Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5472702" data-attributes="member: 4937">If in fact you've already got a 1e like structure in your game, then I have no problem.  However, we don't share experiences in this regard.  In my experience with 3rd edition, saves actually become harder right about the time that it really starts to suck if you fail one (that is to say, death is the likely result of a failed save).If you start looking at the math, over the course of levels 1-20, the DC of saving vs. a spell goes up by 9 since spell level adds to spell DC.  The bonus of saves goes up by 6-12, which means that the good saves can generally outpace this increase will the poor saves fall behind.  However, over the course of 1-20, the caster will also likely dump all points into his primary spellcasting attribute which means that spell DC goes up on average by 11.  By constrast, the defender will generally not be able to dump all of his stat increases into the defensive attribute (wisdom in the case of will, etc.).  Likewise, the caster is likely to acquire at least one level of Spell Focus or other enhancement of spell DC through feats, bring up spell DC's increase to at least 12.  But defensive feats may or may not taken by the defender, and certainly the defender has a harder time plugging all three defenses than the caster has enhancing attack.  Enhancement bonuses to ability scores through items/buffs/wishes tend to be a wash, increasing defense and offense on both sides equally.  That leaves only resistance enhancing items, but in the best case they add +5.   The net result of all of this is the odds of making your poor saves tends to slowly slip over time even with optimal equipment, because the attacker is also likely to be so enhanced.  In practice, it is even worse because you are seldom optimally defended except in games with fungible magic items and magic marts.Multiclassing IME doesn't help much.  If you use fractional accounting, it is a wash.  If on the other hand you play with stock RAW, the tendency of multiclassing is to slightly increase your good saves at the expense of slightly decreasing your poor saves.  This just makes you that much more vulnerable.  Multiclassing also opens up spellcasting PrCs, some of which provide additional ability to enhance spellcasting DC.The situation is even worse with the extraordinary abilities of high HD creatures, who get increases in DC at the rate of 1/2 HD and can usually outstrip at high levels in a character's good saves.If you can get your save or dies to where they succeed half the time, you are still much much ahead of a guy who wins by whittling away hit points.  Given that you probably start out with the ability to succeed in a poor save about 40% of the time, and IME tend to slip over time, IME at higher levels you might only have a 10 or 20% chance of making your poor save versus an attacker's best spells - which often means at those levels an 80 or 90% chance of instant death.  It is that that ends up driving a spell buff economy that revolves around absolute defenses like Freedom of Action, Mind Blank, Death Ward, etc.  You either have those up or die.  IME those numbers are almost backwards (especially in the case of attacks made against the PCs rather rather than attacks by the PCs).  If your spell has a 20% chance of killing something outright, it's still probably as strong of an attack as trying to whittle off hit points and it still means a potential slaughter of the party if there is a spate of bad rolls. I think this was only my ill-informed opinion, but one of the main things 3.5 openly tried to address was this problem.  I don't feel it went far enough, and like many things in 3.5 actually ultimately made the problem it was supposedly trying to fix worse.IME again, and naturally this may vary, 'save or die' casters do just fine versus humanoids and only really have problems versus dragons, outsiders, and other things with lots of good saves (3 in those cases) and typically superhumanly high ability scores with few weaknesses (and possibly SR and immunities on top of that).</blockquote>

Verification