"Flipping" saves to attacks

[DonTadow]

Well, I wouldn't want to tranglate your fun. You just keep buying your games from the Happy Game Fairies who come out of the woodwork at night to design games by sprinkling magic pixie dust on bags of dice.

Will do
They are trying to expand beyond the math nerd as their gamer and get the regular folk who lke fantasy but are intimidated by the math that hampers the game now. Fireball with a 1d6 based on an attack roll is just fine and they've already incorporated it in a product. The difference you're lookinat in damage is miniiscule and their target base could care less.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Will do
They are trying to expand beyond the math nerd as their gamer and get the regular folk who lke fantasy but are intimidated by the math that hampers the game now. Fireball with a 1d6 based on an attack roll is just fine and they've already incorporated it in a product. The difference you're lookinat in damage is miniiscule and their target base could care less.

Just because you design a computer for use in a kindergarten doesn't mean you let the kindergarteners design the computers.

I would have thought that was obvious. Math isn't the only thing you struggle with, I assume.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The other two spells are hammered flat by batch saving throws. They are either 100% effecitive against 100% of the enemy, or they are 0% effective against 100% of the enemy.

If I understand you correctly, I think that my response is "not exactly." Since we're not really talking about batch saving throws, but batch magical attacks, if we assume that it works like Star Wars, we'll probably see lots of situations in which the defenders have different defense ratings. So the high-fort orc barbarian may not be affected by the stinking cloud, while the low-fort goblin rogues are, if the caster's roll is an intermediate value.

Of course, there's also the question, does the caster roll for his stinking cloud each round, or did they change it so that the strength of the effect is set at casting?

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Math is deeply important to RPG rules, but for the math-disinterested it should disappear.

But it shouldn't be ignored. While it might not be your cup, Don, I am always interested in this sort of stuff and I have some props for Wulf for talking about it.

These deeper mathematic issues are the major driving force behind MY interest in 4E. I can play 3.5, and do, and enjoy it quite a bit, but I'm hotly interested in seeing what the basis is for 4E, what they've changed and, far more importantly, WHY they have changed things.

We played a d20Modern/GrimTales/SpyCraft2.0/SWSE amalg last night to test out some rules concepts from SWSE and theories I've had. The flipped save/defense mechanics worked out well from what I saw of them. It took the players a moment to get used to, but not long and they liked it. I did some skill reworking and boiled my skill list down to a great extent, which they liked. There was a comment that a lot of Perception rolls were being made, but also they liked that they had one perception skill.

--fje

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

If I understand you correctly, I think that my response is "not exactly." Since we're not really talking about batch saving throws, but batch magical attacks,

Stop! From a mechanics standpoint, they are functionally equivalent. Somebody is rolling a d20 against a fixed target number. The adjudication of the spell is reliant on that d20 roll.

Really, it's just "Players Roll All the Dice."

if we assume that it works like Star Wars, we'll probably see lots of situations in which the defenders have different defense ratings. So the high-fort orc barbarian may not be affected by the stinking cloud, while the low-fort goblin rogues are, if the caster's roll is an intermediate value.

But that, basically, is how 3e works now. When you target the orc barbarian in the midst of his five goblin rogue buddies, you know that the barbarian is more likely to make Fort saves and the five goblins are more likely to make Reflex saves.

The key difference is that in 3e, your stinking cloud might not get ALL of the goblins. It depends on how many of them fail their saving throw. You might affect anywhere from 0 to 5 of them.

Flipping the check and making one attack roll means that you are either going to get ALL FIVE of the goblins or NONE of the goblins.

Of course, there's also the question, does the caster roll for his stinking cloud each round, or did they change it so that the strength of the effect is set at casting?

Spells with a persistent effect make a good argument in favor of leaving the saving throw in the hands of the target (because they will be re-adjudicated on the target's turn).

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Something I haven't seen anyone mention yet...

Unless you're throwing a fireball at a bunch of mooks all with Evasion, you're still going to deal half damage even if caster rolls below the entire group's defense (assuming area attacks work as they do in SWSE).

So, it's not an "all or nothing" effect; it's an "all or half" effect.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

True on a 1 for 1 basis, but false in that area attacks in Saga make one attack roll against all target defences; but multiple foes in 3e get to make individual saves (and the UA option pretty much assumed that in 'players roll all the dice' that a separate roll is made against each targets save, IIRC)

CHeers

Good point. I've not read SWSA, just read about it.

 

[Grog]

If I understand you correctly, I think that my response is "not exactly." Since we're not really talking about batch saving throws, but batch magical attacks, if we assume that it works like Star Wars, we'll probably see lots of situations in which the defenders have different defense ratings. So the high-fort orc barbarian may not be affected by the stinking cloud, while the low-fort goblin rogues are, if the caster's roll is an intermediate value.

Problem is, that's a mighty big "if." And since you're only making one roll, the odds of a lucky (or unlucky) result which skews things increase dramatically. One natural 1 is astronomically more likely that five natural 20s.

And, the real problem isn't when PCs use these spells against enemies. If an encounter ends up being too easy because a PC got a lucky roll, you just move on to the next encounter where things will probably go differently. The problem happens when bad guys use these spells on the PCs.

DM: "Okay, the enemy wizard casts Confusion on all of you.... Oops, natural 20. Sorry, guys. Now, we can play out all of you killing each other and the bad guys mopping up the survivors if you want, or you can just start making new characters now. Which do you prefer?"

That's a problem.

 

[Grog]

Something I haven't seen anyone mention yet...

Unless you're throwing a fireball at a bunch of mooks all with Evasion, you're still going to deal half damage even if caster rolls below the entire group's defense (assuming area attacks work as they do in SWSE).

So, it's not an "all or nothing" effect; it's an "all or half" effect.

Fireball isn't the only area effect spell. Lots of them are "all or nothing."

 

[AllisterH]

But that, basically, is how 3e works now. When you target the orc barbarian in the midst of his five goblin rogue buddies, you know that the barbarian is more likely to make Fort saves and the five goblins are more likely to make Reflex saves.

The key difference is that in 3e, your stinking cloud might not get ALL of the goblins. It depends on how many of them fail their saving throw. You might affect anywhere from 0 to 5 of them.

Flipping the check and making one attack roll means that you are either going to get ALL FIVE of the goblins or NONE of the goblins.

.

The more you think about it though, the more the other factors come into play. For example, given how the save system and DC worked in 3.x, those low level mooks only would've passed if they rolled a 19 or a 20. In the *speculated* system, they would've only survived if the spellcaster had rolled a 1 or 2 on his spellcasting roll.

In practice, when you used a spell versus a group of monsters, if a lower level mook actually passed their saving throw, it was something of a rarity. So why bother rolling it since the mooks really aren't going to be a factor in the battle?

Of course, WOTC has said that they ARE looking at Save or Die spells given their distorting nature at higher levels. I think we might see a revision of these spells where instead of No Effect vs Instant Death, we'll get "Slight Inconvenience Status" vs "Not Death but debilitating Status" spells or even a rework of the Saga system so that instead of half damage/no effect on a successful save, the target simply takes the effect as if the spellcaster had rolled a lower spellcasting value.