OSR How Sacrosanct Are Saving Throws?

[loverdrive]

If you want to emulate OD&D, then, yeah, saving throws are a part of the mythos.

Otherwise, I don't think that they are mandatory. Freebooters of the Frontier or World of Dungeons treat every roll the same and it works fine.

 

[Mannahnin]

For me, the virtue of the classic saving throws is that they divorce a big chunk of character competence and durability from how good your ability scores are. I think it's a mistake and a weakness of later editions to make saves dependent on ability scores.

Prior to AD&D, a character could be highly competent and badass with average ability scores. Once Gary made the charts dependent on high scores for bonuses (to the extent of saying that a character "needed" at least two 15s to be viable), it fed this whole escalation where ability scores became hugely important and a character with low or average ones was cruddy.

Making saves also dependent on them has the virtue of mechanical simplicity, but it further emphasizes their importance, which I don't think is a great move, unless maybe you want to have them increase reliably as characters advance in level like Tunnels & Trolls or WotC-era D&D. But for my tastes that still makes them too important.

Now, that being said, I think there's definitely room to tweak them. There is certainly something to be said in favor of more intuitive save categories than the classic 5. Honestly I think 5th edition took a misstep in going to saves for all six ability scores. For the physical ones it's usually easy to distinguish, but dexterity clearly rules the roost in applicability. For the mental ones, it can be hard to really intuit which one should apply for a given magical effect. Who's really to say whether breaking or resisting a mental enchantment should be a function of sharp wits, common sense, or force of personality?

The result in 5e seems to be that dexterity and wisdom dominate in importance, with Constitution getting a look in, and the others largely ignored.

I think 3E and 4E actually may have had the best approach here, with the broad categories of Will, Fortitude, and Reflex being easy to understand for nearly anyone.

4E mitigated the issue of ability disparity a bit by letting you use either Strength or Con for Fortitude, either Dex or Int for reflex, and either Wisdom or Charisma for Will. But I think I still prefer making saves be primarily level dependent, with minor bonuses for ability scores, racial abilities, magic items, and so forth adding in a bit where applicable.

Single save with modifiers definitely has potential too. You could even keep a little class differentiation, say by giving fighters a flat +2 against physical threats and hardships, magic users +2 against spells, and clerics +2 against supernatural threats. Thieves maybe +2 against traps and anytime quick reflexes would matter. You could do it many different ways, but that's just an example off the top of my head.

 

[Lanefan]

There is certainly something to be said in favor of more intuitive save categories than the classic 5.

Agreed, except my answer there is not to streamline it but instead to split those 5 into maybe 8. Poison, for example, could and IMO should be split out from paralysis and-or death.

A complete re-working of the save matrix is on my to-do list.

As for ability scores, I don't mind their giving a bonus (or a penalty!) where it makes sense e.g. high Con helping vs poison. There's going to be some places where it's an arbitrary distinction. For example should it be high Int, Wis or Cha that helps vs Charm effects - there's an argument for each and there's no doubt one of them should, so the designers or DM just have to pick one.

Single save with modifiers definitely has potential too. You could even keep a little class differentiation, say by giving fighters a flat +2 against physical threats and hardships, magic users +2 against spells, and clerics +2 against supernatural threats. Thieves maybe +2 against traps and anytime quick reflexes would matter. You could do it many different ways, but that's just an example off the top of my head.

This is an interesting idea, though there'll be some messy bits: is a fireball, for example, counted as a spell or a physical threat for those caught in it?

For Thieves, I'd suggest their +2 bonus should come against poison, if for no other reason that it kills so many of them.

 

[Horwath]

deleted...

 

[Democratus]

Throwing out the Saving Throws and going with ability checks instead has two knock-off effects:
1. At early levels, ability checks are FAR easier to make, even for average scores.
2. There is very little improvement as you level. So saves will change very little.

In general, a saving throw is made when someone made a mistake or got into a terrible situation - and it was a last ditch effort to avoid equally terrible consequences.

I feel that the phrase "Roll your Saving Throw!" is even more thrilling than in "Roll Initative!"

 

[Sacrosanct]

This is what I decided to go with. While saving throws are important and I can totally see and agree with the arguments why they are needed beyond ability score rolls, for the basic version of Chromatic Dungeons (level cap of 10, by the way), I will not have them. My goal for the basic version is to have a few unique mechanics as possible, so rolling up saves into ability checks is desirable as long as you can account for the leveling up factor.

Rogues will have bonuses to certain abilities, and every level they gain 6 discretionary points to distribute among the following skills (no more than 1 point per level can be put towards any one skill check):

Skill​	Ability Check Bonus ​
Climb Walls (dexterity)​	2​
Find Traps (wisdom)​	1​
Hear Noise (wisdom)​	1​
Open Locks (dexterity)​	2​
Perception (intelligence)​	1​
Pick Pockets (dexterity)​	2​
Read Languages (intelligence)​	0​
Remove Traps (dexterity)​	1​
Stealth (dexterity)​	1​

They also have class features like:

Lucky (2nd level): Whenever a rogue accidentally sets off a trap, or if a trap is set off that impacts the rogue that forces the rogue to make a dexterity ability check, if the check is successful, then the affect of the trap is completely ignored, and if it fails, then only half damage is applied.

For spells, many spells that force an ability check to resist, the person making the check would have a -1 penalty to the check for every caster level who cast the spell. So a 5th level wizard casting stinking cloud would force everyone in the AoE to make their constitution check at a -5 penalty.

Then there are other class abilities that impact this, for example the fighter class:

Athlete (4th level): The fighter gains a +3 bonus to all STR, DEX, and CON checks.

Resilient (6th level): Whenever the fighter fails an ability check, they may attempt to reroll another attempt. This can be used twice a day at 6th level and three times a day at 9th level.

There are other scenarios as well, but you get the idea.

 

[Blue]

What would be sacrosanct is OSR about saves to me is that they are only dependent on the person making the save - the caster doesn't adjust them at all. So every single character gets better and better at saves their entire adventuring career. Which is part of the reason why the different saves - different classes got better at different ones at different rates. Differently.