[RPG Theory] The Folly of the Saving Throw

[stevekenson]

One curious aspect of RPG design and play is the idea that everything—every hazard or danger—should be, at least potentially, survivable. You get a saving throw, soak roll, resistance test, or what have you. There’s always a chance, even if it’s a slight one. Thus you have RPGs defining saving throw DCs for things like cyanide (or fictional toxins defined as the deadliest in the world) and damge values for molten lava and nuclear blasts. Now, of course there are genres of fiction (notably comic books) where such things are entirely surviveable by characters with the right powers, but for others is there really something so wrong with having “instant kills” in the game, much as there are in real life?

One brilliantly humorous example of this is the Fire and Brimstone “supplement” (subtitled “The Comprehensive Guide to Lava, Magma, and Superheated Rock) that makes fun of this attitude in RPGs by offering the simple “rule” of: if you fall into lava, you die. Similarly, if you’re jettisoned into space, or dropped from 30,000 feet without a parachute... you die. Is there really a point in calculating and “reality checking” the amount of damage involved per second (round, minute, what have you)?

Similarly, a colleague and I were discussing modeling certain poisons with all sorts of resistance and “attack” rolls and whatnot and I asked: Is this really necessary? Aren’t the effects of a given poison on a given metabolism (as measured by a game trait like Constitution, Stamina, or the like) pretty clear-cut? Barring some kind of medical intervention, many poisons are simply lethal; your Stamina score is just a measure of how long you have to live, or how long medical attention has to arrive before it’s too late. In some cases, the answer is “not very long.”

Am I saying the GM, like nature, should be sometimes cruel and merciless? Perhaps, sometimes. After all, what really creates dramatic tension in fiction is the potential for death at the hands of such dangers. The hero dangles over the lake of lava, but doesn’t fall in and somehow manage to suffer only half damage long enough to swim ashore. The heroine nearly drinks from the poisoned goblet; she doesn’t take a hearty swig but somehow manage to make her save vs. poison.

Ah, but what about the heroic resistance, the one-in-a-million avoidance of certain death? Well, in some heroic genres that should certainly be an option, but I think it would be easier to have an overall “avoid certain death” mechanic than to define every means of “certain” death in detail and build a slight (and often different) chance of survival into each one.

There’s a great deal of derision directed at “killer Gamemasters” who dispense death without mercy, and “railroading” plots that have certain moments where the heroes have no way out, no chance whatsoever, but I wonder whether or not those things add a certain excitement to the game. I wonder if they help to break down the notion that player characters are somehow entitled to their survival and success simply by virtue of being “important,” the kind of “everybody wins” mentality that encourages a “fairness” wherein no one is challenged, and nothing is ever really at risk.

Comments

[robin-d-laws.livejournal.com]

Most improbable results from saving throws (surviving lava or poison) derive from a failure to identify what sort of chance the character should have to avoid the devastating consequence. In the lava example you give the character a chance to avoid falling into the lava, not one to survive once you fall in. Same with the poison: a chance to identify it as toxic with a sense or knowledge roll.

Most players expect some shot at avoiding certain doom, a doctrine that arose in the early days of D&D when it turned out that getting your character summarily killed because you walked into the wrong village or entered the wrong room really sucked. Excitement comes from the suspense of knowing you might die if you fail a roll. Unpreventable doom lacks that key emotional moment, giving you only the disappointment of discovering that you've already died.

[xomec.livejournal.com]

Excitement comes from the suspense of knowing you might die if you fail a roll.

Oh, I agree entirely. Unpreventable doom has no dramatic value. However, the thing with the suspense of knowing a character might die because of a bad roll is, sooner or later—just according to the law of averages—you've got to follow through on that threat, or else it becomes hollow.

[grey-twolf.livejournal.com]

"and “railroading” plots that have certain moments where the heroes have no way out, no chance whatsoever"

Now, it's one thing to me if the players' choices have lead to a assured death kind of situation, quite another if the GM creates a scenario where all choices lead to that kind of situation.

[jediwiker.livejournal.com]

The main problem I see with the "instant death" threat is that a lot of GMs don't quite grasp that they don't need to accurately model every last danger out there. Sure, there are caterpillars in South America that can cause paralysis and anaphylactic shock, but putting them in the adventure doesn't make the adventure any more exciting ... unless it's there *specifically* to create a "ticking clock" scenario (find the right medicine and get it to the victim before he/she expires).

In fact, in my experience, putting that kind of threat in adventures only teaches players to behave like PCs. ("Before we go into the empty room, we throw in several flask of oil, then set them on fire. After the fire burns out, we blow flour dust in, to see if anything is moving on the floor or walls. Finally, I put my mirror through the doorway on a stick. Assuming the mirror isn't instantly disintegrated, I use it to check the ceiling for signs of monsters or other potentially dangerous activity.")

Another problem, though, is the binary condition between "succeed" and "fail." PCs fighting on a swaying rope bridge is dramatic, but only if they have to make checks to avoid falling off the bridge and into the lava. If the check is too low, it's not scary. If it's too high, then the PCs run the risk of just plain dying--unless, of course, you introduce either a "partial exposure" rule, or you give characters yet another check to make to see whether or not they catch themselves on something before they are immersed in lava.

