D&D 5E Failing saves is...ok?

James Gasik said:

So how do you feel about saving throws? Sacred cow that needs to be ground into hamburger? Implemented poorly? Just needs a tweak here and there to succeed? Or is everything working fine, nothing to see here?

Click to expand...

If I've been playing a character for over a year IRL, struggling through an intricately designed campaign, I'm going to be emotionally invested in that character's growth and story. If my character fails a mere one or two saves on a random encounter with a banshee or mindflayer or whatever, without ever seeing the campaign through or saving the world... well, that's a pretty effing metal way to go. I'm going to fondly remember that character for a long time.

Everything working fine, nothing to see here.

I find it a nice feature that the dynamics involved in saves change as players progress in levels.

At the lower levels, being proficient or not in a save does not have that much impact, and to have a big difference between saves usually requires proficiency in a save in which the character also has a good stat versus non-proficiency in a save tied to a dump stat. Take wizards for instance. They likely start with a good int save, but their wis save might as well be as good as their dex or con save, depending on stat placement. Anyhow, the result of the saving throws will be more spread out, luck plays a bigger part, and consequences are usually mild.

At higher levels, the difference increases, and heroes start experiencing a real difference between good and bad saves, to the point that good saves might be successful very often while bad ones will almost guaranteed result in failure. Then, luck will play a smaller role, and the decisions the players make yield a much bigger impact. The fact that these high level characters actually have a lot of resources to deal with the challenges they face matches nicely this change in pace. And then, the higher levels is where disintegrating rays and quivering palms belong.

Barolo said:

At higher levels, the difference increases, and heroes start experiencing a real difference between good and bad saves, to the point that good saves might be successful very often while bad ones will almost guaranteed result in failure.

Click to expand...

Not so much the good saves, no. Your best possible save - proficient, with your primary stat adding, so, for instance STR saves for a fighter - about tracks save DCs. So when you're +5 at low level 9 (16-17 post-racial stat & +2 prof), and rolling vs DCs of 13, you save on an 8, and, when you're very high level, and +11 (20 stat +6 Prof) vs DCs of 19, you're still saving on an 8. Nuth'n - a 4e-style treadmill, just on a lower speed.
All your other saves get worse. That proficient-but-tertiary-stat save (10 stat +2 prof) that needed an 11 before, now needs a 13 (10 stat +6 prof), that non-proficient, second-high-priority stat that needed an 11 (14 stat, +2 vs 13), now maybe needs a 15 (18 stat, +4 vs 19), that non-proficient (0) dump-stat (-1) save needed a 14, now needs a 20.

Then, luck will play a smaller role, and the decisions the players make yield a much bigger impact.

Click to expand...

The decision of which save to force makes a bigger impact. If a caster targets an enemy's worst save, it's virtually guaranteed, best and it's still got the same shot it probably had at 1st level. The DM can decide which saves to target with what, and thus bring down the PC who's too big for his britches. That kinda thing.

Tony Vargas said:

Not so much the good saves, no. Your best possible save - proficient, with your primary stat adding, so, for instance STR saves for a fighter - about tracks save DCs.

Click to expand...

Best possible save far outpaces save DCs. In the extreme case, and neglecting magic items and epic boons/etc., you get +5 (ability) + 6 (proficiency) + 5 (aura of protection) + d4 (Bless) + d12 (Bardic Inspiration) with advantage (Circle of Power or Foresight) and an extra die usable retroactively (Lucky) plus a reroll on a failure (Diamond Soul or Indomitable). That's +16+d4+d12 which beats DC 35 more than 50% of the time even before you count advantage, lucky, or rerolls. If you count those, success rate against DC 35 is 99%.

Getting your save DC up to 35 would be much, much harder.

It's analytically wrong for people to look only at proficiency and then conclude that non-proficient saves don't scale at all at high level. In fact you get better at mitigating all manner of effects which grant a saving throw, especially in a party context. Sometimes those mitigations even come by way of increased saving throw bonuses.

Hemlock said:

Best possible save far outpaces save DCs. In the extreme case, and neglecting magic items and epic boons/etc., you get +5 (ability) + 6 (proficiency)

Click to expand...

That's a character's actual save, the 'best' of his six...

...hypothetical best possible save ever, for someone, somewhere, in the right circumstance, buffed to the gills, of course, would be different...

...I suppose outright immunity is the best possible hypothetical save.

+ 5 (aura of protection)

Click to expand...

Paladins, yes, do get much better...

It's analytically wrong for people to look only at proficiency and then conclude that non-proficient saves don't scale at all at high level.

Click to expand...

Analytically, it's correct, because that's what actually happens.

