Poll: How Often Should Saves be Successful?

[Tequila Sunrise]

A thread over on the house rules forum got me thinking about saves and DCs. I think it is often a problem that gamers have no commonly accepted standard of how often a save should be successful.

1. Should a character's good save be successful 50%, 75% or 95%?
2. Should a character's bad save be successful 5%, 25% or 50%?
3. Should character DCs differ from monster DCs? If so, by how much?
4. Do your opinions about how saves/DCs should interact differ from your experiences of how they actually interact? If so, how?

 

[DragonLancer]

1. Should a character's good save be successful 50%, 75% or 95%?
2. Should a character's bad save be successful 5%, 25% or 50%?
3. Should character DCs differ from monster DCs? If so, by how much?
4. Do your opinions about how saves/DCs should interact differ from your experiences of how they actually interact? If so, how?

1. IMO, a good save should be successful roughly 50% of the time. It should never be a forgone conclusion that a decent save will work most of the time.

2. IMO 25%. Not so bad that a success isn't plausible, just unlikely.

3. Monsters should have better saves than PC's. Monsters are the ones being ganged up on most of the time, and since the CR system doesn't work past a certain point, this would be my way of making it better

4. They come from my experiences as both a player and as a DM. I feel the same way regardless of my role in the game.

 

[Hussar]

Really? Fail a good save half the time? Yeesh, that's brutal. Don't you find that that overpowers save or die effects terribly? Basically means that any creature like a medusa or basilisk should wipe out 1/2 to 2/3rds of your party in the first round.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

1. Should a character's good save be successful 50%, 75% or 95%?
2. Should a character's bad save be successful 5%, 25% or 50%?
3. Should character DCs differ from monster DCs? If so, by how much?
4. Do your opinions about how saves/DCs should interact differ from your experiences of how they actually interact? If so, how?

1. Between 50% and 75% (about 67%, or 2/3 of the time, I'd like a good save to succeed). This assumes, however, that save or die effects are made rarer than in D&D or a strong narrative resource is included, and thus most saves are debilitating rather than crippling. Otherwise, 95%, because save or die is just infuriating to lose to.

2. Between 25% and 50% (about 33%, or 1/3 of the time, I'd like a bad save to succeed). With the caveat above; if save or die is RAW strong, then 50%.

3. Mooks should have lower saves than the PCs (succeeding 50% and 25%, respectively). Bosses should have higher saves (succeeding 95% and 50%, respectively).

4. Yes. Save-tank PCs save all the time against everything, everyone else fails more than 50% of the time. I always play save-tank PCs as a player in RAW D&D, for the reasons listed above.

 

[DragonLancer]

Really? Fail a good save half the time? Yeesh, that's brutal. Don't you find that that overpowers save or die effects terribly? Basically means that any creature like a medusa or basilisk should wipe out 1/2 to 2/3rds of your party in the first round.

It all comes down to how my group likes to play. They want edge of the seat gaming. Adventuring shouldn't be a walk in a park. Not saying that every encounter should be like that, but its different tastes.

 

[imbiginjapan]

Saves should be successful more often than not... given the prevalence of 'save or die' type effects 50% sounds way too low. If you don't mind doing some work to figure out what the game feels is valid, you could probably get a rough estimate by looking at characters with x levels versus monster encounters with a CR of x, and compare the save DCs involved versus the average save bonuses.

 

[Bad Paper]

Nevertheless, I agree with DragonLancer. Yeah, 50% is harsh, but that's because there are so many devastating effects.

I hate it when saving throws are a foregone conclusion. My campaign plays with the "natural 1 is negative 10 and natural 20 is 30" rule for saves. For example, many of the Fortitude saves I throw at the fighter automatically succeed, even on a natural 1. That basically removes the Fortitude dimension from that character entirely.

There's a reason Superman is the most boring comic book hero.

 

[Schmoe]

On average, I like saves as follows:

1. Good saves - 75-80%

2. Poor saves - 40-50%

 

[Schmoe]

Nevertheless, I agree with DragonLancer. Yeah, 50% is harsh, but that's because there are so many devastating effects.

I hate it when saving throws are a foregone conclusion. My campaign plays with the "natural 1 is negative 10 and natural 20 is 30" rule for saves. For example, many of the Fortitude saves I throw at the fighter automatically succeed, even on a natural 1. That basically removes the Fortitude dimension from that character entirely.

There's a reason Superman is the most boring comic book hero.

You might try changing that to the following:

Natural 1 = Roll again and subtract 20

Natural 20 = Roll again and add 20

Repeat for each subsequent natural 1 or 20 (unbounded).

 

[Felix]

PC:

Good save 2/3 success.
Poor save 1/3 success.​

I like PCs to be fairly sure of their strong suit, but not so strong that being targetted isn't a worry. Similarly, I like PCs to have a signifigant shot at surviving their poor saves.

Monster:

Good save 3/4 success.
Poor save 1/4 success.​

For monsters, I like them to be really tough where they're supposed to be tough, and have a big weakness where they're not. Don't use a Fort-save against an ogre, but cast Sleep and you're A-OK.

There's a reason Superman is the most boring comic book hero.

You need to see Bill's commentary on Superman from Kill Bill Vol. 2 again. Good stuff.