67 réponses à ce sujet

[BelgarathMTH]

This topic is basically a shout out to @MagicalMaster for teaching me how to do this in a post in a previous topic, which now, unfortunately, I can't find.

 

In my current run, I fell to Desther when I rolled a 1 against a DC save of 14 on his Hold Person spell. I had a base save bonus of 9, and a plus two, for a total of 11, from an Extended Owl's Wisdom. I also had an Extended Protection from Evil active, but either Desther is some form of neutral alignment, or Protection from Evil does not protect against Hold Person cast by any alignment.

 

This awful, humiliating death, made me start thinking about the nature of "save or die" spells in NWN.

 

It should be possible to anticipate such potential eventualities for a young character, and to focus that character's entire build towards automatically making saving throws against "save or dies" cast by enemies.

 

So, as someone who is very, very attracted to that kind of "warm, fuzzy, safe" character build, I find it kind of game-breaking and absurd that, no matter what level you are, or how many defenses you've built against save-or-die magic, there is *always* a five percent chance that a level one character could bring down a level 20 to infinity character using spammed save-or-dies, which will eventually hit and destroy, no matter how powerful the creature, or how low-level (even level one!) the caster.

 

The example MagicalMaster gave was of a level five rogue armed with Finger of Death scrolls, bringing down an ancient dragon just by spamming the scrolls. Really? A level five rogue can bring down an ancient dragon, just by good luck via exploitation of the "roll of one equals critical failure" rule? I agree that that entire idea is ridiculous in any good story.

 

The whole "roll of one equals automatic save failure" default setting in NWN encourages spamming of save-or-die spells, and builds that depend on them, to the detriment of pretty much every other kind of build, especially those that focus on defending against save-or-die spells.

 

Changing my NWN .ini file to remove this "rule" has given me kind of a whole new "lease on life" for this game. I just love the idea of building characters who oppose dark magic, and who have an ability to eventually be immune to any mind-affecting crap by way of will save bonus 20, as well as guaranteed half-damage and immunity to any spell that calls for a reflex save or fortitude save, by prioritizing getting those saves up to 20 bonus level.

 

 

[Grani]

I have a bit different opinion on save auto-fails.

I find it more realistic that there is a small chance of winning against a much higher levelled opponent thanks to some amazing luck. I cannot, however, see any dependable strategy being built around this feature.

A rogue stocking on scrolls and spamming them against an ancient dragon? Sure. Just keep in mind you'd need to cast this spell at least 14 times to have more than 50% chance of success. Even if you have enough money to spare just like that for twenty or more scrolls, an ancient dragon will likely obliterate you to smitherins after your first cast if you're a level 5 rogue.

 

Of course, I'm assuming the player doesn't practise save scumming.

[BelgarathMTH]

"Of course, I'm assuming the player doesn't practice save scumming."

 

Part of the problem is that right there. A lot if not most of players do in fact do that.

 

The fact that they do is part of the problem, if a person wants a good, strong, story. A character's success or failure in that story ought to depend on preparation, planning, good tactics, and story needs, not a random dice throw.

 

Really, I guess this problem is built into the D&D D20 system, especially where saving throws are concerned, but also, to some extent, where chance to damage is concerned.

 

How many insects or rats would it take to kill you, a human being, even with a swarm of them with very good luck attacking you? Basically, no realistic scenario would allow any realistic number of insects or rats to seriously hurt you, unless poison were a factor, or unless you were in the jungles of South America and facing swarms of fire ants or killer bees.

 

Any individual first level character of any race amounts to a single, individual insect or rat to a dragon, a god, or an epic level character of any class.

 

The whole idea that *anyone* of any level should have even "a snowball's chance in Hades" of doing more than scratching a being on the level of a dragon or a god, or even a heavily-armored high-level fighter, is one of the places where Gary Gygax went wrong when he created the entire system.

 

I very much like disabling the "automatic failure on a roll of one" rule from the system as a way to greatly increase realism, and rewards for playing the game intelligently.

 

"Automatic success on a 20" is fine for any kind of attack roll, even though the damage from that "critical hit" might be negligible against gods and dragons.

