[BX/OD&D] Towards a single save

 In my game of Trow Fortess, I don't use the five saves. I only use a d6 pool and two saving throw types (plus an special one at zero hp)

The types are the Easy (Death Ray, Poison and Paralyzation) and the Difficult (Spells including wands, Triggering Traps and Dragon Breath). Their chances by level are based on BX's Death Ray and Spells saves, respectivelly; and there is nothing in between (full spread of chances here)

I am thinking on trying OD&D at some point; but getting back to the classic 5-saving throw system and consulting charts is not appealing to me anymore (It's specially painful to check saves for monsters and having them referred to like "as fighter 4" instead of a fucking number). If you follow this blog, you know I usually take an effort to eliminate rules and charts that I feel are redundant, or just do not offer enough reasons in exchange for their cost.

So I started wondering if I could keep a single save number that scaled with level; and then, with advantage or disadvantage mechanics, cover my two save types mathematically faithfully. The answer is yes:

The two rows above are the fighter's saving throw progression for his best (death ray) and worst (spells) saves. These numbers are the same for OD&D and BX, saving me time because I had already done that calculations.

The third row is the Spells saving throw, rolled with advantage (2d20 keep best). As you can see, and without counting the unimportant normal man's saves, it follows the Death Ray saving chances with a maximum deviation of a 5% at level 10. This allows me with a clear conscience to use the spells save as the baseline single save, use it for the hard saves (spells, traps and dragon breath) then giving advantage for the easy saves (death ray, paralization, poison)

(PD: Lets ignore the fact that elf saves fuck this proportion completelly)

The fourth row is the opposite: disadvantage (2d20 keep worst) on the Death Ray numbers. The mathematical probabilites deviate from the original Spells' ones a little more, and the psychological act of rolling an easy save with disadvantage feels worse than rolling the hard one with advantage, so the previous method feels much better in both senses.

Five VS three VS one: Saving throws

First we have the classic five:

Death/poison

Wands

Paralysis, petrification

Breath attacks

Spells, rods, staves

- They look like omens on your character sheet. They put you into the mood of what the game is about.

- The saves are disconnected from actual traits of your character in-game. Your fighter doesnt train really hard to be resistant to Spells, he just does it somehow, which is ultimately up to the GM to narrate.

- If you think about it, saves represent how likely is your character to get plot armor. The Death Ray is not supposed to fail a % of the time, it just fails when it strikes your character because it suits the plot. There you find that D&D has a narrative side under its naturalistic appearance. Which is OK.

- As a good plot armor device, they increase only with level. This means that the more you play a character (the more invested they have been in the story) the more protected they will be from unwanted disasters. Sometimes, of course, the save fails.

- Though they sound cool, some effects can be hard to adscribe to those categories. Here is a guide, in which it is described how they are ordered from easy to hard, based on how lethal and telegraphed the effects are (because Gygax cares for you). BUT in my opinion, there is a lot of work and text space dedicated to saves in the book, while the differentiation between the highest and lowest saves are not very meaningful (+4 in the greatest cases). There are whole matrixes dedicated to check which is the save of a certain class, at a certain level, for a certain danger; and at which levels should they ever change. This makes it seem like there is an intended and important order for this, while the impact on the actual game is relativelly low. One could think that this granularity is excessive, and, while is not hard to check a number on a chart, ponder if it pays off. 

- Sometimes attribute bonuses might modify certain rolls. Many people is against it, but I feel that its just a small bonus after all and it helps to establish game reality: it is just tangible that a character with good dexterity can use its bonus when the save is reflex-dependant. As an alternate view, I was using a certain retroclone recently (Aventuras en la Marca del Este) which gave the Wisdom modifier as a bonus to ALL saves. Not bad idea at all in my opinion: wisdom is often despised unless one is a cleric, and though the increase in saves might be small, the increase in character depiction is huge: Your character is not just a faceless level 1 stick figure: its a moderately wise guy which happens to be 5% better at saving: that makes you start the game like a 70s pimp

The three saves (Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower) came later.

- They are level-independant, relying on attributes. Into the Odd (using strength, dexterity and charisma) went as far as removing the levels completely. This makes them more naturalistic and easy to adscribe to effects.

- This, on the other hand, removes the concept of saves as plot armor. This is the greatest departure point, in my view. You don't have to come up for a reason to "why" or "how". You also can't, because the save does it for you. Its an upside and a downside at the same time. Into the Odd, again, solves this on a very clever way: Strength is about enduring physical stress, Dexterity about reacting fast and Charm encompasses plot armor, as being a measure, among other things, of how much blessed you are. So you can always fall back on that to factor plot armor back into your rules.

