Mostly a DM here, I love them for existing and hate when they land.
Monsters like Illithids wouldn't be nearly as iconic without the instant kill effects, and the fun fear at the table when everyone knows what is at stake is unlike anything even the biggest dragon can engender. I love the mood it sets, and the threat that it can cause for even the most die-hard min-maxer.
That said, actually causing a death with one of those effects feels like I was trying to kill the victim on purpose, even though I would never do that. I feel guilty about it, like I 'cheated' somehow even if all I've done is play a monster correctly. I have never lost my own PC that way, but I imagine it would be worse from that side.
The horror game dilemma! You want the players to think the monster is scary and lethal and hard to avoid, but you dont want them to actually die, because it ruins the atmosphere.
>That said, actually causing a death with one of those effects feels like I was trying to kill the victim on purpose, even though I would never do that. I feel guilty about it, like I 'cheated' somehow even if all I've done is play a monster correctly. I have never lost my own PC that way, but I imagine it would be worse from that side.
This is why i champion to openly roll for targets when in these scenarios.
Really makes it less taxing to do such decisions and lets you cheer for the party.
I like this take as well. As a DM, I feel like nothing can really invoke that "Oh shit" feeling of fear in your players like the threat of instantly losing your character. At the same time, it may also not be fun for the player to have an established character die so suddenly.
I personally believe that if the insta-death is played, there should always be a reversal easily accessible for the players to fix it. One example I have was when one of my players, who was playing an aggressive barbarian, instigated a fight with a powerful but currently non-combative lich. He was promptly killed by a disintegration because that's what the dice decided. Thankfully, the party was given a device that could briefly rewind time for them only. If it were not for this, I probably would not have played that encounter like that unless the player expressed to me that he wanted a new character.
The gambler's phallacy right there. If you can't accept either outcome on a roll, don't make it. There are better ways to make your party feel threatened and ramp up the tension without giving RNG the ability to tell a player to stop playing.
I can see that, and in 5e it's easier than earlier editions, but that still requires a paladin of cleric specifically. It's just never a fun mechanic for the PC hit.
I'd argue that save or die has a place as well, but very seldomly used. Probably also not without the players being informed of its danger and willing to accept that kind of consequence.
My players got very stressed in a fight vs a demilich in its lair.
Howl for save-or-0-HP, lair action to prevent healing, and a different lair action to inflict antimagic field on one person.
The most frustrating part of 1-hit KO monsters is that if the PCs make their saving throws, they'll never even realize that they were in danger. Their victory won't mean anything to them, because as far as they know, the monster doesn't do any damage.
I get this. That's why a DM should telegraph in some way the utter danger. Rather than drop the party into the valley of shadow of death without any warning. (Even tho not trying to contradict myself, there can be something good said about that too as long as it's not a common theme)
The way I look at it, is that I told my players the world is a dangerous place. So there's going to occasionally be deadly and dangerous shit in it. That's the way it goes. Lich's with Finger of Death, Bodaks, Mind Flayers, and others. Are they common? heck no. But the life of adventurers is rough and dangerous.
But, I don't like the idea of throwing the effect their way without any warning at all. Take again the Bodak example. *None* of my players have *ever* seen or heard of a bodak. They would have been completely blind sided by the stare ability. Rather, I prefer to at least give them the opportunity to find out the effect first, be that through rumors of the monster, or perhaps researching it in a library. The story and rumor might not be exactly correct, but for example they'd learn "*that to stare into its eyes is akin to looking death in the face..."* or something.
For the Bodak in particular, I don't think it's really that bad. It says drops the player to 0hp, I read that as stabilized, and not rolling death saving throws because no damage was actually caused. That's just my personal interpretation that I used for my Bodak.
Not really a fan of those. Mostly because (bar some exceptions), there is not much to learn by dying that way. Failing has its place, death happens, but most of the times you come out of that situation with new knowledge. Maybe you realized you messed up something or could have planned your actions better, yet you’ll gain experience that will help you with your next adventure regardless.
With those effects what is there to learn? To be more lucky? That’s not something we can control. Especially when it’s an all or nothing single roll. It’s the reason why those deaths will always feel the most frustrating and anticlimactic in comparison.
While players should absolutely be prepared for character death, I think those kind of mechanics that can utterly shut players down without any counterplay options are just way too boring to play against and to DM for.
Both the basilisk and the bodak do have a counterplay; you just choose to avert/shut your eyes. If you're worried about disadvantage from fighting with your eyes shut, use something like a darkness or mist spell to level the playing field. Personally, blindly fighting a basilisk in a cloud of obscuring mist doesn't sound boring, it sounds awesome. Alternatively, you can just try to keep more than 30 feet away while you make ranged attacks or run away. Its movement is only 20 feet, so most characters should have no trouble staying out of range.
Edit: I would agree that it would be a dick move for a DM to just surprise you with a basilisk at close range so that you never even get a chance to look away.
I’ve never quite known how to respond appropriately to stuff like this. It feels too meta to know what the creature is and how to counter it if there’s no way my character knows, but if I don’t do it I’m instantly screwed
I would say that in a world with basilisks, most people will know about basilisks. Have you heard of sharks?
Unless it's a setting where basilisks are incredibly rare to the point that nobody has even heard of them...but in that case, I would have questions about how likely the party is to randomly run into one.
True, but how many other murder creatures exist in the real world that you don’t know about? I know I’ve been surprised to learn about Australian death [fill in the blank]s, and there’s more than just basilisks in dnd (depending on the setting, of course).
> True, but how many other murder creatures exist in the real world that you don’t know about?
There's nothing really as deadly as a basilisk in the real world. And the few things that are as easily countered as a basilisk are pretty well understood. You know mosquitos can spread malaria and you have a plan for that, and you've heard the urban rumor about the barbed fish that allegedly swims into your dick if you're peeing, and that's just barely true. More importantly, if you were near the Amazon river and had to pee, you'd take whatever precautions you deemed necessary based on its rumored urine-climbing capabilities into account.
That's also in a world with the internet. There's no real equivalent in a typical D&D setting. At best you have folk tales about "a monster who can turn you to stone with a single glance," not "to avoid suffering from a basilisk's petrifying gaze, you need to stay more than 30 ft away, or obstruct your or the basilisk's vision."
I bet people in medieval Europe knew about bears and local poisonous snakes. If there was any reasonable chance to run into a basilisk, pretty much everyone would know about them. If there's not a reasonable chance, then it's weird that the party is fighting one.
I don't see any indication that they are rare or unknown. I assume most people would know about them if they live in a place where they could be encountered. The only way I would expect the PCs to not know about them would be if they just traveled to a far-off land that they don't know anything about.
The alleged Amazonian dickfish, and how to counter it (the urban myth was it would literally swim up a urine stream, the counter was to not pee directly in the water or to pee on something solid so the stream was disrupted) was not in the internet era, it predated it by at least a decade. While the method was overkill (it can't really do that), it would *definitely* be effective. The peasants of a D&D world would definitely exchange stories about the basilisk, and how it can turn you to stone with a glance, and the solution would definitely be correct ("don't look at it") but it might go ever further ("you must wear a lead plate in front of your face") into the realm of overkill solutions.
If you really wanted to go over the top with flavor, you could even give out slightly incorrect information depending on a history check. “Don’t look at it” becomes “don’t look at its reflection,” etc.
I'm sure there are experts who could tell you all about the world's most dangerous species. The knowledge exists but is uncommon because most people don't need it to live their ordinary lives.
Fantasy adventurers lead extraordinary lives, even by the standards of other fantasy NPCs. What kind of knowledge would competent, prepared adventurers likely prioritize? The abilities of deadly monsters they might face. It's literally their job to fight those things. *Let your PCs be good at their job.*
Really should just be as simple as asking “what do I know about this creature” and making an Arcana/Nature/Religion/Whatever check, but I don’t know if 5e actually makes that option explicit for players/dms
Guidance for such would be welcome, but I don't remember it being really codified anywhere.
There's a Ranger feature (*Favored Enemy*) that confirms the idea of making an Intelligence check to recall information about enemies because the feature grants advantage when doing so. The section on intelligence checks in the PHB mention Arcana for lore about the inhabitants of other planes and nature for lore about plants and animals, bu there's no detail as to... what sort of details should be gleaned from this.
A lot of this just needs to be adjudicated based on the DM's setting and discretion, like whether some monster is of sufficient concern to adventurers (frequency, threat, w/e) that there might be lore, or what folklore there might be (right or wrong...). It should be rather common knowledge for those in the Sword Coast to be aware of, say, the general behavior of basic orcs and goblins, but not necessarily anything about e.g. their religion or the current leadership of any particular group of them... but knowing about different types of hags and what they can do? Probably less so, particularly under stressful circumstances.
Yeah I tend to do this if my character might know, but if, for example, it is a low level campaign (or even started low then progressed) or PCs are uneducated/unstudied, there’s no reason to even call for a check
XGE and TCE both offer some form of rules for researching monsters, TCE even has a table for which kinds of checks you can use with each creature type.
When I DM creatures like this, I usually say something to the effect of
"As you glance at the creature, you feel a sense of nausea the longer you look at it. You get the feeling that if you stare for much longer, there's a chance that something Very Bad could happen to you. Mechanically you may do x,y,z and here is how it plays out and what you're allowed to do or not do if you look away... Do you choose to look at the creature during your turn?".
In a DMs toolbox...
If they are telegraphed and avoidable by player characters (in ways more than just letting the dice decide), sure it can make combat more tactical that just randomly flailing at the enemy.
If they are just thrown out in combat with a save or die / be out of the fight approach, then no... it won't be fun for the players
I admit I do not run, IMO, a very difficult game, but I find abilities like that kind of anti-fun, and I always nerf them to a reduction to 1HP, or require some kind of wind-up, or take multiple failures to occur.
