Trading Save Progressions

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Trading Save Progressions

Assuming no multiclassing, would you allow player's to select their character's good save(s) progressions, rather than just accepting the default? What are the possible pitfalls and/or balance considerations?

For example, the fighter normally has a good fortitude save progression. Would you allow the good fort progression to be traded out to a good reflex save progression? Or, a good will save progression?

 

[Old_school_overlord]

I suspect that Will and Fortitude are both significantly better than Reflex, but considering that the good Reflex classes are Rogue and Bard (both of which are well away from the break-able spectrum of classes) I'd let em do it.

If it was a quality class like Swordsage, I might have a different response... more specifics pls!

 

[Arkhandus]

I don't see any problem with it. The DMG also encourages the DM to make minor changes/tradeoffs like this when fitting for a character concept.

While Fortitude and Will are definitely better than Reflex in some ways (Ref just generally reduces damage from area attacks), there's still some importance to Reflex for everyone (the less damage a fighter takes, the longer he can fight, and fighters are made to be great at long-term effectiveness....; wizards are fragile and can be slain easily by one failed Reflex save at the wrong time; etc.).

Also, pretty much all of the classes with high Reflex have mediocre or low HP (d8 hit dice or weaker, and heavy dependency on two or more stats besides Constitution). Thus, if they swapped out high Reflex for high Fortitude or Will, they'd be lowering their survivability against the most common danger - hit point damage. Lots of monsters and classes have area attacks, be they breath weapons, Fireballs, Flame Strikes, Shouts, or whatever. And Reflex saves are used against some monsters' special attacks, like catching on fire from contact with a Fire Elemental.

So I don't see any problem with allowing it. A barbarian might rely on his Constitution and Rage bonuses for Fortitude, and choose to make Will his high save, but that'll still leave his Fortitude mediocre and somewhat vulnerable to poisons (which often deal Strength or Dexterity damage), diseases, death effects, and various paralysis/petrification/nausea/fatigue effects. A rogue might go with a high Fortitude save to avoid those nastiest of things that can come from a failed trap disarmament or failed trap search, but his Reflex save will still be only mediocre with a high Dexterity, and he doesn't have a lot of HP to go around. A sorcerer might go with high Reflex to survive enemy spells and stuff more easily, but nobody wants the caster to be mind-controlled by a vampire, evil mage, or something....so he still makes a trade-off, leaving himself vulnerable to stuff that could make him slaughter the party with his own tricky and destructive spells.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Thank you for the response.

More specifics? Hmmm... Where do I begin?

Our group only gets together to play about once every 4 to 8 weeks. This past weekend, when we were playing, we were experimenting with a house-rule that expanded the "Disabled" stage as it concerns hit points to an amount equal to the character's fortitude bonus. One player made the comment that he didn't think that every fighter would necessarily have a good fortitude progression. So, that got me thinking "What would be the harm in allowing save progressions to be traded?"

Now, having the Disabled stage become based on fortitude strengthens the value of fortitude considerably, but he was wanting the option to give up the good fortitude to take either a good reflex or will progression, instead.

As a counterbalance, we're using a house-ruled variant of the Base Defense Bonus variant presented in Unearthed Arcana. We have a fairly complex mathmatical formula that takes into account the hit die size, save progressions, and BAB of the class in question in order to calculate which Base Defense Bonus progression a class gets. So, I was thinking that since Reflex might be a little less important with our house-rule mentioned above that makes fortitude more important, it might be a good idea to just use the Reflex progression for the Base Defense Bonus.

In that respect, I could see fighter's with good reflex save progressions (and poor fort and will) becoming more common because Reflex would be tied to AC.

I haven't mentioned any of this thinking to the player in question, but I'm strongly considering it.

What problems do you think it would present if someone was playing a swordsage and traded out one of their save progressions? We aren't using the Bo9S, yet, but I plan on adding it to the available classes sometime in the next year.

 

[Old_school_overlord]

I'm a big fan of Bo9S, my game (which is also a 4-8 week occasional game) has started to see some use of it and people are definately enjoying it - though i'm finding the easy access to short teleport "hops" a bit of a pain...

I doubt that the ability to switch to good Fort save would be a big power up for a swordsage - but considering they get evasion and oftern have an excellent Dex, maybe it would.

Afraid I don't have UA, I think incorporating reflex into your formula would help the AC of classes that generally need it quite a bit - bard, rogue and monk oftern come up rather short...but then maybe they should, since their not supposed to be top class melee tanks. As ever, you probably know your own game best and what would fit in it.

We have been using the Trial death & dying rules and found them generally good - another possible alternative? Afraid I can't find em right now if you didn't see them before, can try and dig them up if you like though.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Thanks!

The trial death and dying rules are part of what got me thinking of expanding the disabled range from exactly zero to a range that grows with level. I tried a larger range, at first, but it made goblins way too hard to kill. We spent about 6 hours on a fight with about 40 goblins (now, I'll admit that about 12 of them were levelled rogues, so they would have taken longer to kill, anyway).

But, back to the point at hand, I'm thinking that I'll present this as an option to my players. I have a feeling some will take me up on it.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Sure, no problem at all. I'd also allow two medium saves in place of one good save and one poor save (this equals out just fine.) Fractional saves and BAB (and BDB) are things I would recommend too, but that's not directly relevant, perhaps. The medium progression's below, in case you're not familiar with it.

+1,+1,+2,+2,+3,+3,+3,+4,+4,+5,+5,+6,+6,+6,+7,+7,+8,+8,+8,+9

Or 5/12 per level, plus an additional +1 (12/12) at 1st level, put another way.