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D&D 5E Weak Saving Throws
- Thread starter Savage Wombat
- Start date
None of which were (thankfully) save or suck effects.
I see no problem with a spell dealing a lot of damage or applying a penalty on a failed save; the problem comes when you have spells and effects that essentially bypass HP AND are virtually impossible to save against.
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jbear
First Post
I think PCs with those weaknesses will have to play smart and prepare fro the possibility that dangerous foes might be able to hit them where they are vulnerable. Wouldn't that make a spell like Bear's Endurance invaluable to a wizard with 10 CON to use when going up against another powerful wizard? (Will there be potions that might exist that can do something similar so concentration is not used? Could other magic items help resist certain types of magic also? I guess we will have to wait and see)
I saw that noone seems to have mentioned a spell like Bless yet. Wouldn't a cleric in that party pretty much have planned to drop Bless right before combat to give the party +1d4 to all saves (amongst other things: love Bless btw!!!)? (Worst case scenario cast Resistance cantrip on Wizard if spells had previously been expended to get to BBEG) That would at the very least give the wizard a chance to make that save, right?
With an inspiration point you can gain advantage on that save as well, so playing in character can help guarantee your survival too.
So, it seems at least that with smart play you could prepare yourself for worst case scenarios with clever play to not find yourself in an impossible situation where you are automatically anhilated with zero chance of success, which is at least something.
I saw that noone seems to have mentioned a spell like Bless yet. Wouldn't a cleric in that party pretty much have planned to drop Bless right before combat to give the party +1d4 to all saves (amongst other things: love Bless btw!!!)? (Worst case scenario cast Resistance cantrip on Wizard if spells had previously been expended to get to BBEG) That would at the very least give the wizard a chance to make that save, right?
With an inspiration point you can gain advantage on that save as well, so playing in character can help guarantee your survival too.
So, it seems at least that with smart play you could prepare yourself for worst case scenarios with clever play to not find yourself in an impossible situation where you are automatically anhilated with zero chance of success, which is at least something.
Bless is a concentration spell so it might be broken on taking damage and the cleric can't cast any other concentration spells without breaking it.
Btw, I find it amusing for someone to make a wizard with 12 con. Except for int, won't con be the most important stat? That was always the case in 3e.
With the default array being 15 14 13 12 10 8, and being a human, you would probably start out with str 9, dex 14, con 15, int 16, wis 13, cha 11. Two full stat gains in int and one in con/wis and you have str 9, dex 14, con 16, int 20, wis 14, cha 11. This gives the wizard d6 (4)+3con *20 = 140 hp at level 20.
Dude, I don't see a single example here.
You're offering solutions without putting them in context.
How much is your chance of success after you've "prepared"?
"Come prepared and you might fare better" is usually good advice, but the point is that "coming prepared" might not make any meaningful difference once the gap grows large enough. Failing a saving throws against a save or suck say 90% of the time instead of 95% might be better, but it still means you'll pretty much fail it all the time.
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jbear
First Post
I am not a mathematician sorry- nor do I have enough information to even say that a spell like Bear's Endurance even makes it into the game. It is a rather iconic spell though so let's imagine it does. Would you not then agree that what I posted, given it only includes one brief reading of the basic rules, constitues slightly more than 'not a single example'?
Bless gives you +1d4 to all saves while active, to at least 3 pcs (more if you cast it as a second level or higher spell). So if you bust out an inspiration point when you get nailed with 'Disintegrate' (probably not a bad time to use something like that, agreed): You get to roll 2d20 and keep highest roll + 1d4 to your save. That is a greater increase of +5% CHANCE (even I can figure that out).
Then let's assume Bear's Endurance is an available possibility: say CON gets a +4 boost which equates to a +2 bonus if it is similar to existing versions in other editions. Now your CON save is 2d20+2+1d4. Seems like the weakly wizard has a shot of surviving Disintegrate to me. Will potions/wands/staves be able to replicate this effect? We don't know.