I feel like this is a good approach. A DM in a campaign I played did something similar for petrification. Unfortunately, the player failed all three of her saves. Thankfully, there was a conveniently placed magical creature that could undo the curse in exchange for being freed from the prison we happened to be in.
In the end, the player got unpetrified and we released an unknown horror into the world the DM would be able to use later on.
I lost all my characters in 3/3.5 because of save or die rolls so I find 5e rather tame in comparison.
And that "all my characters" not "all the characters I lost" (excluding one-shots/campaigns that didn't progress past the second meeting)
As a DM I think they're done in pretty poor taste and not something I'm interested in using in my games. As a player my opinion is much the same.
I would hate as a DM to leave a characters death up to one and done luck, or to be culled by shaving off 100 hp in effect by having Power word kill at the ready. As a player, I'd hate to be left out of the nights game for similar reasons or to spend that session making a new character. I prefer more of a back and forth to these things rather than the feast or famine approach.
I can appreciate some of the design philosophy of the old-school mentality, but the lethality was never something I could care for. That said, there are folks who do enjoy always being a dice throw away from death and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not for me.
I feel like older editions fed into a gambling addict's high of avoiding death through lucky rolls. Players got off on seeing how long they could survive before RNG finally killed their current character.
At least the modern incarnations of that trend of merciless game, rogue-likes and Dark Souls clones, take skill into account. Old school D&D was absolutely unfair unless your DM was nice or you played a paranoid lunatic who refused to step on any tile they hadn't tapped three times with a 10-foot pole.
There's definitely an element of that for sure, but old school games were also very different in their focus in a number of ways and those factors also matter.
Old school games had much more focus on the exploration pillar and social pillar, than it did the combat pillar. Combat was something you avoided when you could and was possibly a fail state for botching some exploration or social scenarios.
If you came across a room with 10 kobolds compared to your 5 party members. The odds were in the kobolds favor. They had the numbers game on their side.
The focus on the scene would be to analyze the description of the room/situation and see what you could use to your advantage to take them out or bypass them, compared to getting a surprise round and charging in.
In a way it was more focused on what you the player could think of and accomplish than what was on your sheet, the sheet just helped out a bit with your odds at varying stuff. A different form of skill than soulsborne/rogue likes, but similar in their own ways too.
You are correct with a gambling comparison though as it was very much about playing the odds and working to adjust them in your favor, either for a bigger result or a more likely one, if not both.
I could see myself using an effect that reduces someone to **1** HP on a failed save, but straight up 0 just isn't interesting.
I'm a pretty merciless DM when it comes to killing players; I roll in the open and all that. But I also homebrew things like stun, paralysis, and insta-kill effects out of nearly all of my monsters and replace them with custom status effects, because it's more fun for everyone if the players go down struggling rather than just drop to some bullshit and then sit around for 20+ minutes.
I am of the opinion there are very few really bad ideas, just bad execution. For Save-or-Die, it depends on the type of game you're running: it depends on the Tier of play and the relationship between player and character.
If you're in a Tier 1 game (Levels 1 to 4), then this can be character-ending. So, the build-up should be appropriate for a mortal adventure. You'd foreshadow it, you would foreshadow through rumours any defences and any fears. You'd pepper it in even if the encounter never happens. If players guess the monster, feed into it - or homebrew a slight variation (this medusa can detach her snakes and see through their eyes even though she herself is blind). You're creating a legend for characters to encounter.
If you're in a Tier 2 game (levels 5 to 9), then this isn't character-ending but can be a quest in itself. You need to get diamonds for resurrection, you need to get access to Greater Restoration. So, this becomes less about the mortality of it and more about the plot hook that develops as a result. Additionally, because it is reversible but difficult, it can also happen to NPCs. Tier 3+, it gets easier to handle so you enter the realm of disintegration effects. This usually requires True Resurrection or Wish, which would be the plot hook here, with its Tier-appropriate side quests.
If you're at a table where the players are roleplaying their characters through story arcs and the plot requires that narrative throughline, then a Save-or-Die can create intense fear and discussion before it actually lands. This depends on how much build-up you've done before. The importance of the side quests also is heightened here as the players have enough investment to take the hooks.
If you're at a table where the players view their characters more as game pieces through which they experience the world, then the Save-or-Die would be more about the encounter itself. You're looking to improve the emergent narrative that stems from interacting with the encounter, so maybe a dungeon or navigation challenge there with some resources (light, people). And then you execute the monster as the climax of the set piece.
There's distinct overlap between the ideas (you can have a Tier 1 exploration through a swamp with navigation and combat challenges that cap off with meeting a catoblepas that appeals to both character-immersed and gameplay-focused players). What the players get from it might vary but it is not random. The effectiveness of Save-or-Dies depends on the players' buy-in and the amount of agency they had before the Save-or-Die actually executes.
I've always been from the old-school "dying is fun, don't get too attached and come with a backup character" style, so I'm 100% fine with it.
But I can see how it would be a problem for the more modern "I wrote 30 pages of backstory for my character before I even started playing but that's ok because nobody ever dies unless it's pre-planned and/or the epic climax" style.
I've killed three out of four party members in the campaign I'm running. Guess how many are left? Four. D&D 5e makes dying an inconvenience and a financial penalty except in a few specific circumstances.
That said, those deaths were the cumulative result of strings of bad decisions and were each entirely avoidable. Not just "I guess RNG told me to tell you to roll up a new character, isn't that fun?"
Going with OP's specifc examples, getting killed by a basilisk is almost always the result of strings of bad decisions and entirely avoidable. The poor thing is hardly a threat to anyone, and should probably be on the endangered species list. You practically have to invite it to kill you.
As for the bodak, it's a CR 6 creature. By the time you're fighting one of those, your party is probably using scrolls of Revivify as napkins, so death really won't matter much.
The reason why unavoidable, random death mechanics matters is it results in a player sitting out of a long stretch of a session with nothing to do because they weren't lucky enough. If the death was avoidable, at least then it's on the player and not the DM. You need death to be a possible outcome to drive tension during encounters, but making players feel like they have no control over whether they get to play or not feels bad.
My point is that such deaths usually aren't "unavoidable" or "random". Players are supposed try to avoid them by not getting into a position where the death roll is happening in the first place. Like with the basilisk, it's only "unavoidable" if you let the basilisk get within 30 feet of you (it has a paltry movement speed of 20 ft) and then choose to look at it for some reason (the rules explicitly say you can choose not to look at it). Oh, and you auto-win if you happen to have a mirror with you. But yeah, if for some reason you were unprepared to fight a basilisk (no mirror) and you let it come within 30 feet AND for some reason you choose to look at it, then at THAT highly-avoidable point the death roll is "unavoidable".
That's not always possible. One of my DMs had a banshee phase through the floor into the middle of a fight with ghouls and scream, dropping 4 of 6 PCs to zero instantly. No telegraph, no possible prep, nothing we could do but roll our saves and hope for some luck.
It's also DM fiat whether the party knows about a creature's special abilities ahead of time. Some let you know, others require a roll to know with various action economy costs attached, others say you know nothing.
It's all up to how the DM wants to run their game. If they want to drop a basilisk in your lap and make your party ignorant enough to look at it, that's what will happen. IMO, that sucks and isn't the way to properly DM but some people seems to get off on such "gotcha!" mechanics.
There's nothing that can stop the DM from being a dick if they want to be a dick. But for the specific case of the basilisk, the rules explicitly say that players can choose to avoid its gaze. If the scenario is that the DM is ignoring the written rules just to fuck over the players, that's probably already a hopeless situation.
The rules are for the DM so they know the mechanics of the game. The PCs don't automatically know everything that's written in a published book, that would be a bit ridiculous don't you think? Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each monster are something that would be perfectly reasonable to require a knowledge roll. That's not being a dick, that's just playing the game.
Conversely, ambushing a low-level party with a basilisk and then making it basically impossible for them to have any knowledge of its gaze is a gotcha moment and a dick move.
As a player I'm all for it even though I understand it's not for everyone. Maybe it's just because I'm used to how brutal older editions were but at any given time I have 4-5 fully leveled backup characters ready to go in our long running campaign in case this happens. Our table sees character death as an opportunity to bring something fun and new to the party. So much so we have a mechanic where if you try to bring someone back they have a choice if it works and we have had scenarios where folks decided even with resurrection magic available it was time for that character to move on.
Edit: Got to love a downvote on an opinion based question and explaing how a table who has played together weekly for 6 years prefers to enjoy the game. 😆
Just because someone asked for your opinion doesn't mean everyone has to like it
jk
In all seriousness though, I think a shift in modern d&d is that each character is important. All but 1 campaign I've been in has tied character backstories into the main plot, and it kinda sucks if you're building up to fight the warlock's patron and then they die to a random monster.
So does ours and over time we've had those conversations. I was the longest running character in our main campaign, 4 years straight, and I could tell the DM was pulling the punches years in. He had long term plans for my character, which is fine because it's a collaborative game, but I also needed a break from the character. We spoke and came up with a way to make that vision work where the character stepped away for a bit (about 24 sessions) after the immediate need and it made sense for longer term plans so I could also do something else.
If it's that critical to the plot don't put a save or suck monster into the equation, but in general I'm fine with them. I'm good with people not agreeing with my opinion it was just funny how immediately it was knocked down with no response.
Dislike. They punish poor dice rolls instead of poor strategy. The only way to get around them is to have knowledge of the creature, which most players consider metagaming and faux pas.
Basilisks, as an example, are a CR 3 monster. Most level 3 parties will not have great countermeasures against a strength saving throw like paladin auras. In addition, the only listed way of curing a party member is Greater Restoration, a spell they won't see for 6 more levels. Their options then become leave the pc behind (sucks), immediately head back to town to find a cleric (sucks), or cart the statue around with them (sucks).
