Jason Bulmahn Speaks about DDXP(His take on the system)

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Obviously, I'm asking those questions rhetorically. The point that saves are just duration rolls spread out over several rounds is a very good one. Does it skew things in favor of the target? A bit. But you've also not seen every way that saving throws can be affected by the classes and their abilities, so you'll see eventually that things shake out a bit differently.

So if in the end the fighter has a better chance to save due to his class this change makes even less sense. Why invent an entirely different mechanic to tack onto the attack vs. defense system, when you can just have ongoing attacks vs. the defense.

In the end, I think that it works out just fine in gameplay, and shifts the responsibility of duration tracking onto the player's combat round instead of on the DM side of things.

Since everyone rolls saves, everyone is equally responsible for duration tracking. Similarly, if everyone rolled ongoing attacks vs. defense, then everyone would still be responsible. Its a net gain of nothing, while having an additional and IMO goofy mechanic crammed in there.

 

[hong]

So if in the end the fighter has a better chance to save due to his class this change makes even less sense. Why invent an entirely different mechanic to tack onto the attack vs. defense system, when you can just have ongoing attacks vs. the defense.

It's a lot easier for the guy who has the spell on him to remember to save, than for the guy who cast the spell to do it.

One thing that may be bugging people is that the current saving throw mechanic gives the same duration regardless of _caster_ level, all other things being equal. A 30th level wizard casts sleep or hold person spells with the same duration as a 5th level one. This is not true for 3E durations; a 30th level wiz might have a 30-round duration on these spells while the 5th level wiz has 5 rounds. Hopefully there will be mechanics to deal with this, eg feats to change the save probability or something.

 

[fafhrd]

Take a look at the Shadow Demon's Shadow Drain ability.

Shadow Demon
Medium Elemental Humanoid (Demon)
Level 11 Skirmisher
AC 25, Fort 23, Ref 24, Will 22, HP 72, Bloodied 36, Init +8, Spd 2, Fly 8 (Hv)
Senses: darkvision; Perception +6
Attacks: Melee Claw +13 vs Ref; 2d6+4 AND shadow drain (save ends; see text)
Shadow Drain Ongoing necrotic 5; save -5 until ends turn at least 5 from this creature, shadow creatures, or others afflicted by shadow drain.
Limited Powers: Devouring Shadow Immediate, when first Bloodied; teleport adjacent to creature within 10 affected by shadow drain, 2d6+7 necrotic.
Abilities: Deathport Immediate, when creature within 10 at 0 hp; teleport to its square.
Skills Stealth +13

 

[hong]

I thought that making combat, especially low-level combat, less swingy was one of 4e's design goals?

And it is. The evidence so far is that if you want to one-shot a 4E 1st level character, you use something like a black dragon, which is a level 4 boss. If you want to one-shot a 3E 1st level character, you only need to use a CR 2 ogre. Or, if it's a 3E 1st level wizard, a CR 1/2 orc with a greataxe.

You can always one-shot a character with a sufficiently powerful monster. The question is how powerful you have to go.

 

[keterys]

Because of one wonky system we need another?

Which 3e wonky system are you talking about at this point? Durations? Saving Throws? D&D?

I played the game. The saves system works well. Different creatures get bonuses, as appropriate - for instance, halflings are bold and get +5 vs. fear, and humans can get a generic bonus, while dragons are particularly resilient. Bad things just don't affect dragons as long as kobolds. You don't need to track durations, it's easy to manage, and very straightforward.

 

[Logan_Bonner]

if a wizard is less likely than the fighter to be charmed in the first place, why are they equally likely to break free? Its hardly a deal breaker, just a design decision I dont understand compared to, say... ongoing attacks vs. the target's defense, which is a more unified system and no more rolling than the alternative.

