First Post of the Year (Saving Throws)

Welcome to 2024.
We've moved!  If you've followed us on our old Blogger, welcome to the new site.  If you've new here, this is where we discuss everything gaming -- game theory, world building, mechanics and setting, rules, and other related topics.  We have, you see, opinions.

So tonight's topic is Saving Throws. Or to be a bit more general, 'rolls a player can make to avoid the consequences of an action or event in the game'. Dungeons and Dragons first introduced the concept, and other games have since followed suit - the idea that the character can escape at least some harm by making a roll to 'resist the effect'. Over the decades, saving throws have become more plentiful, and the damage from failing them has generally been reduced.

We think Saving Throws can have a place at the table, but we also think they've become too prolific. Our view of this is relatively simple:  "not everything can be (or should be) avoidable".

For instance? There's a pit trap. It looks like any other part of the floor.  You step on it, it snaps open, you fall.  In D&D, "Make a Saving Throw to avoid falling into the pit". The DC of the Saving Throw should reflect 1) how quickly it snaps open when it triggers - is there a half-second delay from where you hear it sprung? and 2) just how far do you have to run to avoid falling in?  If you're standing in the middle of a 80 x 80 room and the entire floor gives out, there shouldn't be a Saving Throw to avoid falling in.  Unless you can move 40 feet now, you're screwed.  Or what if the trap springs at the end of your movement?  Then what?  You're not moving any further...

(That's what kills me about Evasion and Fireball.  Sure, you saved, but it wasn't by getting out of the way - you don't move when you use Evasion... so how did you avoid taking any damage at all?)

Now, when dealing with traps that don't do anything themselves - no moving parts - but react to your action (usually touching it), more often than not I don't think a Saving Throw is in order.  "I put my hand on the Sphere of Annihilation" shouldn't give you a Saving Throw to resist being sucked in to your untimely demise. Did you touch the Sphere, or not?  You said you did, so...

Which makes it such a lovely trap.  You have a sphere that's disguised as a crystal ball via illusion. If someone touches the crystal ball, poof.  What, you think there should be a Saving Throw? Why? Would there be a Saving Throw if it wasn't an illusion? Well... they might see through the illusion! That's called a Perception (or Investigation) Check, and that's made when the character says they're examining the crystal ball. And 9 times out of 10, we won't presume they're touching it during the examination of it unless the player tells us otherwise. If they don't bother examining it, and just say 'I take the crystal ball' or something - there's no Saving Throw.  Also, check most illusion spells.  They don't normally trigger Saving Throws from just existing, either.

It's about Fairness
We disagree.
Fairness is about the players knowing what the rules are, and the rules being used evenly and consistently. Is it fair that characters in Call of Cthulhu can lose 100 (as in 'all') sanity in the face of Cthulhu rising from the deep, making their characters completely unplayable as he kills 1d6 characters a turn?

Yes, yes it is. Because that's how Cthulhu rolls (so to speak).
The players know that the game is dangerous. And they chose to play it.

D&D is the same way. There's rules. The players know the rules. They know there's risks involved in the actions they take.  Fair is applying those rules consistently.

"Yorik touches the Crystal Ball and vanishes."  That's fair.

Now, don't get us wrong.  If we're running 5th Edition, we'll abide by the rules of 5th edition, and our players know that. This doesn't mean 'everything gets a Saving Throw' though. But if something calls for a Saving Throw - fine, a Saving Throw is provided. But there will be things out there which don't give a Save, because it simply makes no sense. Like the Crystal Ball.

It's about Fun
Yes and No.
Fun is relative. What is fun for one table is not fun for another. And if your table is having fun, that's all that matters. That said?

We can absolutely have fun with "Save or Die" on the table. We've lived through BECM, 1e AD&D, 2e AD&D, 3.5 D&D, Pathfinder 1e, and 5e. There are things we prefer from earlier edition, and there are things we prefer from later editions. Our expectations are different depending on the edition used. But we also have a preference, and for us that preference is 'we kind of want the game to be more difficult'. There are simply too many things, in our opinion, that have Saving Throws when they didn't before -- or that the effect of failure is a lot weaker than it used to be.

A rust monster touches your stuff. That should not 'wear off over time'. A medusa's stone gaze should be one-and-done, not 'you slowly petrify but you can resist it'. A snake with lethal venom bites you - then congratulations, you're going to die. Maybe not immediately, but possibly soon.  To us, this just makes sense.

"Dying isn't fun"

Says who?  Maybe to you, but that's not a blanket, true statement.  Fun is subjective.  Our character dies? Cool, that's a story to tell in the future, now let's roll up our next character. Oh, did the character have unfinished business, or 'their story isn't told' - then you run them in a different campaign in a different world (we do this when a campaign ends before we feel we've played our character out).

