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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6163794" data-attributes="member: 58197">Mmm... the thing is, high-level AD&D spells were designed on the expectation that high-level foes would reliably make their saving throws. That's why "save or X" spells have nastier values of X as the spell level gets higher.Let's imagine two spells. One is 4th level, the other is 8th level. Both are single-target spells that grant saving throws, and both impose a status effect on a failed save. Call them Knockdown and Lockdown respectively.Now, if you're a 5th-level wizard, you can cast Knockdown once per day. If you're a 15th-level wizard, you can cast Lockdown once per day. So we expect that Knockdown will have roughly the same average impact against a 5th-level ogre that Lockdown has against a 15th-level storm giant.Traditionally in D&D, the status effect imposed by the 8th-level Lockdown is going to be a lot nastier than that imposed by the 4th-level Knockdown. If Knockdown is "each round, save or fall prone," then Lockdown is going to be more like "save or be unable to move or act for the duration." But a spell with a 1/round chance to knock the target prone is only a moderate hindrance, while a multi-round stun is tantamount to a one-shot kill. So how can we make it so that Knockdown works as well on ogres as Lockdown does on storm giants?The only solution is to give storm giants more ability to resist Lockdown than ogres have to resist Knockdown. AD&D handled this by giving storm giants better saving throws. 3E negated this solution (by introducing scaling save DCs) and didn't put in anything to replace it, which is why "save-or-lose" magic is overwhelmingly dominant at mid to high levels in 3E. 4E tried to sidestep the issue by making it so 95% of spells dealt damage, but this was unpopular and Wizards soon caved, whereupon the problem returned. They finally managed a partial fix by giving solo monsters special abilities to deal with the worst status effects.The current proposal is to return to the 3E system, albeit with (I hope!) less drastic DC scaling. This is, at best, a solution to one problem that introduces another problem. I certainly don't see any overriding necessity for going with this as opposed to the AD&D approach.</blockquote>

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