Networks. While you're thinking about it, you better go help your parents fix or upgrade theirs again, because it's about time. So what does Save or Suck mean? It's a game design decision where passing a saving throw means nothing happens, but failing means something really bad happens. In other words, you make the save where it really sucks. Examples from gaming systems that I've played in the past. Saving versus a Medusa's gaze, blindness, paralyzation, stunning, sleep, finger of death, confusion, feeble mind, possession, phantasmal killer, plane shift, and nauseating.

Example spells, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Hold Person, Banishment, Magic Jar, Bestow Curse, Flesh to Stone, Insanity, Domination, the Power Word spells, etc. I first heard the term save or suck in a game of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons way back in the day. Versions earlier than the current 5th edition had a number of spells that if you didn't make the save, sucks to be you. Thankfully, more recent editions, 4e and then even more so in 5e, and in Pathfinder 2nd edition, the save or suck mechanic is on its way out, but it's not gone completely. So why are these spells so powerful? Well, it's because of the way saving throws work in most gaming systems.

In most gaming systems, saving throws have been a toggle, pass or fail. There's nothing in between. They don't care about armor class. Most don't care how many hit points you have. Some gaming systems have added more levels. For example, Pathfinder 2nd Edition have added critical success, success, failure, and critical failure as four possible results of a roll. In a lot of systems, a natural one is an automatic fail, which means 5% of the time, this spell will take someone out of the fight or out of their life. But who cares? Fifth level caster with one spell can take

the Lizardman Barbarian right out of the fight. Maybe that creature was going to be a major player in the adventure or campaign. Not, not anymore, she's not. Failed save, now she's blind. Disadvantage in all attack roles, assuming she even attacks the right square. The party just whittles her down from range without being in danger. Boring. Takes combatants out of the fight in one fell swoop. And I mean, let's face it, that one saving throw could change the course of an entire fight, adventure, or campaign.

Oh look, he stunned the 18th level wizard who can't move. Mr. DM, what are the coup de gras rules again? Or the spells fail. It's anticlimactic. I cast power word blind at the giant. He needs to make a will save. 27. Well, okay then, I'm done with my turn. Some would argue, aren't these spells just examples of playing smart? Sure. From a player's perspective, it makes a ton of sense. We can trap our home base such that anyone entering without a certain insignia is turned to stone. Sounds like our treasure's safe. I can blind a dragon forever and make it live in an extended period of time in dark agony for it. Where's my pen? I'm ready to sign the dotted line. As a player tactic, I think it may be a little bit overrated, and here's why. There's two scenarios. One, there's a ton of enemies on the battlefield.

You took one dire celestial were donkey out with a six level spell. Yay, 19 more to go. Or there's one big enemy on the battlefield. You do everything or nothing. This is the equivalent for those of you that play chess of the chess players who pull their queen out and try to use it for everything. Eventually they lose it and it sucks for them for the rest of the game. Contrast that with spells that support or protect your party. They pay dividends the entire fight, even if the fight does last longer. That being said, I completely understand why so many players use them.

Are they powerful? Absolutely. For most casters, should they be a tool in your belt that you pull out every now and then? Yes, you should. Worst case scenario, you lose a round of casting and a spell slot if it doesn't work. But what if it works? Should you rely on them to the exclusion of or diminishing other types of spells? Absolutely not.

Let's flip the screen. What about using them as a GM? Is it okay to throw baddies at the players who have these abilities? Occasionally? Absolutely. But what happens when a PC fails a saving throw and is blind, unable to cast spells, a drooling, zero-intelligent moron who can't do anything, or they're possessed by a demon or banished to a plane of existence where his life will end in seconds, the negative energy plane of Vernus, wherever. You'll likely hear cries of, well, that's not fair, and that sucks, and why does so much hinge on one die roll? Why do you game?

Your players get together to play together. One save or suck spell, and one of your players is down for the fight, the night, or maybe even the entire campaign. Players show up to have fun, and because of these spells they're not able to play. So they sit around, they open up their phone, they disconnect, goof off, distract others. Does shit happen? Yeah, shit happens. Natural ones happen. All of us occasionally get taken out of fights. So every now and then, yes, absolutely, I think it's fair for you as the GM to do this to players, since players can do it to the baddies.

