‘Save or die’ can be removed from the game but not the way you think.

Once upon a time, I read a little about the making of the Tomb of Horrors. It talked some about how people were trying to talk Gygax down from ‘death no save’ traps to ‘save or die’ traps. Compare that to the recent talk about saves and realize how much softer things are now.

Every time someone talks about removing ‘save or die’ effects from the game, remember the alternative: death without save!

PCs can’t just auto-survive everything! Does anyone seriously expect to look at a medusa or get bitten by a poisonous animal and just live? Without even danger? There’s some talk of only making saves under a certain HP threshold.

“Don’t look at that, it’s a medusa!”

“Don’t worry; I have full HP.”

There’s always a strong push to make things softer and easier. Someone needs to push back in the opposite direction. This is part of the role of the OSR. To that end, consider this house rule:

All saves fail.

Whenever the manual calls for a save it fails, automatically, without a roll. If you see a medusa, you become stone. If you get bitten by a poisonous snake, you die. If you hear a harpy’s song, you’re entranced. Etc. Why wouldn’t you? These things are lethal!

It shouldn’t have a huge impact on game play because PCs shouldn’t be relying on saves anyway but it will make things a little tougher. The upside is it should really drive home two messages:

1) It’s not about the numbers on your sheet, it’s about the actions you take in game.

2) There’s nothing wrong with a tough game.

No guts, no glory!