 

"Automatic save failure on a 1" is not fine to me, not in a game with save-or-die spells in it, which is supposed to be a framework for good storytelling.

 

Getting saves so high that the bonus finally reaches 20 is not something any character can do easily. That character who desires save bonuses of 20 will have to spend its lifetime working on that save bonus, and collecting magic items that help with the dream of having 20 save bonuses, or else to advance to such high levels that it becomes a god. There should be a reward for focusing efforts in that direction.

 

The idea that a mere mortal has a chance to land a save-or-die spell against a god is ridiculous to me, or at least, it lends itself to very, very bad storytelling.

[Malagant]

There are incidents on record of people dying from an attack by rats, so there goes the foundation of your "no realistic scenario would allow any realistic number of insects or rats to seriously hurt you" right there. These things do happen in the real world, therefore they must be realistic by definition.

The real problem is not anything you mention above. It isn't spamming (directly). It's called the law of averages:

a statistical principle formulated by Jakob Bernoulli to show a more or less predictable ratio between the number of random trials of an event and its occurrences. Short of altering reality, no one is getting around it.

The core problem is the amount of events occurring within a game environment. In the real world, the number of times one finds themselves in a situation where they are being attacked is low in most cases. In a game world, they occur every few minutes. There's no way around this unless you're up for one boring game. There's also the issue of taking saves quite literally. Making a fortitude save doesn't mean your character was hit and shrugged it off with a laugh and a one liner that would make Roddy Piper or Stallone look impotent before pouncing into action.

 

What I hear is "I got taken out by a bad roll!" And? It comes with the territory. It's why DM's in PnP sometimes fudge a roll or two when necessary, but no one seeks to remove it from the game because someone got sore over it. It reminds me of the old PW days, when terms like "Tank" started getting adopted. A player min/maxed to infinity with the belief they would be untouchable and, when someone was able to touch them, cried either foul, cheat, unbalanced, exploit or bug because how dare someone be able to create a build that can touch them.

I must point out you aren't complaining about automatic success on 20 at all either, so it evidently isn't the rule that bothers you as much as the fact that it affected you. Removing it may give you the sense of a new lease on the game (and I would question the merit of one that would give up on a game over a rare bad roll), but it's just as unrealistic as you claim it's presence is in the first place is. The next time you consider automatic fail/success being ridiculous, consider some real life individuals that apparently had the die of life roll against them:

Ray Chapman: August 16, 1920 - the only professional baseball player to be killed by a pitch.

 

Janet Parker, September 1978 - Died of smallpox while working in the same building as a lab yet not directly with any viruses. No one else in the building was affected.

 

I dare say Dick Wertheim, a tennis line judge at the 1983 US Open, failed his reflex save when he saw a tennis ball coming at him, made an attempt to dodge, which allowed the ball to connect with his own jewels, causing him to crumple and strike his head on the pavement before dying a week later after never regaining consciousness.

 

I don't even need to mention Boris Segal.

[MrZork]

I agree that the auto-fail-on-1 is pretty dumb system. I don't think any player should feel bad about disabling it. I also think most PWs (certainly any that I have played) would benefit from disabling it. In a party situation, the auto-fail rule is not as catastrophic as it is when soloing. But, anyone running a PW (even a party-focused one) should understand that soloists benefit the server, because then there is someone on to heed the call when someone shouts to see if anyone wants to team up. If no one feels safe soloing because the players know that they will eventually roll that one, then fewer players will be on to form parties.

Auto-hit-on-1 does not bother me. In most situations that I can imagine where a toon can only hit his target with the auto-hit rule (in other words the target's AC is 21 or more higher than the attacker's AB), that hit won't be enough to take down the target. And, there are no crits in that situation, so it will typically barely scratch the target.

(As far as realism goes, it's more the auto-hit that is occurring in those situations than the auto-fail. A thousand rats can kill someone, because occasionally some will get a bite in and that adds up. But, someone failing to dodge some projectile and then dying because of the initial impact or some accidental side event isn't so much an example of a failed save as of a lucky hit. In the real world, people don't have uber hp, so a lucky hit with a baseball or some blow to the skull can take someone out.)

