While re-reading the various posts and considering the various ideas about Saving Throws, I also had a thought... Saving Throws, with their original categories, are often the ultimate barrier between a character and their death, especially at low levels. Several house-rules aim to maintain a low chance of success as in the OD&D and tune instead the mechanics (see my intro of this post). Other house-rules, though, have an impact (wanted or not) on those low chances.
Be it because they are changed to a roll-under on the ability score or because they are given better odds, these house-rules make Saving Throws more likely to succeed (especially at low levels).
But what about achieving a similar result (better chances) without drastically changing the game?
If every character is given for instance a 3 in 6 chance for all Saving Throws at level one, this changes the game.
What if instead there was a price to pay for a better chance?
Saving Throw Effort
Whenever you face a threat which triggers a Saving Throw, you may spend points to improve your chances of success, before rolling the dice.
For a d20 Saving Throw, spend 1 HP for a +1 to your roll.
For a d6 Saving Throw, spend 3 HP for a +1 to your roll.
As an alternative, you may sacrifice an item for a +1 (if approved by the GM) or a shield or armor, with a +1 for each AC point it grants, but only if this is applicable to vs. the given threat.
If the threat is magical, you may sacrifice a memorized spell (spend it as if it was used) for a +1 bonus for each level of the spell.
With Saves vs. Death (and Poison), vs. Wands (and Device), vs. Paralysis (and Stone), for example, you may sacrifice a shield if there is a physical threat, otherwise against poison or similar you must use HP.
With Saves vs. Breath (and Area Effects) it is much more likely that you could sacrifice AC points for a bonus to your Saving Throw (or HP as stated above).
With Saves vs. Spells (Magic and Curses) it is possible to sacrifice a memorized spell (or HP as stated above).
This would give low level characters a better chance to survive, but only a very limited amount of times per adventure or session. The point would be that lost HP would be recovered probably not before the end of the session or when back to civilization, broken equipment or protections could become a problem later on, and lack of spells similarly so.
There is therefore a trade-off, a significant decision to be made by the characters.
It preserves players' agency, makes the characters a little bit more resistant, but without being overpowered.
If you'd like to push this further, you might introduce a XP mechanism. Remember that in this case you probably want to factor in the current character level, and put a limit to it. Reasonably, the limit is that you should not spend XP to go below your current level (in other words, you are more vulnerable when you just leveled up, and on the other hand you may loose a chance to level up by spending XP but with the advantage of increasing your chances of surviving a given threat).
The rule could be something like: spend 100 x your Level in XP for +1 bonus on a Saving Throw.
Great post, thank you. I love the idea of expending resources to improve odds on a saving throw.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it makes sense to use HP as that resource since HP already acts as a buffer against character death (i.e. no harm befalls the character until HP hits zero, at which point injury or death happens). Spending HP to make a save just adds an extra step to what could have just been more HP reduction (i.e. take 5 HP poison damage vs make a save vs poison, spending 5 HP to ensure you pass).
I think it could be interesting to allow a permanent spend from an ability score to improve the odds of a save (maybe 1 point = +5 to a d20 roll?). This would represent the permanent and serious harm that the character incurred in just barely avoiding death.
I understand your point about spending HP in advance... I was thinking that spending HP in a controlled manner is a sort of a bet: you decide how much you sacrifice, for better odds of passing the save... but yeah, spending resources sounds better than HP.
ReplyDeleteAnd also a temporary attribute reduction could be a better option than spending HP.
My thinking was that if the original model is "save or die" (i.e. effects that can't be modeled as HP reduction), anything that allows you to spend resources to avoid death should a) have a serious lasting impact and b) have hooks back into the fiction.
ReplyDeleteHP reduction obviously wouldn't meet either criteria since it's not lasting and HP doesn't exist in the fiction (i.e. it's purely an abstraction of how much longer you can avoid death, not an injury tracker).
Losing equipment or positioning on the battlefield is good because it's directly linked to the fiction (e.g. the boulder smashes your helmet to pieces and you narrowly avoid death), but lacks a long term impact.
Loss of points in an attribute is good because you can link it to the fiction (i.e. the poison courses through your veins. You manage to shake it off, but the lasting effects leave you frailer than you once were).
But, if the attribute loss is temporary, is that really a reasonable substitute for "save or die" as a core mechanic?
I'd argue that it's worse than just giving better odds of survival since you'd always spend enough to make the save knowing that you'll recover in days, weeks, whatever. This eliminates the usefulness of save or die as a mechanic (which is fine if that's what you're going for...this just trades it out for an additional resource to manage [HP, gear, temporary attribute loss]).
OTOH, by making the attribute loss permanent (maybe baring a wish spell or other extremely rare, game altering event), you give the player a real choice to make: "do I spend 3 points from CON and guarantee the save, but weaken my character or do I gamble at worse odds and preserve my stat". And it gives the player a chance to be particularly heroic through emergent stories (e.g. the Fighter was permanently weakened resisting the poison, but still went on to defeat the ogre through superior tactics).
Thanks for raising this topic! I'm still wrestling with differentiating between saves and HP and how and when to use each. This approach provides some cool alternates to the defaults (which vary wildly by edition, etc. anyway).
Eden, thanks for your comments. I guess the exact specifics of the house-rule for a Saving Throw bonus should be tailored to the GM's style and other game's rules (i.e. a loss of points on an attribute is "harder" on the player if the Save is based on the attribute itself).
DeleteIn other words, there's a lot to consider and there is (as always with the OSR) not just "one right way" to do it.
The post is about presenting a concept: sacrifice something in exchange for better odds of survival right now.
Something I'd like to clarify though: the Effort-rule is not granting an automatic success on the Saving Throw.
It gives you a bonus.
So sometimes you may sacrifice something important and still fail - and sometimes a little sacrifice for a +1 is all you need...
But you should decide what to sacrifice and what bonus you want to gain, BEFORE the roll (so you could make a sacrifice for a Save you would have passed in any case, etc...).
Basically it's about the player having something to "bet" to influence the dice.
Also, not all Saves are Save-or-Die... those of course are the ones where players are more invested in making a sacrifice, and even if they then pass the Save, they will keep on with the adventure, and the next Saving Throw might still be the one killing them...
Oh yes, for certain. 4e and 5e in particular mostly treat saving throws as a filter for how much additional HP loss one takes.
DeleteMy response was based on your initial statement that "Saving Throws, with their original categories, are often the ultimate barrier between a character and their death". I took this to mean a stricter, "save or die" approach, but can see that it's still an open ended statement.
And understood on the sacrifice just being for a bonus. Knowing players however, if the resource drain is temporary and the risk of failing the save is severe (i.e. original save-or-die premise), they will quickly learn to weigh the costs and make "optimal decisions".
Another factor we haven't noted is frequency of saves. In our home game it's rare for any particular PC to make more than one (meaningful) save in a session. We're playing 5e RAW, which has a fairly forgiving resource cycle, so we (I'm also a player in this game) often know that it's safe to burn inspiration on an important roll like an important save. If we could also (or instead) burn HP, I think most of us would burn 5-10 HP without a second thought to mitigate the chance of failure. We'd then take a short rest (or long rest if we're positioned for that) to quickly restore the lost resource with minimal risk.
In any case, I appreciate the idea you put forth here. I think the general concept of "burn resources to effect saves" is awesome and agree that it needs tuning depending on version of the game, intended level of difficulty, what saves represent relative to HP loss, etc.