Saving throws are a coin toss?

[Morrus]

That's not the saving throw, that's the duration determinant.

The "saving throw" is the attacker's roll vs. your Ref, Will, Fort, etc made when he attacks.

Then, once we know whether you've saved or not (just like in 3E), duration of effect needs to be determined. Instead of rolling a set amount in advance (d4+1 rounds, or whatever), it's made a little more unpredictable by rolling each round to see if it has ended yet.

 

[Plane Sailing]

That's not the saving throw, that's the duration determinant.

The "saving throw" is the attacker's roll vs. your Ref, Will, Fort, etc made when he attacks.

Then, once we know whether you've saved or not (just like in 3E), duration of effect needs to be determined. Instead of rolling a set amount in advance (d4+1 rounds, or whatever), it's made a little more unpredictable by rolling each round to see if it has ended yet.

The thing is, they call it the saving throw... so that is the correct terminology, even though it is now used to determine the duration as you say.

 

[Roman]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding it, but from what I have seen of it I dislike the new save mechanic. It appears to be based completely on randomness and does not seem to account for how 'tough' the creature saving is against the specific effect (no bonuses from fortitude, will...) nor does it take into account the power of the creature causing the effect and the power of the effect itself (DC). That seems like a huge step backwards for saving throws. Hopefully, I am misinterpreting the mechanic, but that is what I got so far.

Can anybody with more experience of 4E rules tell me whether my conjectures are correct?

 

[BryonD]

I think the goal of 4e is to remove all "action-removing effects" a la hold person's nerfing in 3.5, and this is one example that I really don't know if you'll ever see altered even in "greater sleep" or whatever. They want to give the critter or PC at the very least one die roll to do in a round, to end the effect if nothing else. At the very least, a party that's ready for it can make great use of this, assuming there's still a delay type action in the round:

count 20: the rogue delays
count 18: the ranger delays
count 15: the wizard casts sleep; two enemies go down.
count 14: the rogue and ranger pop the heck out of two sleeping enemies, and maybe get lucky enough to kill them. If they're really lucky, they were within 5 feet and coup de grace them! Of course, this assumes coup de graces work similarly...

Man. It is going to be hard for Order of the Stick to stay funny if this is the future. It is funny when the characters in a comic openly know the loopholes in the mechanics of their universe. Not mearly so much when it simply assumed.

The term SLEEP has a meaning. And that meaning is not "lose one round and then have a 45% chance of losing more rounds until you don't." If an actual sleep effect is to powerful, then make it higher level. But a radical disconnect from anything that meets the expectation of the name is very unappealing.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I wonder if there are also saving throws that are not done on the end of the turn. Like "Save each day to shake off the disease" or "save every 5 mintues to end the petrification"

 

[Crosswind]

It's unclear to me why this is surprising anybody - WotC was clear that they were removing Save or Die spells. Relatively few people disagreed with the statement that failing one save (in this edition, one attack versus your defense) and being screwed was not particularly fun. So a "recovery" mechanic, a-la Hold Person of 3rd edition, got implemented.

I like this change for a few reasons.

1.) You no longer have players who have to sit out the entire combat, with little hope of coming back, just because a Basilisk has CR 5, and Stone to Flesh or Break Enchantment require a level 11 or 9 caster.

2.) One of the more boring wizard archetypes of 3rd edition is gone - the spellcasting prodigy, greater spell focused archmage, who relied on his gigantic save DCs to instantly kill anything that wasn't immune to his spells. Less Scry, Teleport, Kill is a good thing in my book.

3.) It seems more cinematic to me. You cast on a bunch of people, some of whom shrug it off, some of whom stagger forwards, and then drop, eventually recovering...this is neat.

So it sounds pretty excellent to me.

-Cross

 

[glass]

Can anybody with more experience of 4E rules tell me whether my conjectures are correct?

You seem to be correct that this is how what 4e calls saving throws work.

However, as Morus points out, they are not what we would previously have called saving throws but something else entirely. So it cannot be a step backwards for 3e saves because they have stepped (forwards IMO) into being attacks vs defenses.

It is a step somewhere for duration tracking. IMO this is again forwards. YMMV.


glass.

 

[Morrus]

The thing is, they call it the saving throw... so that is the correct terminology, even though it is now used to determine the duration as you say.

Yeah. I think they should have used different terminology on that one, if only to avoid confusion like this. Although people will get used to the new terminology pretty quickly, so I don't imagine there will be long-term and widespread confusion or anything!

 

[glass]

I suspect the "jolly good reason" is that it's clear and simple. I'm expecting to find that modifiers to saving throws are vanishingly rare in 4e, and probably easy to remember themselves - the more modifiers to this roll, the more complex it becomes. (That'll also be why it's a 10+ for success, not 11+; it's easier to remember.)

Actually, I think the one mistake with this is making it 10+ rather than 11+ because it is harder to remember. But again, maybe there is a very good reason that I am not seeing.


glass.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The term SLEEP has a meaning.

What, like DARKNESS does in 3e?

After all, at least this spell -can- put targets to sleep!