D&D 5E Saving throw bonus that is based on CURRENT HP

[n00bdragon]

How is it not a wound penalty or death spiral? By implementing a generic bonus that applies to everyone, you change the assumption of the default saving throw.

By reducing that bonus, you have instantiated a penalty against the default assumption of the saving throw.

By keying this off of current hp instead of maximum hp, you have created a wound penalty or a death spiral.

A death spiral is a game mechanic that makes you more likely to get hurt the more hurt you are. This can be offensive or defensive in nature. If a game applies penalties to your attack rolls or skills for example you are less effective at continuing to fight, thus the fight will drag on longer and you will take more damage. If the game applies a penalty to your defenses then further attacks are even more likely to hit you, causing a much faster spiral where taking damage effectively lines you up to take more damage which will get you taking wads of damage very quickly.

A penalty to saving throws on the other hand is unrelated to your ability to fight in combat since the results of a saving throw rarely make changes to your hit point total (awful spells that no one normally uses like Fireball excepted of course). In most editions of D&D saving throws are typically invoked as something to end your participation in a fight more or less completely (the edition which shall not be named used them as a substitute for set durations so I'm considering them unrelated here), in general if you failed a saving throw you were at worst done fighting or at best had to deal with some major inconvenience before you could start fighting again, and I use "fighting" here as a general term for the unrelated combat system that involves swinging objects at people to make them lose hit points. So losing hit points really doesn't make you more likely to lose even more hit points and failing a saving throw doesn't make you more likely to fail another one after it.

So... where again is the death spiral?

 

[Schmoe]

Does this mean that wizards have worse saves than fighters?

 

[n00bdragon]

That would be implicit in such a scenario. Gives a much needed leg up to a class that has felt nothing but hate for the last forty years.

 

[jonesy]

I'm not sure. It just occurred to me that there are different ways to interpret the phrase "based on CURRENT HP". Like for instance, would it work both ways in an absolute current?

I think my head hurts.

 

[Kraydak]

+1/10 max hp or +1/5 current hp would probably work out pretty well. I'd prefer the former, because of book-keeping issues, but it'd be a good fix to the scaling of saves (at the expense of making Con even more of a must-pump stat than it already is).

 

[billd91]

Everyone gets a bonus to all saving throws, based on CURRENT HP.
It could be a +1 bonus at 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 hp. (maximum +5)

Numers could change. Maybe different classes could get different HP tresholds. You could base it on fractions of MAX HP.

I do however like the most general approach. 100hp is a nice number for the maximum bonus of +5. Basing it on absolute HP helps higher level characters vs spells of lower level casters. And even higher level casters need to wear down some hp to more or less reliably take out a fighter with a save or disable spell.

I can't say that I'm really keen on doing something like this based on hit point values. I don't see why, for example, a tough-as-nails fighter with a lot of hit points should be more resistant to a charm or illusion spell than his brainier but less physically robust wizard twin brother.

If you wanted to include some sort of "beset" condition or characteristic that would make the target more vulnerable to whatever he's saving against, maybe inflict a penalty to his saves based on the number of attackers successfully battering him. The target gets hit a few times in the round prior to the spell, he suffers a -2 (or disadvantage) on his save because he's still reeling from the onslaught.

 

[Libramarian]

Make sure before you advocate a save bonus that you're actually looking at the spells--they're much weaker than they are in 1-3e. They either have an HP threshold, require the caster to concentrate to maintain the effect, allow a save to throw off the effect every round, or something like that. Essentially, it looks like it was a conscious design choice to eliminate a save bonus progression in favor of weaker spells.

 

[Kraydak]

Make sure before you advocate a save bonus that you're actually looking at the spells--they're much weaker than they are in 1-3e. They either have an HP threshold, require the caster to concentrate to maintain the effect, allow a save to throw off the effect every round, or something like that. Essentially, it looks like it was a conscious design choice to eliminate a save bonus progression in favor of weaker spells.

The spells are even more powerful than in 3e! All spells have the same absurdly high DC, not just the high level ones. Cause Fear, a measly 1st level spell, is a fight ender at level 20 (FEAR the Arcanist cleric and his ability to give disadvantage while stripping magic resistance) . Concentration might be a problem, except that you only have to concentrate on the fight winning spell if it won the fight for you. Such a hardship. Multiple saving throw opportunities might be a balancing factor, if you had an actually chance to succeed at a save. But since you don't, well.....

 

[Blue]

Some people believe, that high level characters have too low saving throws. And with a bonus of +5 to Spell DC from Wizard level, I tend to agree.

So taking HP treshold further I came to following solution:

Everyone gets a bonus to all saving throws, based on CURRENT HP.
It could be a +1 bonus at 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 hp. (maximum +5)

Numers could change. Maybe different classes could get different HP tresholds. You could base it on fractions of MAX HP.

I do however like the most general approach. 100hp is a nice number for the maximum bonus of +5. Basing it on absolute HP helps higher level characters vs spells of lower level casters. And even higher level casters need to wear down some hp to more or less reliably take out a fighter with a save or disable spell.

Hmm, raw numbers mean that the non-casters are better at making saves then casters, which seems somewhat out of whack. You mentioned different classes having different thresholds, but it also seems that those who rolled better at HPs get even more of an advantage in hitting those tiers earlier (or at all). Either one (but worse in the tiered one) it makes CON indirectly give saves. In the every 20, a 10th level character with a 14 CON will have +1 to all saves vs. a character with a 10 CON due to 20 extra HPs. If the numbers are lower for some classes CON gives even more of a bonus.

We could reverse it - give everyone +5, and then give a penalty based on total wounds (vs. HD size). This eliminates the how well you rolled HPs or CON as part of your base (unwounded) save, and if one character can get bigger negatives, well, the other character would be unconscious or dead at the same amount of damage taken.

Either of these seem to penalize melee combatants, especially "tanks" and other characters who have more swingy HP and take more damage regularly, I'm not sure that I'd really want that.

Just as a thought experiment, how about the exact opposite? Call it "when the going gets tough, the tough get going". PCs (and ONLY the PCs and major villains) get a bonus to saves (and AC?) the more hurt they get. Allows DMs to throw tougher encounters while giving a buffer against crossing the line into TPK land. Really ratchets up the tension and lets players tell the story of how they held off the Balrog that needed extra round to complete the dismissal ritual with only 3 HPs remaining. Adds to dramatic tension by allowing characters to get in spitting distance of death, while providing a mechanism against killing off too many characters.

 

[n00bdragon]

I don't see why, for example, a tough-as-nails fighter with a lot of hit points should be more resistant to a charm or illusion spell than his brainier but less physically robust wizard twin brother.

You- you answered your own question. He's "tough-as-nails". Why are people so absolutely dead set against a class with no class features to speak of outside of "hit bad thing with metal thing" at very least getting a "doesn't take your ****" ability. If you must object to mundane characters doing anything special can they at least be good at saying "lolnope"?