FWIW, I have never even heard the term "save scumming" until this thread. I assume it means reloading from right before the target rolls his save until he fails it. I have never done it or heard anyone suggest it. But, I wouldn't doubt that some have tried it. But, at the end of the day, they are playing SP modules, so who cares? They are only nerfing their own play experience.

A few things to keep in mind, though, regarding the saves. First, playing on hardcore rules helps with this somewhat, at least for non-casters spamming spells from scrolls via UMD.

And, as Grani points out, even without hardcore UMD rules in place, a wimpy character shouldn't last long enough against a godlike opponent to make effective use of a spell that will only really hurt the godlike opponent on an auto-fail roll.

BTW, I checked and you were right that Desther is true neutral, so Protection vs. Alignment has no effect on his spells. I actually consider his non-evil alignment to be an bug/oversight. At that point, he has spent months working for Maugrim and the old ones, trying to infect everyone in Neverwinter with plague, betraying the naive Fenthick, and then raising an army of undead. Seems like he's pretty much evil by then.

But, it's worth pointing out that you didn't fail that save because of the auto-fail rule. Not that that is an argument in favor of the rule (I say dump it if you don't like it), but it's an odd jumping off point for this thread. :-)

[Gruftlord]

It's a nice system for what it was designed for: A dnd party. I have no problem with it on PWs. But for my single player plays, i also have that flag switched. Dnd 3.0 (or the much older 'fail on 1' even) never was designed to be used on a computer game and/or a single player experience, and it shows. It was designed with pnp group play on mind, and i support the use of some house rules to make the nwn experience more enjoyable.

[icywind1980]

Is ''practicing scumming'' a euphemism for not being an elitist?

[Grani]

Is ''practicing scumming'' a euphemism for not being an elitist?

 

It's not. Guess I could have used different words, but save scumming is a quite common expression in gaming. Well, anyway, I don't have any disdain for people who like to play this way, if that's what you're asking.

[kalbaern]

Personally, I don't mind "fail on 1", whether in a party or soloing. It's a part of PnP after all. That's reflected on my own PW by this rule and many others, like .... 5th level rogues not being able to spam a stack of FOD scrolls. They would most often fail as the base DC in PnP and on my PW is 27 (20 + caster level of the scroll). I further limit how instant death spells work on my dragons and bosses. Even with a successful DC check or when cast by an actual caster, such spells have only a 1 percent chance on my PW of instant death. I've applied this to AA's death arrows as well. Only as concerns dragons and bosses though and just because I personally dislike being able to "one shot" any "end of adventure" foes. There's still a chance, but it makes folks expect and prepare for failure as well.

 

Games based directly on DnD are by their very natures party based. Whether its Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights, groups of one sort or another are encouraged. This stems from DnD itself actually being a team game. No single class/character was ever meant to "do it all". Co-operative play has always been the norm. The majority of old published PnP modules not only had suggested levels listed for characters, but were meant for groups of 3-5 players and it was often suggested that a DM provide henchmen or other NPCs to fill in the gaps when they lacked sufficient players (or players controlled multiple PCs). In video games, added party members or henchmen often fill this spread when multiple players isn't an option.

 

When it comes to SP, meh, it doesn't bother me what difficulty settings, rules changes or even multiple saved games folks use. Whatever makes the game enjoyable for them I think is fine.

[Lilura]

Horrible thought, but I can see how a person might easily get owned by a swarm of insects. So yeah, bad example.

 

FWIW, I have never even heard the term "save scumming" until this thread. I assume it means reloading from right before the target rolls his save until he fails it. I have never done it or heard anyone suggest it. But, I wouldn't doubt that some have tried it. But, at the end of the day, they are playing SP modules, so who cares? They are only nerfing their own play experience.

 

TV tropes sums up save-scumming pretty well:

 

Old, old method of playing games. Basically, you save the game whenever you get a result you like (or before you face a risk), and restore the saved game whenever you get a result you don't like.

 

I heard about the term fairly recently, too (five years maybe?); but I certainly engaged in the "shameful" activity in the first Fallout (and perhaps in older games, too!)

