There are actually games with rules around saving a ball after it has passed the outlane switch (WMS Indy and others) and mechs designed to make it possible (Embryon and others). This rule doesn’t work in real life. Heck we’ve gotten so we can sometimes knock a ball into play from the side on Grand Prix.
If you ban a move because it could cause an injury, should we also ban MMA fighting because punches to the head can make you dumb? Or side arm pitchers in baseball because that’s much more likely to cause injury than throwing overhand?
When done properly, death saves and bang backs are skill moves. If you’re hurting yourself doing either, you’re doing it wrong. Size isn’t a good argument either. I’m skinny as a rail and can death save anything short of a JJP wide body. It’s not pretty, but I can do it. Stetta can play for hours doing bangbacks and not hurt himself, and he’s about as skinny as I am. The injury argument doesn’t fly. If you’re good at it, you’re not getting hurt.
I believe neither should be legal because it’s cheating on 99.9% of games. Lazarus balls are ok because luck is a part of pinball. Yes, Lazarus balls can sometimes be skillfully assisted, but luck always plays a big part. Plus, Stern switching to plastic aprons have made them much more common now. Would be near impossible to police it if you made them illegal. If you do a bang back or death save a game, someone is going to see it. No matter how smooth your are.
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That’s what I was referring to with “skillful outlane saves are a feature”. Just like progressive jackpots and midnight madness, I don’t believe that just because it’s in the software it must be deemed fair play. “No death saves” seems pretty fair to me, and I do agree with KCB that any tournament game should have a tilt set tight enough to make them pretty much impossible anyways.
Correction: I do believe Midnight Madness should be fair play, but that’s a whole different thread. The point is that it’s a bad software feature for competition.
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That’s the real answer. Configure the machine as desired for competitive play, then let the machine itself be the judge, jury, and executioner, unless there’s clear indication that it’s malfunctioning.
That’s tautological … they shouldn’t be legal because they’re not legal? What? 
I’m also curious what you consider to be the 0.1% of games where it’s not cheating… just those games that happen to award points for a detected bang-back / death-save?
As you said, death saves and bang backs are skill moves. If an event director wants to specifically exclude them out of fear of damage to the machines, fear of damage to the players, or fear of games dragging on forever, then so be it, but I’ve never understood the blanket condemnation of them.
Not sure why tautological means but you’re probably right. It’s just my measuring stick. Playing on location? Anything goes to get the GC score. In competition, no bang backs or death saves. That’s just were I personally draw the line.
An exception might be WOF, where a ball goes between the flippers and rolls over a lit free spin. Ball drains, but another ball gets auto plunged. While technically not a death save or a bang back, it’s one of the few situations where a ball drains and I would say play on. Like a Lazarus ball, just a luck thing. Wheel can also have a definite drain/ keep playing situation. Ball goes thru lit big money lane, awards shoot again (without collecting bonus) and another ball gets auto plunged. Can’t call it an EB because bonus wasn’t collected.
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No, I wasn’t trying to suggest that all nudging should be banned. But, for a death safe, I really have to move the machine a fair distance and do it hard. That requires a fair bit of strength, much more so than normal nudging. Not everyone is strong enough for that. Younger men, many women, some older men…
I’ve seen a 9 year old boy pull off a death save… as well as slam tilt games…
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I brought this up in the “what do you do with extra balls” thread and the same principle holds here: those of us who run tournaments on route games to which we do not have the keys and thus cannot change the settings have the “no deathsaves, no bangbacks” rule in part because we can’t control whether a machine is death-save-able. Added bonuses from banning deathsaves include: not worrying that someone is going to move their machine into the fingers of the player next to them when space between games is already quite limited, not worrying that inexperienced players will try and fail to deathsave and do harm to themselves or the machine.
While, as @KCB noted, skillful nudging can elongate game times just as much as deathsaves, a deathsave is an easily defined and identified maneuver, so it’s much easier to blanket ban it than it would be to try and moderate “regular” nudging.
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I have no doubt that there are a few nine-year-olds around who can perform a death save. I also have no doubt that 99.9% of nine-year-olds can’t.
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