Using resources to counter or mitigate is another question. You bring up a good point in that the high-level party with a Paladin (whom everyone sticks close enough to) or with casters who learn/prep & use the right spells at the right time will have a lot of resources to make up for bad saves - or for other purposes, high-level full casters are very versatile that way.

Yeah, 5e has a problem with saving throws:
They are too easy to succeed at with effects that are usually too mild if you fail. Long years of whiny, entitled players have resulted in the newest edition mostly lacking any real teeth. Boo hoo, characters have weaknesses.

Tony Vargas said:

Using resources to counter or mitigate is another question. You bring up a good point in that the high-level party with a Paladin (whom everyone sticks close enough to) or with casters who learn/prep & use the right spells at the right time will have a lot of resources to make up for bad saves - or for other purposes, high-level full casters are very versatile that way.

Click to expand...

Or any of a number of other mitigations. Even something as simple as taking the Lucky feat is akin to universal proficiency in All Important Saves, if you use it that way. Then there's elvish advantage against charm and Berserkers' and some Paladins' immunity to charm, Fiendlock's Dark One's Whatsitcalled (AFB), Evasion (effectively an auto-success on many Dex saves, with a chance at uber-success), Tides of Chaos... the list goes on and on.

Some of these cost resources, others don't, but even if it does cost resources it doesn't make sense to exclude these features from analysis unless you're analyzing utterly trivial saves, like the chance of failing your DC 10 Dex check to slip on some ball bearings during the last round of combat. If you explicitly limit your analysis to trivial saves then sure, no one would ever* use Bardic Inspiration to avoid falling prone if the only consequence is not being the one to strike the killing blow against the last monster in a random encounter. But if we're talking about saving throws against important things, like being banished to temporal stasis for five thousand years (as mentioned in this thread), these things are very relevant. Even if it's just a question of "do you take 20d6 poison damage from the trap or save for half," these mitigators are important. A 12th level Cha 20 Con 14 Paladin may not have proficiency in Con saves, but he can still take 12d6 (42) (Con save DC 19 for half) purple worm poison damage and make the DC 19 Con save 45% of the time (32.55 average damage), and he can make the save 70% of the time and cut the damage to 13.65 on average just by casting a little Protection From Poison spell on himself (no concentration, 1 hour). That's better than having Con save proficiency.

* And yes, I realize that by saying "no one would ever...", I guarantee that I will very shortly see some player do exactly this thing during play.

Saving throw proficiency is not your first line of defense. Never has been**, never should be.

** Except maybe in 3E or 4E, about which I know little.

Hemlock said:

Saving throw proficiency is not your first line of defense. Never has been**, never should be.

** Except maybe in 3E or 4E, about which I know little.

Click to expand...

I don't think there was a viable line of defense vs optimized save DCs in 3e. In 4e, yes, scaling of non-AC defenses (4e consolidated the resolution of offensive spells &c into the attack mechanic) kept pace with scaling of the corresponding attacks, though it was still pretty advantageous to be able to target any of those 3 defenses, and not easy to keep them all strong.

In 1e leveling made your saves better, period, as there weren't 'save DCs' to scale or optimize - something might give a save penalty, but it was rarely high -2, maybe -4 at worst - for the most part, what you saved against (petrification, poison, a breath weapon, etc) determined the number you needed to roll, whether it was the breath of a mephit or an ancient red dragon, the spell of a prestidigitator or an arch-mage made no difference.

The WotC era really did introduce a sea change in the way such mechanics scaled.

Hemlock said:

Best possible save far outpaces save DCs.

Click to expand...

But the most likely case is that DCs outpace saves, and the rules really should be designed to work in common scenarios rather than extreme ones. In the most likely case, DCs all eventually progress to 20, and saves remain split between -1 and +11. Everything else is situational.

Tony Vargas said:

In 1e leveling made your saves better, period, as there weren't 'save DCs' to scale or optimize - something might give a save penalty, but it was rarely high -2, maybe -4 at worst - for the most part, what you saved against (petrification, poison, a breath weapon, etc) determined the number you needed to roll, whether it was the breath of a mephit or an ancient red dragon, the spell of a prestidigitator or an arch-mage made no difference.

Click to expand...

But 1E is a poster child for the point I'm making: if you have to make a saving throw, you're already in deep trouble. Nobody sane deliberately risks even a 5% chance of insta-death. Saving throws represent your last-ditch effort to avoid something really bad happening to you, but if you go through a whole session and never have to make a single roll against your strongest save (e.g. Death/Poison for a Fighter), you don't lament the waste of an opportunity to exercise your class features--you breathe a sigh of relief.

If you play 5E with an AD&D mentality towards saves and try to avoid making them, your PCs will survive just fine.