[allen179gmail]

The 'fail on 1' doesn't matter to me. That is what saved games are for. I save before a fight because I don't always die from fail on 1. Some times I am at fault. ( most times) Things like forgot to keep an eye on my health. that sort of thing.

BTW: Remember 'David and Goliath' from the Bible?

[WhiZard]

Also note that many creatures have low DC abilities that would be rendered ineffective if the auto-fail on 1 were disabled. Should a PC's average saves allow him to rush into a basilisk's nest and go full tilt slaughter? Taking away the auto-fail will often remove intended elements of the game.

[Shadooow]

Also note that many creatures have low DC abilities that would be rendered ineffective if the auto-fail on 1 were disabled. Should a PC's average saves allow him to rush into a basilisk's nest and go full tilt slaughter? Taking away the auto-fail will often remove intended elements of the game.

And thats the most riddiculous setting. This rarely happens in single player modules but Ive seen this so often on PWs. Map with dozens of spawns of basilisk in a packs of 6. Or another one that is full of driders who (due to the bug in AI) spams only wail of banshee till they run out of uses.

 

No immunity = sure death in less than 2 rounds. What is point of this?

[WhiZard]

And thats the most riddiculous setting. This rarely happens in single player modules but Ive seen this so often on PWs. Map with dozens of spawns of basilisk in a packs of 6.

Well there are alternatives to melee combat that could be employed.

Or another one that is full of driders who (due to the bug in AI) spams only wail of banshee till they run out of uses.

How is a sorcerer using spontaneous casting a bug?

[Shadooow]

Well there are alternatives to melee combat that could be employed.

Indeed there are, invisibility and you don't need to fight them at all, or just cast fireball on them from distance and run back till you be able to cast next, or just take ranged weapon and runshoot. Yes there are alternatives but they all smell fishy and it doesn't seem as what was intented.

 

How is a sorcerer using spontaneous casting a bug?

If you look into AI, you can see a function that prevents casters from using same spell over and over. Due to the bug in that function however, this doesn't work and thus sorcerers who doesn't have specified uses of a spell will spam one spell over and over. From this reason they usually cast 5 from 20 spells assigned. I documented this bug back in days I made CPP 1.70.

[WhiZard]

If you look into AI, you can see a function that prevents casters from using same spell over and over. Due to the bug in that function however, this doesn't work and thus sorcerers who doesn't have specified uses of a spell will spam one spell over and over. From this reason they usually cast 5 from 20 spells assigned. I documented this bug back in days I made CPP 1.70.

Okay, but that 8 second timer really was only to stop consecutive spells being the same. Looking at what the drider would cast instead, it would either be time stop or weird, which are both just as devastating. But this is also AI, and a complaint about the AI being too competitive when the usual complaints are the other way around.

[Shadooow]

Okay, but that 8 second timer really was only to stop consecutive spells being the same. Looking at what the drider would cast instead, it would either be time stop or weird, which are both just as devastating. But this is also AI, and a complaint about the AI being too competitive when the usual complaints are the other way around.

Eh? What are you trying to discuss here? So its a bug or not? And why do you even try to debate about what would they use if this was fixed if you didn't tried it. You are only speculating here which has no value.

[WhiZard]

Eh? What are you trying to discuss here? So its a bug or not? And why do you even try to debate about what would they use if this was fixed if you didn't tried it. You are only speculating here which has no value.

The eight second timer was part of the check. So what is it that I said that was speculation? You are the one complaining that the AI is not working right.

[allen179gmail]

Shadooow, What is your point?

[Shadooow]

Shadooow, What is your point?

That desing like Whizard mentioned is nonsense that leads into inevitable rolling 1 sooner or later. Default settings of 1 = autofail has a sense only when the modules aren't crowded with instant death ability monsters. Which in most PWs Ive played doesn't apply. And in most of them there are no immunities on items so you are either cleric/mage that can cast immunity and then you can survive or you can't unless this cleric/mage is in your party of course.

[WhiZard]

That desing like Whizard mentioned is nonsense that leads into inevitable rolling 1 sooner or later.

