Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6573589" data-attributes="member: 996">All sorts of things you care about could depend on a single result.&nbsp; Your life, an allies life, whether you drop the McGuffin in the volcano it was forged or meekly hand it to the BBEG who just dominated you.&nbsp;Evidence?&nbsp; Just an illustrative example of how a bad save can snowball.&nbsp; And, not necessity.&nbsp; The question wasn't &quot;Is it absolutely necessary to save 5e from itself by giving everyone save proficiency?&quot;&nbsp; &nbsp;It really, really does.&nbsp; Especially the 25 years prior to the last 15, if that makes any sense.&nbsp; ;P&nbsp; Yeah, since 3.5, D&amp;D had been increasingly going the direction of not utterly ending a character on a single failed save, and 5e didn't back off that as much as it did some other recent trends.&nbsp; That doesn't mean a low level character having a +1 instead of a -1 to his worst save is going to break the game, or even register in the very loose balance of 5e.&nbsp; Nor will a +5 vs a -1 devastate playability at high level - even assuming high level gets played any more often in 5e than it did in classic D&amp;D.&nbsp;In classic D&amp;D, a very high level character would pass saves very easily, often on anything but a natural 1, so saves being vs horrific things still didn't intimidate them that much.&nbsp; In 5e, failing a save is not always so gruesome a fate - but failing because you rolled 11 is still very different from saving because you rolled 1 - it doesn't need to be failing because your rolled a 17 to make up for toning down the consequences.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6573589, member: 996"] All sorts of things you care about could depend on a single result. Your life, an allies life, whether you drop the McGuffin in the volcano it was forged or meekly hand it to the BBEG who just dominated you. Evidence? Just an illustrative example of how a bad save can snowball. And, not necessity. The question wasn't "Is it absolutely necessary to save 5e from itself by giving everyone save proficiency?" It really, really does. Especially the 25 years prior to the last 15, if that makes any sense. ;P Yeah, since 3.5, D&D had been increasingly going the direction of not utterly ending a character on a single failed save, and 5e didn't back off that as much as it did some other recent trends. That doesn't mean a low level character having a +1 instead of a -1 to his worst save is going to break the game, or even register in the very loose balance of 5e. Nor will a +5 vs a -1 devastate playability at high level - even assuming high level gets played any more often in 5e than it did in classic D&D. In classic D&D, a very high level character would pass saves very easily, often on anything but a natural 1, so saves being vs horrific things still didn't intimidate them that much. In 5e, failing a save is not always so gruesome a fate - but failing because you rolled 11 is still very different from saving because you rolled 1 - it doesn't need to be failing because your rolled a 17 to make up for toning down the consequences. [/QUOTE]

Verification