General problem with saves?

[Brazeku]

Hi! There's one thing I've noticed with saving throws. Much of the time, the standard progression is acceptable (topping out at a save DC of 31 or so for the most powerful spells and natural abilities). I think this is okay for abilities which still have a secondary function, or which have a truly devastating effect.

The thing is, you can pretty much assume that players are going to be buffed out with morale or luck bonuses, and equipped with cloaks of resistance (they are necessary equipment, more or less), so you can look at even a poor base save as totalling around 14 (+2 for miscellaneous buff, +6 for cloak), plus whatever the stat happens to be. This gets even worse with all the immunities and spot bonuses flying around (and there are lots).

Given this, do you think that weaker abilities, especially save or nothing effects, should have a different modifier?

I've found similar problems with skill checks. A level ten character concentrating on a skill can make DC 30s more than 50% of the time. Yet the DCs they have floating around are always too easy.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I think that part of the problem is that gamers have no real commonly accepted idea of how often a character should make/fail a save. With a good save, should a character succeed 50%, 75%, 95%? What about a bad save? Should monster save DCs differ significantly from PC save DCs?

I don't have any answers, but I'd love to hear what a WotC 'official source' says about the subject.

 

[Victim]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the fail rate should be either. It's especially awkward since PCs will be both rolling saves and dishing out save effects. While most PCs probably want a high success rate on saves to avoid losing turns (or just dieing), a high success rate also means that casters are likely to waste their turns on failed spells - or switch to no save spells like say Web, Ray of Enfeeblment, and Enervation which bypass saves (and can still screw people over). Which just moves the problem sideways as other defenses come into play without solving the issue of relative chance of success versus the reward for it.

Same thing for damage, both independently and as it relates to saves (high average damage that reliably disables foes makes save based eliminations less attractive).

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

Well to be fair, a PC should be able to make most saves: If they don't, their lifespan will probably be pretty short. Nothing angers a player more than losing a character over a single die roll. ("Oh, looks like you fail the climb check so badly you fall off the cliff into the lava... Falling Damage... Lava Immersion... Fire Elementals...")

Many DCs are set intentionally low so that characters of any caliber can make them. Erring on the low side of the scale is also a better option when planning an adventure. IE If you plan for players to have to make some sort of check (Like a spot check to notice a critical plot element/trap/etc) you should never, ever count on someone making the check. It is a total possibility that no one will, and thus you either have to change the adventure or let them fail. If you are just going to change that part of the adventure, why even plan it in the first place?

In short, the threat of failure should be weighted vs the check difficulty. Instant death saves should not be hard to make, since failure usually means permanent set backs. A high DC check or roll probably shouldn't have too much long-term serious considerations. (Unless you are running epic-level games, at which point all bets are off)

As for PC generated Save DC: Monsters can usually make most saves, due to high hit die, so metagame logic aside, unless the PCs are hitting a monster in it's weak save, it is going to make the save. Even a dragon can make most reflex saves with it's 10 dex. But an Undead is not likely to resist disintegrate any time soon.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Another thing to keep in mind is how much trouble characters that aren't buffed out on a single ability are in.

Honestly, though, rather than changing the spells, why don't you alter the buffs? Most of the buffs were created not to emphasize a strength but to shore up a weakness. 10 wisdom Fighters at 20th level have a +6 will save. Without magical increases, they will fail a 9th level spell will save at least 80% of the time (more if the caster has a higher than minimum ability score or other increases to the save DC). Thus, various buffs were created to allow Fighters to have an acceptable chance of success; I saw somewhere that MMO games consider a 70% chance acceptable to the majority of players.
The fact that those buffs work just as well for Wizards is a sign of poor planning, in my view.
Decrease the number of buffs available, make them less powerful, and generally lower the 'beyond the actual character' ability to avoid effects. Suddenly, those failure rates go through the roof.