So playing through the SoU without disabling auto-fail on one is "nonsense."

[MrZork]

First, just some context for my comments: I am primarily concerned with MP environments for this topic. For SP, it's more of an annoyance than anything else because the reload option is there. To someone who saves somewhat frequently, a catastrophic auto-fail on 1 is just a reload with the extra step that it's triggered by a failed save. It's pointless, but it's not a huge problem. On a PW, an auto-failed save can mean a respawn, which can entail significant consequences in terms of XP and gold loss and, often the biggest issue, can cause long delays as the PC has to trudge back from the respawn point to where the rest of the party is waiting. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, even on PWs that are intended for mostly party play, there are players who might be willing to spend some time on solo runs when there aren't enough other players online and those soloing players help the server because then they are at least online when the shout goes out to form a party.

That said, I tend to agree with the criticism of encounters with low-DC death (or equivalent) spammers like standard basilisks. I would much prefer that some other option is taken than having an wimpy creatures whose only chance of being significant is the PC auto-failing a save. Some straightforward ideas for replacing such encounters might include:

• Turn auto-fail off and replace the creature or ability with one that has a non-zero (without auto-fail) chance of affecting a level-appropriate PC who doesn't have a good save. In other words, a PC who was designed with a great save in that area has little to worry about unless he's facing a creature with a powerful abiltiy. In contrast, a more typical PC will fail it sometimes, and a PC with a poor save will fail it often. That way, players can roleplay the strengths of their PCs - toons with great saves might take more chances (which is what the build is designed to do) whereas wimpier toons need to rely on spell buffs and gear.
• With auto-fail on, instead of a low-DC (only failed on auto-fail) ability for these creatures, replace that special ability with one where a failed save isn't a death sentence. Maybe a 4-5 round petrification, or a "death" gaze that is 60% of max HP, etc.
• With auto-fail on, instead of a low-DC (only failed on auto-fail) ability that takes out a PC 1 in 20 times, replace that special ability with one that reflects a more rare event. Script it to actually have the nasty really effect only 1 in 5 times, so that the actual chance for a toon with good saves is 1 in 100 or something.
• With auto-fail on, script the abilities of these wimpier creatures to be progressive. E.g. a failed save the first time applies a slow effect. A failed save for a slowed creature results in daze. A failed save for a dazed creature results in paralysis. Etc. (Obviously, steps can be removed from that contrived sequence. In reality, even having a two-stage process greatly reduces the impact of auto-failed saves.)
• Et cetera.

Anyway, that's my feeling on it. I find it annoying when I am solo on my favorite PW (sometimes just having a little fun until more players show up) and I run across a pile of wimpy spawns where one has a petrification-on-failed-save ability. Here is some bone medusa who could barely make stone with water and a bag of concrete mix, but I have to worry that my tough-as-nails fighter / dwarven defender / champion of torm is going to wake up in the temple because he, in effect, rolled a –12 on his save.

[MagicalMaster]

Hey, I like this topic!

either Desther is some form of neutral alignment, or Protection from Evil does not protect against Hold Person cast by any alignment.

As MrZork mentioned, Desther (oddly) is True Neutral, if you're curious. Glad to hear you've been enjoying the game more, though.

I find it more realistic that there is a small chance of winning against a much higher levelled opponent thanks to some amazing luck. I cannot, however, see any dependable strategy being built around this feature...Of course, I'm assuming the player doesn't practise save scumming.

I wasn't referring to save scumming either. Note that there's a difference between "having a small chance of winning" and "having a small chance to instantly kill the enemy."

And, despite your perception, there are dependable strategies built around it. A level 20+ Sorcerer will easily have 24+ instant death spells, for example, just looking at level 7-9 spells only. That's over a 70% chance to kill the target with once of those cases (0.95 ^ 24). Open it up to a multiplayer environment (or throw in some scrolls) and even with just two people spamming Save or Die (which, at a minimum, includes Clerics/Druids/Sorcerers/Wizards) you're up to over a 90% chance.

