D&D General What types of Saving Throws do you like?

[iserith]

I barely played 4th. Folks didn't roll their saves? I thought they were similar to D&D 3.x with having 3 of them? You only rolled them to end conditions?

Effectively, everything's an attack in 4e. So if I throw a fireball at some monsters, I roll to hit against each of their Reflex defenses, but only roll one time for damage. A save in 4e is a thing that typically happens at the end of your turn when you have an ongoing effect/condition. If you roll 10+, you succeed and the effect/condition ends.

 

[kenada]

I liked how old school saving throws give a higher bonus to save versus death. 3e lost that when it merged death and paralysis to get fortitude. While I don’t like the old school categories, I ended up voting old school anyway because I prefer rolling versus a value on your sheet (or against a static difficulty) to rolling against a DC set by the effect or caster.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

The ones I make... badum-ching

 

[W'rkncacnter]

i like the idea of modern, but 5e indicates that it's extremely difficult to actually dispense effects between all 6 saves properly, so i went middle.

also, 5e's proficiency system absolutely sucks for saving throws, but that's a whole other topic.

 

[tetrasodium]

I voted middlegrade because I've used all 3 forms & it's the form that worked best mechanically & narratively. 2e style was too esoteric & hard to convey sometimes, there were other things but I'm not going to break out the 2e books to refresh & detail. 5e style 6 saves is both needlessly specific and pointlessly vague at the same time... player to GM "why is mental or physical attack sometimes int/wis.cha or str/con with somespells but the other for other spells?"... no reason just because, don't ask questions nobody can answer.

3.x style fort/reflex/will is easy to telegraph and fun to use as the parallel development & lasting power of rock paper scissors vrs silly thought experiments only fit for memes like rock paper scissors lizard spock or the other versions involving dynamite & such show. When a player asks why X thing is a will save instead of a fort save or vice versa I as a GM can invent a plausible bit of fluff that keeps the gameplay going without devolving into possibly casting a spell

 

[Lanefan]

Old school plus, mostly because I want the source of the effect to matter along with the type of effect. The "plus" is there because there's room for more categories than original 1e has, e.g. poison and death should be split out.

Stats still matter, in that a stat often gives a bonus to or penalty against a given save; but they shouldn't determine what the root save requirement is. And Fort-Will-Dex just isn't granular enough.

 

[James Gasik]

Put me down for Fort/Ref/Will defense. There was something so elegant about the player being able to roll a die and have some control over whether or not their spell took effect, instead of casting and praying the DM rolled bad, even if it was fundamentally the same.

 

[robus]

I'm confused. Isn't that exactly what we do in 5e?

Well perhaps I've been doing it wrong, but AoEs dictate a save, and most adventures list the save to use to defend against some environmental effect or whatever?

Edit: And probably this is derailing this thread, so I'll leave it there!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Well perhaps I've been doing it wrong, but AoEs dictate a save, and most adventures list the save to use to defend against some environmental effect or whatever?

Edit: And probably this is derailing this thread, so I'll leave it there!

You can always choose to fail a save.

 

[Minigiant]

Other:
Fortitude, Reflex, Will, Death, Soul, Magic, Psionics