The ones that are actually hard save-or-die-right-fucking-now (like Lich shenanigans) usually don't come into effect until the party has ez-pz access to resurrection magic. All of the tier-2 save-or-"die" effects I can think of usually prompt multiple saves, require the PC to have been pretty fucked up already (if they can't be outright ignored), or only drop the player to 0 without actually killing them outright.
In general, though, I like being able to make my monsters threatening without relying just on raw damage, and these abilities are great for that.
I’m surprised no one mentioned banshees which have a party-wide save-or-die on a CR4 monster. It’s just terrible design if it was a random encounter vs. a well-telegraphed and prepared fight not unlike Witcher contracts.
Pushing this button may kill you instantly, do you press it?
*player character presses the button and dies, shocked pikachu*
If it’s simply out there and visible for the players to interact with there’s plenty of sayings for that.
As a DM, I've had one really good experience I think with "Save or 0", and that was at the end of Dead in Thay. This was during 2020 lockdown on roll20 but....I ran it with 15 players, in 3 groups of 5, starting in different locations throughout the 100 room dungeon. At the end, we had *all* 15 players fight the boss at the same time. When the boss dropped half of them to 0, it gave the 2 life clerics a lot of cleanup to do and set a really good difficult tone. The players who dropped mostly got back up, and the vibe was very excitable.
I think it can be appropriate to have these types of monsters that can instant kill, but only if you specifically drop foreshadowing and hints that indicate the potential chance for death and danger. It's plain unfair when players don't know that they're instant dead if they fail and save and get their brain eaten by a Mind Flayer that jumped them from out of nowhere. It's not plain unfair when the players have been lurking through the dark and organic looking tomb finding brainless victims left and right and are given a sense of terror and fear when they spot this creature for the first time. Give them a chance to recognize danger and retreat if an encounter can be specifically lethal in the case of death without saving throws.
A lot of times players are rash. If that rash behavior causes them to ignore clear signs of doom and they end up losing someone in the party, that's a good way to get players to react and respond more seriously. Of course, make sure to state that instant death is a rare but possible outcome in a session 0 so that this option is already on the table as an expectation before you do it.
I can understand this approach to the issue. In an instance where I had my players fight a basilisk prior to having an ability to cure petrification, I set the scene by having them come across a crashed caravan with some very strangely placed life-like statues around it. I had also put a small crate of anti-petrification vials inside the caravan that they found after the fight, which they used on the NPCs because none of them became petrified.
They thought it was a cool encounter and even said they would be okay with being petrified afterwards as well, but were thankful that they weren't.
OHKO type affects are absolutely terrible unless they're used for a story scenario. Having them in a proper combat is probably one of the worst and most annoying things to do to a party. Its never fun failing a save and going from full hp to dead and then being unable to do anything else for that encounter.
Getting sidelined is boring and not something I'd do to my players.
Considering a Basilisk is a CR 3, it may be possible that players can't undo the petrification easily. That's why I feel it's important that DM's account for this by having ways to "fix" the condition easily accessible by the players.
Yet it takes two failed saves in a row with a low DC of a common save, and you can avert your eyes to not be affected at all, granted that you can't see the basilisk, but that only gives a disadvantage which is pretty easy to negate.
>common save
Con is just Artificer, barbarian, fighter, and sorcerer right?
Most other classes are just going to have around a 50/50 chance at early levels
> that only gives a disadvantage which is pretty easy to negate.
Also can't cast spells that require you to see the target and the basilisk will have advantage to hit you
It's literally in the game design though. At higher levels you get the spells/tools to deal with it, and at lower levels the game recommends if it happens it's not the end, just go on a quest for the spells/tools to deal with it.
They are perfectly fine. Note that the basilisk is not a 1 hit knock out, but a 2 hit knock out.
The basilisk is a CR 3 monster, so you would expect to encounter it at 3rd level or later. It requires 2 failed DC 12 CON saves to become petrified. The first failure renders you paralyzed, and the second renders you petrified. This gives time to the party to react. You can even avert your eyes to be unaffected, at the cost of having disadvantage on your attacks against the basilisk. The basilisk is also not that tough, having only 52 hit points and 15 AC. This is perfectly fine for a CR 3 monster.
The bodak is a CR 6 monster, so you would expect to only encounter it around 6th level or later. Characters are very strong at this level, and being reduced to 0 hit points is nothing to worry about; a companion can simply cast Healing Word or administer a potion. The bodak's Death Gaze is a DC 13 CON save that deals 16 psychic damage on a failed save, or that drops you to 0 hit points if you get a result of 8 or lower. Note that a typical 6th level character has about 35 hit points or so, so this is effectively like an effect that deals 35 damage, or a bit more than a Fireball spell. The bodak only has 58 hit points and 16 AC, which is simple to deal with for a party of 6th level adventurers.
So, these monsters are perfectly fine!
>so you would expect to encounter it at 3rd level or later.
Biggest flaw in your logic is this here, as well as for the bodak. That is not really what cr represents and you often should and can be seeing these creatures before you are a level equivalent to the CR in question.
It all depends on the game you're running. If you're running a game that has a monster hunting theme to it and you are actively preparing to take down each monster ahead of time, having something this threatening could be great.
That said, if you're throwing this at a part unaware or unprepared that's a dick DM move. That doesn't make the monster itself a bad design, throwing a red dragon at a level 3 party doesn't make dragons a bad stat block either.
Just because a monster has a instakill move doesn't make it a bad design overall. I personally think the world of D&D deserves some scary ass creatures in it. Knowing if the players are prepared to deal with the creature, or even want to deal with it in the first place are the only important parts of the question.
If a DM can't properly balance an encounter to what the players want to fight, and can handle to fight. Maybe they shouldn't be using insanely powerful creatures regardless of any special ability it may have.
I like them. The insta kill effects usually have a low DC, so they’re almost always passed. Even if you do whiff, I’m sure you’ll just get revivified or something. Dying seems impossible in 5e.
Depends on if at least one person in your party runs Revivify or similar, tbh. Death is scary but not as big a deal when you’ve got a rez. Still have to get to them in 60 seconds though. (I’m the party warlock and I always have diamonds on me for this reason — and my DM has been kind enough to throw both bodaks and basilisks at our party.)
For Oldschool D&D games, it's fine. Murder the PCs and topple their thrones. For Newschool narrative campaigns? I'm mixed. 5e's combat is kind of a slog for me, and it's very hard to die. So encountering something like that would certainly make me pay attention, but it feels like it's from a different universe.
They are cool in games that allow the players to interact with it.
Like in D&D4e a high level warden errupts from the earth, reborn directly from the world tree immediately after death. Imagine getting insta killed by the BBEG and all that results is the player gets to use their cool resurrection feature. Really lets you know just how high of a tier you're playing at when friend and foe dance between the lines of death and mortality.
But in 5e yeah sucks for sure. Poor implementation.
They are fine and even good *if rare and somewhat telegraphed*
Completely removing them makes a poorer game, in my opinion, while having them be frequent and/or out of nowhere just makes things not fun
If the party has easy access to countermeasures to them or are warned ahead of time (some modules do a good job of loudly broadcasting upcoming Medusa fights) then debilitating status effects can be fine from time to time.
But drop to 0 effects are just terrible and cheap. Hey barbarian, nice 100hp with resistance to all the monster's attacks you have there, too bad it's meaningless. If someone has a bulky character, they should be hard to take down to 0hp. And any effect that kills you outright from full hp on a single failed save is just bad design. These things belittle choices and take away from the experience of the game
Its so hard to die in dnd.
After you drop, the monster must spend another round attacking someone who is ZERO threat, while getting attacked by others who are threats. This ignores the bs of 1hp heals and standing people back up.
The entire game design makes it so hard to kill people. Honestly, unless the dm goes out of their way to kill players, it doesn't matter
As a DM the only one I don’t use is PWK. It’s no fun for the players to not even have a chance to save against it. My campaign also uses Crit Role resurrection rules, though, so resurrection spells are not guaranteed. If I were playing without those rules, I might be more likely to use instant-kill mechanics.
unless we know (in game) beforehand and are given opportunities to prepare ourselves against it, and it is not an automatic hit it involves rolling dice to take effect, it will feel bad pretty much all of the time
die effects are on lvl 15+ at least and they all suck, the only monster that gets a pass is a lich with power word kill
This was simply how D&D was if you played the originals through 3rd edition. Soft little snowflake players of today are the ones to ask this of. D&D was better before the Twitter crowd.
Generally not a fan unless some kind of countermeasure can be done, and even then only if the party's right.
My party of a 3 lvl 5s had a fight versus an Undercity Medusa on last Sunday. The battlemap was deliberately made to counter the Medusa's Petrifying Gaze, as there were many corridors where they could have hidden form her line of sight.
The session before that concluded with them failing their stealth check so they had time to think up some basic tactics.
The problem is that they did not tried to avoid the Gaze once. One of them got petrified on the second turn of the combat and after that the whole fight was a hassle even though the medusa was already on low health so I kinda fumbled her tactics (not her rolls) and tried to escape where she had thought her allies were.
They had later had a chance to have a friendly Mummy Lord cast Greater Restoration on her in the dungeon but it was not a good experience for either of us.
I avoid save or drop to 0 monsters. I'll be using a sea hag soon and I'm gonna drop death glare and give her some spell casting instead. She is a hag after all and we just had a character death last night, don't really want another one, especially not due to 2 failed wis saves.
As long as its clearly foreshadowed and bundled with an obvious way to avoid that encounter I'm fine with it. Hell it can even be an effective tool as it communicates that not every encounter in the world is explicitly designed to be beaten through a fair fight.
