D&D 5E Weak Saving Throws

[jadrax]

I don;t have too much of a dog in this fight, mainly cos levels above 10 I never see. But I am looking forward to the official line on this, why they chose this way. I just hope that WotC don't just ignore it. In the non scientific 'longer thread means most meaningful to the player base' this issue is right up there!

The answer to almost every 'Why did the designers do it this way' question always ends up with the exact same answer.

Which is 'We asked a load of people how to do it, and this is the answer that annoyed the least amount of them'.

Obviously it annoyed some people a lot, and they are very vocal about it on this and other forums, but its still pretty clear they are in the minority.

Personally I really wanted the game to make the full use of all six saving throws, but it is now pretty clear that the Fortitude/Reflexes/Willpower idea is pretty entrenched in the public mindset, so I simply did not get my way.

 

[Zardnaar]

The answer to almost every 'Why did the designers do it this way' question always ends up with the exact same answer.

Which is 'We asked a load of people how to do it, and this is the answer that annoyed the least amount of them'.

Obviously it annoyed some people a lot, and they are very vocal about it on this and other forums, but its still pretty clear they are in the minority.

Personally I really wanted the game to make the full use of all six saving throws, but it is now pretty clear that the Fortitude/Reflexes/Willpower idea is pretty entrenched in the public mindset, so I simply did not get my way.

More or less entrenched in the developers mindset as well going by the saving throws in the Basic PDF. Spells are kind of nerfed but the save discrepancy seems to be almost going back to 3.0 levels of disparity where you could blow a save 75%+ of the time. At leastr its not blow a save 95% of the time in your best save which was 3.0.

 

[Nagol]

How about this house rule, then: Casters do not get their Int / Wis / Whatever modifier as a bonus on the DC of their spells. If this makes it too easy to save against the spells, a possible solution would be to change the base spell DC, maybe to 10 + proficiency bonus. (In the case of Wizards, Int would still be very useful as it gives them a bonus as a spell attack modifier as well as a bonus number of spells per day).

I laid out a couple of such variants up thread here

 

[Nagol]

I don;t have too much of a dog in this fight, mainly cos levels above 10 I never see. But I am looking forward to the official line on this, why they chose this way. I just hope that WotC don't just ignore it. In the non scientific 'longer thread means most meaningful to the player base' this issue is right up there!

Most of the damage is done by level 9. By 9th level, proficiency bonus goes to +4 so the effect is already growing noticeably -- it's just not as bad as it will get by 17th level.

Let's assume you your playing a Fighter (because they get the most attribute bumps), that only 3 stats matter for saving throws despite (going by what the rules do as opposed to what the text says), and you start with 16, 14, 14, 14, 10, 10 (better than the base point buy + Human ).

STR 16, DEX 14, CON 14, WIS 14, INT 10, CHA 10.

At level 1 Saving throw DCs are typically 13 and your saves are Con +4 (60%), Dex +2 (50%), Wis +2 (50%) (total 160%)

At level 4 you bump Con to 16. Now your typical saving throw DCs rise to 14 (opponents bump offense) and your saves are Con + 5 (60%), Dex + 2 (45%), Wis + 2 (45%) (total 150%)

At level 6, proficiency rises to +3. You bump Con to 18. Now your typical saving throw rises to 16 (opponents bump offense again) and your saves are Con +7 (60%), Dex +2 (35%), Wis +2 (35%) (total 130%)

At level 8, You decide your secondary saving throws are too weak so you bump Wis to 16. Your opponents have hit their cap for their offensive stat so your target saving throw stays 16. Your saves are Con +7 (60%), Dex + 2 (35%), Wis + 3 (40%) (total 135%).

At level 9, proficiency jumps another point to +4. Target saving throws increase to 17. Your saves are Con +9 (60%), Dex + 2 (30%), Wis + 3 (35%) (total 125%)

Every last bump has gone into defensive stats. Your Str is still 16 and thus you are struggling in combat -- missing out on +2 to hit and damage. Your saving throws have gone from middling / OK to worse across the board with Dex now terrible and Wis only very bad.

The good news is further increases will increase your target saving throws only by changes in proficiency. The bad news is you will slip even further behind even if you exclusively increase your defensive stats.

By level 17, target saving throws hit DC 19. Let's put the last 2 stat increases into Dex so it keeps up with Wis. Your saves are Con +11 (60%), Dex +4 (30%), Wis +4 (30%) (total 120%).

A PC can't get better than that, defensively. A player is unlikely to put every stat bump in defensive stats so take 10% out of the saves to give the PC a 20 Str reducing your total saves to 110%. If you have roleplaying or other reasons to want to increase Int or Cha, take 5- 20% more out of saves for those stat increases.


Lets' review:

• the character's stats were better that those promoted for play.
• The class chosen was a Fighter because it gets the most stat increases.
• Every stat increase went into saves. No stat increase were used to augment offense or to otherwise improve the character.

The result:
It started with middling save across the board and managed to keep up in its one good save and cut its other two saves almost in half by level 17. Almost all the damage was felt by level 9.

 

[BryonD]

There is no way in Basic, at least that I've noticed, that lets a fighter get WIS or CHA save proficiency, which is the mechanical realisation of "strong will" in Next.

But in TSR editions, fighters at high levels had the best saves in the game (except for clerics vs poison/death).

The structure of fighter saves in 5e in no way resembles TSR editions. The only previous edition that it resembles is 3E.

[MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] and I aren't expressing concerns because we're unfamiliar with TSR editions. We're expressing concern at departure from the TSR model in favour of (what we see as) the flawed 3E model for saving throw scaling.

I'm not too worried about the limits of basic. And if a lot of character customization options are not available then the game will have serious problems that go way beyond the saving throw point.

With regard to TSR editions, I have already strongly endorsed the idea that I expect WotC to keep their word and support 4E play style. What they said was that they would support all prior play styles. So if that is your only concern then I have no issue with it whatsoever. I want 5E to be a game that you can adapt into anything you want. It certainly won't have any impact on my game and it is good for my game if it grows the fanbase of the core system I like. The point I responded to was a specific claim that there is no reason to have a gap in saving throws. That statement is incorrect.

And I, clearly, strongly disagree with the claim that the 3E model is flawed. Obviously it doesn't work for you. But I know that there are numerous elements of 4E that you really like, but don't work at all for a very large segment of the gaming community. I doubt you would embrace the same standard for "flawed" there.

 

[TwoSix]

1) Arguing about the results of "the math" obscures the fact that people have different preferences for what narrative the saves are supposed to showing. You should be upfront and answer these questions:

a) 1st level character rolling a strong save against a 1st level caster: What percent of the time should he succeed?
b) 1st level character rolling a weak save against a 1st level caster: What percent of the time should he succeed?
a) 20th level character rolling a strong save against a 20th level caster: What percent of the time should he succeed?
b) 20th level character rolling a weak save against a 20th level caster: What percent of the time should he succeed?

My own preferences are: a) 60% b) 40% c) 80% d) 20%. High level combat should be more extreme. A 20th level caster should have the experience to know what save to target, and choosing correctly should give a correspondingly greater reward. Concurrently, a 20th level character should become better at resisting effects that he's supposed to resist.

2) Magic items will play a big role in mediating higher-level combat, I believe. Since magic items won't be giving numerical bonuses normally, I expect to see defensive items giving permanent immunities to a narrow class of effects or limited (per/day, charged) immunity to a broad range of effects. The game is upfront that it doesn't want magic items to affect the math of the game, but there's nothing that says they don't want them affect the overall narrative and/or game balance. Heck, Chapter 1 of the rules is pretty explicit that high-level play is about acquiring and controlling different types of magic.

 

[Nikosandros]

That's a very good question. I would say something like this:

a) 60%
b) 40%
c) 70%
d) 50%

 

[Nagol]

1) Arguing about the results of "the math" obscures the fact that people have different preferences for what narrative the saves are supposed to showing. You should be upfront and answer these questions:

a) 1st level character rolling a strong save against a 1st level caster: What percent of the time should he succeed?
b) 1st level character rolling a weak save against a 1st level caster: What percent of the time should he succeed?
a) 20th level character rolling a strong save against a 20th level caster: What percent of the time should he succeed?
b) 20th level character rolling a weak save against a 20th level caster: What percent of the time should he succeed?

My own preferences are: a) 60% b) 40% c) 80% d) 20%. High level combat should be more extreme. A 20th level caster should have the experience to know what save to target, and choosing correctly should give a correspondingly greater reward. Concurrently, a 20th level character should become better at resisting effects that he's supposed to resist.

2) Magic items will play a big role in mediating higher-level combat, I believe. Since magic items won't be giving numerical bonuses normally, I expect to see defensive items giving permanent immunities to a narrow class of effects or limited (per/day, charged) immunity to a broad range of effects. The game is upfront that it doesn't want magic items to affect the math of the game, but there's nothing that says they don't want them affect the overall narrative and/or game balance. Heck, Chapter 1 of the rules is pretty explicit that high-level play is about acquiring and controlling different types of magic.

5e hits most of those preferences pretty well. (c) stays stuck at around 60% unless you are a Wizard and then your Will save will tend to drop lower - i.e. Wizards have competing demands for their stat boosts.

The game engine seems to answer (a) 60, (b) 40, (c) 60, (d) ~20

My preferences would be (a) 50, (b) 35, (c) 80, (d) 65. High-level magic should be dangerous, but high-level character should have a good chance to mitigate the worst effects.

 

[SkidAce]

Only Hold, in Basic at least.

WIS seems to be the main save for avoiding save-or-suck (Hold, Dominate). I guess petrification is the other classic - does anyone know what the save for that is based on?


One possible intention is that Hold and Dominate are expected to be negated via damage forcing concentration checks, rather than via successful saving throws.

I personally don't like that dynamic, because it will be the classic damage-dealing class (the fighter) being rescued by some other PC (probably a caster) dealing damage to the mage. But that may nevertheless be what the designers have in mind.

Or rescued by the other fighter.

Just like when they rescue the wizard stuck in a grapple with icky tentacles.

 

[TwoSix]

5e hits most of those preferences pretty well. (c) stays stuck at around 60% unless you are a Wizard and then your Will save will tend to drop lower - i.e. Wizards have competing demands for their stat boosts.

The game engine seems to answer (a) 60, (b) 40, (c) 60, (d) ~20

My preferences would be (a) 50, (b) 35, (c) 80, (d) 65. High-level magic should be dangerous, but high-level character should have a good chance to mitigate the worst effects.

Yea, there seems to be a fairly common community desire for high level characters to be better than lower level characters at saves, at the very least their intended stronger saves. Not sure what the best house rule to achieve that is, though.