- They are usually mocked on the OSRsphere mainly because they put weight on the attributes and because they don't scale with level (edit: as pointed by JEL in the comments, in 3e the saves do scale with level. I don't know to which extent as all my 3e knowledge is second hand). It is true that I don't think that they can be used as "roll d20 under this to save". The numbers are just too high: Level 1 characters with normal stats would save most of the time. Would be a joke. Into the Odd, AGAIN, solves this on a clever way by introducing attribute damage: certain attacks decrease your attribute scores, and then force you to save under them. I like how Chris McDowall has taken its way into exploring the three saves into a very fruitful design, turning them into attributes themselves.

- As the "don't scale with level" thing: we'll, that is a bad idea if we see saves as plot armor. But if we see it as a naturalistic simulation, it's ok. In the end they work if you are conscious on what kind of story you are emulating. 

The Single Save is a number that increases with level. 

- The number can be universal or fixed by class. A good example of it is Swords and Wizardry (class based) among the retroclones, and Pits and Perils if you go a little beyond that (universal, though dwarves get a bonus).

- This is freeing enough that you can give or take small bonuses on an easy way. It is easier to write on your sheet a single number with "+2 vs magic", like S&W does with Magic Users, than five of them, and then decide which one apply everytime. You can give each class a bonus to a specific situation: +2 vs death to clerics is also on S&W. +2 to reflex rolls to thieves? sure, just say it so. The best of the single save is that you don't have to come up with categories of saves prior to play. You can specify as much or as little as you want: You can make an amulet of +2 vs Sleep, for example; or a cheap charm of +1 vs storms, and drop them on your treasure.

- On the "saves as plot armor structure", it works perfectly without having to separate plot armor by "categories vs classes" that might have sense for Gygax, but seem arbitrary to me.

- You can set saves at a middle point between death (low) and spells (high) and just give +2 to -2 bonuses on specifics, using the classic saves as reference or set by you.

- You can also add attribute modifiers to it (from dex, cha, etc) in the same range of modifiers without it altering too much the math, but in a meaningful way, that makes players feel that their dexterity or charisma actually work.

- Single save is the best and everybody knows

and tomorrow, I will (try to) write how I am doing saves now in D6D  A.K.A. Trow Fortress. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: there is still another way to make this: with ZERO saves.

Minimalistic D&D-like, part 3: Saves

Part of a series building a game without levels, hit dice, ability scores or classes. The main resolution is 1d6 for everything.

As a quick recap, numerically and chemically speaking, characters have:

#Hit Points, and some power ups derivated from their amount (+ac and +attacks per round)

#Spell Points per day, and some power ups derivated from their amount (+magic resistance and power) and a list of spells known

#Specials (like being strong, an animal companion, or whatever that is a significative trait but is not a spell)

So, without any level-related characteristic to increment the saving throws, how can we deal with such things when they arise? I'll run over the most common "Save Or" states to see what can be done. 

"Partake of the fruit!!"

Poison: 

* "You drank poison... you died". This can actually work if the poison was telegraphed well enough. I think its even on an actual Raggi's module. Still, you can give the poison 2d6 turns to take effect, in which healing actions can be attempted. Sucking out the venom in the case of snakes, or applying an antidote, for example.  Shifting more agency to the equipment is another of my goals, so, in that line, buying antidotes for different venoms can be something interesting for adventurers to invest in. 

* The person who poisoned you might know or even carry the antidote.

* If it's deadly over time, roll 1d6 and keep that number. For every night or every strenous action you take, decrease the number by 1. Getting rests or treatment lets you re-roll, and maybe heal on a 6. 

* For creatures that can poison you, make it so they need to hit you. Maybe even apply a certain amount of damage (for example, if they score exactly 1 damage) and skip the save altogether. In the end the randomization is the same. If it seems unfair, its because the monster makes the roll, not the victim. But in the end it's the same.

* Poison doesn't have to be deadly: it can be paralizating or narcotic. For example, make it so the effect lasts (1d6-1) turns/hours/whatever.

* Let's not forget the magical solutions: Neutralize Poison is a cleric spell. 