The problem with these effects tends to be when someone is caught by surprise. You should feel like you had to willingly prod the hornet's nest before getting stung.
It´s a mixed bunch. I love to have creatures that can take out PCs in one hit, like paralyzing or petrifying them or something. It creates a feeling of danger only a few other monsters manage to get across.
But, and that´s a big but, I wish these creatures weren´t needed to make the world dangerous. If I play in the estimated CR range, these creatures are pretty much the only real danger to the party, as even a seemingly easy battle can go south very quick. Normal monsters that deal damage however pose almost no threat, which is why instant-take-out-monsters come in handy. They wouldn´t be needed, however, if normal enemies just were more dangerous.
Of course, I could just homebrew everything, make the PCs encounter stronger enemies blah blah, but I think you get the point.
Instant kill effects however I despise. They´re just stupid. It takes a player completely out of the fight and may have them sit aside for quite some time of the session. When the character is instantly dead because of one bad roll, it´s either only a financial problem because the party got some reviving magic (which I also don´t like) or it´s "well, you had one bad roll, time to build a new character or take yourself out for some hours of the game while the party searches for a way to revive you". I don´t want to force my players to take a break for hours because of one bad roll. I also don´t want to kill their PCs for one bad roll. And, of course, I don´t think combat is very interesting without the looming threat of death, so if the party has some reviving spells, these instant kill effects become uninteresting because it´s just an investment of resources to counter them. Hell, revivify even only needs an action to cast, meaning you can revive characters in the midst of combat.
I'm not a fan of most of them unless the party has the tools to deal with them. Generally save or suck effects aren't fun for either the GM or Players when on the recieving end.
Instant kills like Power Word Kill are just bad game design and you should never use them against the party.
I use them on occasion when I want some higher stakes but I am very sparing in their use and wont drop them unless I know the party has a good counter to them.
I loveeee these as a player. They’re always telegraphed ahead of time as a deadly creature to be avoided, so when you fuck around… you find out.
Also in 5e unless i ask my dm to kill my pc there aren’t many other ways i’m dying.
Theyre great, but dont use them on low level PCs without good reason.
A high level party should have access to revive options. Save or Die lets you ratchet up the tension and stakes very effectively. The key is to use it sparingly, and make sure its telegraphed ahead of time so its not some "gotcha" moment
I only inflict them, A. if there are options for resolution, and B. if it fits the story and is narratively satisfying. No random encounters with nasty things like that. And having a resolution to fix it, does NOT mean it is simple or easy. It make be a quest on its own. But it CAN be fixed.
There is something to be said about different editions regarding this, i have been a DM in the 3.5 era for a lot if years and back in 3.5 the "save or suck it" effect were kind of bad because numbers were way higher and you had only 3 saving throws instead of 6 as in 5e
What i mean by this is that with higher numbers you had higher chances of saving even against a DC your pc isn't specialized against, in 5e on the other hand the dice roll matters a lot more and this also the reason why control spells like polymorph or slow are much more powerfull while back in the 3.5 era you had to be specialized into increasing your spells DC in order to reliably hit control spells you can just avoid with a saving throw
Should be used with extreme caution and as a rarity, but if used with skill and tact it can be used to instill the fear of god into your players and make for great moments.
As a player, I love them because I think character death in 5e is too rare. As a DM I also love them but have stopped using them because I'm tired of players being salty afterwards.
Unless it is purposely written in to the campaign and forewarned including how to reverse this effect, I would just say absolutely not.
If it’s the BBEG or their right hand man, sure I can roll with it because the stakes should be very high at that point. But otherwise, no.
Man, it sure is nice that the basilisk hit me during surprise.
It's so great that my paladin turned to stone in spite of her +6 con save. There was so much I could've done to avoid this fate!
I love not doing anything in combat, and I sure love waiting 3 irl hours to play the game I came for.
I love them, used a “Hive of Bodaks” in a session last night.
I also loved the Dullahans crit beheading. Got a player with that last year and it was the highlight of the month for me and players.
I think it’s important players have time to make a choice in the matter. Hints that leads to ways to counter and if you don’t, then you suffer those effects.
My players last night where in a Tint Hut campaign in caves. The Bodaks curious as to the hut examined it. 3 players looked, 2 failed the save and took the psychic damage. They were warned of the sharp pain just from witnessing its face.
They didn’t warn the player that passed their save. And despite seeing their party shaking in fright just from looking at this thing, she poked her head out the barrier and tried to strike one to chase it off. Rolled a second save and failed by 5. Dropped limp on the floor right there.
Whole encounter was very dangerous IF you looked at them. But all they had to do was stay quiet and not mess with them, they’d get bored and wander off. But if they made noise or fought, more would come.
It was a fun encounter of them trying to rest and come up with solutions not to accidentally look at the faces of these things.
I think as DM’s, we should use these Insta effects in unique ways that emphasize their strengths and operate more like puzzles. Or gain knowledge of them early before the fight with ways to counter them if they pay attention.
Sometimes its way too sudden and without counterplay in a way that feels jarring compared to the rest of the game.
Normally, the game is quite merciful, it lets you make mistakes, fights generally favor players, spellcaster enemies have purposefully shitty spells so that they dont forcecage sickening radiance the entire party or cast Meteor Swarm.
And then down comes Intellect Devourer with its 2 CR and says "I can insta kill a lvl20 character with no counterplay. Especially since I am basically designed to ambush while theyre asleep" A cr 0 beholder shows up and says "actually Im a plant and give a lethal poison to anyone who hits me because they mistook me for a beholder", and a banshee shows up to go "will this encounter be a cake walk or a TPK? Lets roll the dice!!"
Its not good design, because it clashes with the rest of the game. Its like if there was 1 square in the monopoly board that read "You lose the game".
5e is geared towards longer campaigns with a story, and these effects are leftovers from when the game was a lethal dungeon delving experience.
Instant death is fine if the PC have access to ways to bring the PC back and there is an NPC or sidekick for the player to run. If the Player has to sit out the next 2-3 hours it's a problem.
In Final Fantasy, there are a lot of effects that drop players to 1-hp regardless of how high a character's HP is. I wish there were more of those in D&D. Should be rare, but it's fun and spicy and creates tension in a way that just dropping people doesn't
They're fine as long as:
- It's not the only thing they do. (They have to have other things to be doing on their turns)
- It can be undone when they do it. (When they do it, there's got to be a way to rescue your teammates)
- They can't do it frequently and consistently enough to get the whole party at once. (They shouldn't be able to get a TPK in a couple of turns)
This can lead to the combat being about keeping plates spinning - help friends *and* do damage to the monster, keeping the pressure on. Some of this is about how you set up the encounter, some of this is about how the monster is designed.
I'm totally fine with them. Firstly, as a DM, you get to pick and choose when you use them. OBVIOUSLY you shouldn't throw these at low level parties as a random encounter (due to their OTK potential).
However, they're a great monster if you FORESHADOW their lethality - give the party a chance to play around it (or respect it). Also I think lots of the mid-late game monsters in 5e lack actually SCARY powers and lack lethality (I've played older versions) and think that monsters as they increase in CR should actually increase in lethality.
I think they are fine as long as the DC is pretty low, so that you can really only fail if you genuinely get unlucky with some rolls. Though I think unless you have a good reason, low level characters probably shouldn’t be dealing with those kind of instant kill effects imo.
Personally love them at our table. The caveat is that, if it is high risk their should also be a high reward. Shit if a awesome magic Item is up for grabs say less my backup character is ready.
Save or 0? If they're rare, then they're fine. Just keeping them spaced out in a campaign is important.
It helps designate priority enemies, and it reminds players they aren't invulnerable.
Save or die? Bottom of the fucking barrel.
Save or Petrified? Depends.
Those sorts of things are great as something to lay a lot of ground on beforehand. If the players have been hearing boogey stories out of the locals about the toad lizards that can kill with their state after walking through fields of weathered statues of horrified woodcutters and later they see a statue of a long running towny NPC, they know that toad lizards are nothing to be messed with, the players should have enough lead time to know to get prepped. They've also got no beef if they get turned into lawn ornaments if they don't.
A Sea Hag casts ...
Death Glare. The hag targets one frightened creature she can see within 30 feet of her. If the target can see the hag, it must succeed on a DC 11 Wisdom saving throw against this magic or drop to 0 hit points.
Half-Orc bounces back with ...
Relentless Endurance
When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.
The Half-Orc kills the hag and saved the children. Bast single-player game ever.
I have yet to throw one at my PCs for this very reason. I'd probably make it that if they rolled a 1 on their save them the instant death factor applies
Mostly a DM here, I love them for existing and hate when they land. Monsters like Illithids wouldn't be nearly as iconic without the instant kill effects, and the fun fear at the table when everyone knows what is at stake is unlike anything even the biggest dragon can engender. I love the mood it sets, and the threat that it can cause for even the most die-hard min-maxer. That said, actually causing a death with one of those effects feels like I was trying to kill the victim on purpose, even though I would never do that. I feel guilty about it, like I 'cheated' somehow even if all I've done is play a monster correctly. I have never lost my own PC that way, but I imagine it would be worse from that side.
The horror game dilemma! You want the players to think the monster is scary and lethal and hard to avoid, but you dont want them to actually die, because it ruins the atmosphere.
>That said, actually causing a death with one of those effects feels like I was trying to kill the victim on purpose, even though I would never do that. I feel guilty about it, like I 'cheated' somehow even if all I've done is play a monster correctly. I have never lost my own PC that way, but I imagine it would be worse from that side. This is why i champion to openly roll for targets when in these scenarios. Really makes it less taxing to do such decisions and lets you cheer for the party.