Yes, your cleric could have his/her concentration broken... lots of things could happen. Couldn't your fighter get to the other wizard first before Disintegrate becomes an issue? Maybe. Could your wizard drop a Silence Spell on the area first?
All I am wanting to add to the conversation is the opinion that (with very very limited knowledge of the rules), it at least appears to be potential ways to overcome character weakness, and more options may become apparent when we see additional features added with alternate rule options, more spells, and magic items (and maybe feats?).
For the record, I also agree that selecting CON as your lowest stat is a rather questionable decision in the first place. It would be my second or third highest stat probably. My pathfinder Wizard certainly has invested points in Constitution (14); taken a feat to boost HPs (Toughness); taken a feat to improve AC (Dodge); and taken a feat to improve a dump stat saving throw (Iron Will). Investing in survivability as a wizard wouldn't be something new.
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Sorry, didn't mean so much "examples" as "scenarios". My apologies, it was a poor choice of words.
Let's put my money where my mouth is:
This is how our 20th level fighter pregen might look at level 20.
Let's say he didn't bother with feats ( or he's playing basics ) and he's trying to minimize his weaknesses.
So, now his ability scores and saves look like this:
Str 20 (+5, +11 total)
Dex 15 (+2 total)
Con 18 (+4, +10 total)
Int 14 (+2 total)
Wis 16 (+3 total)
Cha 14 (+2 total).
Against an equal level wizard (int 20), he needs to roll a 17+ to save. So, he fails his "bad" saves 85% of the time.
Bless adds 2.5 points to his saving throws; assuming he's pemanently under the effects of a bless spell, he now fails them 72.5% of the time, on average.
Assuming inspiration, he fails around 52.5% of the time (unless I've done something wrong ).
Seems good enough, right?
Couple of problems with that, though: first, we've taken a high level fighter as our example, and, as such, he got more ability score advancements than anyone else; second, he's taken a grand total of zero feats in order to minimize his weaknesses. While this is a legitimate choice, he's losing quite a bit in the customization department just to turn an auto-fail into a coin toss ( assuming the cleric is backing him up AND he has inspiration ).
Third, if he's ever granted disadvantage, inspiration will at most cancel it out, and thus our (sorta )optimized fighter is back to failing his bad saves 72.5% of the time.
Now, how much you like these specific values is a matter of taste; personally, I have an issue with the fact that I might spend a ton of finite resources, give up pretty much any customization that feats might offer in the process, get help from another party member, and still risk sitting out of the fight half the time when someone targets the wrong half of my saving throws.
Obviously, if that fits your playstyle that's fine, but it doesn't really fit mine.
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BryonD
Hero
But this is a straw man because I never ruled those out. You can build powerful warriors with strong will. The point of dispute was that the idea that the gap MAY NOT be above a certain threshold. My reply is that excluding a large gap is a bad thing. I never said that allowing build options for making that gap go away should be removed. There *is* "a lot of narrative space in which powerful warriors are not easily made pawns to wizards", just as you say. There is also a lot of narrative space where the warriors have less mystic resistance that their wizardly piers. Do you agree that both is better than either or?
I would take minor issue with the phrasing "easily made pawns". But that is just because it is loaded language. The wizards are just as easily made into split skulled corpses. I don't accept the presumption of outcome. Only that there are narrative, and thus tactical (mechanical) strengths and weaknesses.
(I'd also quibble that Aragorn and Conan may be more resistant than common men in their settings, but are distinctly weaker than the wizards of their settings. But getting hung up on the examples isn't really the point. )
BryonD
Hero
But the fighter's HP increase as well, and faster than the wizards. And, really, that works out even better for me. The 14th level fighter still can't get out of the way of the fireball, but he is less harmed by it overall.
Yeah, but the problem, as I said earlier, isn't fireball. I only used fireball in my answer because you did. As I said earlier, if the worst thing that could happen when you fail a save was HP damage, I would have zero issues with it ( precisely because HP improve with level ).
The problem arises when a saving throw is your only line of defense against being petrified, paralyzed, killed or otherwise disabled.
