Saving throws are a coin toss?

[frankthedm]

Yep.

And you can kill a +3 level dragon with it.

no, you can't. CDG no longer has a outright chance to kill. Someone in the party will get to whack it for max damage, but then congrats, you smacked it awake.

Part of the balance of the sleep spell IS that CDG are not autokill. If a DM rules CDG to be autokill, that makes sleep FAR stronger than designed.

 

[small pumpkin man]

From memory a regular ogre in 3.5E is 4HD so a single ogre would still have a good chance of falling asleep unless there were also lower HD creatures in the AoE.

In any case trying to set up an example where the spell in the previous edition is intended to have a 0% chance of affecting a target hardly seems relevant to a discussion of the 4E version of the spell.

The point is because the attack roll (the equivalent of the DC in 3.5) scales by level, and because most creatures do not seem to get a bonus to saves, a 30th level Wizard can cast it on a 30th level creature, and it's just as likely to work as a first level caster on a first level creature. For example, it's more effective on the pit fiend than on the hobgoblins we've seen (assuming the caster is appropriate level).

So yeah, that is important when discussing it's power level.

 

[small pumpkin man]

no, you can't. CDG no longer has a outright chance to kill. Someone in the party will get to whack it for max damage, but then congrats, you smacked it awake.

Part of the balance of the sleep spell IS that CDG are not autokill. If a DM rules CDG to be autokill, that makes sleep FAR stronger than designed.

I believe he's referring to this, where one of the Experience groups killed a level 4 Black Dragon by starting out with sleep. Admittedly, it was only half down after being unconscious and CDGed multiple times, but that was one of (I believe) only two groups which killed that Dragon.

 

[Terramotus]

The save mechanic is a little ridiculous in that the goblin hit with sleep by the 30th level archmage has a better than 50% chance to snap out of it the very first round he gets a save, whereas the Great Wyrm red dragon hit by the 1st level wizard on a lucky 20 only has his regular chance to get out of it.

No, I won't be playing this way. I don't even care if it messes up the system - I'll deal with that. Second house rule after fixing movement so it's 1-2-1-2.

I'll be replacing the save with the reverse of the original attack. For example, if it's Int attack vs Will, subtract 10 from Will and add a d20 roll. Add 10 to the opponent's Int attack modifiers. Done.

Now at least an archmage can keep a friggin goblin asleep.

 

[glass]

If that's not the case, and it turns out that Saving Throws are always a flat 55% chance to succeed, regardless of any other factors, I'll have a good laugh at the sheer stupidity of the concept and then houserule it away.

Phrases like 'sheer stupidity' are getting thrown around a lot in this forum. Is it not more likely that if it is always 55% (and I don't know whether it is or not any better than you do), that there is a jolly good reason for it?


glass.

 

[hong]

Now at least an archmage can keep a friggin goblin asleep.

Maybe an archmage can keep a friggin goblin asleep, but by using something stronger than a 1st level spell. Is there a problem with that?

 

[Terramotus]

Phrases like 'sheer stupidity' are getting thrown around a lot in this forum. Is it not more likely that if it is always 55% (and I don't know whether it is or not any better than you do), that there is a jolly good reason for it?


glass.

I dunno, man. I've been almost nothing but enthusiastic about the vast majority of the 4E mechanics, but a save mechanic where relative power level has nothing to do with the outcome flies in the face of what D&D has always been - a level-based roleplaying game where experience and treasure makes your character more powerful.

Seriously, I've rolled my eyes practically every time I've read someone say that a change I think is minute makes it "not D&D anymore". But this really does it for me. When my power level relative to the monster doesn't affect my ability to shrug off magical effects that hit me, I really don't see it as D&D anymore. I've played in roleplaying sessions where there was no game system and everything was decided by a coin flip on campouts when I was younger. They were fun, but they weren't D&D.

I'm guessing they did this because reversing the original attack roll was considered to be too much math to do at the table, and they didn't want to add a bunch of numbers onto the character sheet. My players can handle this. On most fights where the challenge ratings are as expected, it'll probably end up practically the same, but when the power disparity is great, the change will be very noticable.

Maybe an archmage can keep a friggin goblin asleep, but by using something stronger than a 1st level spell. Is there a problem with that?