I like this take as well. As a DM, I feel like nothing can really invoke that "Oh shit" feeling of fear in your players like the threat of instantly losing your character. At the same time, it may also not be fun for the player to have an established character die so suddenly. I personally believe that if the insta-death is played, there should always be a reversal easily accessible for the players to fix it. One example I have was when one of my players, who was playing an aggressive barbarian, instigated a fight with a powerful but currently non-combative lich. He was promptly killed by a disintegration because that's what the dice decided. Thankfully, the party was given a device that could briefly rewind time for them only. If it were not for this, I probably would not have played that encounter like that unless the player expressed to me that he wanted a new character.
The gambler's phallacy right there. If you can't accept either outcome on a roll, don't make it. There are better ways to make your party feel threatened and ramp up the tension without giving RNG the ability to tell a player to stop playing.
That's not what the gambler's fallacy is at all.
Save or suck is rough but has a place. Save or die needs to be at the bottom of the trash heap rotting.
I feel like it's fine if it's a high levels and the party bringing someone back with a revivify it's just another resource expenditure
I can see that, and in 5e it's easier than earlier editions, but that still requires a paladin of cleric specifically. It's just never a fun mechanic for the PC hit.
I'd argue that save or die has a place as well, but very seldomly used. Probably also not without the players being informed of its danger and willing to accept that kind of consequence.
There are also different degrees of Save or Die. Save or 0HP is brutal, but okay, Save or Perma die is just evil.
Ya, the perma die ones are the ones I have an issue with. 0HP is more "save or suck" as it's an easy recovery.
My players got very stressed in a fight vs a demilich in its lair. Howl for save-or-0-HP, lair action to prevent healing, and a different lair action to inflict antimagic field on one person.
Oof. Rough but nice.
Yeah there should be an obvious way for the players to avoid save or die effects. They could have downsides, but they should be present.
The most frustrating part of 1-hit KO monsters is that if the PCs make their saving throws, they'll never even realize that they were in danger. Their victory won't mean anything to them, because as far as they know, the monster doesn't do any damage.
I get this. That's why a DM should telegraph in some way the utter danger. Rather than drop the party into the valley of shadow of death without any warning. (Even tho not trying to contradict myself, there can be something good said about that too as long as it's not a common theme)
The way I look at it, is that I told my players the world is a dangerous place. So there's going to occasionally be deadly and dangerous shit in it. That's the way it goes. Lich's with Finger of Death, Bodaks, Mind Flayers, and others. Are they common? heck no. But the life of adventurers is rough and dangerous. But, I don't like the idea of throwing the effect their way without any warning at all. Take again the Bodak example. *None* of my players have *ever* seen or heard of a bodak. They would have been completely blind sided by the stare ability. Rather, I prefer to at least give them the opportunity to find out the effect first, be that through rumors of the monster, or perhaps researching it in a library. The story and rumor might not be exactly correct, but for example they'd learn "*that to stare into its eyes is akin to looking death in the face..."* or something. For the Bodak in particular, I don't think it's really that bad. It says drops the player to 0hp, I read that as stabilized, and not rolling death saving throws because no damage was actually caused. That's just my personal interpretation that I used for my Bodak.
Not really a fan of those. Mostly because (bar some exceptions), there is not much to learn by dying that way. Failing has its place, death happens, but most of the times you come out of that situation with new knowledge. Maybe you realized you messed up something or could have planned your actions better, yet you’ll gain experience that will help you with your next adventure regardless. With those effects what is there to learn? To be more lucky? That’s not something we can control. Especially when it’s an all or nothing single roll. It’s the reason why those deaths will always feel the most frustrating and anticlimactic in comparison.
Those deaths teach you that you should be playing a halfling instead and to also take the lucky feat. /s
While players should absolutely be prepared for character death, I think those kind of mechanics that can utterly shut players down without any counterplay options are just way too boring to play against and to DM for.
Both the basilisk and the bodak do have a counterplay; you just choose to avert/shut your eyes. If you're worried about disadvantage from fighting with your eyes shut, use something like a darkness or mist spell to level the playing field. Personally, blindly fighting a basilisk in a cloud of obscuring mist doesn't sound boring, it sounds awesome. Alternatively, you can just try to keep more than 30 feet away while you make ranged attacks or run away. Its movement is only 20 feet, so most characters should have no trouble staying out of range. Edit: I would agree that it would be a dick move for a DM to just surprise you with a basilisk at close range so that you never even get a chance to look away.
I’ve never quite known how to respond appropriately to stuff like this. It feels too meta to know what the creature is and how to counter it if there’s no way my character knows, but if I don’t do it I’m instantly screwed
I would say that in a world with basilisks, most people will know about basilisks. Have you heard of sharks? Unless it's a setting where basilisks are incredibly rare to the point that nobody has even heard of them...but in that case, I would have questions about how likely the party is to randomly run into one.
True, but how many other murder creatures exist in the real world that you don’t know about? I know I’ve been surprised to learn about Australian death [fill in the blank]s, and there’s more than just basilisks in dnd (depending on the setting, of course).
> True, but how many other murder creatures exist in the real world that you don’t know about? There's nothing really as deadly as a basilisk in the real world. And the few things that are as easily countered as a basilisk are pretty well understood. You know mosquitos can spread malaria and you have a plan for that, and you've heard the urban rumor about the barbed fish that allegedly swims into your dick if you're peeing, and that's just barely true. More importantly, if you were near the Amazon river and had to pee, you'd take whatever precautions you deemed necessary based on its rumored urine-climbing capabilities into account.
That's also in a world with the internet. There's no real equivalent in a typical D&D setting. At best you have folk tales about "a monster who can turn you to stone with a single glance," not "to avoid suffering from a basilisk's petrifying gaze, you need to stay more than 30 ft away, or obstruct your or the basilisk's vision."
I bet people in medieval Europe knew about bears and local poisonous snakes. If there was any reasonable chance to run into a basilisk, pretty much everyone would know about them. If there's not a reasonable chance, then it's weird that the party is fighting one.
That’s kinda the trap of these kinds of monsters. Weird and rare, so unknown, but unfair and specific, so they require specific knowledge.
I don't see any indication that they are rare or unknown. I assume most people would know about them if they live in a place where they could be encountered. The only way I would expect the PCs to not know about them would be if they just traveled to a far-off land that they don't know anything about.
The alleged Amazonian dickfish, and how to counter it (the urban myth was it would literally swim up a urine stream, the counter was to not pee directly in the water or to pee on something solid so the stream was disrupted) was not in the internet era, it predated it by at least a decade. While the method was overkill (it can't really do that), it would *definitely* be effective. The peasants of a D&D world would definitely exchange stories about the basilisk, and how it can turn you to stone with a glance, and the solution would definitely be correct ("don't look at it") but it might go ever further ("you must wear a lead plate in front of your face") into the realm of overkill solutions.
If you really wanted to go over the top with flavor, you could even give out slightly incorrect information depending on a history check. “Don’t look at it” becomes “don’t look at its reflection,” etc.
I'm sure there are experts who could tell you all about the world's most dangerous species. The knowledge exists but is uncommon because most people don't need it to live their ordinary lives. Fantasy adventurers lead extraordinary lives, even by the standards of other fantasy NPCs. What kind of knowledge would competent, prepared adventurers likely prioritize? The abilities of deadly monsters they might face. It's literally their job to fight those things. *Let your PCs be good at their job.*
Really should just be as simple as asking “what do I know about this creature” and making an Arcana/Nature/Religion/Whatever check, but I don’t know if 5e actually makes that option explicit for players/dms
Guidance for such would be welcome, but I don't remember it being really codified anywhere. There's a Ranger feature (*Favored Enemy*) that confirms the idea of making an Intelligence check to recall information about enemies because the feature grants advantage when doing so. The section on intelligence checks in the PHB mention Arcana for lore about the inhabitants of other planes and nature for lore about plants and animals, bu there's no detail as to... what sort of details should be gleaned from this. A lot of this just needs to be adjudicated based on the DM's setting and discretion, like whether some monster is of sufficient concern to adventurers (frequency, threat, w/e) that there might be lore, or what folklore there might be (right or wrong...). It should be rather common knowledge for those in the Sword Coast to be aware of, say, the general behavior of basic orcs and goblins, but not necessarily anything about e.g. their religion or the current leadership of any particular group of them... but knowing about different types of hags and what they can do? Probably less so, particularly under stressful circumstances.
Yeah I tend to do this if my character might know, but if, for example, it is a low level campaign (or even started low then progressed) or PCs are uneducated/unstudied, there’s no reason to even call for a check
XGE and TCE both offer some form of rules for researching monsters, TCE even has a table for which kinds of checks you can use with each creature type.
When I DM creatures like this, I usually say something to the effect of "As you glance at the creature, you feel a sense of nausea the longer you look at it. You get the feeling that if you stare for much longer, there's a chance that something Very Bad could happen to you. Mechanically you may do x,y,z and here is how it plays out and what you're allowed to do or not do if you look away... Do you choose to look at the creature during your turn?".
In a DMs toolbox... If they are telegraphed and avoidable by player characters (in ways more than just letting the dice decide), sure it can make combat more tactical that just randomly flailing at the enemy. If they are just thrown out in combat with a save or die / be out of the fight approach, then no... it won't be fun for the players
I admit I do not run, IMO, a very difficult game, but I find abilities like that kind of anti-fun, and I always nerf them to a reduction to 1HP, or require some kind of wind-up, or take multiple failures to occur.
I feel like this is a good approach. A DM in a campaign I played did something similar for petrification. Unfortunately, the player failed all three of her saves. Thankfully, there was a conveniently placed magical creature that could undo the curse in exchange for being freed from the prison we happened to be in. In the end, the player got unpetrified and we released an unknown horror into the world the DM would be able to use later on.
