Poll: How Often Should Saves be Successful?

[Brazeku]

This has been a useful topic for me, thanks again!

1. Should a character's good save be successful 50%, 75% or 95%?

Good saves on average should be about 2/3.

2. Should a character's bad save be successful 5%, 25% or 50%?

I'd say about 1/3 up to 1/2.

3. Should character DCs differ from monster DCs? If so, by how much?

I think that monsters and characters at the same CR should have similar saves.

4. Do your opinions about how saves/DCs should interact differ from your experiences of how they actually interact? If so, how?

I think brutal instant kill effects should maybe be easier to save against, and less powerful effects should have something other than just 'no save'. In my experience, save or die is fairly lame and should be hard to pull off unless a character/NPC/monster really makes sacrifices to strengthen that ability. On the other hand, I think that spell obsolescence is not so hot, weaker spells should have some way to remain at least somewhat useful at higher level, so I figure their saves could become more difficult.

 

[Celebrim]

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?

In 1st edition, the DC of saves did not scale with power. At low levels, even your good saves failed more often than not. But, eventually a high level character's saving throws would become so good that he could be relatively secure when faced with a series of saving throws (not that saving throws are ever a good thing, since failure generally meant death).

This is more or less my preference. At low levels poor saves should fail more than 50% of the time, and good saves at least 25% of the time. But a character's saves should scale more rapidly than the DC's, and that eventually they should fail only 5-10% of the time and even the poor saves should not fail more than 25-40% of the time.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I think that player characters' good saves should be successful about 80% of the time, and the poor save about 60% of the time... Players in my games make a LOT of saving throws. I can't imagine what their fates would be if they failed even their poor saves 50% of the time.

Monters should save only slightly less often. Maybe 70% / 50% or so... For the most part, monsters don't have to make that many saves (one or two before they are simply beat down).

Later
silver

 

[T. Foster]

Star Wars Saga is like this.

The Defenses (which replace both saves and AC) are equal to 10 + your level (+ various other bonuses, like ability scores). Classes give a very small, one-time bonus of +1 to +3 (and only prestige classes give a +3) to one or more defenses, and you take the best for that defense. So a Jedi (which gives +1 to all three defenses) who multiclasses into Soldier (which gives a +2 to Fortitude defense, a +1 to Reflex defense and nothing to Will) would have +1 Ref, +2 Fort and +1 Will as his class defense bonuses, and then add his level and ability scores.

EDIT: The more I look at this, the more I think you're (sort of) asking for something else/more. Do you specifically want saves to get easier at high levels than at low levels? If so, I suppose you'd have to use lower relative CLs (Challenge Levels, Saga's simplified version of CR) as the characters advanced. Which, to be fair, is what the system generally indicates. Emperor Palpatine's attacks are still going to be hell on your defenses no matter your level, though, and a stormtrooper's not so much.

It's a reflection of my general ambivalence towards the trend in d20 (and d20-derived games like C&C) that challenges more-or-less keep pace with character abilities, so that a 1st level character facing a balanced challenge likely has about the same chance of success as a 10th level character facing a balanced challenge -- once you cancel out all the bonuses on one side of the equation and the increased DC on the other side, both characters likely have about the same chance of success (probably somewhere around 50%).

I prefer the model of pre-3E editions where characters start out weaker relative to the challenges they're facing but then gain power more quickly than the challenges increase in difficulty, so that a low-level character faced with a die-roll (whether an attack or a saving throw) likely only has about 1/3 chance of success (the average of the low level good and bad saves I posted above, or a 1st level character vs. AC 5*) but gradually improves to the point of at high level probably having about 2/3 chance of success (the average of the high level good and bad saves I posted, or a 10th level fighter with a +2 sword against AC 2*). To me this feels like real growth, real accomplishment -- at low level any time a die-roll is called for ou're scared because chances are you're going to fail, whereas at high level there's less risk, you're more likely to succeed, more heroic. I like this much better than adding up a ton of bonuses and modifiers but at the end of the day still needing to roll the same 10+ or 11+ to succeed that I needed when fighting a kobold at 1st level...

*in OD&D

 

[Kelleris]

I prefer the model of pre-3E editions where characters start out weaker relative to the challenges they're facing but then gain power more quickly than the challenges increase in difficulty, so that a low-level character faced with a die-roll (whether an attack or a saving throw) likely only has about 1/3 chance of success (the average of the low level good and bad saves I posted above, or a 1st level character vs. AC 5*) but gradually improves to the point of at high level probably having about 2/3 chance of success (the average of the high level good and bad saves I posted, or a 10th level fighter with a +2 sword against AC 2*). To me this feels like real growth, real accomplishment -- at low level any time a die-roll is called for ou're scared because chances are you're going to fail, whereas at high level there's less risk, you're more likely to succeed, more heroic. I like this much better than adding up a ton of bonuses and modifiers but at the end of the day still needing to roll the same 10+ or 11+ to succeed that I needed when fighting a kobold at 1st level...

