D&D 5E Saving Throws

[Blackwarder]

I think it's a great idea, it needs polish but I think it's a very good idea.

You will essentially have six saving throws numbers that you won't have to fiddle with around the table, it will be easier to estimate the effect of special attacks on players and by tweaking the progression rate of the base DC by class you also make the class more different in a fundamental way. For example, fighters should have the best saves and so forth.

As for the number bloat people are talking about, I don't see what they are talking about a system that is basically OD&D/AD&D on a new chasis will be by definition bounded.

Mike have my enthusiast support in this and I hope we will see it in the next playtest packet.

Warder

 

[variant]

I think it's a great idea, it needs polish but I think it's a very good idea.

You will essentially have six saving throws numbers that you won't have to fiddle with around the table, it will be easier to estimate the effect of special attacks on players and by tweaking the progression rate of the base DC by class you also make the class more different in a fundamental way. For example, fighters should have the best saves and so forth.

As for the number bloat people are talking about, I don't see what they are talking about a system that is basically OD&D/AD&D on a new chasis will be by definition bounded.

Mike have my enthusiast support in this and I hope we will see it in the next playtest packet.

Warder

I am not completely against it. I would just need to see it in action. The biggest problem I see is that it will be easier for a level 20 to resist a dragon's breath than a level 5 to resist a ghoul's touch simply because the DC scales with level.

 

[billd91]

I hate the idea of saving throw DCs being set by level rather than the source. It make all threats equal and I think that is nonsense. It would also take away the last reason spellcasters have for having a high ability score (aside from the tiny handful of spells that require attack rolls).

Except that this is, in a system in which casters can invest heavily in one ability score, a major source of problems with the CODzillas. Unlike 1e and 2e, in which saves were based on the level/HD of the target, 3e wizards could pump their Int, target weak saves, and warp the balance of the game between hit point ablation (via martial attacks and damage spells) and save or die/sit spells. So it's not like D&D hasn't tried this approach and found problems with it in actual play.

The 1e/2e method, while it could make casting save or die spells against high level/HD opponents frustrating, did a reasonably good job of maintaining one area of spellcaster/martial balance. Spellcasters might be able to suddenly end encounters, but do so in a somewhat unreliable way. Hit point ablation was more reliable, but generally slower and exposed the party to more ablation in turn.

I many ways, 3e's ideas were pretty sound from a simulation point of view. The level of the spell counted since higher level spells should be harder to resist than lower level spells. The offensive stat of the caster mattered because it makes sense that some casters would be more talented than others. Level affected the save bonus because more powerful characters should be more resilient than less experienced ones. Defensive stats mattered because some characters should be more talented at resisting than others. And, finally, it made some sense that character archetypes should be better at some saves than others and have stronger/weakers saves. They then set defensive resistance bonuses to be cheaper than offensive bonuses in magic item prices. That's all good stuff. But put it all together and add in myriad ways to enhance casting stats and imbalances between single-attribute dependent classes and multiple-attribute classes that could be exploited in character generation and you've got some trouble brewing.

D&D Next is building in solutions to some of the problems. Caps on stats keeps a caster from pumping his casting ability too far above the target's likely defensive stats. Making all stats useful for defense helps a little, but I don't think their implementation is close to being an ideal solution yet. But as far as driving the main thrust of the saving throw modifiers and DCs, I'm not convinced that building in either the spell level, the caster's stat, or the target's level is the inherently ideal solution as the basis of the saving throw.

 

[Blackwarder]

I am not completely against it. I would just need to see it in action.

Lets say that a 5 lvl fighter Dex save DC is 17-ability mod for a net roll of 14 or higher on a d20 roll for a character with +3 ability mod, that's a static save. Now I think that it's fine but if you want to make a dragon breath weapon more potent than dodging a huge boulder for example than you can just tell you players to make a Dex saving throw against their DC+2.

Personally I think that it's a bit too much, the elegance of this system is that ideally each player will know that he have a number that he need to roll over and he can make an educated guess on how likely he is to succeed fairly simply, a high level character is simply better than a low level one.

The current ability score scheme is the second thing that concern me about the current and previous play test packets and I think that mike idea is great.

Warder

 

[GX.Sigma]

The most pertinent problem is that it becomes the only case where it's better to have a low number. (Also, players used to playing spellcasters in 3e will be pretty excited to see their 1st-level character has a Save DC of 20...)

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

To be honest there's still not much evidence that six different saving throws are adding anything to the game. Working with the premise that the caster boosts one attribute and can target the worst enemy attribute is obviously worsened by having six over three relevant attributes. Having an all round save bonus by level obviously maintains the difference between your worst and best saving throws, but that's still quite a gap. Admittedly, it's no larger a gap than for the best and worst member of the party trying to stealth, or something like that.

Still, I would not reject a return to three saving throws. Fort, Ref and Will always made good sense. They could be the best of two abilities, the sum, but probably best not just pick one. The Int-Ref link is a bit odd too. Maybe we just need two saving throws? Physical and Mental? There's got to be a better solution.

 

[Cyberen]

+1 for divorcing Save or Suck potency from caster build.
I'm not sure "saving throws" (old school) are the way to go, as [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] proved above (3.x proved the soundest approach was hopeless).
I surely prefer ADD style, where difficulty is based on the target... But I hope R&D will keep on investigating the HP threshold promised 1 year ago, or trying to refine one of the interesting piece of tech brought by 4e : attack based on a contest, effect mitigated by a (new school) saving throw (a repetitive head or tails game, actually). Perhaps this last part could be refined further ?

 

[Falling Icicle]

Since this entire dilemma was started by ghouls, I will say that I think that is just a case of bad monster design. Ghouls are overpowered at low levels too. When you give a creature 3 attacks and paralysis on all of those attacks, you're obviously going to have problems with the monster locking down PCs with ease. You don't need to change the whole saving throw system to fix that.

 

[KidSnide]

I think D&DN will want to keep the d20 system where the difficulty of the task (in this case saving throw) sets the DC and the ability of the person attempting the task (the person trying to make a saving throw) determines the bonus.

This whole issue is coming up because saving-or-suffer effect isn't completely compatible with the flat math idea of D&DN. As a systematic approach, they have two choices:

(1) They can provide save bonuses, presumably at a lower rate than 3e/4e. This can create "flatter math", but still preserves a chance of lower level effects hosing higher level characters.

(2) They can design the effects so the penalty for failing a save decreases with level. Hit point thresholds were an approach at this (and level/HD thresholds served this purpose in 1e/2e), but you could imagine others as well.

#1 is analogous to slowly ramping up ACs and to hit modifiers as characters gain levels. #2 is analogous to just giving higher level characters more hit points (i.e. they suffer proportionately less when hit by lower level opponents).

-KS

 

[Klaus]

I don't like it, personally, because that means a character facing a dragon leading a bunch of kobolds throwing vats of fire has the same chance of dodging the dragon's breath and the kobolds' thrown bombs.