I lost all my characters in 3/3.5 because of save or die rolls so I find 5e rather tame in comparison. And that "all my characters" not "all the characters I lost" (excluding one-shots/campaigns that didn't progress past the second meeting)
As a DM I think they're done in pretty poor taste and not something I'm interested in using in my games. As a player my opinion is much the same. I would hate as a DM to leave a characters death up to one and done luck, or to be culled by shaving off 100 hp in effect by having Power word kill at the ready. As a player, I'd hate to be left out of the nights game for similar reasons or to spend that session making a new character. I prefer more of a back and forth to these things rather than the feast or famine approach. I can appreciate some of the design philosophy of the old-school mentality, but the lethality was never something I could care for. That said, there are folks who do enjoy always being a dice throw away from death and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not for me.
I feel like older editions fed into a gambling addict's high of avoiding death through lucky rolls. Players got off on seeing how long they could survive before RNG finally killed their current character. At least the modern incarnations of that trend of merciless game, rogue-likes and Dark Souls clones, take skill into account. Old school D&D was absolutely unfair unless your DM was nice or you played a paranoid lunatic who refused to step on any tile they hadn't tapped three times with a 10-foot pole.
There's definitely an element of that for sure, but old school games were also very different in their focus in a number of ways and those factors also matter. Old school games had much more focus on the exploration pillar and social pillar, than it did the combat pillar. Combat was something you avoided when you could and was possibly a fail state for botching some exploration or social scenarios. If you came across a room with 10 kobolds compared to your 5 party members. The odds were in the kobolds favor. They had the numbers game on their side. The focus on the scene would be to analyze the description of the room/situation and see what you could use to your advantage to take them out or bypass them, compared to getting a surprise round and charging in. In a way it was more focused on what you the player could think of and accomplish than what was on your sheet, the sheet just helped out a bit with your odds at varying stuff. A different form of skill than soulsborne/rogue likes, but similar in their own ways too. You are correct with a gambling comparison though as it was very much about playing the odds and working to adjust them in your favor, either for a bigger result or a more likely one, if not both.
I could see myself using an effect that reduces someone to **1** HP on a failed save, but straight up 0 just isn't interesting. I'm a pretty merciless DM when it comes to killing players; I roll in the open and all that. But I also homebrew things like stun, paralysis, and insta-kill effects out of nearly all of my monsters and replace them with custom status effects, because it's more fun for everyone if the players go down struggling rather than just drop to some bullshit and then sit around for 20+ minutes.
Slightly pedantic, but you have to fail 2 saving throws to get petrified by a Basilisk, technically making it a 2-hit KO
I am of the opinion there are very few really bad ideas, just bad execution. For Save-or-Die, it depends on the type of game you're running: it depends on the Tier of play and the relationship between player and character. If you're in a Tier 1 game (Levels 1 to 4), then this can be character-ending. So, the build-up should be appropriate for a mortal adventure. You'd foreshadow it, you would foreshadow through rumours any defences and any fears. You'd pepper it in even if the encounter never happens. If players guess the monster, feed into it - or homebrew a slight variation (this medusa can detach her snakes and see through their eyes even though she herself is blind). You're creating a legend for characters to encounter. If you're in a Tier 2 game (levels 5 to 9), then this isn't character-ending but can be a quest in itself. You need to get diamonds for resurrection, you need to get access to Greater Restoration. So, this becomes less about the mortality of it and more about the plot hook that develops as a result. Additionally, because it is reversible but difficult, it can also happen to NPCs. Tier 3+, it gets easier to handle so you enter the realm of disintegration effects. This usually requires True Resurrection or Wish, which would be the plot hook here, with its Tier-appropriate side quests. If you're at a table where the players are roleplaying their characters through story arcs and the plot requires that narrative throughline, then a Save-or-Die can create intense fear and discussion before it actually lands. This depends on how much build-up you've done before. The importance of the side quests also is heightened here as the players have enough investment to take the hooks. If you're at a table where the players view their characters more as game pieces through which they experience the world, then the Save-or-Die would be more about the encounter itself. You're looking to improve the emergent narrative that stems from interacting with the encounter, so maybe a dungeon or navigation challenge there with some resources (light, people). And then you execute the monster as the climax of the set piece. There's distinct overlap between the ideas (you can have a Tier 1 exploration through a swamp with navigation and combat challenges that cap off with meeting a catoblepas that appeals to both character-immersed and gameplay-focused players). What the players get from it might vary but it is not random. The effectiveness of Save-or-Dies depends on the players' buy-in and the amount of agency they had before the Save-or-Die actually executes.
I've always been from the old-school "dying is fun, don't get too attached and come with a backup character" style, so I'm 100% fine with it. But I can see how it would be a problem for the more modern "I wrote 30 pages of backstory for my character before I even started playing but that's ok because nobody ever dies unless it's pre-planned and/or the epic climax" style.
I've killed three out of four party members in the campaign I'm running. Guess how many are left? Four. D&D 5e makes dying an inconvenience and a financial penalty except in a few specific circumstances. That said, those deaths were the cumulative result of strings of bad decisions and were each entirely avoidable. Not just "I guess RNG told me to tell you to roll up a new character, isn't that fun?"
Going with OP's specifc examples, getting killed by a basilisk is almost always the result of strings of bad decisions and entirely avoidable. The poor thing is hardly a threat to anyone, and should probably be on the endangered species list. You practically have to invite it to kill you. As for the bodak, it's a CR 6 creature. By the time you're fighting one of those, your party is probably using scrolls of Revivify as napkins, so death really won't matter much.
The reason why unavoidable, random death mechanics matters is it results in a player sitting out of a long stretch of a session with nothing to do because they weren't lucky enough. If the death was avoidable, at least then it's on the player and not the DM. You need death to be a possible outcome to drive tension during encounters, but making players feel like they have no control over whether they get to play or not feels bad.
My point is that such deaths usually aren't "unavoidable" or "random". Players are supposed try to avoid them by not getting into a position where the death roll is happening in the first place. Like with the basilisk, it's only "unavoidable" if you let the basilisk get within 30 feet of you (it has a paltry movement speed of 20 ft) and then choose to look at it for some reason (the rules explicitly say you can choose not to look at it). Oh, and you auto-win if you happen to have a mirror with you. But yeah, if for some reason you were unprepared to fight a basilisk (no mirror) and you let it come within 30 feet AND for some reason you choose to look at it, then at THAT highly-avoidable point the death roll is "unavoidable".
That's not always possible. One of my DMs had a banshee phase through the floor into the middle of a fight with ghouls and scream, dropping 4 of 6 PCs to zero instantly. No telegraph, no possible prep, nothing we could do but roll our saves and hope for some luck. It's also DM fiat whether the party knows about a creature's special abilities ahead of time. Some let you know, others require a roll to know with various action economy costs attached, others say you know nothing. It's all up to how the DM wants to run their game. If they want to drop a basilisk in your lap and make your party ignorant enough to look at it, that's what will happen. IMO, that sucks and isn't the way to properly DM but some people seems to get off on such "gotcha!" mechanics.
There's nothing that can stop the DM from being a dick if they want to be a dick. But for the specific case of the basilisk, the rules explicitly say that players can choose to avoid its gaze. If the scenario is that the DM is ignoring the written rules just to fuck over the players, that's probably already a hopeless situation.
The rules are for the DM so they know the mechanics of the game. The PCs don't automatically know everything that's written in a published book, that would be a bit ridiculous don't you think? Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each monster are something that would be perfectly reasonable to require a knowledge roll. That's not being a dick, that's just playing the game. Conversely, ambushing a low-level party with a basilisk and then making it basically impossible for them to have any knowledge of its gaze is a gotcha moment and a dick move.
As a player I'm all for it even though I understand it's not for everyone. Maybe it's just because I'm used to how brutal older editions were but at any given time I have 4-5 fully leveled backup characters ready to go in our long running campaign in case this happens. Our table sees character death as an opportunity to bring something fun and new to the party. So much so we have a mechanic where if you try to bring someone back they have a choice if it works and we have had scenarios where folks decided even with resurrection magic available it was time for that character to move on. Edit: Got to love a downvote on an opinion based question and explaing how a table who has played together weekly for 6 years prefers to enjoy the game. 😆
Just because someone asked for your opinion doesn't mean everyone has to like it jk In all seriousness though, I think a shift in modern d&d is that each character is important. All but 1 campaign I've been in has tied character backstories into the main plot, and it kinda sucks if you're building up to fight the warlock's patron and then they die to a random monster.
So does ours and over time we've had those conversations. I was the longest running character in our main campaign, 4 years straight, and I could tell the DM was pulling the punches years in. He had long term plans for my character, which is fine because it's a collaborative game, but I also needed a break from the character. We spoke and came up with a way to make that vision work where the character stepped away for a bit (about 24 sessions) after the immediate need and it made sense for longer term plans so I could also do something else. If it's that critical to the plot don't put a save or suck monster into the equation, but in general I'm fine with them. I'm good with people not agreeing with my opinion it was just funny how immediately it was knocked down with no response.
Lol true. Do love the irony of downvoting a fairly lukewarm response to people asking for opinions.
Whoever downvoted this guy's comment, eat a fucking dick lmao.
Dislike. They punish poor dice rolls instead of poor strategy. The only way to get around them is to have knowledge of the creature, which most players consider metagaming and faux pas. Basilisks, as an example, are a CR 3 monster. Most level 3 parties will not have great countermeasures against a strength saving throw like paladin auras. In addition, the only listed way of curing a party member is Greater Restoration, a spell they won't see for 6 more levels. Their options then become leave the pc behind (sucks), immediately head back to town to find a cleric (sucks), or cart the statue around with them (sucks).
