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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brazeku" data-source="post: 3571893" data-attributes="member: 48916">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?</blockquote>

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