Two Ideas: SR (school); Saves as skills

[Vrecknidj]

I've been toying with two ideas for my campaign and would like to see what others have done if they've done anything similar. I've been off these boards for a while, but figured the community here was the place to post.

Idea 1
Spell Resistance on a per-school basis. Or, in other words, Illusion Resistance, Evocation Resistance, etc. I'm not thinking of eliminating SR, that's not the plan. Instead, I was thinking of a feat, prestige class ability, or special ability that allows certain beings, etc., to have spell resistance only to certain schools of spells. So, some monster or magic item or whatever might have or bestow something like SR (evocation) 17, or SR (enchantment/charm) 19, or whatever. Those having this resistance will get the spell resistance roll whenever they're faced with spells from this school, but not against other spells. Creatures with both SR and SR (evocation), for example, will take the better SR against evocation--they won't stack.

Idea 2
Saves as skills. Introduce three new skills, call them Fortitude, Reflex and Will. They are cross-class skills for all classes. Give everybody some more skill points every level (6?) and let them do what they will with their points. (This obviously won't work in a campaign where almost no one ever makes a certain kind of save--I mean, why bother putting the skill ranks in the saves if you never use them.)

Dave

 

[Sravoff]

I like the spell resistance idea, that would be cool.

Not so sure about the saves change. Perhaps let characters decide what save they want high and what they want low? So a fighter could have any one good save, while a ranger could ahve two good saves.

-Sravoff

 

[Vrecknidj]

After having spoken elsewhere with some folks, it's looking like the school-specific SR idea is seeming quite popular.

No one else is liking the saves idea.

Dave

 

[MatthewJHanson]

After having spoken elsewhere with some folks, it's looking like the school-specific SR idea is seeming quite popular.

No one else is liking the saves idea.

Yeah, I have to agree. The spell resistance is cool, but I think that skills and saves are just to different to share the same system. (And would anybody not max out their save skills?)

 

[apesamongus]

There's also balance problems. Having multiple good saves is one of the strengths certain classes have.

 

[Intrope]

I like the idea of making SR less generic, but I'm not sure by school is really a good idea (it could lead to a lot of spell lookups, since school isn't usually summarized). For my part, the biggest change to SR that I'd make is to make energy damage types ignore SR in the first place--if you want defense versus energy damage you need Energy Resistance. SR protects you from being altered by magic, not crisped by a bonfire (whether the bonfire is magical or not shouldn't matter).

I like Saves for Skills, but for balance reasons every class should get +2 skill pts/level per good save (otherwise, the monk gets totally shafted as they'd essentially lose 2 good saves or a lot of skill points!)

 

[Sravoff]

hhmmm......both sounds good. Make SR for schools and make SR NOT apply to energy damage....sounds good. Cause soem monsters shouls not be charmed, some should not be poly morp-hed adn some should not laugh....

-Sravoff