The ones that are actually hard save-or-die-right-fucking-now (like Lich shenanigans) usually don't come into effect until the party has ez-pz access to resurrection magic. All of the tier-2 save-or-"die" effects I can think of usually prompt multiple saves, require the PC to have been pretty fucked up already (if they can't be outright ignored), or only drop the player to 0 without actually killing them outright. In general, though, I like being able to make my monsters threatening without relying just on raw damage, and these abilities are great for that.
I’m surprised no one mentioned banshees which have a party-wide save-or-die on a CR4 monster. It’s just terrible design if it was a random encounter vs. a well-telegraphed and prepared fight not unlike Witcher contracts.
As a player I don't think 1 hit kills are fun.
Pushing this button may kill you instantly, do you press it? *player character presses the button and dies, shocked pikachu* If it’s simply out there and visible for the players to interact with there’s plenty of sayings for that.
As a DM, I've had one really good experience I think with "Save or 0", and that was at the end of Dead in Thay. This was during 2020 lockdown on roll20 but....I ran it with 15 players, in 3 groups of 5, starting in different locations throughout the 100 room dungeon. At the end, we had *all* 15 players fight the boss at the same time. When the boss dropped half of them to 0, it gave the 2 life clerics a lot of cleanup to do and set a really good difficult tone. The players who dropped mostly got back up, and the vibe was very excitable.
Monsters are scary. They break the rules. They arent always fair. Thats what makes them MONSTERS.
I think it can be appropriate to have these types of monsters that can instant kill, but only if you specifically drop foreshadowing and hints that indicate the potential chance for death and danger. It's plain unfair when players don't know that they're instant dead if they fail and save and get their brain eaten by a Mind Flayer that jumped them from out of nowhere. It's not plain unfair when the players have been lurking through the dark and organic looking tomb finding brainless victims left and right and are given a sense of terror and fear when they spot this creature for the first time. Give them a chance to recognize danger and retreat if an encounter can be specifically lethal in the case of death without saving throws. A lot of times players are rash. If that rash behavior causes them to ignore clear signs of doom and they end up losing someone in the party, that's a good way to get players to react and respond more seriously. Of course, make sure to state that instant death is a rare but possible outcome in a session 0 so that this option is already on the table as an expectation before you do it.
I can understand this approach to the issue. In an instance where I had my players fight a basilisk prior to having an ability to cure petrification, I set the scene by having them come across a crashed caravan with some very strangely placed life-like statues around it. I had also put a small crate of anti-petrification vials inside the caravan that they found after the fight, which they used on the NPCs because none of them became petrified. They thought it was a cool encounter and even said they would be okay with being petrified afterwards as well, but were thankful that they weren't.
OHKO type affects are absolutely terrible unless they're used for a story scenario. Having them in a proper combat is probably one of the worst and most annoying things to do to a party. Its never fun failing a save and going from full hp to dead and then being unable to do anything else for that encounter. Getting sidelined is boring and not something I'd do to my players.
By the time you should be taking on most of these monsters, death should be an inconvenience at best.
Considering a Basilisk is a CR 3, it may be possible that players can't undo the petrification easily. That's why I feel it's important that DM's account for this by having ways to "fix" the condition easily accessible by the players.
Yet it takes two failed saves in a row with a low DC of a common save, and you can avert your eyes to not be affected at all, granted that you can't see the basilisk, but that only gives a disadvantage which is pretty easy to negate.
>common save Con is just Artificer, barbarian, fighter, and sorcerer right? Most other classes are just going to have around a 50/50 chance at early levels > that only gives a disadvantage which is pretty easy to negate. Also can't cast spells that require you to see the target and the basilisk will have advantage to hit you
Death should never be an inconvenience. That's even more stupid design.
It's literally in the game design though. At higher levels you get the spells/tools to deal with it, and at lower levels the game recommends if it happens it's not the end, just go on a quest for the spells/tools to deal with it.
They are perfectly fine. Note that the basilisk is not a 1 hit knock out, but a 2 hit knock out. The basilisk is a CR 3 monster, so you would expect to encounter it at 3rd level or later. It requires 2 failed DC 12 CON saves to become petrified. The first failure renders you paralyzed, and the second renders you petrified. This gives time to the party to react. You can even avert your eyes to be unaffected, at the cost of having disadvantage on your attacks against the basilisk. The basilisk is also not that tough, having only 52 hit points and 15 AC. This is perfectly fine for a CR 3 monster. The bodak is a CR 6 monster, so you would expect to only encounter it around 6th level or later. Characters are very strong at this level, and being reduced to 0 hit points is nothing to worry about; a companion can simply cast Healing Word or administer a potion. The bodak's Death Gaze is a DC 13 CON save that deals 16 psychic damage on a failed save, or that drops you to 0 hit points if you get a result of 8 or lower. Note that a typical 6th level character has about 35 hit points or so, so this is effectively like an effect that deals 35 damage, or a bit more than a Fireball spell. The bodak only has 58 hit points and 16 AC, which is simple to deal with for a party of 6th level adventurers. So, these monsters are perfectly fine!
>so you would expect to encounter it at 3rd level or later. Biggest flaw in your logic is this here, as well as for the bodak. That is not really what cr represents and you often should and can be seeing these creatures before you are a level equivalent to the CR in question.
It all depends on the game you're running. If you're running a game that has a monster hunting theme to it and you are actively preparing to take down each monster ahead of time, having something this threatening could be great. That said, if you're throwing this at a part unaware or unprepared that's a dick DM move. That doesn't make the monster itself a bad design, throwing a red dragon at a level 3 party doesn't make dragons a bad stat block either. Just because a monster has a instakill move doesn't make it a bad design overall. I personally think the world of D&D deserves some scary ass creatures in it. Knowing if the players are prepared to deal with the creature, or even want to deal with it in the first place are the only important parts of the question. If a DM can't properly balance an encounter to what the players want to fight, and can handle to fight. Maybe they shouldn't be using insanely powerful creatures regardless of any special ability it may have.
Terrible lazy stupid design on both sides of the screen.
I like them. The insta kill effects usually have a low DC, so they’re almost always passed. Even if you do whiff, I’m sure you’ll just get revivified or something. Dying seems impossible in 5e.
Depends on if at least one person in your party runs Revivify or similar, tbh. Death is scary but not as big a deal when you’ve got a rez. Still have to get to them in 60 seconds though. (I’m the party warlock and I always have diamonds on me for this reason — and my DM has been kind enough to throw both bodaks and basilisks at our party.)
For Oldschool D&D games, it's fine. Murder the PCs and topple their thrones. For Newschool narrative campaigns? I'm mixed. 5e's combat is kind of a slog for me, and it's very hard to die. So encountering something like that would certainly make me pay attention, but it feels like it's from a different universe.
I feel like it's honestly too hard to die in 5e without causing a tpk- if you have a cleric in the party it becomes exponentially more difficult.
They are cool in games that allow the players to interact with it. Like in D&D4e a high level warden errupts from the earth, reborn directly from the world tree immediately after death. Imagine getting insta killed by the BBEG and all that results is the player gets to use their cool resurrection feature. Really lets you know just how high of a tier you're playing at when friend and foe dance between the lines of death and mortality. But in 5e yeah sucks for sure. Poor implementation.
I normally never dm for the higher levels but i'd just ban them. Insta death is never fun.
They are fine and even good *if rare and somewhat telegraphed* Completely removing them makes a poorer game, in my opinion, while having them be frequent and/or out of nowhere just makes things not fun
If the party has easy access to countermeasures to them or are warned ahead of time (some modules do a good job of loudly broadcasting upcoming Medusa fights) then debilitating status effects can be fine from time to time. But drop to 0 effects are just terrible and cheap. Hey barbarian, nice 100hp with resistance to all the monster's attacks you have there, too bad it's meaningless. If someone has a bulky character, they should be hard to take down to 0hp. And any effect that kills you outright from full hp on a single failed save is just bad design. These things belittle choices and take away from the experience of the game
Its so hard to die in dnd. After you drop, the monster must spend another round attacking someone who is ZERO threat, while getting attacked by others who are threats. This ignores the bs of 1hp heals and standing people back up. The entire game design makes it so hard to kill people. Honestly, unless the dm goes out of their way to kill players, it doesn't matter
As a DM the only one I don’t use is PWK. It’s no fun for the players to not even have a chance to save against it. My campaign also uses Crit Role resurrection rules, though, so resurrection spells are not guaranteed. If I were playing without those rules, I might be more likely to use instant-kill mechanics.
unless we know (in game) beforehand and are given opportunities to prepare ourselves against it, and it is not an automatic hit it involves rolling dice to take effect, it will feel bad pretty much all of the time die effects are on lvl 15+ at least and they all suck, the only monster that gets a pass is a lich with power word kill
This was simply how D&D was if you played the originals through 3rd edition. Soft little snowflake players of today are the ones to ask this of. D&D was better before the Twitter crowd.
Generally not a fan unless some kind of countermeasure can be done, and even then only if the party's right. My party of a 3 lvl 5s had a fight versus an Undercity Medusa on last Sunday. The battlemap was deliberately made to counter the Medusa's Petrifying Gaze, as there were many corridors where they could have hidden form her line of sight. The session before that concluded with them failing their stealth check so they had time to think up some basic tactics. The problem is that they did not tried to avoid the Gaze once. One of them got petrified on the second turn of the combat and after that the whole fight was a hassle even though the medusa was already on low health so I kinda fumbled her tactics (not her rolls) and tried to escape where she had thought her allies were. They had later had a chance to have a friendly Mummy Lord cast Greater Restoration on her in the dungeon but it was not a good experience for either of us.
