Playing with Saving Throws (5e and BX)

Now that Jeff Rients has officially released Broodmother Skyfortress under the Lamentations of the Flame Princess ruleset, he is going through and comparing what he (somewhat jokingly) calls the Objectively Best Rules published by TSR (BX) and LotFP. The comparison that really interests me is that on Saving Throws. Like Jeff, I really like the 3e saving throw structure of Fortitude/Reflex/Will, at least on paper. Unfortunately, when applied to actual play it lacks that palpable joy/fear of hearing those wonderful words: “Make a save versus Death Ray!”

Now that I have run a 5e campaign for quite a few sessions, I have been meditating on the various aspects of that system I would like to hack back onto the Objectively Best Rules published by TSR. One of the things that I like quite bigly about 5e is the expansion of the Fortitude/Reflex/Will saves to every ability score and the idea that characters get to apply a proficiency bonus to two of these saves. On paper, it takes the simplistic beauty of the 3e save system and makes it more glorious.

Of course, the 5e save system still has the same glaring weakness that the 3e version had: no Death Rays. Unlike 3e, however, there might very well be a fun way to alleviate the problem. Traditionally, D&D has five different categories of saving throws. That is one less than the number of ability scores. Thus, if we can separate out one category to two there will be six different categories of saves that can then be married to the six ability scores so that Death Rays can still wreck havoc at the gaming table.

This is why I find Jeff’s comparison of BX and LotFP saving throws so interesting. I decided to pull out all of the various older versions of D&D and their retro-clones to get a fuller picture of all the glorious ways players have had to make saving throws through the years:

• 0e: Death Ray & Poison; All Wands including Polymorph and Paralyzation; Stone; Dragon Breath; Staves& Spells
• Holmes: Spell or Magic Staff; Magic Wand; Death Ray or Poison; Turned to Stone; Dragon Breath
• BX: Death Ray & Poison; Magic Wands; Paralysis or Turn to Stone; Dragon Breath; Rods, Staves or Spells
• 1e AD&D: Paralysis, Poison or Death Magic; Petrification or Polymorph; Rod, Staff or Wand; Breath Weapon; Spell
• LL: Breath Attacks; Poison or Death; Petrify or Paralyze; Wands; Spells or Spell-like Devices
• ACKS: Petrification & Paralysis; Poison & Death; Blast & Breath; Staffs & Wands; Spells
• Delving Deeper: Poison; Paralysis or Petrification; Wands or Rays; Breath Weapon; Spells
• LotFP: Paralyze; Poison; Breath; Device; Magic
• S&W: Paralysis; Poison; Fire; Spells; Wands; Staffs; Magic

I realize S&W systemically only has one Save, the categories listed are implied by the bonuses various classes and races get to that one saving throw for certain situations.

This is surprisingly diverse (even among the original TSR stuff!). Some of my favorites: Death Ray, Death Magic (as opposed to Spells or just pain Magic), Devices (as opposed to Staff, Wand, etc.), Blast (as a companion to Dragon Breath), Fire and Stone (which has a lot more flexibility than Petrification). It also seems that Polymorph was a whole lot more important in the Gygax editions than other ones. I also have to say that Dragon Breath just sounds cooler than Breath Weapon. I realize that the game has a lot of non-dragon creatures that breath nastiness, but “Breath Weapon” does conjure up visions of a Listerine ad.

So, onto the business at hand — assigning categories to ability scores:

• Strength: Stone & Paralysis (because it just feels right to muscle through a ghoul’s touch)
• Dexterity: Blast & Dragon Breath (because this is something that has to be dodged)
• Constitution: Poison (because endurance seems to be the most appropriate way to tough through a spider bite)
• Intelligence: Devices (because these things can be figured out logically, yes?)
• Wisdom: Spells (because this is the traditional ability score for saves vs. spells as in BX)
• Charisma: Death Magic, Death Ray & Death (because the root of the word charisma means gift, as in the gift of life given by God)

There you have it. Death Rays are back in business!

Holmes & Cook: Saving Throws

There are some major discrepancies between Holmes and Cook when it comes to Saving Throws. For example, Cook has Thieves begin with worse saving throws than Holmes, but the opposite is true when it comes to Dwarves and Halflings. Cook does answer a pressing question in Holmes — what do Elves save as: Fighting Men or Magic-users? Cook has them somewhere in between (a logical conclusion given Holmes' justification for Elves having a d6 for HD — it falls in-between the d4 of Magic-users and the d8 of Fighting Men).

While all of this is interesting, these discrepancies don't really mean much. Whether or not one chooses Holmes or Cook to begin with, eventually one can only really go with Cook because he is the one who provides saves for higher level characters.

Nonetheless, Holmes does give us a fascinating take on what a Saving Throw is:

Even when a magical spell has been properly thrown, it does not always work. Anyone subjected to magical attack rolls a special die to see if the magic took effect (see below). This die roll is called a "saving throw" because if you roll the correct number (given in the chart below) or any higher number, you are unaffected or "saved."

Note those two very intriguing words: magical attack. Indeed, when he describes Dwarves, he states:

They are sturdy fighters and are especially resistant to magic as shown by their better saving throws against magical attack.

Given the fact that Dwarven saving throws are better across the board than any other class, this means that every time a character makes a save it is against a magical attack.

In other words, the bite of a giant spider and the breath weapon of a dragon are not natural — they are magical. This throws a gigantic wrench into the assumed naturalism used by Gygax, Arneson and their progeny (like myself). It also adds credence to the notion that the Dungeon is a magical, otherworldly place that has its own agenda.

This view, however, doesn't stop me from asking a few questions and making some assumptions from a naturalistic POV. Ignoring the demi-humans for a moment, Clerics have the best saving throws to begin with. The non-spell casters (Fighters and Thieves) have the worst. If one looks at the name-level of each of class, however, while Clerics still have the best saves, Magic-users have the worst.

This seems to indicate that being associated with divine magic consistently makes the Cleric more resistant to magical attacks than any other class. In contrast, while it initially gives them an advantage over non-spellcasters, being associated with arcane magic makes Magic-users more susceptible over time to magical attacks than any other class.

This reinforces the idea that the arcane magics of the ancients, while powerful, are dangerous. It also continues to suggest that civilization has made a move away from paganism towards some kind of Christianity — being strongly associated with the Church helps protect one from the nasty magical effects of the pagan (and ultimately evil) ancient civilization that still plague the world.

This pattern also holds true in context of the demi-humans, where the one race most closely associated with arcane magic (the Elf) is the most vulnerable to magical attacks. It begs the question, however, why demi-humans are overall more magic-resistant than humans.

One simple answer is to assume that the ancient civilization so closely related to powerful arcane magic (and the turning away from God to produce an evil slave economy) was a human civilization. The very close association humans had for so long with such powerful arcane magic made them all far more vulnerable to magic attacks than the demi-humans — especially those that never dabbled in magic like the Halflings and the Dwarves.