Saves to Defense Conversion

[jaywolfenstien]

I'm thinking about running an online 3.5 campaign, and I was considering altering the Saves to more resemble the Defenses of 4th Edition to cut down on the amount of back-and-forth. At the table, exchanges of course go much faster. Resolving a saving throw will only take ten seconds:

"And Big Bad Guy casts a spell, give me a Will Save."
(player rolls) "I got a 16."
"'Mwa ha ha!, the villain laughs, 'You're mine now!' as your vision goes blurry and you feel weak..."

But with an online campaign said exchange might take a day or two which, by itself isn't so bad, but with a hypoethtical complex fight and hypothetical RL issues (not being able to post/e-mail/whatever) might drag said exchange out to a week or more.

I was wondering if I could make, say, a Lvl 1 Fighter's "+2 Fortitude Save" a "Fortitude Defense: 12" (essentially just add base 10)

And then the Evil Wizard's Level 2 Ghoul Touch spell (Save DC13) becomes a +3 attack to overcome the Fighter's Fortitude Defense.

It seems easy enough, but if D&D 3e has taught me anything, it's to become very suspicious if things seem easy. So, has anyone tried this? What were the results? How did it work out? What am I not seeing? Thanks in advance.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

I think you'd need to use Base 11, instead of Base 10.

Here's a link to the OGL Variant Rules from Unearthed Arcana.

Players Roll All The Dice :: d20srd.org

I've considered using this, but haven't.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Yeah, UA says it's 11+mods.

However, a good point was made here for actually using 12+mods instead of 11:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-dice-variant-ua-anyone-used.html#post2555177

Plenty of folks have messed around with it over the years. You can search for things like ' "players roll all the dice" site:www.enworld.org" ' in google and get some hits.

Although it's in the "4E Discussion" area, there's a decent discussion of this from back in 2007 and was talking about this approach, which was apparently used in Star Wars Saga (and carried over into 4E):
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/205016-flipping-saves-attacks.html

 

[Water Bob]

I'm thinking about running an online 3.5 campaign, and I was considering altering the Saves to more resemble the Defenses of 4th Edition to cut down on the amount of back-and-forth. At the table, exchanges of course go much faster. Resolving a saving throw will only take ten seconds:

"And Big Bad Guy casts a spell, give me a Will Save."
(player rolls) "I got a 16."
"'Mwa ha ha!, the villain laughs, 'You're mine now!' as your vision goes blurry and you feel weak..."

I wouldn't ask the player in an online game for a throw like this. You're the DM. Make the throw yourself. Describe the results. Use fantastic description of the events. Keep the drama high and the game moving.

Forget about even informing the player that he made a save. Just say, "'Mwa ha ha!, the villain laughs, 'You're mine now!' as your vision goes blurry and you feel weak..."

If the player asks in OOC chat, then tell him what you did, "I rolled a save for you, using these modifiers, with the result being blah, blah, blah".

If you want, get one of those online dice rollers that sends the player the results automatically each time you roll for him. The player will see the description of events and get the auto-e-mail from the dice roller, put two-and-two together, and realize what happened.

Either way, your game keeps on sailing.