Sleep is difficult to argue about because we all expect it to be useless at high levels because of conditioning. But that isn't necessarily true in the new edition. Certainly I haven't seen many signs that powers have a "planned obsolescence" in the rules we've seen. So, yeah. Maybe an archmage should be better at keeping a goblin asleep than a first level wizard.

Like I said, mathematically reversing the original attack roll and rolling that instead will slow down gameplay a bit, but will probably be mathematically similar except in extreme circumstances. That difference seems worth the work to me, but obviously the desginers disagreed.

 

[small pumpkin man]

The save mechanic is a little ridiculous in that the goblin hit with sleep by the 30th level archmage has a better than 50% chance to snap out of it the very first round he gets a save, whereas the Great Wyrm red dragon hit by the 1st level wizard on a lucky 20 only has his regular chance to get out of it.

No, I won't be playing this way. I don't even care if it messes up the system - I'll deal with that. Second house rule after fixing movement so it's 1-2-1-2.

I'll be replacing the save with the reverse of the original attack. For example, if it's Int attack vs Will, subtract 10 from Will and add a d20 roll. Add 10 to the opponent's Int attack modifiers. Done.

Now at least an archmage can keep a friggin goblin asleep.

The problem is you're mixing up what "save" means in 4e with what it means in earlier editions. They could change it so that these spells last 1d6-2 rounds, minimum 1, would you really have a problem with that? Because that's essentially what it's doing, it's not supposed to be "save" in the 3.x sense at all.

 

[hong]

Sleep is difficult to argue about because we all expect it to be useless at high levels because of conditioning. But that isn't necessarily true in the new edition. Certainly I haven't seen many signs that powers have a "planned obsolescence" in the rules we've seen. So, yeah. Maybe an archmage should be better at keeping a goblin asleep than a first level wizard.

Just because there's no planned obsolescence doesn't mean you can't have an "improved sleep" that has more sleep mojo. The 2-page wizard spells spread includes "greater invisibility", so we can infer that the regular invisibility is still around, and greater invis is a more powerful version of it.

 

[Terramotus]

The problem is you're mixing up what "save" means in 4e with what it means in earlier editions. They could change it so that these spells last 1d6-2 rounds, minimum 1, would you really have a problem with that? Because that's essentially what it's doing, it's not supposed to be "save" in the 3.x sense at all.

I actually think I've got a pretty good handle on it. I understand that the "save" mechanic is the way of figuring durations in 4E. The problem I have is that, from what I understand, this is the standard way of dealing with durations of debilitating spells in 4E.

So unless there are higher level spells that "break" this rule and state that their effects last until the end of the encounter, or until dispelled, or until 24 hours passes, then yes. I would also have a problem with that. Wouldn't 3E seem weird if every spell combat-oriented had 1d6-2 rounds for a duration?

I think it will be extremely frustrating as a wizard to find that there's really nothing non-blasty that you can do inside of combat (we have no idea how rituals will work) that you can count on to last more than a couple of rounds.

Just because there's no planned obsolescence doesn't mean you can't have an "improved sleep" that has more sleep mojo. The 2-page wizard spells spread includes "greater invisibility", so we can infer that the regular invisibility is still around, and greater invis is a more powerful version of it.

I'm not disputing that some spells may get more powerful versions. But I'm worried that they'll all follow the pattern of a Hit effect that's cool that you can only count to last a round or two, and then some inconvenience effect that lasts until the end of the encounter. That's cool and all, but I'd like to at least know that the primary effect lasts more than a couple of rounds on *something*, even if it's vastly below my level.

As to Greater Invisiblility that's 1) a party buff and 2) if it's anything like 3E it just lets you attack and not become visible. We already know that some buffs last for the whole encounter. It's debuffs and debilitators I'm thinking of. I can tell you already that this save system makes me lose all desire to play an enchanter of any sort if it works like I fear it will.

EDIT: Having seen the 3 pages of spells we've seen, it appears that Greater Invis just has the option of extending the duration as a minor action. That's cool, but the rest of them are more disheartening. Everything is either "until the end of your next turn" or "save ends", even spells that are reasonably high level.