Six Saving Throws - One for Each Ability Score?

[Hassassin]

I'd be fine if bonuses from stat boost items did not stack with your inherent bonuses; that way you could choose whether you will have natural bumps or enhance your abilities with magical items. Or the DM might say that he wants to run a low-magic campaign in which magic items are rare.

I'd rather see things like a Belt of Hill Giant Strength that sets your strength to 19 than stacking bonuses.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I can't for the life of me see how Charisma would link to Fear and Charm saving throws.

Charisma is about force of personality, confidence, wits, charm, and how commanding your presence is. The type of people who have a high charisma are the opposite of shy and afraid, so it makes sense to me.

 

[Minigiant]

I can't for the life of me see how Charisma would link to Fear and Charm saving throws. If anything, a high Charisma score could lead to the vanity of the character making them more susceptable to Charm, whilst fear is simply irrelevant.

Charisma is about force of personality, confidence, wits, charm, and how commanding your presence is. The type of people who have a high charisma are the opposite of shy and afraid, so it makes sense to me.

Too many action heroes, kid heroes, and animated heroes breaking through fear and mind control with raw force of personality.

Then action point + second wind + clobbering time.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm a bit worried about their design philosophy if natural bumps are removed; IMO this would add reliance on magic items, instead of lessening the "Christmas Tree Effect".

Legitimate concern, but the xmas tree effect was a result of assuming that the PC had easy access to magic item and therefore designing monster with which required the PC to have pretty high stats (whatever the source). It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: "the players are going to have lots of magic items by this level, so let's make monsters tougher which in turns require the PC to have lots of magic items..."

So the xmas tree effect would have been probably worse in 3e if you removed natural stat bumps, but there's no reason to believe there will be a significant xmas tree effect at all when a new edition is "organically designed" with different assumptions.

(BTW, technically "xmas tree effect" refers more to having lots of magic items for different things so to be precise, removing stat bumps in 3e would rather result in PC trying bigger bonus items, not necessarily more items)

 

[CleverNickName]

Hmm...why not just have a single, all-purpose save throw and call it "Luck"?