Saving throws are a coin toss?

[Felon]

One of the players in my group got us together to run a little dungeoncrawl with the bootleg characters and kobolds. A few things raised big question marks with us, like "what is Int for if it's not going to get a character any more skills", and "what's the effect of being slowed", and "do attacks of opportunity work like they used to"? But the one that really caught my attention was how saving throws worked. Instead of using Reflex, Fortitude, or Will Defense actively, a saving throw against an ongoing effect is reduced to a roll of 10+ on a d20. That's for all effects, all characters, all monsters...everything.

So my wizard uses his daily sleep power on a mass of kobolds. Hie misses half. Of the half that are hit, half of them make their initial saving throw. The ones that fail fall asleep, but they get saves every round to wake up. It certainly seemed pretty darn weak.

I gotta admit, I don't see the rationale for making the saves a coin toss. Maybe that was just a shorthand method we were copying, and the real mechanics for saves in 4e will be different.

 

[Cadfan]

I think we're pretty sure the coin toss is in.

It does provide a pretty much one size fits all means of resolving the duration of debilitating effects. It does seem to suggest that long term effects which harm a character are either gone or significantly altered.

The nerfing of Sleep was a feature, not a bug. It can still be an encounter ending attack.

 

[hong]

Terminology confusion. The 3E "Reflex save" is the new 4E "attack vs Reflex defense", and the attacker rolls the die, not the defender. The 4E "save" appears unrelated to any 3E concept.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

No, that is the save mechanic. But, there are various bonuses. My eladrin ranger got a +5 racial modifier vs. Charm, for instance. I don't know if there are powers later on that up the DC as it were, but I would assume so.

 

[Gloombunny]

So my wizard uses his daily sleep power on a mass of kobolds. Hie misses half. Of the half that are hit, half of them make their initial saving throw. The ones that fail fall asleep, but they get saves every round to wake up. It certainly seemed pretty darn weak.

They don't make saves when you use the power. You make an Int attack against their Will or whatever to see if the spell effects them, and then on their turns they make saves to throw off the slowing/sleeping.

 

[Colmarr]

How sure are we that you can save to recover from the Sleep spell's unconsciousness? That seems to be the rub, rather than the slowed -> unconscious progression.

I would have thought that once you were unconscious it's no longer a magical effect, and you don't get to make further saves (unless/until someone does something to wake you up - such as trying to decapitate you for example ).

 

[Stalker0]

Don't forget the following:

1) Saves happen at the END of the creature's NEXT turn. So if you throw a sleep on a kobold, it has one action under its effects before it gets any saving throw.

2) Even if you miss with sleep, they are still slowed. With a more mobile game, that's a huge advantage. For example, a fighter could attack the slowed kobold and move back. Since the kobold is slowed, he won't be able to move in and attack the fighter.

 

[Felon]

How sure are we that you can save to recover from the Sleep spell's unconsciousness? That seems to be the rub, rather than the slowed -> unconscious progression.

I would have thought that once you were unconscious it's no longer a magical effect, and you don't get to make further saves (unless/until someone does something to wake you up - such as trying to decapitate you for example ).

Well, the description of sleep on the quickplay wizard's sheet does indeed provide saves every round to shake off both the slowing effect and the sleep effect.

 

[Felon]

The nerfing of Sleep was a feature, not a bug. It can still be an encounter ending attack.

Refer to it as a bug, feature, or Chinese dentist; a coin toss is inadequate as a universal method for governing lasting effects--specifically because it won't create lasting effects.

I'm sorry if it sucks to be knocked out by a sleep spell, but I don't see the solution as reducing it to a six-to-twelve second long nap.

 

[Kordeth]

Refer to it as a bug, feature, or Chinese dentist; a coin toss is inadequate as a universal method for governing lasting effects--specifically because it won't create lasting effects.

Good thing, then, that the design goal of the power isn't to create a lasting effect.