But should you as a GM set up combats to incapacitate the same character again and again? Things like stun locking and chain locking or chain disabling? No, absolutely not. Do not do this as a DM. Players quit campaigns. They quit playing with you over stuff like this. In a recent campaign I was running, the ranger natural one to will save against a suggestion like spell. He spent the entire combat trying to eat a dinner table. Long story. Not eat, by the way, not eat at the dinner table. Eat the dinner table. Next fight had a different monster with a similar save or suck ability. I made sure to target someone else. As a matter of fact, I probably would have targeted everyone else in the party before I tried a save or suck spell on him again. If sections of your adventure

or your campaign contain the ability to incapacitate players, make sure you spread the love around. Don't just pick on Dumb Dumb the Fighter because you, the GM, know his will save sucks. Now when it comes to save or suck, you have multiple options and I'm going to present four of them to you. They're not your only four choices, but it's just something to think about whenever you come across save or suck abilities. One, no one has access to these abilities. They're completely removed from the world. Gods don't grant these spells to clerics. Wizards and sorcerers can't learn them. It nerfs your PCs, it nerfs the monsters, and it nerfs NPCs as well. I'll admit, I think this decision is hard to defend, because what defines save or suck?

Does color spray count? My 20th level wizard can't learn a first level spell? No stinking cloud? No blindness spells? 2. PCs have access to this, but very few monsters or baddies do. Typical monsters like Medusa, Basilisk, monsters with it in their description, and with innate abilities do have access to them, but very few enemy spellcasters do. The exception possibly being major NPCs and revealing their ability should be a major plot point, by the way, or at least a major reveal. He steps back, raises a finger at you. Yes, the middle finger, because that's how he rolls. He flips you the bird, points to you, and says, die. I need a will save, please. By giving PCs free access to spells like this and abilities like this, whereas the NPCs are rare, this does

lean the power balance pretty hard towards the PCs. And after all, as a role-playing moment, PCs could get a reputation. Let's say they use blindness spells a lot. People in the next town may say, well, if you see these four adventurers, that will be the last thing you ever see, even if you live. There could be role-playing aspects to it, but it does lean power balance hard towards the PCs, and you may have to scale up your monsters in other ways in order to challenge them. 3. Make no change to save or suck abilities.

Life sucks, then you die die if your players can use the spell so can bad guys it does mean that there's a chance that the character's participation in the campaign can end on a single die roll some would argue that's fair and equitable but make sure your players know that this is the way you're going to handle save or suck abilities that there's a chance that they could be blinded, banished to another plane. I'm about to DM a campaign called Skull and Shackles in Pathfinder, and it's a very pirate's life for me. One of the things it talks about is alternate rules about character maiming.

So characters can lose an eye and have to have an eye patch, or lose a leg and have to have a peg leg, that kind of thing. And this campaign probably doesn't start for another six months or so. I've already let the players know, there a about average chance that if your player lives throughout the entire campaign, that they're going to have some sort of disfiguring scar. Just make sure they know about it. Make sure they know that these save or suck abilities are in your campaign. And I think everybody will live happily ever after. But I promised you four options. So let's go to the fourth option. Modify save or suck

abilities into negative effects over time. Make these single save decision points multiple saving throws. I tried this once in a one shot, and it's actually an interesting variant. I haven't implemented it widely because it does require a DM who can improvise instant effects to effects over time, so it requires you to change things kind of on the fly. It also requires really good note-taking, because once you've adjudicated a spell a certain way, you need to do it the same way, or at least as close to it as you can every time. The idea is simple. Take any spell or ability that would work on a single save, regardless of HP, and you change them. Note 1. Powerful spells like Disintegrate that work against hit points still work as written.

Two, powerful spells that require multiple saving throws to fail still work as written. If there was a spell that required a will save, and then if that failed, then a fort save, those remain intact, works as written. For me, examples would be Petrification, Forced Polymorph, and Instant Death effects. Now the negative effect requires two or more failed saving throws made one per round. I've found three feels like a good compromise to me because that way it gives you a minimum of 18 seconds before suck. Example, petrification. The PC basically gets hit by a Medusa's gaze and fails the save. On the first failed save, they begin turning to stone from feet up.

