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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7205774" data-attributes="member: 29398">So this removes the random roll aspect of the current saving throw?  If yes, that's really going to have some impact and major knock-on effects, not least of which is that targeted offensive magic (hold person, finger of death, etc.) might as well disappear as who would ever bother when it's guaranteed to Do Nothing.Also, this makes something like Fireball all-or-nothing rather than all-or-half, if I'm reading it right...which will also have some impact.  In effect, you're not only giving Monk/Rogue-like evasion to everyone but you're making it a chooseable at-will ability as long as you've any defenses left.  So, if I start a combat with 6 defenses I can eat 6 Fireballs and not take a scratch, where now even half-damage from 6 Fireballs would put me either in a grave or a world o' hurt.You mean 0 defenses, don't you?  I thought h.p. went away with this system... OK, I think I see where this part is going.  Maybe a random d% table of negative effects with high being death; and each time you roll on it after the first time (assuming you survive the first time) you add 25 to the roll?Example: you're out of defenses and you get hit - you roll low and merely lose your shield.  Then you get hit by a fireball, you roll low + 25 and take a major injury to your leg.  Then the archer gets you, you roll middling + 50 and drop dead.Variable by defense type makes the most sense but would be the hardest to track.Ah.  I was assuming these defenses would accrete with level much like h.p. do now. (and how would you randomize this to reflect random h.p. rolls?)The problem here - as you indicate just below - is that there's never a chance of getting someone on the first try.  As it stands now it doesn't matter if a wizard has save values up the wazoo against willpower effects: a 1 is a 1 is a 1.  The attacker always has a chance.With this system the attacker doesn't have a chance until she's attacked enough times to exhaust the target's defenses...which works fine for melee but not at all for spells.'A' will never be used against certain types of effects e.g. fatal ones.  That said, I'd assumed acceptance of the spell effect (or weapon strike) in this system was always an option - nothing forces you to use a defense if for some reason you don't want to.In part this is why I suggested earlier that the save-vs.-magic system should stay as is (particularly against spells that bypass hit points) and use this new system for physical combat only.  The problem there becomes what to do with spells that cause full/half damage without making them full/none.Thinking about this, I would never want to play a caster in this system unless all it ever did was (boring) buff-utility-support-defense.  Offensive casting of any kind gets almost completely neutered - it would even take two or three fireballs to obliterate the goblins that previously couldn't survive one - while defensive casting becomes paramount.The only way around this that I can think of - and it presents its own host of headaches - is to introduce some sort of effect or spell that prevents use of (some or all types of) defenses for however long.Lan-"and then there's the whole realism aspect, which we haven't got to at all yet"-efan</blockquote>

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