Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6163773" data-attributes="member: 5143">It's designed to solve TWO problems.  One is that without scaling save bonuses then a level 1 monster with a paralyze attack is just as dangerous as a level 20 monster with that same attack.  If you give scaling save bonuses to PCs then that means that, at higher level, they have a much greater chance to save against low DC(from low level monsters) than against high DCs(from high level monsters).However, if you give PCs scaling save bonuses but don't change the DCs of spells as level increases then that just means magic gets less and less useful as you go up levels.  A level 20 character might have +11 to save against spells but level 9 spells still have a DC of 15, so they almost never work.The same effect happens if you tie the save DC to the target instead of the caster.  This was the way it worked in 1e/2e and was one of the largest complaints about the system.  Once you reached high levels, you spells would start doing less damage and having less effect because nearly every monster could save against them on a 4+.  Plus enemy spellcasters had the same problem when trying to affect the PCs.The only way to solve the first problem without causing the second is to have DCs scale as you go up levels.  Now, that can either apply to ALL of your spells(which is probably the simple way to do it and the way it currently works in the playtest) or you can have it scale based on the level of the spell you cast(which creates a system that encourages you to only use high level spells).The only other real solution is to not scale either the DCs or the saves but give the target a modifier based on the difference between their level and the caster's.  This would mean no recording save bonuses or changing spell DCs.  But it would mean doing math on every single save as well as giving out metagame information just to make the save(i.e. "I get a +2 to the roll, eh?  That means he's 2 levels below us!").  Math at the time of resolution is never really preferable as many people find basic math hard to do quickly.  For many people looking up the DC in a box on their character sheet goes much faster than trying to minus 3 from the number they rolled.</blockquote>

Verification