It happens. That's one of the risks of living a dangerous lifestyle.
But yeah, it's also not everyone's thing - and sure, the game master may decide that death isn't in the cards for the characters except under certain circumstances.  That's fine. We just think the mechanics have gone entirely too far in the 'the PCs should theoretically survive everything if it's about on par with the PC's strength'.

In some games though, it's gone to the level of the absurd. In one game, a 'lethal poison' is survivable by ... normal folk. Like, you drink it down, and if you pass even a single Saving Throw, you live. And you get multiple Saving Throws as it whittles down your Strength. One of the most lethal creatures on Earth does, at most, about 6 Strength Loss.

In another game, no disease is fatal, and even being naked in below-Freezing weather is relatively easy to ignore for normal humans.  The PCs aren't normal humans, by the way, by any stretch, but they can get abilities to reduce or ignore the problems of weather ... and if they don't take it the weather doesn't do anything to them anyway, so ... why bother?

So why even have diseases or weather conditions in the game, then, if they can be safely ignored?

Balancing Acts
Our thought on the matter is this:
If it's a threat in the game, make it threatening.  If the game master decides to soften the blow, that's the choice the game master makes, not the rules.

If the "deadly fangs of the basilisk" aren't deadly, then they aren't the "deadly fangs of the basilisk", now are they? The mechanics should reflect just how bloody dangerous things can be. The game master then gets to decide whether or not to implement the rules at face-value.

Rule:  If you fail your Saving Throw the medusa's gaze petrifies you.
GM:  "You get three Saving Throws to resist this."

The players get a reprieve, it isn't 'save or die'.
See, because of the rules are soft on the players, and the game master ramps up the difficulty, that's more likely to cause hard feelings, than the other way around.

Saving Throws? Really?
One of our siblings hates Saving Throws.  Despises them. Because she was in a game where the Saving Throws basically rendered her character useless.

She made a debuffer in a super hero game. This means her powers were meant to weaken and hamper the enemy, so that the group could have an easier time dealing with them. Every single one of her debuffs required a Saving Throw (because this edition didn't have the 'No Save' modifier).

The game master's villains had outrageously good Saving Throws.  So she pushed her powers to the campaign maximum for her level.

And it made no difference.

So here's the logic she has (and which we agree with). In comics, powers work.
The only time a power doesn't work, is if the target has something which allows them to resist or ignore the power. 99% of the time, the power simply works.

If Spider-Man webs someone up, they're stuck. For an hour. Unless, say, they're strong enough to break the web - which requires them to be incredibly strong. Not strong enough, not happening. As opposed to the enemy making a saving throw each turn to escape the grapple condition.

Professor X goes to read someone's mind. It works. Unless the target has been trained in resisting telepathy, or has a power which counters telepathy. There's no 'Saving Throw' to resist it.

"But comics aren't roleplaying games".
No, but if you're playing a roleplaying game that reflects comics, it should ... probably reflect comics. And that should, we feel, mean that if you've got a Power, that Power works - unless there's something the target has which allows them to resist or ignore it.

This is (by the by) why we like the "No Save" modifier in the earlier edition of that super hero game, and in fact allow players to take that modifier when they feel it makes sense (and yes, villains get to have it too, because ... yeah, it makes sense).

In the End
Sure. In some games, Saving Throws make sense. It's that little bit of reprieve which can save you from Certain Death. The thing is, we feel it shouldn't be used as ... ubiquitously as it is in 3.5 / PF / 5e. Some things, certainly, the Saving Throw to take less damage from a fireball - alright, cool. 'No Damage' we think is a bit much.  Or to resist the casting of a Hold Person.  Okay, sure.

But we also think some things shouldn't get that Saving Throw. You touch the cursed object? Great, you're cursed. No, you don't get to Save.

Or if the effect is deadly, then let it be deadly. If you have flesh rot disease, then you'd better have made that first Saving Throw, because your life is going to suck afterwards if your cleric doesn't have Cure Disease. (and really... what Clerics have Cure Disease prepared these days? Diseases (and Poisons) are laughably weak... the victim's more likely to be able to just Walk It off).

One last anecdote.

We were reminded that in 1e AD&D, the damage done by a Clay Golem couldn't be healed except by a 17th Level Cleric. Nothing short would do. In a game that didn't have Challenge Ratings.  Clay Golems were on the lower tier of monsters, your 1st ro 2nd level party could, in fact, encounter one, and it wouldn't be unusual. No, there was no Saving Throw.

In 5th Edition? Constitution Save DC 14. Cured by Greater Restoration (5th Level Spell, 9th Level Cleric to Cast).  The monster is CR 9, which means that in all probability, the Cleric in the party has the spell on-hand, or can have it by the next day.

So something which is probably terrifying to fight, is now... not so much.  The PCs in the party that would get hit are very likely to pass their Saving Throws, and if not... the Cleric's right there to undo the effect.

Different times, we guess.