D&D 4E One thing I miss from 4e...the Saving Throws

[Otterscrubber]

I am a huge fan of 5e, did a good job of returning the game to a more "D&D" feel for me. I really like how 4e had the guts to try what felt like a whole new system, but it seemed to collapse under it's own weight after awhile. One of the innovations I did like was that there were only 3 saving throws and you had 2 abilities scores that would allow you to get a bonus.

Str/Con: Added to your Fort Save cuz you were just "tough" if you had a high score in either of these.

Int/Dex: You had a good reflex cuz you were just quick on your feet, either through natural talent or by just being aware of your surroundings.

Wis/Cha: You had a good Will Save because you were wise enough not to be fooled or had a strong personality that was hard to dominate.

Nowadays it's not so easy. This is very clear in the case of a Warlock I made. Has a high charisma as I wanted him to be charming, through both skill and spells. But Wisdom sadly became the "dump stat" here as I needed all his other abilities to be good as well. But now this warlock who uses a lot of charm spells and mind control now himself is almost powerless to make a Wisdom saving throw, which all charms are. So although this is his strength, for some reason he is also weak at this. Feel weird to me. Charisma is more than just how good you look, it is your force of personality, your willpower. Or so it has been defined. This comes up again and again for other characters and is the one thing I'd have to say I do not like about 5e. It's tough to have 6 decent saving throws, unless you have a paladin with a high charisma near you

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The six save system is a definite weakness of 5E, with the weird dichotomy between common saves and rare saves, but I definitely wouldn't say that 4E did it better. It doesn't make sense that a sickly person can build their immune system by lifting weights without actually overcoming the underlying illness, or that the sessile Mother Brain could dodge a fireball by being very smart. It was just a concession to make their math work.

A better system would be a three-save system which took into account both relevant stats - if your Fortitude save was equal to the sum of your Strength modifier and your Con modifier, and so on. That way, you could stand a decent chance of resisting charm whether you were wise or forceful, but the rare character who was both would be even better.

 

[JeffB]

Technically those are not saving throws, they are defenses.

Saves in 4e are 10 or better, no modifiers

 

[Otterscrubber]

Technically those are not saving throws, they are defenses.

Saves in 4e are 10 or better, no modifiers

Oh....you know what I mean!

 

[iserith]

I too really liked saves as defenses in D&D 4e and was, at first, sad to see them go in favor of what I thought was a "step backward" to the days of saving throws. But after having internalized the D&D 5e paradigm, what we have now is a good fit in my view.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I am a huge fan of 5e, did a good job of returning the game to a more "D&D" feel for me. I really like how 4e had the guts to try what felt like a whole new system, but it seemed to collapse under it's own weight after awhile. One of the innovations I did like was that there were only 3 saving throws and you had 2 abilities scores that would allow you to get a bonus.

Str/Con: Added to your Fort Save cuz you were just "tough" if you had a high score in either of these.

Int/Dex: You had a good reflex cuz you were just quick on your feet, either through natural talent or by just being aware of your surroundings.

Wis/Cha: You had a good Will Save because you were wise enough not to be fooled or had a strong personality that was hard to dominate.

Nowadays it's not so easy. This is very clear in the case of a Warlock I made. Has a high charisma as I wanted him to be charming, through both skill and spells. But Wisdom sadly became the "dump stat" here as I needed all his other abilities to be good as well. But now this warlock who uses a lot of charm spells and mind control now himself is almost powerless to make a Wisdom saving throw, which all charms are. So although this is his strength, for some reason he is also weak at this. Feel weird to me. Charisma is more than just how good you look, it is your force of personality, your willpower. Or so it has been defined. This comes up again and again for other characters and is the one thing I'd have to say I do not like about 5e. It's tough to have 6 decent saving throws, unless you have a paladin with a high charisma near you

No, charisma has never been defined as willpower. Clearly you didn't want your warlock to have a good willpower, or you would have put a higher score in Wisdom rather than something else. Seems those other stats were more important. Seems like you want to be good at everything, which the default mechanic of D&D doesn't support. Might as well put a minimum 15 in every stat if that's how you want to play.