Dragon breath: 

* This is just a dragon attacking, it just covers a big area, but its the same nonetheless. Just take the damage from the hit points, which are already a measure of how likely you are to survive an attack. I happen to have had a good idea for dragon breath and I leave it here for posterity (keep in mind that damage is scaled to an hypotetic game):

"Everyone in range of attack gets 1d6 damage, rolled separately. Then the smallest dice rolled deals damage again to ALL victims"

This way, the more people is attacked, the smallest the extra die will be. Using the same attack, the dragon will do statistically more damage to a single target (average 7, good chance of 12 hp) than to a group of targets (average drops towards 4'5, chances of more than 7+ hp decrease drastically with every new target). This models nicely the concentration of fire of the dragon and can be played around using decoys or even hirelings. But you will never do that, would you?

* The use of shields or any other blockage can shelter you from a little damage versus dragon breath. Of course, magical shields vs dragonbreath are even better, and should be one of the most ubiquitous magic items on any fantasy game that behaves realistically.

Petrification: 

* If players are savvy enough, they will activelly look away from the gaze of the basilisk. If they accept the (-1) penalty to attack rolls, they wont be turned into stone. Unless, you know, they roll a 1 or under. I'm against botch rolls in games, but they can be used in special situations like that. If they botch a roll attacking or running from the basilisk, they are turned to stone.

* You can make it less deadly: you don't turn into rock in a snap: instead you are paralyzed and you have 1d6-1 turns until you become solid rock. Anyone breaking line of sight between the basilisk and you will have you released in 1 turn (be it by covering you with a blanket, shooting an arrow into the basilisk eye, turning off the light, etc). Same for gorgons.

* On the "inventory" side, you can find:

- amulets against petrification (they break when you would otherwise be petrified)

- antidotes against petrification (like a "soft" from FFVII). You can make them cheap (and only works on those that are half-petrified), expensive af (can undo a recent petrification) or mythic (will turn any stone statue to flesh)

- a flash grenade that impedes vision. Same with a darkness spell or provoking a great smoke into the room,

- buying or asking an artificer for sunglasses made of mirrors. 

- installing mirrors at the medusa's halls, then making her follow you so she run into herself at the turn of a corner

* Make it so the gaze must be sustained for a turn (so it will only work on immobilized or tricked PCs)

* Hit points are abstracted enough so they can represent avoiding harms different from physical damage. You can make it so the basilisk gaze deals 1d6 doom damage that ignores armor. Once you are at 0 hp, you are turned into stone.

* The Stone to flesh spell is a thing. There is no reason that you can even make up more spells that ward against more ailings if in need.

* If nothing convinces you, just deal with a death save (see below)

Spells: 

* Make the spells require a mistake from the players to be committed in order to take effect. For example, eating strange fruits from weird silent ladies in the middle of a dungeon. Or make them require intimacy, or touch range. If you approach a weeping, encroached figure in a ghastly place, you can first weigh your chances and then take an action.

* As in poison, giving the spell a chance to work instead of working automatically accomplishes the same stastical function, though shifting the roll from the affected to the caster.

* Polymorph spells are not totally unfair if the target retains the agency in its new shape. Maybe you can play as a frog for a while, maybe even retain your hp and abilities. If you do polymorph, consider giving the players shapes that can still be played. 

* Again, certain inventory can be found or bought to protect from spells. This, paired with giving the spells a time to act (1d6 turns or 1d6 days) will also give players the chance to revert or minimize the damage. If you feel you've been hit by a sleep spell, you can try to eat coffee grains. If you are hearing a charming song, you can try to cover your ears (this makes you unable to hold or use weapons). Put on a walkman if you have one. Invent your share of magical antidotes, but also allow creative approaches. If some vines are coming out of the earth to grab you, dont bother with paralyzation rolls: you can try to cut them in time: give them an AC and start slashing. You can even try to scare or attack the wizard away in that 1d6 time. Who knows! 

* Spells that do damage, work as damage. Or even as dragon breath. Spells would otherwise paralyze can just hinder you slightly (penalties to rolls: you're feeling too cold to properly move, -1 to anything that requires finesse) or hard (penalties that are cumulative each turn: each turn, roll 1d6: on a 1, the chill gets worse: additional -1 and you will freeze completely when you get -3)

Death:

* When you suffer a grievous death, roll 1d6. On a 6, you get better. Fate favours you, something happens, whatever, but you are still OK. This roll can be modified by special things in game, such as having received the blessing of a princess before you had parted to your last quest (roll a second die, keep highest!) or by a healing spell by one of your comrades. EDIT: This also pairs nicely with another rule I made for monks and mummies: Get 1 free success for answering a question.

* Depending on the tone you want for your game, you can make it so this roll is only enabled after that certain things have happened, instead of being enhanced. Anyways, GM will describe something as absurd as the Naruto's resurrections if he must, but you won't die. 

polymorphed, no save.