Alternatively, rather than providing a +X to saves or skills, the magic can instead alter the character's total modifier to +Y. So it's not giving a +6 to will saves, it's making the character's will save into a +12, irregardless of the character's base save, wisdom score, feats or other abilities. Similarly, glibness wouldn't give a +30 to bluff, instead it would change the bluff modifier to +30 irregardless of feats, skill, Charisma or other modifiers.
This has the benefit of letting the buffs shore up weaknesses without having them maximize strengths.

 

[Bagpuss]

What's so bad about maximizing strengths? Any caster knows you aim will save spells at fighter types, and Fort saves at rogues, etc. If a Wizard wants to buff his will save until he is sure of success what's the problem, he is less likely to be needing to use it anyway, he would have been better spending the buff on his weaker saves.

 

[Brazeku]

Thanks everyone for your input!

Valhalla- I like the idea of an alternate type of buff; I think I would actually include it alongside existing buffs as a way to help out characters who have really terrible saves in one column (such as can be caused by prestige class hopping). I don't think that weakening the buffs in general is a good idea, though, because there really are a lot of save or die effects, the problem is that those effects are just as easy/hard to avoid as a lot of other effects.

Ltheb Silverfrond- I agree that PCs should make many saves, especially ones that cause instant death. But some other effects are rendered completely useless by high saves, more subtle debilitations and so on. Take a look below for a mechanic which might shore those abilities up, and tell me what you think!

Victim - the switching to no save spells is exactly it. I've both played as and GMed for a lot of wizards, and I know how bad it can be to lose a turn casting something that doesn't pay off, especially when combats last maybe 3-5 rounds. Not only this, but I'm frustrated by the obsolescence of low level magic.

Tequila Sunrise - thanks so much for making that poll. I'm going to answer it myself in a second. I guess what you're about to read below is an answer of sorts.


After reading all the replies and considering the actual math for a moment, I've come to a conclusion. It's not all the spells that are a problem. I think it's the universal save mechanic - in the aim of producing a simple system, it hasn't really worked quite right. What I was thinking was having three basic save DC progressions:


Easy (DC 5 + spell level or 1/2 CR + ability modifier) (effect is a flat -5 to DC)
Medium (DC 10 + spell level or 1/2 CR + ability modifier)
Hard (DC 10 + character level or CR + ability modifier) (effect scales by level, being +5 at 10th and + 10 at 20th, helps to account for items)

And then, each would be modified by whether or not it had an effect on a successful save. So you would wind up with Easy/Partial versus Easy/None. You get the picture. Hit dice vary a lot by CR, which is why I think maybe it should be based upon CR instead?

*I also like the 'hold person mechanic', whereby a person stuck in an effect has a chance to break free every round- in this case, you can make the ability more or less powerful by having a separate save progression for that.

Things like instant death effects or completely debilitating effects shouldn't be any harder than Medium/Partial. Which is about what most of them are. But for weak effects (say, a spell that just stuns a target for a round or two), I think it's acceptable to make the save Hard/partial. That way the effect isn't guaranteed (the idea of guaranteed success is iffy because we still want there to be variables in combat, right?) yet it will work the majority of the time.

Also, effects like "attack deals 1 intelligence damage on a hit", which are open for abuse in some instances, yet are too conditional to have a regular saving throw, could have a hard/none save. You'd set something like that as a fort save.

So what do you think of this idea? Is it workable?

 

[Wish]

Part of the problem is the vastly different effects of failed saves on PCs and monsters.

Any given monster makes only a very, very tiny fraction of the number of saves that PCs have to make in the course of their career. And if they fail a save-or-die, the adventure continues. If a PC fails a save-or-die, the adventure screeches to a halt. Big difference.

So it's probably a good idea to have PC failure rates much smaller than monster failure rates. Climactic encounters should have monster failure rates similar to PC failure rates.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Yeah, I've been of the opinion for a while that HD should be used for HP and nothing more.