D&D 5E What if save proficiencies were based on categories instead of abilities?

[Charlaquin]

Just a random thought I had. What if, instead of each class getting proficiency in all saves with two of the six abilities, we brought back the old saving throw categorires: death/poison, rods/wands/staves, breath weapons, pettification/polymorph, and spells, and each class was proficient in all saves against effects in two of those categories? You’d still have saves with each of the six ability scores, but if you were proficient in saves against spells for example, you’d get to add your proficiency bonus to all saves against spells, regardless of what ability score the save was made with.

If one were to implement this as a house rule, I wonder if those traditional six categories would be the best ones to go with, or if it would be better to rejigger them slightly. For example, death/poison could become poison and disease, since there aren’t really a lot of save or die effects left these days. Rods/wands/staves could just be all magic items. Breath weapons and paralysis/polymorph are pretty narrow categories, whereas spells is extremely broad. Maybe those could get redistributed a bit to like areas of effect, transmutation (as in being transformed, not the school of magic), and mind-affecting?

 

[Lanefan]

I like the root idea here; and if you can keep it at six categories it might even be possible to map each category to a different stat as well.

First off, though, I'd split out Poison and Disease. Why? Because disease should ideally threaten all classes equally while certain classes e.g. Rogue should be better vs poison due to training. I did this in my 1e-variant game for much the same reason - poison, paralysis and death used to all be the same; I split them out mostly to give Thieves and Assassins a bit of help vs poison.

"Disease" ties to Constitution. That's the easy one out of the way.

"Breath Weapons/Polymorph" could tie to Dexterity. It's a stretch, I know, but this is a nice way of downgrading Dex just a tiny bit in relation to the other stats as these saves are probably the least common.

"Poison" might tie to Wisdom; though I'm half-tempted to lob AoE stuff in here as well and call it "Poison/Damage".

One category could be "Spiritual", covering anything that affects the mind or spirit regardless of its source. This could include instant death effects, possession, domination, magic jar, charms, etc. and would map to Charisma.

"Magic Items" could tie to Intelligence. Some illusions would fall in here as well.

And "Other", a catch-all for anything not covered by one of the above, would tie to Strength as it's the only stat left. This might serve as a boost for Strength's usefulness, in that there will be many things that fall under "Other". There will, however, be many things that while they use Strength as their save stat in fact have nothing to do with the character's Strength; but this is kind of unavoidable with this idea.

After that, the only thing you'd need to do would be to prioritize the categories to set which order they are checked in. For example, a magic item that inflicts poison - which save do you use? I'd probably put them in the order listed above - you go down the list and the first save that applies, that's what you use.

The biggest amount of work involved, though, will be going through all the 5e spells and books and monster effects and noting which save applies in each case. Dunno 'bout you, but that alone would be enough to put me off putting this otherwise great idea into practice.

 

[Charlaquin]

I like the root idea here; and if you can keep it at six categories it might even be possible to map each category to a different stat as well.

First off, though, I'd split out Poison and Disease. Why? Because disease should ideally threaten all classes equally while certain classes e.g. Rogue should be better vs poison due to training. I did this in my 1e-variant game for much the same reason - poison, paralysis and death used to all be the same; I split them out mostly to give Thieves and Assassins a bit of help vs poison.

"Disease" ties to Constitution. That's the easy one out of the way.

"Breath Weapons/Polymorph" could tie to Dexterity. It's a stretch, I know, but this is a nice way of downgrading Dex just a tiny bit in relation to the other stats as these saves are probably the least common.

"Poison" might tie to Wisdom; though I'm half-tempted to lob AoE stuff in here as well and call it "Poison/Damage".

One category could be "Spiritual", covering anything that affects the mind or spirit regardless of its source. This could include instant death effects, possession, domination, magic jar, charms, etc. and would map to Charisma.

"Magic Items" could tie to Intelligence. Some illusions would fall in here as well.

And "Other", a catch-all for anything not covered by one of the above, would tie to Strength as it's the only stat left. This might serve as a boost for Strength's usefulness, in that there will be many things that fall under "Other". There will, however, be many things that while they use Strength as their save stat in fact have nothing to do with the character's Strength; but this is kind of unavoidable with this idea.

After that, the only thing you'd need to do would be to prioritize the categories to set which order they are checked in. For example, a magic item that inflicts poison - which save do you use? I'd probably put them in the order listed above - you go down the list and the first save that applies, that's what you use.

The biggest amount of work involved, though, will be going through all the 5e spells and books and monster effects and noting which save applies in each case. Dunno 'bout you, but that alone would be enough to put me off putting this otherwise great idea into practice.

If you assigned each category to an ability score, you’d be doing a whole lot of work just to arrive right back at what 5e already does. The point here would be to change up the dynamic so that instead of being proficient with (for example) all Dexterity saves, you’re instead proficient at (again, for example) all saves against breath weapons, be the Dex saves, Con saves, or some other type of save, while not necessarily being proficient in Dex saves against, like traps or whatever.

 

[Lanefan]

If you assigned each category to an ability score, you’d be doing a whole lot of work just to arrive right back at what 5e already does. The point here would be to change up the dynamic so that instead of being proficient with (for example) all Dexterity saves, you’re instead proficient at (again, for example) all saves against breath weapons, be the Dex saves, Con saves, or some other type of save, while not necessarily being proficient in Dex saves against, like traps or whatever.

Ah. I was thinking one would use category first and stat second, so instead of saying "Make a Con save" you'd say "Save vs poison", with each class having its own poison-save DC at each level and each character then able to throw their Con bonus on top, very much like 1e. Right now it's just a straight stat-based save no matter what class you are.

This allows different classes to be suitably good at some saves and poor at others, helping to further differentiate them.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ah. I was thinking one would use category first and stat second, so instead of saying "Make a Con save" you'd say "Save vs poison", with each class having its own poison-save DC at each level and each character then able to throw their Con bonus on top, very much like 1e. Right now it's just a straight stat-based save no matter what class you are.


This allows different classes to be suitably good at some saves and poor at others, helping to further differentiate them.

Well, depending on your class it’s either a straight stat-based save, or a stat plus your proficiency bonus. I’m not looking to change that, but I think it would be interesting if the proficiency bonus was added to, say, all saves against poison, instead of all constitution saves.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I've actually been working on a homebrew to bring back AD&D but into a 5E frame-work, including saving throws, which Fighters had the best overall by the end. So, I'm definitely interested in what people have to say here.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've actually been working on a homebrew to bring back AD&D but into a 5E frame-work, including saving throws, which Fighters had the best overall by the end. So, I'm definitely interested in what people have to say here.

This sounds like something I would be interested in. Though, I suspect you and I would have different aspects of AD&D we would want to carry over and different aspects we would want to leave behind. Still, always interesting to see others’ takes on such things.

 

[Simonb1]

Would concentration be its own category?

 

[Li Shenron]

It worked fine back then, but nowadays I would like to see a better rationale for those categories.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Would concentration be its own category?

I'd make it a skill.