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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 8809737" data-attributes="member: 7030563">No not worst case.  The example I gave you attacks were better, more like best case, on top of this attacks also crit where saves don't and they generally do more base damage than save cantrips.Spell casters can change out to try to figure this out, but unless they have metagame knowledge of the monster it will not be very efficient.   Assuming the DM lets you see the roll, you have about a 25% chance of gaining some insight based on his roll on a save.  With a 13 DC, if he rolls between a 10 and 14 it is useful but still not very telling on a single roll alone.  Any other number lower than 10 or higher than 14 is almost useless by itself unless he has extremely good or bad saves, and that is assuming the DM does public rollsSo statistically it is normally going to take 2-3 rounds (sometimes more) to get any useful information at all and even then your info is limited.Example: your DC 13 Wizard tolls the dead on the bad guy and he rolls a 9 and fails.  You don't know much from that, so you toll the dead again and he rolls a 15 and saves.  You still don't know much.  Then you toll the dead a 3rd time and he rolls a 14 and saves.  Ok you have spent 3 turns doing this and you know his save is better than -2 and less than +4.  This example is BETTER than it will usually be as all 3 of these rolls fall in the middle 50% of the distribution. Distribute it more widely where one of these is a 3 and the other an 18 and you still know basically nothing after 3 attempts.If the DM does not do public rolls it is going to take dozens of rolls to get this right with any sort of reliability.Add into this the difference in damage and you have something you can't typically figure out without observing many rolls.  Say I am considering targeting intelligence with mind sliver and 1d4 damage vs wisdom with toll the dead with 1d12 damage.  Now you need to consider not only the save but the damage since TTD does well over twice as much damage on average.  So casting TTD against someone with a +2 is going to do more damage on average than casting a mind sliver against someone with an automatic fail.Give me an example with real numbers and real hypothetical rolls to show me how you would actually use this to determine which of these is the best choice.  Or better yet roll it out on your kitchen table 3 times and let me know what you find out.</blockquote>

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