 

[billd91]

The six save system is a definite weakness of 5E, with the weird dichotomy between common saves and rare saves, but I definitely wouldn't say that 4E did it better. It doesn't make sense that a sickly person can build their immune system by lifting weights without actually overcoming the underlying illness, or that the sessile Mother Brain could dodge a fireball by being very smart. It was just a concession to make their math work.

I think the 6 save system in 5e would be a better strength if there were more balance between save types - and that's something I'm taking some time at house ruling in the game I run. 4e's problem with allowing the player to select the stat for the defense was it just reinforced stat dumping behavior by making it more efficient to do so.

A better system would be a three-save system which took into account both relevant stats - if your Fortitude save was equal to the sum of your Strength modifier and your Con modifier, and so on. That way, you could stand a decent chance of resisting charm whether you were wise or forceful, but the rare character who was both would be even better.

Maybe - at least each dumped stat would have an effect, though perhaps an ameliorated one.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think the 6 save system in 5e would be a better strength if there were more balance between save types - and that's something I'm taking some time at house ruling in the game I run.

The obvious problem with that is how it can be difficult to agree on which of six saves should apply to a given effect. Even as it is now, I'm not sure why Charm Person is a Wisdom save but Banish is a Charisma save, except that Wisdom is the primary mental defense and so most mental saves are Wisdom saves.

One of the major benefits of switching to a three save system is that players would feel less blindsided by effects that didn't make sense to them. It's like, under the current system you might have someone playing a Fighter who takes the Resilient feat for Wisdom (or otherwise invests stat boosts into Wisdom) because they want to resist mind-affecting magic, but then they get hit with a random Charisma save and it feels like there's no way they could have seen that coming. With a three save system, it would be very easy to divide effects up into three obvious categories, so there would be very little disagreement or confusion about how things worked.

 

[TwoSix]

Nowadays it's not so easy. This is very clear in the case of a Warlock I made. Has a high charisma as I wanted him to be charming, through both skill and spells. But Wisdom sadly became the "dump stat" here as I needed all his other abilities to be good as well. But now this warlock who uses a lot of charm spells and mind control now himself is almost powerless to make a Wisdom saving throw, which all charms are. So although this is his strength, for some reason he is also weak at this. Feel weird to me. Charisma is more than just how good you look, it is your force of personality, your willpower. Or so it has been defined. This comes up again and again for other characters and is the one thing I'd have to say I do not like about 5e. It's tough to have 6 decent saving throws, unless you have a paladin with a high charisma near you

I don't mind the 6 save system, although I would have been just as happy with 4e's "best of a related pair" approach or even the "add a pair" suggestion from comments above mine. (That might have been problematic with bounded accuracy, though.)

I think 5e suffers from the general incoherence of the Wisdom stat (it's the noticing/surgery/praying/willpower stat, what?), as well a lack of stat-replacement mechanics that could let character-focused players such as yourself to adjust your character's mechanics to your preference, like 3e and 4e have.

I would note, though, that 5e's stat description does NOT use any description of willpower in its Wisdom description, so you're pretty free to say that willpower is derived from Charisma if you choose. (Or anywhere else for that matter, if it fits your character. Constitution makes perfect sense to be attributed to force of will, as an example, or a reflavoring of the Lucky feat. There's a reason World of Darkness games have Willpower as a stat that exists outside the normal stat definitions.)

Also, one can rationalize charm spells as not being mental force, but rather mental trickery, which is why a highly intuitive, self-aware person is less likely to fall prey to the magic. That gives a rationale for allowing charm magic to continue to be predominantly Wisdom saves.

 

[Uchawi]

I like the 4E system in regards to each class having the capability to have different attacks whether that was AC, fortitude, willpower or reflexes. And the classes also mixed it up where different builds focused on different attributes. You could also substitute in different skills for attacks depending on the power. I would like 5E better if it did the same where each class could have different primary abilities, different specializations/builds, or skill substitution that used saves or attacked AC. It is my opinion they went too retro without appreciating the present.