Actually, in my experience this is just how 3e works. At low levels, that base 10 on the DC means that the die roll always matters more than the bonus, so anyone can fail any save. As you gain levels, the relative cheapness of save-boosting items over DC-boosting items, the effects of multiclassing, and the paucity of easy ways to increase save DCs combines with the ability to get different kinds of bonuses than stat, base, and resistance on saves to produce numbers that make the base DC of 10 and the die roll relatively unimportant. It's very rare in high-level games, in my experiences, for someone's "pride and joy" save to fail except on a natural 1. My 13th-level bard-built-as-a-ninja, for instance, has a +26 Reflex save most of the time, and can take that up to +35 as an immediate action if needed. My 17th level Barbarian/Battle Sorcerer has a Fortitude save that varies wildly, but tends to be in the low 30s when in the thick of combat - both of these characters frequently have a save bonus that's higher than the entire DC that they're saving against when some targets their good saves. At low levels, that's impossible to do, and every save is risky. When you're third level, a 4 is a 4, but when you get up there, all that matters is that it isn't a 1. And this is hardly exclusive to my characters, it's the general trend with the PCs of those I've played with as well.

 

[T. Foster]

Actually, in my experience this is just how 3e works. At low levels, that base 10 on the DC means that the die roll always matters more than the bonus, so anyone can fail any save. As you gain levels, the relative cheapness of save-boosting items over DC-boosting items, the effects of multiclassing, and the paucity of easy ways to increase save DCs combines with the ability to get different kinds of bonuses than stat, base, and resistance on saves to produce numbers that make the base DC of 10 and the die roll relatively unimportant. It's very rare in high-level games, in my experiences, for someone's "pride and joy" save to fail except on a natural 1. My 13th-level bard-built-as-a-ninja, for instance, has a +26 Reflex save most of the time, and can take that up to +35 as an immediate action if needed. My 17th level Barbarian/Battle Sorcerer has a Fortitude save that varies wildly, but tends to be in the low 30s when in the thick of combat - both of these characters frequently have a save bonus that's higher than the entire DC that they're saving against when some targets their good saves. At low levels, that's impossible to do, and every save is risky. When you're third level, a 4 is a 4, but when you get up there, all that matters is that it isn't a 1. And this is hardly exclusive to my characters, it's the general trend with the PCs of those I've played with as well.

That's my ignorance of 3E (especially high level 3E) showing, then, and my complaint apparently applies more to C&C than to D&D itself -- since C&C characters don't pile on bonus modifiers to the degree D&D characters do, but the challenges levels (equivalent to D&D's DCs) still increase, a high level C&C character is likely to have no better (or only slightly better) chance of saving against an effect (be it spell, poison, or otherwise) from a challenge of equal level than a 1st level character would against a 1st level challenge. This changes the feel considerably from pre-3E D&D, and not in a way I like.

(Though it's perhaps also worth mentioning that the idea of characters routinely having bonuses in the +20s and +30s makes me blanch a bit -- it reminds me of high-level T&T where you might find characters rolling 2D6+90 and such; a legit-enough playstyle, but not what I prefer...)

 

[hong]

Star Wars Saga is like this.

The Defenses (which replace both saves and AC) are equal to 10 + your level (+ various other bonuses, like ability scores). Classes give a very small, one-time bonus of +1 to +3 (and only prestige classes give a +3) to one or more defenses, and you take the best for that defense. So a Jedi (which gives +1 to all three defenses) who multiclasses into Soldier (which gives a +2 to Fortitude defense, a +1 to Reflex defense and nothing to Will) would have +1 Ref, +2 Fort and +1 Will as his class defense bonuses, and then add his level and ability scores.

Pretty much like Iron Heroes, where all base saves are equal to character level. Was IH the first game to dump the pointless good save/bad save distinction entirely? No wonder I love IH etcetcetc.

 

[Crothian]

Good save makes it about 50%. The thing that swings it though is that characters have high attributes and other bonuses to their saving throws so it seems that it is around the 80-90% range. That's how I see it.

 

[Kelleris]

(Though it's perhaps also worth mentioning that the idea of characters routinely having bonuses in the +20s and +30s makes me blanch a bit -- it reminds me of high-level T&T where you might find characters rolling 2D6+90 and such; a legit-enough playstyle, but not what I prefer...)

Yeah, that's one of the big complaints that comes even from people (like me) who like high-level D&D - after a certain point, the d20 roll starts to be irrelevant. But it's worth mentioning that the saves I mention are the *good* saves, and the others are much more reasonable. The +26 in particular is absurdly good for 13th level - the result of a good cloak of resistance, levels in three classes with good Reflex, a racial Dex bonus, and a focus on Dex above all else for stats - and the character's other saves are +9 and +10, respectively. The 17th-level character is at about +9 and +14 for his other two saves. That's really another problem altogether, though - balancing encounters gets weird when the difference between someone's good and bad saves is 17 points.

 

[Cadfan]

First, you can't directly compare saves in this fashion, because a character with a good reflex save will have drastically different results if he focuses on dex, or ignores it. Example: wizards and clerics both have good will saves. But their actual saves are very different in strength due to wisdom scores.

At low levels, characters should fail saves most of the time, even on good saves. Also, the difference between a bad and good save shouldn't be very extreme.

At high levels, a character with a good save who focuses on the stat linked to the save should almost never fail on that save. Ie, dex based rogues should nearly never fail a reflex save. A character with a good save who doesn't focus much on it should succeed more than half the time, maybe about 2/3 of the time. A character with a bad save who has an ok bonus to the linked stat should succeed slightly less than half the time on it. A character with a bad save who has no particular bonus to the linked stat should succeed around 2/5 of the time.

And in the meantime, save-or-die effects should be lessened to save-or-be-removed-from-combat.