Another way to look at it is: That's double jeopardy. It's making two ways in which a wizard is worse at resisting effects instead of one, and that makes him FAR worse at defending against those effects instead of somewhat worse. It's sort of like giving small creatures a Strength penalty and making them use weapons that deal less damage. Doing one of these gets the desired result: Small creatures deal less damage with weapons. Doing both means small creatures do insignificant damage with weapons and are dumb to use them. Instead of a nudge away from something, we've given a shove. That's not what we want.

Let's say fighter, ranger, and wizard all get attacked with an attack against Fortitude. Their Fort defenses are: fighter 18 (40% chance of being hit), ranger 16 (50%), and wizard 14 (60%). Now pretend we had Fort, Ref, and Will saves. The fighter gets +2 to Fort, ranger gets +0, and wizard gets –2. Now, each round the fighter has a 65% chance to drop the effect, the ranger has a 55% chance, and the wizard has a 45% chance.

At that point, the progression is far worse for the wizard than is sensible. We don't want the enemies to always attack the wizard's Fort or the fighter's Will. We use only one measure—a defense—to differentiate the characters' resistances to these effects for a reason: We only need one of them to achieve the desired result. The idea that the fighter has a better defense against some types of attacks is carried in his Fortitude defense.

 

[Imp]

So am I the only one who liked 3e's wizards-with-crossbows?

It made starting wizards seem, I dunno, kind of Giles-ish. They knew about arcane stuff, but couldn't bend it to their wills regularly yet, so they got a fairly effective weapon to use.

Though this may just be in comparison with their earlier-edition brethren, who were stuck throwing darts and flaming oil. Mind you, I don't really pine for Vancian magic either.

 

[Plane Sailing]

So am I the only one who liked 3e's wizards-with-crossbows?

I don't know about only one, but I think it is probably quite a small minority

 

[Zinegata]

Another way to look at it is: That's double jeopardy. It's making two ways in which a wizard is worse at resisting effects instead of one, and that makes him FAR worse at defending against those effects instead of somewhat worse. It's sort of like giving small creatures a Strength penalty and making them use weapons that deal less damage. Doing one of these gets the desired result: Small creatures deal less damage with weapons. Doing both means small creatures do insignificant damage with weapons and are dumb to use them. Instead of a nudge away from something, we've given a shove. That's not what we want.

In short, you don't want a situation where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Definitely not a bad design choice.

Let's say fighter, ranger, and wizard all get attacked with an attack against Fortitude. Their Fort defenses are: fighter 18 (40% chance of being hit), ranger 16 (50%), and wizard 14 (60%). Now pretend we had Fort, Ref, and Will saves. The fighter gets +2 to Fort, ranger gets +0, and wizard gets –2. Now, each round the fighter has a 65% chance to drop the effect, the ranger has a 55% chance, and the wizard has a 45% chance.

At that point, the progression is far worse for the wizard than is sensible. We don't want the enemies to always attack the wizard's Fort or the fighter's Will. We use only one measure—a defense—to differentiate the characters' resistances to these effects for a reason: We only need one of them to achieve the desired result. The idea that the fighter has a better defense against some types of attacks is carried in his Fortitude defense.

Ah. So what you're saying is that the decision to make Saves standard for everyone is because the "smoothening" of the Save rolls (because you now roll every round) has greatly highlighted the real (probability-wise) differences between the Fortitude, Will, and Reflex saves of various classes. Unlike before where everything was simply swingy because everyone makes just a single roll.

Instead, the main method for avoiding effects will be the Reflex, Will, and Fortitude defense, which is still different depending on the class of your character.

Okay, I think that works for me.

 

[Zinegata]

In the end, I think that it works out just fine in gameplay, and shifts the responsibility of duration tracking onto the player's combat round instead of on the DM side of things.

I'm not entirely sure that making the player track their own status effects is a good thing. I mean, most players even forget about the buffs they have on their characters like Bless.

Though I will say that making players roll for a save at the top of their round (if done consistently) would help in reminding players that they should keep track of their status effects.