D&D 5E Thoughts on the Resilient Feat

Swarmkeeper · Sep 4, 2018

Satyrn said:
So, an adventurer who started with a terrible Dexterity never bothered to shore up his weaknesses as he gained experience, and now he's facing a red dragon?

Well then, even though he has no mathematical chance of making that Dexterity save, I'd still say it's his choices that led to him being immolated.

I like this. My choice to ignore my own weaknesses matter.

Agreed. I would even say if one thinks everyone should always have a chance to succeed regardless of choices along the way, one might consider playing a superhero RPG. Part of what makes D&D sessions interesting is that PCs can fail - and some of them almost always fail at certain things. Which is why there is a party with other PCs who are strong at different things. As DM, I’ll judiciously exploit weaknesses - as that is another way to share the spotlight and make for memorable sessions.

The Crimson Binome · Sep 4, 2018

DM Dave1 said:
Agreed. I would even say if one thinks everyone should always have a chance to succeed regardless of choices along the way, one might consider playing a superhero RPG. Part of what makes D&D sessions interesting is that PCs can fail - and some of them almost always fail at certain things.

And that's a perfectly fine philosophy for a game, if that's what you're going for, but it's at odds with the fundamental premise of 5E: That anyone can try anything, and at least has a chance of succeeding.

Bounded Accuracy exists to guarantee that a difference of +1 to the roll actually matters, because the range of difficulties is small enough that you don't need a rule about always succeeding on a 20. That premise currently doesn't hold for saving throws, past a certain level.

TallIan · Sep 4, 2018

Grognerd said:
So basically you could say you have the option to take +1 & a Save, or +1 and +1. So here's the questions:
Who thinks it would be unbalanced for a feat - let's call it Steadfast for now - to offer proficiency in two Saving Throws with no increase in stats?

You're making the mistake of assuming all save proficiencies are equal. As others have said there are three strong saves (Dex, Con, Wis) and thre weak saves (Str, Int, Cha). Offering a feat that grants you both missing strong feats to PC is more powerful than than Resilient, since that PC is less likely to fail the relevant saves.

Consider the following ability scores: 16; 15; 14: for ASMs +3; +2; +2 with proficiency in the highest for saves modifiers of +5; +2; +1.

Taking Resilient at forth level nets you ability scores of 16; 16; 14 for ASMs +3; +3; +2 with proficiency in the two highest for save bonus of +5; +5; + 1, only two of them go up at fifth level.

Taking Steadfast, leaves your ability scores at 16; 15; 14: for ASMs +3; +2; +2 but your saves go to +5; +4; +4 All three of those saves go up at 5th level.

Further, if it was indeed too much more powerful than Resilient, what sorts of balancing aspects could be formed? My initial thoughts on this would lean to 1) preventing characters from taking both Resilient and Steadfast, and 2) forcing the character to choose one physical (S, D, C) and one mental (I, W, Ch) save rather than allowing them two saves from either one category. So something like this:

If you really ant to allow for multiple save proficiency, I would just allow Resilient to be taken multiple times. This gives a more gradual power increase (one more save proficiency per four levels).

Lastly, to those saying that the monk gets proficiency in all saves, keep in mind that they get that instead of something else cool at 14th level.

Swarmkeeper · Sep 4, 2018

Saelorn said:
And that's a perfectly fine philosophy for a game, if that's what you're going for, but it's at odds with the fundamental premise of 5E: That anyone can try anything, and at least has a chance of succeeding.

Bounded Accuracy exists to guarantee that a difference of +1 to the roll actually matters, because the range of difficulties is small enough that you don't need a rule about always succeeding on a 20. That premise currently doesn't hold for saving throws, past a certain level.

Sorry, but not exactly. Bounded accuracy is most certainly only a fundamental premise of 5e when an outcome is uncertain. There are plenty of times where an action is either impossible or is an auto-success and bounded accuracy need not apply. To take it to an extreme, there is no reason for a low level party to have any chance to succeed in combat against an ancient red dragon or some other high CR nasty thing that they had no business engaging with. And it’s not because the math is “broken”. It’s because the only chance of success in some situations is not a die roll to attack or save but is “fly, you fools!”

Horwath · Sep 4, 2018

Saelorn said:
Actually, if you go with that breakdown, you can almost fix the math by calculating save bonuses as follows:

Fort = Str bonus + Con bonus
Reflex = Dex bonus + Wis bonus
Will = Int bonus + Cha bonus

It relies on the fact that PCs have above-average stats on-average, but it significantly reduces the likelihood of someone falling entirely out of the range of a d20 roll just because they had one bad stat.

