R&C Human Resiliency = Better Saving Throws?

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Getting a 10% better chance (or even a 5% better chance) to throw off ANY ongoing effect in the game is vastly superior to being able to reroll one attack per encounter.

From the first Castle Smoulderthorn playtest article:

June 28th, Thursday Night, Wizards Conference Room (Wayne Manor).
Campaign Arc: Castle Smoulderthorn
DM: Dave Noonan
Players: Bruce Cordell (yours truly), Richard Baker, Logan Bonner, and Toby Latin

Before we begin play, another player is giving Rich grief about one of Rich’s character’s abilities that grants the rest of us a blanket +2 to saves; it just ain’t sexy. Rich says something like, “I don’t know, I doubt I’ll use it that much, but who knows, maybe everyone in the party will get entangled.”

Sure enough, not 10 minutes later this fire-crazed flame priest has entangled half the party with fire snakes! Rich throws up his +2 to saves and, voila, at least two of us get free immediately. I guess that power isn’t so corner case after all.

At the time I was thinking that this sounded odd given the brave new world of defences. Now it's obvious what that power was doing. The party was somewhere around 7th to 10th level, and the character with the power is Rich Baker's Warlord/Wizard that's been discussed so much. I don't think bonuses to saves are that rare.

 

[Generico]

Keep in mind, that playtest is from June 28th of last year. I would be that a lot has changed in the past 7 months.

A racial bonus to saves is significantly more powerful than what the Elf has in the way of starting racial powers. I'm not saying that save bonuses won't exist. I'm saying that I think it's highly unlikely that any character will get them because of their race. Honestly, I think they should have used a d% instead of d20. That would give you a bit more granularity, so you could give bonuses smaller than 5% at a time.

If save bonuses are being thrown around all the time, then powers with ongoing effects won't be very useful.

 

[med stud]

Actually, I get the impression they might be moving away from humans as the "most flexible" race, and instead giving humans an actual niche (dynamic, resilient, etc).

I would be a bit surprised if humans got specific attribute bonuses, though. I'm thinking since most races get +2 to 2 different attributes, humans will get +3 to one attribute of their choice. ("Humans tend to be more focused than many other races...")

A support for the non-specific attribute bonuses is that they have stated that humans fit equally well for all classes. That would be hard if they had fixed attributes.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Keep in mind, that playtest is from June 28th of last year. I would be that a lot has changed in the past 7 months.

Absolutely.

A racial bonus to saves is significantly more powerful than what the Elf has in the way of starting racial powers.

But we don't know if humans get the same stat bonuses as the other races. All we know so far is that Elves get +2 to Dex and Wis, and no race has penalties. Wizards could be balancing better powers with weaker ability scores.

Honestly, I think they should have used a d% instead of d20. That would give you a bit more granularity, so you could give bonuses smaller than 5% at a time.

Well I'm glad they didn't, I've never found d% to be much more useful than a d20 in most systems I've played. The granularity is almost never used.

 

[Generico]

But we don't know if humans get the same stat bonuses as the other races. All we know so far is that Elves get +2 to Dex and Wis, and no race has penalties. Wizards could be balancing better powers with weaker ability scores.

I don't doubt that's possible. I just think a bonus from race that applies to a mechanic that already grants a grants a 55% chance to shake off ANY ongoing effect from ANY source is pretty powerful. Especially considering that we do know that a level 26 devil (which traditionally are pretty resistant to magical effects) only gets a 65% chance.

Well I'm glad they didn't, I've never found d% to be much more useful than a d20 in most systems I've played. The granularity is almost never used.

Have you played with a system that uses a save mechanic like this?


I don't know. The more I think about it, the less I really like this mechanic for saves. It seems to make ongoing effects a lot less useful, considering that even a commoner could shake off something like a fear spell from a lvl 30 Wizard in one round more than half the time.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Have you played with a system that uses a save mechanic like this?

No, I've played systems that used d%, and I've never found them worth the hassle.

 

[The Little Raven]

Have you played with a system that uses a save mechanic like this?

I have. I swapped all d% with a d20 in 3e, since I never saw a percentage that wasn't a multiple of 5, and therefore easy to replicate with a d20. No need to bust out d% when a d20 can fill the exact same purpose.

 

[Belphanior]

I don't know. The more I think about it, the less I really like this mechanic for saves. It seems to make ongoing effects a lot less useful, considering that even a commoner could shake off something like a fear spell from a lvl 30 Wizard in one round more than half the time.

Possibly.

Assuming that minions, which is what commoners are, don't have in inherent save penalty. And that saving throws don't suffer adjustments based on relative strength of attacker vs defender.

All we have so far about saving throws is the miniature game and the 3.75 bleeding mechanic. I don't think that's a very solid foundation to base like or dislike on just yet.

 

[Jhaelen]

From the first Castle Smoulderthorn playtest article:



At the time I was thinking that this sounded odd given the brave new world of defences. Now it's obvious what that power was doing. The party was somewhere around 7th to 10th level, and the character with the power is Rich Baker's Warlord/Wizard that's been discussed so much. I don't think bonuses to saves are that rare.

Wow, you're right. I'd already forgotten about that one. That +2 bonus is HUGE! A lot better than I originally thought.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I have. I swapped all d% with a d20 in 3e, since I never saw a percentage that wasn't a multiple of 5, and therefore easy to replicate with a d20. No need to bust out d% when a d20 can fill the exact same purpose.

Interestingly, a lot of D% games seem to work only in 5% steps. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is such an example - the only reason for not all numbers beind divisible by 5 % is that you roll your base statistics from which basically all other d% roles are based on. (2d10+some number depending on race)