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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 5723813" data-attributes="member: 53980">I'm not really a fan of rolling defense against attack rolls, but there's an old 2nd edition variant called The Arcanum that does that.  It uses 8 ability scores, and no static defenses.  If an attack roll is successful, a save is rolled with a modifier based on the relevant ability score; an 11+ defends while 10- means you get hit.  It sounds similar to your idea, so I'm just mentioning it in case it's of interest to you.I prefer static defenses in general.  I suppose you could replace all attack rolls with a save-like defense roll, though I'm not sure there's much to be gained by that.  I wouldn't want to see the old saves and defenses approach from 3.x come back though.  IMO, that adds complexity with little to no mechanical gain.To be clear, saves and defenses had a purpose, IMO, before 3.x.  They scaled quite differently, and saves were arguably a counterbalance against the power of high level spells.  High level monsters would make their saves more often than not, helping to rein in spellcasters.  It became a mess in 3.x though (again, IMO).  At high levels, saves tended to be either so good that a creature couldn't fail or so bad that they couldn't succeed; add to that the ability for spellcasters to inflate their spell DCs, and the checks and balances of earlier editions went out the window.On the other hand, I don't mind saves used against ongoing effects, as in 4e.  Depending on how that is implemented, I could also see adding a relevant ability score modifier to the saving throw.  In this paradigm, however, saves are at least as much condition timer as defense.  You always know when you're rolling a save because you only use saves to end conditions, rather than avoiding attacks.What I'm trying to say is that I think there should never be any question as to whether an attack requires an attack roll or a saving throw.  Acid Arrow was an attack roll; Fireball was a saving throw; Disintegrate required both.  Unless the players are intimately familiar with these spells, that kind of design slows play without benefit.  I can't just roll a d20 because I don't know whether the player or I should make the roll.  I think that a single, standardized method is the more elegant solution.</blockquote>

Verification