Really, I think I would go with something similar to the Warhammer FRP "Fate Point" mechanic, where instant death isn't fatal, but it does put the character at a temporary disadvantage. ("You fall of the bridge, but your foot catches a trailing loop of rope. You're suspended, upside down, about 120 feet over the lava, and about 10 feet below the bridge. As the fight goes on above you, you're swaying back and forth, and you're not sure the rope is going to hold much longer.")

JD

[xomec.livejournal.com]

Another problem, though, is the binary condition between "succeed" and "fail." PCs fighting on a swaying rope bridge is dramatic, but only if they have to make checks to avoid falling off the bridge and into the lava. If the check is too low, it's not scary. If it's too high, then the PCs run the risk of just plain dying--unless, of course, you introduce either a "partial exposure" rule, or you give characters yet another check to make to see whether or not they catch themselves on something before they are immersed in lava.

Sure, and that's actually how I tend to run games, but it begs the question: how many saves do you get before you take a dip in molten rock? Two? Three? More? If there is a point of no return, it has to come sooner or later, and will eventually crop up in play. If there isn't one, then what's the point?

[kosmic.livejournal.com]

In my old AD&D 1e campaign, we had a solution for that. You're suspended in a death trap and halve a limited amount of rounds to save yourself. How many? Let the player roll a d6, and that was how many rounds they had. Basically we would let the player roll to set their own death timer.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

Similarly, if you’re jettisoned into space, or dropped from 30,000 feet without a parachute... you die.

The Free Fall Research Page (http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffallers.html)

The record seems to be approximately 22,000 feet, so perhaps that's still accurate. ;)

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

You're start to channel me now, which, I suppose, is only fair.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Is there really a point in calculating and “reality checking” the amount of damage involved per second (round, minute, what have you)?

Yes, because not every victim is a normal, mortal, young adult human being. Most nonhuman PC races are set apart by resistances or immunities to stuff that gimps humans, and even plain vanilla real world games like T2K for example can have animals with diverse capacities for "certain death".

[xomec.livejournal.com]

Yes, because not every victim is a normal, mortal, young adult human being.

And I copped to that when I said "there are genres of fiction (notably comic books) where such things are entirely surviveable by characters with the right powers". Even then, there are lots of hazards that are (or should be) fairly instant death to most living things in a setting, barring the effect of supernatural resistance (which falls under the aforementioned genre).

I still don't think, for example, it's necessary to know the precise damage of being immersed in lava in a "vanilla real world" game.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I still don't think, for example, it's necessary to know the precise damage of being immersed in lava in a "vanilla real world" game.

It's not, but my point is "vanilla real world" is a small minority of games played, and the subset of vanilla real world games played under rulesets designed only for such is smaller still, so the scope of this truism is really too small to be compelling to me.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I've had some much needed sleep and seen the product (http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=XRPLAVA) that doubtless provoked the train of thought.

What about considerations like relics, artifacts, plutonium, the Andromeda strain, or other Maguffin surviving the lava? Is the altar inside the evil temple made of evil black basalt and obsidian instantly destroyed when the lava pours over the ramparts? Will the updraft from the lava keep helicopters from swooping to the rescue at the last minute? How close can we get for how long? Can I as a GM re-use set pieces from the movie VOLCANO in a game of a given tone and realism?

These are special cases, but there are so many of them that PCs being dipped directly in lava are *also* a special case by comparison. So if saving throws are what you have to work with, might as well include that one as well, with a suitably unreachable figure.

[anaka.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the end of Hudson Hawk, when Bruce Willis and Andie McDowell escape from the exploding castle with their lives, exhaustion, and ripped clothing to see them through (oh, and a model of Da Vinci's flying machine they abscond with). They glide down to the little Italian village and who do they see but Danny Aiello, riding on a mule -- previously seen trapped in a car hurtling off a cliff only to burst into a giant fireball.

Bruce: "You're alive!"

Andie: "But you went off the cliff!"

Danny: "Airbags, can you believe it?!?"

Bruce: "But the car exploded!"

Danny: "In car sprinkler system! Can you fucking believe it?!?"

Bruce, looking nonplussed. "Yeah... yeah, I can!"

Everyone hugs and they all have an espresso. The end.

[gamerguy.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I know what you're getting at - when does the threat become hollow - but I don't really know how to avoid it becoming hollow without the possibility of a sudden showstopper (character death) or how to create the illusion that it isn't hollow when both the players and the GM know that it really is.

[gwelt.livejournal.com]

Two things came to mind reading your post the first was an episode of Star Trek when Kirk admitted that he reprogramed a holodeck simulation in star fleet academy because he didn't believe there were such things as no win situations.

The other thing that came to mind was my first time playing Call of Cthullu. The GM said, "Don't become too attached to your charactor because they are'nt going to last long." Two things I learned from that game: Know when to run away and throwing an innocent into the path of a deep one will give you time to escape.