D&D 5E Failing saves is...ok?

[CapnZapp]

Allow me to clarify, there should be no fundamental difference in your strategy based upon whether a save is impossible or just hard. In both cases you should assume failure and have a plan to work around it.

I recently nearly TPK'd a 14th level party with 5 ghosts as 2 of the three PCs missed a DC 13 Cha save and became possessed. One PC who missed had a +7 in the Cha saving throw, while the one who made it had a +1. And the fact that this is anecdotal is exactly the point. Even a 25% chance to fail a particular save means you could be failing a save you are proficient in multiple times a day, if not in a single fight.

This is all well and good.

It is also a different discussion than "should the game take steps to reduce the likelihood a player is asked to roll a 21 on a d20?"

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[CapnZapp]

I'm not sure there is a fundamental difference between a hard save and an outright impossible one.

This is a design issue.

From the POV of a given character there might be no difference, unless that character faces and survives enough epic threats to make a statistically significant sample, and so could deduce "my save bonus is likely not high enough to ever save".

But again, that's not the complaint.

The complaint is that you approach D&D as a game - any game. And eventually you realize the nature of saves at high level, and then you go "what kind of klutz designed these rules?"



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[Barolo]

Gotta agree with Hemlock on this one. In a way, it reminds me of the arguments for/against the "expertise" feats in 4e. In both cases, I don't think there's anything wrong with the math starting to work against the PCs at higher levels. At the levels where the auto-fails become an issue, they could/should be proactive enough to consider covering their weaknesses, whether through acquisitions of magic items, spells, class levels, or followers. The only caveat I would apply if that the DM must be lenient enough to allow the PCs to be proactive enough to acquire those resources if the players are willing to expend time/treasure on them. If not, then the DMs bear some responsibility to not through an elder brain with a DC 19 Int save mind blast at his group of players with no Int above 10, i.e. the bog standard 5e party.

This. Getting better at resisting stuff just by rolling dice is not really interesting, but being able to protect yourself by being smart, doing recon on the enemy and actively raising defenses against their capabilities is. Lower level adventurers rely a little bit more on luck (as PCs have way less resources and stuff), while experienced high level, world-changing heroes have proved their wits and guile, and should be trying to leverage any situation in their favor. The change of pacing in the game is also quite nice, keeping low, mid and high level play distinct, which for me makes the whole level-advancing more interesting.

On a side note, one thing I don't miss about earlier editions was that a wizard (or any monster with special abilities) actually got worse at landing their goodies as the game progressed. Thinking from my players' PoV, it seems more exciting to them that the robed guy nice toys work better as the game progresses. It also seems more exciting to them that the battle master can guarantee his moves. And then, they expect the monsters they face to keep awesome too, as winning against whiners ain't fun. All cases rely on selecting the right tool for the job, though. No fireballing the nest of assassins, that's what cone of cold is for....

 

[OB1]

This is a design issue.

The complaint is that you approach D&D as a game - any game. And eventually you realize the nature of saves at high level, and then you go "what kind of klutz designed these rules?"

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Games have choices that have consequences. If I'm playing three card draw poker, I may decide to give up a straight to go for three of a kind. I don't complain the game is broken because I then get dealt the cards that would have given me the straight.

High level characters in 5e are designed to have weaknesses that can be exploited. Which weakness a PC has is chosen by the player when they choose their strengths. Weaknesses can be mitigated in a variety of ways. It's part of the challenge of the game at high levels. Its part of the game.

 

[OB1]

*Dupe post

 

[CapnZapp]

Games have choices that have consequences. If I'm playing three card draw poker, I may decide to give up a straight to go for three of a kind. I don't complain the game is broken because I then get dealt the cards that would have given me the straight.

High level characters in 5e are designed to have weaknesses that can be exploited. Which weakness a PC has is chosen by the player when they choose their strengths. Weaknesses can be mitigated in a variety of ways. It's part of the challenge of the game at high levels. Its part of the game.

You reply as if my complaint was "I'm a crybaby that dislike weaknesses".

I am not talking about weaknesses. I am certainly not arguing high level characters shouldn't have exploitable weaknesses, nor am I against games with choices that have consequences.

Now will you give me the courtesy of actually addressing my stated concerns?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[OB1]

You reply as if my complaint was "I'm a crybaby that dislike weaknesses".

I am not talking about weaknesses. I am certainly not arguing high level characters shouldn't have exploitable weaknesses, nor am I against games with choices that have consequences.

Now will you give me the courtesy of actually addressing my stated concerns?

Your stated concern is that 5e is a poorly and/or haphazardly designed game, one you contend was designed by a "klutz".

I provided a counter argument that the design was intentional and provides for decision points that are similar to other popular games.

I'm unclear as to why your concerns about the design choices of the game mean that the game is poorly designed. It may not be to your taste, but that doesn't mean it's bad.

As an anecdotal side note, the game I DM doesn't count Nat 20s and 1s as auto success or failure for anything except attack rolls, but both games I play in use auto success 20s and auto fail 1s for saving throws and ability checks. Over the course of over 100 sessions in three years, nothing game breaking has happened from either choice. It's just a mater of taste and feel.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Your stated concern is that 5e is a poorly and/or haphazardly designed game, one you contend was designed by a "klutz".

That does seem unfair. How would Zapp know anything about Mike's gross motor coordination?

I'm unclear as to why your concerns about the design choices of the game mean that the game is poorly designed. It may not be to your taste, but that doesn't mean it's bad.

