D&D 5E Non-Proficient Saves

[trentonjoe]

Path of the Berserker- 6th level can't be charmed or frightened
Bardic Inspiration Dice
Bard's Counter Charm
Nature's Ward- Circle Druid, Can't be charmed or frightend by elementals or fey
Indomitable- 9th fighter, saving throw reroll
Stillness of Mind- MOnk 7-ends the effect of frightened or charmed
Purity of Body- MOnk 10- immune to poison and disease
Diamond Soul- MOnk 14- proficiency on all saving throws- can also reroll if use ki point
Divine HEalth- Paladin 3- Immune to disease
Aura of Protection-- Paladin 6- bonus to allies saving throw
Aura of Courage- Paladin 10- you and close allies can't be frightened
Cleansing TOuch- Paladin 14- end the effects of one spell on you or another
Aura of Devotion- Paladin 7- you and close allies can't be charmed
HOly nimbus- Paladin 20- advantage on saving throws on spells cast by undead
Slippery Mind- Rogue 15- gain proficiency in wisdom saving throw
Bend Luck- Sorcerer 6 (wild mage)- 1d4 to saving for an ally
Beguiling DEfense- Warlock 10 (Arch fey)- immune to charm
Dark One's own luck- Warlock 6 (fiend)- +d10 to one save

Dwarves have advantage against saves against poison
Elves and half elveshave advantage against being charmed and can't be put to sleep
Halfling's have lucky (reroll 1's) and have advantage against being frightened.
Gnomes have advantage on saving throws vs magic (INT, WIS and CHR only)


That's 22. Do you want me to go through the spells?

 

[jodyjohnson]

Looks like the high level party should be mostly monks with a paladin and a sacrificial bard.

 

[TwoSix]

Jersey fight!

Fine. I thought it was manifest from the math, but I guess not.

My expectation is that a single AoE spell or poisoness gas or whatever in the first round should not take out 3 PCs for half to all of an encounter out of a party of 5 at high level. Especially if the PCs taken out are the spell casters, so there are few ways to break them out of the enchantment, poison, stun, hold, whatever. This is a TPK waiting to happen because the 2 remaining PCs do not typically have the resources to both fight foes and help their allies. Encounters are balanced for 5 PCs in this example by a DM, not 2.

Yep, this is what I mean by math and intent not matching up.

If you say "3 PCs out of 5 should not be taken out for at least half an encounter at high level", there's a lot of variables to parse just in that one statement.

Is 3 bad because it's more than half? Would 2 out of 5 be OK? If the party was only 3 people, how should that expectation be adjusted?

Should it always be the case that there is zero probability of everyone being affected in a party? Maybe sleep type rules, where there's a maximum number of HPs that can be affected, should be used for all save-or-dies? Or limitations on number of targets, maybe only affecting up to 3 targets who fail their save?

Or does "should never happen" mean higher than 0 probability, but still really low? Like less than 5%? Or less than 1%?

Point being, raising up lower saves is nice, but it's not going to stop situations where most of the party is neutralized. It will just lower the incidence (and the overall duration, for save every round effects). Is that enough for you to feel that your intent is being met?

This should not happen at any level, let alone high levels when the PCs really should all be heroes.

Doesn't that mean that save bonuses and save DCs are largely irrelevant, then? If the concern is across the board, than shouldn't the effects themselves be the target of the house rules?

Taking a couple of PCs out for a couple of rounds, fine. But when the DC is 20 and most 18th level PCs have a +0 to +2 save, that's ludicrous and bad design. IMO

So you're saying incapacitation of less than half of PCs for less than half of the encounter is OK, but more than half of the PCs for more than half the encounter is bad. (Let's ignore the fact that failing saves increases encounter duration by preventing offensive resources being brought to bear, as it complicates the situation further). That's a pretty tight window to tune the DCs and saves into. Plus, we need to determine what the allowable probability is for each situation. I mean, you're looking for what, about a 90%-95% probability of at least 3 characters succeeding a saving throw out of 5? Assuming 2 have it as a "good" save (however we define that), and 3 not?

And to tell you the truth, just due to how dice can go cold or hot, I would suspect that an ambushing set of monsters that are considered medium to hard, but not deadly, could easily TPK a mid-level party partially due to the weak save factor. Given the nature of this, it might be a miracle for any group to survive past level 12 or so unless the DM takes steps to protect the PCs.

Any system that relies on a d20 is going to be susceptible to hot/cold dice. The systemic fix for that is to not have effects that can incapacitate multiple PCs. Or to tune the probabilities so that the chance of affecting the majority of party members is quite low (<1%, realistically. Even a 5% chance of a TPK roll for a nasty spell gives a decently high chance of a wipe over 10+ occurrences).

In 6 months, people will be talking about this like they did for weak saves in 4E. The difference is that there were usually 1 out of 3 weak saves in 4E and there are 4 out of 6 weak saves here (2 out of 3 major, and 2 out of three minor). The odds do not look good. Eventually, I expect an errata or a splat book will have ways to mitigate it. Not quite sure why the designers did not see this coming and if they did see it coming, wow.

Could be. I want to look through the Monster Manual and see the prevalence of multi-target incapacitate-type powers before I judge what house rules I deem appropriate. I have no issue with the party getting screwed over by lesser effects. My personal game desires have no problem with near auto-hit effects for higher level monsters, as long as they aren't insta-wipes.

 

[TwoSix]

Looks like the high level party should be mostly monks with a paladin and a sacrificial bard.

Get behind the pile of dead bards!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ohk5Swy-04

 

[Andor]

D&D is a complex game with emergant behaviors.
These cannot be accurately predicted, by definition.

What this means in practice is that you as a GM have to know your party, and know your goals for the experience of play.