Maybe the first round after the, or the rounds after the first failed save, they can't move their legs because they're a statue from the knee down. Maybe the next round, they try another saving throw and pass it. So they stay as is. But the third round,

they try it and they fail the second time. Now they've turned to stone all the way up to maybe the mid torso. So they can't retrieve items from packs because it's all turned to stone. They can still move their arms, but that's about it. Third failed saving throw, whether that's the next round or 10 rounds down the line, dead. That simple. Another example would be like a forced polymorph, like the old baleful polymorph spell that turned you into a sheep. On the first failed saving throw, maybe your armor is now stuffed with wool, like a minus 10 foot to your movement speed,

and minus one to all skill checks and attack rolls because you're distracted with all the scratchy wool inside your armor. On the second failed save, your hands start to become hooves, and wool sprouts out of your arms, legs, and head. So maybe you're taking a, I don't know, minus five to attacks and minus 10 to disarm attempts because your thumb is starting to shrink. And on the third fail save, well... Death effects. First failed saving throw, maybe you drop another hit points equal to caster level times 10 and you're automatically staggered no matter what your hit points are. Second failed saving throw, whether that's next round or two rounds down the line, you drop another caster level times 10 hit points, and no matter what hit point level you're at,

you're unconscious. And then the third failed save, dead. Rather than being an instantly dead, one roll failed and done, the character has to fail three saves in order to truly die. What this does is it gives your allies and victims time to counteract the effect. There's going to be unusual situations, by the way, in the one shot that I was DMing where I tried this, I had a character start to turn to stone underwater. And so I said, okay, well, first round, your legs are stone. You're not going to be able to kick to swim. So I'm going to say minus five, your swim check. Second round stone up to the chest. It was a minus 20 to the swim check. And she started sinking like a stone.

Third round, dead. She was an underwater statue. But she had to fail three saves, and no one was able to get to her to reverse the effect in those rounds. And I believe that she failed it. I want to say it was over four or five rounds. Here's the thing. If you adjudicate these save or suck abilities this way for the PCs,

it really needs to be adjudicated the same way for the bad guys. PCs use some sort of petrification attack and the bad guy starts turning to stone. Maybe he has time to reach into his pack, retrieve a stone to flesh scroll and save himself. Or PC casts a petrification attack on a minotaur who because of modifier needs to roll a 12 on a save. The old way, there's a 55% chance that this minotaur is going to turn into a statue instantly, fight over. And there's a 45% chance of, oh, oh, well, I guess I just lost a round of casting. This new way, besides that 55-45% chance, once that's

initially adjudicated, the minotaur might still be in the fight for a while, maybe a long while if he starts rolling well. Even if his legs are stone, he could call for help. He could switch to his bow and start firing away at the PCs. Maybe he has a Dispel Magic wand and uses it to get rid of the effect. If the PCs are smart, maybe they start him turning to stone and they know this will happen over time. They get to cover and wait it out. Maybe eventually he's going to roll a natural one. If you decide to modify Save or Suck to rather than being an instant effect, it'll be effects over time. It can artificially lengthen fights. Like I said, I experimented with it and it's not bad. I think I could use some refinement and tweaking. I mean, giving PCs and

baddies multiple saves against effects reduces what I call the sniper shot out of nowhere effect, where one bad roll means the characters are red smear across the floor. In a lot of gaming systems, there are bottomless pits as traps. And a lot of times the PC will get a reflex or a dexterity save to keep from falling into the pit. And even if they fail that, a lot of times the description of the pit will say, well, they also get an acrobatics check or an athletics check to try to catch themselves on the lip before they fall in. Because the simple fact is, if they fall into a bottomless pit, they are effectively gone. You're giving them two die rolls to prevent the really bad thing from happening. If you modify spells like this, you must let players know during session zero. But if you