5e's meant to evoke past editions, and past edition have approached attacks in a few very different ways. 5e does a fine job, with regards to saves, of evoking the classic game at low level and 3e at it's least broken. But, while it makes PCs amazingly resilient in terms of hps relative to 1e, it also makes them much more vulnerable to failed saves. That's in keeping with 3e, which was whack-tastic-crazy-broken in the favor of save-DC-optimizing Tier 1 casters - which is maybe not the best thing to be in keeping with, if you're aiming for a broader range of styles & feels.

Some sort of better-saves-module, especially something that'd help at higher levels, would not have been unreasonable.

I'm talking about a DC of "Impossible". A DC which no check will ever be considered a success. A DC that is essentially the DM saying "you will fail this, no matter how hard you try, no matter how well you prepare, no matter how good you roll, the outcome is always failure."

What's the point of that in a game?

In games that aren't 5e, I suppose the point is to allow 'player skill' (strategy, system mastery, et al) to overcome the random element of the die roll.
In 5e, there's no point, as the DM would just narrate failure rather than setting a DC that high.

1. From a design perspective, you shouldn't just focus on the difficulty of the saving throws, but also on the likely impact of missing saves. The impact of a missed saving throw, overall, is fairly minimal in 5e in almost all cases. Most effects have been reduced to either hit point loss or allow you multiple saves (one per round, etc.). So the effects of missing saving throws is much less.

This point has been made, and, while 5e pushed the resolution of some former save-or-die effects to using hps instead of or as well as saves, it has not eliminated save-or-else effects that bypass hps, leaving save bonus as the only indicator of increasing ability to resist with level.

3. I agree with Tony Vargas, in that 1e had the "best" saving throw system (by class, advanced with level), but that ship sailed a long time ago. That was a much more table-centric era. You can't just graft that on to 5e.

The basic effect, that all saves improve with level, is trivially implementable in 5e, by simply adding proficiency to all saves, just as casters add it to all their DCs. Stats would still swing that by 6 points (from -1 for a dump stat of 8, or lower in random generation, to +5 for a 20).

The more nuanced approach of advancing at different rates, that was the norm in the TSR era would be slightly trickier to implement. You could have two tiers of save advancement, one full proficiency, one half or prof-2, for instance. And/or you could add 'expertise' in some saves...

In the end, this was a deliberate decision.

It's been a trend, anyway. Starting in 3.0, save DCs started scaling, and at least some saves started scaling more slowly, creating a net greater vulnerability as characters leveled. (Even 4e, which didn't use saves, as such, used non-AC defenses that, as 'treadmill'-like as 4e generally was, would tend to fall behind due to the need to focus on primary & secondary stats by class.)
Lovely for casters optimizing their spells' DCs, pretty sucky for everyone else.

I'm talking about a DC of "Impossible". A DC which no check will ever be considered a success. A DC that is essentially the DM saying "you will fail this, no matter how hard you try, no matter how well you prepare, no matter how good you roll, the outcome is always failure."

What's the point of that in a game?

In games that aren't 5e, I suppose the point is to allow 'player skill' (strategy, system mastery, et al) to overcome the random element of the die roll.
In 5e, there's no point, as the DM would just narrate failure rather than setting a DC that high.

1. From a design perspective, you shouldn't just focus on the difficulty of the saving throws, but also on the likely impact of missing saves. The impact of a missed saving throw, overall, is fairly minimal in 5e in almost all cases. Most effects have been reduced to either hit point loss or allow you multiple saves (one per round, etc.). So the effects of missing saving throws is much less.

This point has been made, and, while 5e pushed the resolution of some former save-or-die effects to using hps instead of or as well as saves, it has not eliminated save-or-else effects that bypass hps, leaving save bonus as the only indicator of increasing ability to resist with level.

3. I agree with Tony Vargas, in that 1e had the "best" saving throw system (by class, advanced with level), but that ship sailed a long time ago. That was a much more table-centric era. You can't just graft that on to 5e.

The basic effect, that all saves improve with level, is trivially implementable in 5e, by simply adding proficiency to all saves, just as casters add it to all their DCs. Stats would still swing that by 6 points (from -1 for a dump stat of 8, or lower in random generation, to +5 for a 20).

The more nuanced approach of advancing at different rates, that was the norm in the TSR era would be slightly trickier to implement. You could have two tiers of save advancement, one full proficiency, one half or prof-2, for instance. And/or you could add 'expertise' in some saves...

In the end, this was a deliberate decision.

It's been a trend, anyway. Starting in 3.0, save DCs started scaling, and at least some saves started scaling more slowly, creating a net greater vulnerability as characters leveled. (Even 4e, which didn't use saves, as such, used non-AC defenses that, as 'treadmill'-like as 4e generally was, would tend to fall behind due to the need to focus on primary & secondary stats by class.) 5e, which has returned to the classic game in so many other ways, has more or less stuck to that trend, as it has with the related-seeming trend of removing restrictions, risks, & limitations from spellcasting, and giving casting to more classes....

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

High-level Lore Bard (+6 proficiency) with Expertise in the ability, a 20 stat, under the effect of Bless, and expending a use of Peerless Skill can hit DC 53 without other benefits: 1d20 + 1d12 + 1d4 + 12 + 5 = a range from 20 to 53.

Aiming for DC 75 makes it more immediately impossible.

Do you mean Bless or Guidance? Bless doesn't help ability checks, and Expertise doesn't help saving throws or attack rolls, so they never both apply to the same roll.