I've played on PWs which had bosses where the community strategy was "Bring instant death casters and scrolls and spam until the boss does." It worked. Yes, the level 5 rogue example was extreme but that was the point of said example -- a level 5 rogue and a level 40 wizard both have (barring SR for a moment) a 5% chance to instantly kill the Supreme Ancient Exalted Dragon Guardian of Uberness when using a death spell/scroll.

This isn't even bringing up the problems of Devastating Critical and Vorpal which *have* no "limited uses."

A character's success or failure in that story ought to depend on preparation, planning, good tactics, and story needs, not a random dice throw.

"Automatic success on a 20" is fine for any kind of attack roll, even though the damage from that "critical hit" might be negligible against gods and dragons.
 
"Automatic save failure on a 1" is not fine to me, not in a game with save-or-die spells in it, which is supposed to be a framework for good storytelling.

The first sentence is the main problem with Save or Die (or equivalent) effects. The enemy crits me with a good roll? I need to drink a potion or use a defensive ability or run away and recover or something. If that enemy crit me when I was at low health and I died? I needed to be more cautious and not let my health get that low. I failed a Fireball spell reflex throw? Damn, I took double damage and might be in a bad spot, need to figure out what to do. I failed a Finger of Death spell? Whoops, reload. Note that I have less issues with Save or Die *without* auto-fail -- in that case it's more of a "Keep out unless you have X saving throw or immunity" (though I still am not fond of the mechanic for several reasons) -- but with auto-fail it's ridiculous.

And yes, that's one (of many) ways to explain why auto-success on 20 isn't a gamebreaker like auto-fail on 1. If Finger of Death had the *caster* roll and automatically killed the target on a 20, then that would be a problem.

The real problem is not anything you mention above. It isn't spamming (directly). It's called the law of averages: a statistical principle formulated by Jakob Bernoulli to show a more or less predictable ratio between the number of random trials of an event and its occurrences. Short of altering reality, no one is getting around it.

The core problem is the amount of events occurring within a game environment. In the real world, the number of times one finds themselves in a situation where they are being attacked is low in most cases. In a game world, they occur every few minutes. There's no way around this unless you're up for one boring game. There's also the issue of taking saves quite literally. Making a fortitude save doesn't mean your character was hit and shrugged it off with a laugh and a one liner that would make Roddy Piper or Stallone look impotent before pouncing into action.

I must point out you aren't complaining about automatic success on 20 at all either, so it evidently isn't the rule that bothers you as much as the fact that it affected you. Removing it may give you the sense of a new lease on the game (and I would question the merit of one that would give up on a game over a rare bad roll)

While your first paragraphs are somewhat true, there are in fact many situations in NWN where you *are* spammed *within a single encounter* and the law of averages raises its ugly head.

The difference between auto-success on 20 and auto-fail on 1 is the difference between having a 5% chance of surviving a fatal attack and a 5% chance of delivering a fatal attack -- the odds of your day being ruined because an enemy rolled a 20 (or your day being saved because you rolled a 20) is extremely low. If you got hit with one 95% chance of dying attack, chances are you'll be hit with another (and if you survive both of those then you are 1 out of 400 people). And probably a third or fourth for good measure. Likewise, even if an enemy lucks out and survives one attack he shouldn't, chances are you so outclass said enemy that it doesn't really change anything. Note that I'd be perfectly fine with removing auto-20s (like, y'know, already exists for skill checks).

And regarding giving up on a game -- well, not every situation is one where you can easily laugh off a "bad roll" and reload (PWs or potentially DMed campaigns, as two examples). And some situations, as mentioned, involve getting spammed and thus a bad roll is extremely likely to happen at some point during that encounter.

I agree that the auto-fail-on-1 is pretty dumb system. I don't think any player should feel bad about disabling it. I also think most PWs (certainly any that I have played) would benefit from disabling it. In a party situation, the auto-fail rule is not as catastrophic as it is when soloing. But, anyone running a PW (even a party-focused one) should understand that soloists benefit the server, because then there is someone on to heed the call when someone shouts to see if anyone wants to team up. If no one feels safe soloing because the players know that they will eventually roll that one, then fewer players will be on to form parties.