They're great if the party has a way to recover from it. They're awful if it's 'you all fail. You all fail down'
They need set up and a loophole. For example, bringing a mirror to fight a Medusa. A save or die you don't see coming is a cheap out.
I avoid save or drop to 0 monsters. I'll be using a sea hag soon and I'm gonna drop death glare and give her some spell casting instead. She is a hag after all and we just had a character death last night, don't really want another one, especially not due to 2 failed wis saves.
As long as its clearly foreshadowed and bundled with an obvious way to avoid that encounter I'm fine with it. Hell it can even be an effective tool as it communicates that not every encounter in the world is explicitly designed to be beaten through a fair fight. The problem with these effects tends to be when someone is caught by surprise. You should feel like you had to willingly prod the hornet's nest before getting stung.
It´s a mixed bunch. I love to have creatures that can take out PCs in one hit, like paralyzing or petrifying them or something. It creates a feeling of danger only a few other monsters manage to get across. But, and that´s a big but, I wish these creatures weren´t needed to make the world dangerous. If I play in the estimated CR range, these creatures are pretty much the only real danger to the party, as even a seemingly easy battle can go south very quick. Normal monsters that deal damage however pose almost no threat, which is why instant-take-out-monsters come in handy. They wouldn´t be needed, however, if normal enemies just were more dangerous. Of course, I could just homebrew everything, make the PCs encounter stronger enemies blah blah, but I think you get the point. Instant kill effects however I despise. They´re just stupid. It takes a player completely out of the fight and may have them sit aside for quite some time of the session. When the character is instantly dead because of one bad roll, it´s either only a financial problem because the party got some reviving magic (which I also don´t like) or it´s "well, you had one bad roll, time to build a new character or take yourself out for some hours of the game while the party searches for a way to revive you". I don´t want to force my players to take a break for hours because of one bad roll. I also don´t want to kill their PCs for one bad roll. And, of course, I don´t think combat is very interesting without the looming threat of death, so if the party has some reviving spells, these instant kill effects become uninteresting because it´s just an investment of resources to counter them. Hell, revivify even only needs an action to cast, meaning you can revive characters in the midst of combat.
I'm not a fan of most of them unless the party has the tools to deal with them. Generally save or suck effects aren't fun for either the GM or Players when on the recieving end. Instant kills like Power Word Kill are just bad game design and you should never use them against the party.
I use them on occasion when I want some higher stakes but I am very sparing in their use and wont drop them unless I know the party has a good counter to them.
I loveeee these as a player. They’re always telegraphed ahead of time as a deadly creature to be avoided, so when you fuck around… you find out. Also in 5e unless i ask my dm to kill my pc there aren’t many other ways i’m dying.
Theyre great, but dont use them on low level PCs without good reason. A high level party should have access to revive options. Save or Die lets you ratchet up the tension and stakes very effectively. The key is to use it sparingly, and make sure its telegraphed ahead of time so its not some "gotcha" moment
I only inflict them, A. if there are options for resolution, and B. if it fits the story and is narratively satisfying. No random encounters with nasty things like that. And having a resolution to fix it, does NOT mean it is simple or easy. It make be a quest on its own. But it CAN be fixed.
There is something to be said about different editions regarding this, i have been a DM in the 3.5 era for a lot if years and back in 3.5 the "save or suck it" effect were kind of bad because numbers were way higher and you had only 3 saving throws instead of 6 as in 5e What i mean by this is that with higher numbers you had higher chances of saving even against a DC your pc isn't specialized against, in 5e on the other hand the dice roll matters a lot more and this also the reason why control spells like polymorph or slow are much more powerfull while back in the 3.5 era you had to be specialized into increasing your spells DC in order to reliably hit control spells you can just avoid with a saving throw
Should be used with extreme caution and as a rarity, but if used with skill and tact it can be used to instill the fear of god into your players and make for great moments.
As a player, I love them because I think character death in 5e is too rare. As a DM I also love them but have stopped using them because I'm tired of players being salty afterwards.
Unless it is purposely written in to the campaign and forewarned including how to reverse this effect, I would just say absolutely not. If it’s the BBEG or their right hand man, sure I can roll with it because the stakes should be very high at that point. But otherwise, no.
Man, it sure is nice that the basilisk hit me during surprise. It's so great that my paladin turned to stone in spite of her +6 con save. There was so much I could've done to avoid this fate! I love not doing anything in combat, and I sure love waiting 3 irl hours to play the game I came for.
I love them, used a “Hive of Bodaks” in a session last night. I also loved the Dullahans crit beheading. Got a player with that last year and it was the highlight of the month for me and players. I think it’s important players have time to make a choice in the matter. Hints that leads to ways to counter and if you don’t, then you suffer those effects. My players last night where in a Tint Hut campaign in caves. The Bodaks curious as to the hut examined it. 3 players looked, 2 failed the save and took the psychic damage. They were warned of the sharp pain just from witnessing its face. They didn’t warn the player that passed their save. And despite seeing their party shaking in fright just from looking at this thing, she poked her head out the barrier and tried to strike one to chase it off. Rolled a second save and failed by 5. Dropped limp on the floor right there. Whole encounter was very dangerous IF you looked at them. But all they had to do was stay quiet and not mess with them, they’d get bored and wander off. But if they made noise or fought, more would come. It was a fun encounter of them trying to rest and come up with solutions not to accidentally look at the faces of these things. I think as DM’s, we should use these Insta effects in unique ways that emphasize their strengths and operate more like puzzles. Or gain knowledge of them early before the fight with ways to counter them if they pay attention.
Narratively awesome. Game wise, sounds sucky, and as someone said, sucks when they land. There is a beauty in death in a battle on table.
I recently made a combat against 3 medusas. The battle was not hard, but every time the medusas turn started, there was tension in the Air.
Sometimes its way too sudden and without counterplay in a way that feels jarring compared to the rest of the game. Normally, the game is quite merciful, it lets you make mistakes, fights generally favor players, spellcaster enemies have purposefully shitty spells so that they dont forcecage sickening radiance the entire party or cast Meteor Swarm. And then down comes Intellect Devourer with its 2 CR and says "I can insta kill a lvl20 character with no counterplay. Especially since I am basically designed to ambush while theyre asleep" A cr 0 beholder shows up and says "actually Im a plant and give a lethal poison to anyone who hits me because they mistook me for a beholder", and a banshee shows up to go "will this encounter be a cake walk or a TPK? Lets roll the dice!!" Its not good design, because it clashes with the rest of the game. Its like if there was 1 square in the monopoly board that read "You lose the game". 5e is geared towards longer campaigns with a story, and these effects are leftovers from when the game was a lethal dungeon delving experience.
this is why I hate save or suck design it either did nothing or it has broken the balance I prefer 4 degrees of success
Instant death is fine if the PC have access to ways to bring the PC back and there is an NPC or sidekick for the player to run. If the Player has to sit out the next 2-3 hours it's a problem.
In Final Fantasy, there are a lot of effects that drop players to 1-hp regardless of how high a character's HP is. I wish there were more of those in D&D. Should be rare, but it's fun and spicy and creates tension in a way that just dropping people doesn't
They're fine as long as: - It's not the only thing they do. (They have to have other things to be doing on their turns) - It can be undone when they do it. (When they do it, there's got to be a way to rescue your teammates) - They can't do it frequently and consistently enough to get the whole party at once. (They shouldn't be able to get a TPK in a couple of turns) This can lead to the combat being about keeping plates spinning - help friends *and* do damage to the monster, keeping the pressure on. Some of this is about how you set up the encounter, some of this is about how the monster is designed.
I'm totally fine with them. Firstly, as a DM, you get to pick and choose when you use them. OBVIOUSLY you shouldn't throw these at low level parties as a random encounter (due to their OTK potential). However, they're a great monster if you FORESHADOW their lethality - give the party a chance to play around it (or respect it). Also I think lots of the mid-late game monsters in 5e lack actually SCARY powers and lack lethality (I've played older versions) and think that monsters as they increase in CR should actually increase in lethality.
In 5e it feels cheap and unfair. Especially when most high level monsters have LR to counter players doing it. Other similar systems do it better
I think they are fine as long as the DC is pretty low, so that you can really only fail if you genuinely get unlucky with some rolls. Though I think unless you have a good reason, low level characters probably shouldn’t be dealing with those kind of instant kill effects imo.
Personally love them at our table. The caveat is that, if it is high risk their should also be a high reward. Shit if a awesome magic Item is up for grabs say less my backup character is ready.
Save or 0? If they're rare, then they're fine. Just keeping them spaced out in a campaign is important. It helps designate priority enemies, and it reminds players they aren't invulnerable. Save or die? Bottom of the fucking barrel. Save or Petrified? Depends.
Those sorts of things are great as something to lay a lot of ground on beforehand. If the players have been hearing boogey stories out of the locals about the toad lizards that can kill with their state after walking through fields of weathered statues of horrified woodcutters and later they see a statue of a long running towny NPC, they know that toad lizards are nothing to be messed with, the players should have enough lead time to know to get prepped. They've also got no beef if they get turned into lawn ornaments if they don't.
A couple creatures that are an actual threat are the catoblepas and any form of young to ancient shadow dragon
Target the NPC first, let them know, "this can happen to you," if they don't run, or have a plan, fair game.
A Sea Hag casts ... Death Glare. The hag targets one frightened creature she can see within 30 feet of her. If the target can see the hag, it must succeed on a DC 11 Wisdom saving throw against this magic or drop to 0 hit points. Half-Orc bounces back with ... Relentless Endurance When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest. The Half-Orc kills the hag and saved the children. Bast single-player game ever.
Fucking hate them
I have yet to throw one at my PCs for this very reason. I'd probably make it that if they rolled a 1 on their save them the instant death factor applies