decide to do it mid-campaign, you need to discuss it with the players and get feedback first. Allow those players who took these spells to trade them for others. Modifying spells and abilities can dramatically change the feeling of game systems. Whether you change the way spells work or not, if you use save or suck to lock down or take players out of multiple sessions in a row, it just isn't fun for the player. That being said, if the player does something silly and this is the result, so be it. I've told this story on another episode, but in the current campaign I'm running, one spellcasting PC severely overextended herself against a basilisk. The paladin was running up behind her and was trying to help, but was still 40 feet away and

there was no way he'd reach her in time. The basilisk used its petrification ability and she natural wonder save. The table went absolutely silent and the player running the paladin said, I'm casting a spell, paladin sacrifice. He went on to say that this spell has an instantaneous casting time, allows the paladin to take on the negative effects from another player. I didn't remember the spell, so I immediately began looking it up while the spellcaster tried to talk him out of it. I read and it worked as he described it, but it had to be done immediately after the failed save, it was, and the paladin received no saving throw against the effect. All I said is, are you sure? The spellcaster said,

no, he doesn't do that. But the paladin said, yes, I do. I described his character turning into a marble statue with his hand outstretched protectively towards the spellcaster that was affected by this. It was an amazingly dramatic moment, created by that player's choices as a result of a save or suck spell. He went on to play a new character in the campaign while the party attempted to bring his old character back. But the player didn't want that character to come back. He felt like his story had come full circle. So even after the stone-to-flesh spell and everything else, he said his soul doesn't return from the afterlife.

It's a great moment. It's a moment I'll never forget from the DM's chair. Save-or-suck spells can produce unforgettable moments on both sides of the screen. From a game I ran a long time ago, the players lured the big bad into chasing them through a precast symbol of death on the floor. I believe this was D&D 3.5 if I remember right. The players knew the rules because they were veteran gamers and they knew it didn't affect creatures who currently have more than 150 hit points. The wizard cast the spell

and covered the symbol with a blanket that was tied to a rope. They sent the ranger and wizard in to kite the monster to the symbol, basically meaning they were peppering it with spells and arrows, whittling the hit points down and trying to get it to chase them. It chased them into the hallway. They asked me, okay, he's about to hit the symbol. How many hit points does he have left? And I said, I'm sorry, your characters have no idea about such a thing. They were committed at this point and ran over the blanket that had the symbol on it. It didn't trigger for them because it was covered. The wizard and ranger turned and ran, and as soon as they were more than 60 feet away,

the fighter and cleric yanked the rope connected to the blanket. The symbol was exposed. The players were too far away to be affected. The monster had to make a fortitude save or die. And what did I roll? A natural fucking one. Automatic failure. It cost them 5,000 gold pieces and diamonds to cast that spell, but it slayed the final dinosaur boss of a short two to three session adventure. The monster failed to save and life sucked for it for the rest of its very short existence. As a DM, no point in being upset. It was clever. It cost the PCs a lot to use that ability. Listen, if you're running a campaign where every two-bit NPC has save or suck

abilities they can throw at the party, then you're just abusing the capability and likely creating an unfun environment for your players, so you might want to talk to them about it. Saversuck has a valid use in your adventures and campaigns, but every two-bit street gangster shouldn't be able to stinking cloud your players into Pukesville. Vomitin? Spewingham? No, no, no, Hurlsboro. Let's go with Hurlsboro. These days, other than monsters with the innate Saversuck ability like Cockatrice and Banshee, I usually don't use the Saversuck abilities to the extent that their description allows them. I generally change them to damaging and disabling spells, but high stakes fights, boss fights, memorable fights, absolutely I use them.

However, that's because most of the sessions I DM are with experienced players who view character death as an inconvenience rather than a traumatic event. For sessions with newer players who are not used to character death, I'm much more cautious with these abilities. I tend to use them against minions, NPCs, and allies rather than the PCs themselves. So when it comes to save or suck abilities, make them rare and give their use a major impact in your adventure or campaign. When you roll it out against the PCs, make that a real oh shit moment that makes the PCs check up and realize that they are facing real danger here.

Thank you so much for listening. Please listen and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and hopefully soon YouTube. Once again, I want to thank our sponsor, Wireless Networks. The technical explanation for the way they work? They're a contention-based collision avoidance wizardry. This has been Taking 20, Episode 30, Save or Suck. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.