Preach it, brother!

I especially love worlds that tout "MASSIVE DEATH PENALTIES! SO COOL! JOIN UP!" that have situations like that.

Where are you playing these days, btw?

But, it's worth pointing out that you didn't fail that save because of the auto-fail rule. Not that that is an argument in favor of the rule (I say dump it if you don't like it), but it's an odd jumping off point for this thread. :-)

Do not discourage the converts.

Do not discourage the converts.

Do not discourage the converts.

Even with a successful DC check or when cast by an actual caster, such spells have only a 1 percent chance on my PW of instant death. I've applied this to AA's death arrows as well.

To be clear, you mean a roll of 1 effectively results in rolling a d5 and if another 1 is rolled *then* the creature dies? I realize the exact method might vary but that's the idea?

For those curious, if you use my earlier numbers (24 instant death casts) that results in a 21.5%ish chance of succeeding versus over 70%. I do wonder why you even keep the chance at that point. If you expect your players to figure out tactics beyond "Pray for an auto-fail on instant death" then why not commit to that idea? If you can't instantly kill it legitimately, then you can't instantly kill it.

Also, am I reading your scroll check correctly? A rogue with 14 Charisma and full UMD would need to be level 19 in order to never fail using a Fireball (caster level 5) scroll?

I heard about the term fairly recently, too (five years maybe?); but I certainly engaged in the "shameful" activity in the first Fallout (and perhaps in older games, too!)

My world has been shattered. I don't know if we can be friends anymore.

Also note that many creatures have low DC abilities that would be rendered ineffective if the auto-fail on 1 were disabled. Should a PC's average saves allow him to rush into a basilisk's nest and go full tilt slaughter? Taking away the auto-fail will often remove intended elements of the game.

Given the default game mechanics, yes. See MrZork's post before mine for alternatives that don't suck.

[MagicalMaster]

And thats the most riddiculous setting. This rarely happens in single player modules but Ive seen this so often on PWs. Map with dozens of spawns of basilisk in a packs of 6. Or another one that is full of driders who (due to the bug in AI) spams only wail of banshee till they run out of uses.

No immunity = sure death in less than 2 rounds. What is point of this?

TO MAKE IT DIFFICULT SHADOW! WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF CASUAL TRYING TO RUIN NWN?
 

That desing like Whizard mentioned is nonsense that leads into inevitable rolling 1 sooner or later. Default settings of 1 = autofail has a sense only when the modules aren't crowded with instant death ability monsters. Which in most PWs Ive played doesn't apply. And in most of them there are no immunities on items so you are either cleric/mage that can cast immunity and then you can survive or you can't unless this cleric/mage is in your party of course.

Or in the case of those basilisks there *are* no immunity items/spells by default.
 

That said, I tend to agree with the criticism of encounters with low-DC death (or equivalent) spammers like standard basilisks. I would much prefer that some other option is taken than having an wimpy creatures whose only chance of being significant is the PC auto-failing a save. Some straightforward ideas for replacing such encounters might include:

Indeed. Another idea that other games do is the idea of "stacks" -- something like each stack of petrification reduces AB by 1, AC by 1, and movement speed by 10%. Hit 10 stacks and you're actually petrified. Like you said, dozens (or hundreds) of alternatives that all work much better

[WhiZard]

I also disagree with the mentality that if a good character is made it automatically *must* easily survive all environments. While I disagree with randomly putting basilisks and bodaks in regularly traversed areas, I very much would support regions with death warnings, such as corpses or statues, to indicate where such creatures would lurk. With gazes there are tricks to avoid them as well as ranged tactics and often immunities (polymorphing or shifting can be quite effective against creatures that petrify). If a server is set up so that you are supposed to farm every area, then that would lead to these high expectations of disabling auto-fail. I also feel that the death system on many servers is too severe and the builders often miss a chance for spirit adventure when they construct their elegant penalties. Nevertheless, I think the expectation that a dwarven defender, or whatever build have you, needing to be immune to a low level medusa is quite far fetched. There is nothing about such a build, besides being a good one, that would warrant it any type of special immunity.