I would put reflex as dex+int and will as wis+cha,

also base DC then should 10+ rather than 8+mod+prof,

The Crimson Binome · Sep 4, 2018

DM Dave1 said:
Sorry, but not exactly. Bounded accuracy is most certainly only a fundamental premise of 5e when an outcome is uncertain. There are plenty of times where an action is either impossible or is an auto-success and bounded accuracy need not apply. To take it to an extreme, there is no reason for a low level party to have any chance to succeed in combat against an ancient red dragon or some other high CR nasty thing that they had no business engaging with. And it’s not because the math is “broken”. It’s because the only chance of success in some situations is not a die roll to attack or save but is “fly, you fools!”

The original premise was that a low-level character should have a chance against high-level difficulties, because they wanted goblins and orcs to remain capable of hitting high-level parties, so they didn't need to print level 14 orc stats in order for a DM to run an entire campaign about fighting orcs; and they wanted the minimally-competent trained fighter to have a chance of picking a lock, even if there was no rogue in the party, without just letting the rogue auto-succeed at everything if they were present. They went through a lot of work to try and flatten the math to make it happen, but they were never quite able to reach that goal. Some high-level characters do, indeed, fall out of the math range for a low-level orc to hit (such that a rule about always hitting on a 20 is necessary). And a fighter with proficiency in thieves' tools, but no significant Dex bonus, cannot even attempt to pick a lock if the DC is high enough that the specialized rogue would have any chance of failing.

We're not talking about a low-level party blundering their way into a high-level encounter, here. We're talking about a level 20 Fighter, who has a special class ability that lets them re-roll a failed saving throw because they're supposed to be good at making saving throws, except they can't possibly succeed on a check against the sort of monster they're supposed to fight because the baseline math simply doesn't allow for the possibility.

And we're also talking about a proposed feat that would allow someone to become proficient in one additional saving throw, because there's an acknowledged lack of an ability for anyone to do anything about their saving throws.

Swarmkeeper · Sep 4, 2018

Saelorn said:
The original premise was that a low-level character should have a chance against high-level difficulties, because they wanted goblins and orcs to remain capable of hitting high-level parties, so they didn't need to print level 14 orc stats in order for a DM to run an entire campaign about fighting orcs; and they wanted the minimally-competent trained fighter to have a chance of picking a lock, even if there was no rogue in the party, without just letting the rogue auto-succeed at everything if they were present. They went through a lot of work to try and flatten the math to make it happen, but they were never quite able to reach that goal. Some high-level characters do, indeed, fall out of the math range for a low-level orc to hit (such that a rule about always hitting on a 20 is necessary). And a fighter with proficiency in thieves' tools, but no significant Dex bonus, cannot even attempt to pick a lock if the DC is high enough that the specialized rogue would have any chance of failing.

We're not talking about a low-level party blundering their way into a high-level encounter, here. We're talking about a level 20 Fighter, who has a special class ability that lets them re-roll a failed saving throw because they're supposed to be good at making saving throws, except they can't possibly succeed on a check against the sort of monster they're supposed to fight because the baseline math simply doesn't allow for the possibility.

And we're also talking about a proposed feat that would allow someone to become proficient in one additional saving throw, because there's an acknowledged lack of an ability for anyone to do anything about their saving throws.

I think we're in agreement on much of what you've written here. Can you give a specific example of what you mean regarding the level 20 fighter not being able to succeed on a saving throw, though? What type of attack and enemy are you imagining in this scenario?

Just to be clear, based on what you say above about the low-level party, it seems safe to deduce that you don't really believe this point you made in your earlier post:

Saelorn said:
... the fundamental premise of 5E: That anyone can try anything, and at least has a chance of succeeding.

The Crimson Binome · Sep 4, 2018

DM Dave1 said:
I think we're in agreement on much of what you've written here. Can you give a specific example of what you mean regarding the level 20 fighter not being able to succeed on a saving throw, though? What type of attack and enemy are you imagining in this scenario?

As mentioned up-thread, a level 17 adult red dragon has a fire breath that requires a DC 21 Dexterity save. This requires a minimum Dexterity bonus of +1 before you can hope to roll a 20 and make the save, which is an unreasonable assumption given either of the suggested stat rolling methods in the book.

The reason why this example comes to mind is because I was recently playing an Eldritch Knight, and while the DM was insistent upon allowing feats into the game, I thought that taking it for Wisdom would make more sense.

DM Dave1 said:
Just to be clear, based on what you say above about the low-level party, it seems safe to deduce that you don't really believe this point you made in your earlier post:
"... the fundamental premise of 5E: That anyone can try anything, and at least has a chance of succeeding."

No, I stand by that being the premise of the game. I also stand by 5E being shoddily-designed, due to too many cooks and and lack of a focused goal, as well as other time constraints, such that the final product is riddled with math errors.

Satyrn · Sep 4, 2018

Saelorn said:
. . . such that the final product is riddled with math errors.

I like to think of it as a forest full of happy little accidents.

D&D 5E Thoughts on the Resilient Feat

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