For any given monster you can construct a sub-cr party that will wipe the floor with it, and an above cr party that risks a TPK. A classic example is a party weak at ranged vs a flying monster.
OTOH the ranged specialized party will get wiped by ambush melee foes that the melee party will smash in 2 round.

If you have a monster with an ability your party is weak to, then take it away, weaken it, or better yet give them a hint and allow them to take precautions.

A party which is all Dwarves and Stoutfoot halflings will have an easier time vs a green dragon than one made of tieflings. The tieflings will have an easier time vs a red dragon. These are not flaws.

What you cannot do, is look at a blank slate of a party, not knowing races, classes, or magic items, and predict worth a tinkers damn how they will do against any given foe 8 levels from now.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I'm fine with the current state of saving throws. If a wizard stays in the way of the ancient dragon, only a very bad roll should save him from the monster's claw-claw-bite.

Likewise, if a fighter stays in the way of a Lich's spell, only a very good roll should save him from its effects. Each class has it's own safety valve (the good save), and that should be enough to make sure that a single save-based tactic won't be an "auto-win button" against the whole group. That said, as a main combat tactic, an ability that uses saving throws should be reliable enough to allow the creature to be successful with it, as long as the creature is intelligent enough to choose how to apply it.

But this is just my opinion. In a game where the group expect saving throws to reliably take you out of bad situations, I expect a "half proficiency" house rule to be not only applicable, but much desired.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I think to evaluate the saving throw situation you need to look at each save individually.

Strength: Not a problem. If you fail a Str saving throw, usually the worst that'll happen is you'll get tossed around a bit.

Dex: Dex saves are awesome if you have Evasion, but then I believe every class that can get Evasion already has proficiency. Without it, quite often you're only saving for half damage. So the difference between passing and failing a Dex save is often not a game-breaking difference.

Con: Con saves are often either very temporary disabling effects (Ray of Enfeeblement) or half-damage saves (Cone of Cold). Failing these might cost you an action or reduce your effectiveness, but again, not usually a game-changer. Even Power Word: Stun at level 8 gets a save every round.

Int: This can make a big difference where it does matter (Feeblemind), but frankly that's not very often. You'll probably go a whole campaign and make less than half a dozen of these.

Cha: Same as Int. Getting banished will suck (for your party if not for you), but there aren't that many effects that target Charisma.

Wis: Hoo boy. Here it is. Wisdom saves are not only often very important, but they're also usually all-or-nothing. Fail a save against Dominate Person and you're worse than dead. Wisdom saves are clearly the most game-changing saves there are. To make things worse, they are often "balanced" by offering multiple saves (like when you are dominated and take damage), which is fine if you have even a 30% chance to save but not when you're a 10 Wisdom fighter trying to beat a DC19 spell.

That's probably why Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Warlock, and Wizard all start with Wisdom save proficiency, Monk and Rogue GET Wis save proficiency as a class ability, berserker barbarians get immunity to charm and frighten effects while raging, hunter rangers can get advantage on saves against frighten, etc.

So in other words, the real issue here is mostly with the actual minority of classes and subclasses (hi fighters!) that don't have any way to boost their Wisdom saves, short of taking the Resilient feat. These are the most important saves to make for the good of the entire group. Now, there are definitely ways to boost your chances (sticking close to the paladin, getting bardic inspiration, etc). So I'd have to play a lot more at high levels in various group setups to see whether they are, in fact, "broken."

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Each class has its own safety valve (the good save), and that should be enough to make sure that a single save-based tactic won't be an "auto-win button" against the whole group.

Because of the way save DCs are set, a tactic that relies on a single save is still likely to beat a whole group. Proficiency doesn't mean you're going to succeed, after all; it just means you have about an even chance to succeed, compared to the non-proficient who basically have no chance to succeed. It's still entirely possible to have a Mind Flayer just kill a party outright, because the one character with a reasonable chance to resist happened to roll poorly.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, I was thinking that if half of the proficiency bonus was added to the non-proficient saves, that range would be more reasonable.

Still not earthshaking, but at least high DC saves can be made once in a while and even the one DC 9 save in the monster section of DMG Basic Rules can still be failed.


Thoughts? Suggestions?

Half'd be better than nothing, I suppose.

Honestly, i think having an 8-12 in a stat makes your saves 'bad' enough without non-proficiency on top of it.

Proficiency, in general may have been a bad ideal. A +0 to +4 bonus over 20 levels on /everything/ might've been good enough for 'bounded accuracy' purposes, with Proficiency in weapons, tools, skills and whatever it is that gives all spellcasters proficiency in all their spells and cantrips, all the time, just adding a flat +2.

But, you could /just/ apply that idea to saves. Good saves get a +2 up front, all saves go up by 4 over 20 levels, just so you don't continually fall behind the blanket rise in DCs.

 

[TwoSix]

Wis: Hoo boy. Here it is. Wisdom saves are not only often very important, but they're also usually all-or-nothing. Fail a save against Dominate Person and you're worse than dead. Wisdom saves are clearly the most game-changing saves there are. To make things worse, they are often "balanced" by offering multiple saves (like when you are dominated and take damage), which is fine if you have even a 30% chance to save but not when you're a 10 Wisdom fighter trying to beat a DC19 spell.

That's probably why Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Warlock, and Wizard all start with Wisdom save proficiency, Monk and Rogue GET Wis save proficiency as a class ability, berserker barbarians get immunity to charm and frighten effects while raging, hunter rangers can get advantage on saves against frighten, etc.

That kind of makes sense. The saving throws that can really bone the party are the ones with the broadest distribution of the needed save proficiency (and/or other resistances).

Now, one could argue that the melee classes shouldn't have this vulnerability to mind affecting abilities, but that's an issue with class design, not the overall save system.