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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7197101" data-attributes="member: 996">IDK about 'again,' I guess it's all about context.  In 1e, at high level, you could count on making saves, it became a 'Murphy's Rule' comic, even - high-level PCs quaffing poison and commenting on the taste...   Yeah, it kinda is, actually, especially if you can resume having fun the next round if you roll a 4+.  OTOH, if rolling a 17 still doesn't get you out of it, you're getting into some serious un-fun territory. The PCs always making saves would work better than them never making saves.  We are modeling protagonists from heroic fantasy, here. Depending entirely on casters' resources to deal with every problem isn't optimization, it's just D&D.   Getting your save bonus up to +16 somehow, on your own, without having casters concentrating on you,  that'd be optimization.   The Sacred Cow in question was killed by 3.0, actually.  In the TSR era, saves improved steadily across the board as you leveled, both from the saving throw matrix (which, like the combat matrix, scaled fastest for fighters), and from accumulating items that granted saving throw bonuses.  The result was that even as spells got more fearsome in their effects, they became less and less likely to actually work, because there was no 'DC' to scale on the caster/monster side.  A few high level spells gave save penalties, but they generally didn't keep up.  A few others - highly valued - gave no saves.  3.0 radically changed that.  Instead of classes starting out somewhat better at some saves than others, but all their saves getting better, classes got 'good' saves, which started at +2 and scaled with level, including any bonuses to stats or saving throws you might get along the way, and 'bad' saves that started at 0 and scaled /very/ slowly.  Conversely, save DCs scaled with spell slot and the caster's prime stat, which would, of course, be optimized to the nth degree, the result was that you got net worse at making saves as you leveled, yet spells still became more fearsome at higher level. 4e 'fixed' that situation by consolidating the save mechanic into the attack mechanic.  Instead of 3 saves, two of which languished dramatically, leaving you helpless before the all-powerful 3.x Tier 1 casters, you got 3 non-AC defenses, at least one of which slowly fell behind as you leveled (they scaled the same with level (and expected items) as AC, but so did the attacks that targeted, AND you needed to keep three stats maxxed to keep all your saves up, and you could only max two, leaving you increasingly vulnerable to the mildly over-powered high-Tier-3 casters (that's what passes for 'balanced' in D&D history). 5e 'fixed' /that/ situation by returning to a separate save mechanic, and to six saves instead of three (two of many ways in which 5e increased needless complexity in order to make the game feel simpler - no, that's actually what it did, that's not a dig, it's intentionally ironic, sure, but not a dig, that's actually how it works when designing D&D for D&Ders).  It made saves BA-compliant, by basing both the DC and the saving throw on Proficiency & a stat.  Well, to be clear, every save DC adds proficiency and is based on a primary stat, likely to hit 20, or scales with level as if it were being calculated that way, in the case of monsters &c, while most classes get proficiency with only two save bonuses, and each save uses a different stat, so only one save (if you're proficient) is likely to keep pace (tread water) against DCs.  Most of your saves will fall behind, and several will likely never improve at all even over 20 levels. There are some tweaks that could help.  Re-instituting scaling for 'bad' saves wouldn't help much, but it'd help.  For instance, non-proficient saves could scale at half proficiency (+1 to +3) or proficiency-2 (0 to +4).  'Expertise' in a save might be made available.  The fighter's Indomitable ability could be improved.  A 'Magic Resistance' feat could grant proficiency on all saves vs magical effects.  Etc...Save DCs could be based on slot level instead of character level, or they could be fixed, based on the effect rather than the caster, so that saves actually do improve, rather than (at best) tread water.For actual, rather than perceived (traditional) simplicity/consistency, saves could be folded back into the attack mechanic.</blockquote>

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