An idea for vancian magic

"Everytime you cast a spell, instead of losing the spell you just casted, you cross out any other spell of the same or higher level instead; unless that was your last available one, in which case, you lose that spell"

It doesn't really fix my quest for the perfect magic system, but it feels like an improvement towards the original: Now you can use the same spell more than once per day, which is how you would expect magic to work in any fantasy setting (except, of course, Dying Earth, from which vancian magic is taken). If I see a wizard casting a fireball, I would prepare against another fireball and try to close range with him as much as possible, so he cannot cast another one on me without hurting himself. In the D&D world, however, you are completely safe from another fireball, as you are sure he cannot even prepare the same spell twice.

Also I like that you can explain it as making the spell you cast becoming more and more present in your brain the more you cast it; the obsession feeding on the other possibilities you had prepared (the rest of the spells)

The problem I perceive is more "conceptual" than "gamist". But, on that side, it allows you to prepare a lot of absurd spells and burn them away once you feel that you are probably not using them that day. That, while using the ones you need without being unnecesarily stingy. I also like that it doesn't change the game at Magic User's level 1, but can be a gamechanger at level 3 or higher: Each new spell gives you much more possibilities on every rest.

EDIT: As you can see on the comments, I have been mistaken all my D&D life, and MUs can prepare spells twice (nowhere mentioned explicitly on BX but I was just assuming they couldn't). This is why its cool to have a blog, I'd still play like that if I hadn't talked about it here. STILL I think my idea is useful to allow casters to spam the same spell multiple times, while still giving them variety of spells at the same time. Are they too OP? maybe. 

BXraw: Fighter VS Halfling

Are Halflings just better than Fighters? They share the same XP and Attack progression. Armor for halflings is only limited by the availability of halfling sized gear (which depends on the setting, I guess) Let's put the advantages of each one towards the other:

FIGHTERS:

- Can use 2-handed weapons (that lose initiative anyways). Use of the d8 longsword is ambiguous, though I'd rule that halflings can only use short swords. If not using the variable weapon damage, this point is ruled obsolete. 

- They can use all magical swords that happen to be not short. 

- Use d8 for hit points instead of d6 (that is 1 puny point on average per level, Fighters can even roll badly and lose that edge)

- One prime attribute (str) instead of two (str and dex) which is irrelevant if you roll the minimum DEX or you happen to ignore prime attributes (like I do)

- No level cap (which has no relevance until level 8)

HALFLINGS:

- Saving throws equal to a fighter seven levels above you

- Shooting arrows or ranged weapons at +1. That is attacking like a fighter one level above you at all times (sometimes two levels)

- Armor class enhanced by 2 versus enemies larger than humans. This is a surprisingly large spectrum in a game like D&D, from bears to basilisks to ogres to dragons

- When using individual initiative they get a +1

- 90% chance of dissappearing in woods or underbrush

- 1 in 3 chance of hiding in normal light when there are shadows or covers present, as long as they remain still. 

- The non-despicable advantage of being lightweight. It is much easier to take out of the dungeon an unconscious or deceased halfling, load it in your own horse and head towards a local temple, than doing the same with a grown up man. This can be an important thing depending on how you rule encumbrance.

This all started because I was running a game following strict RAW rules, then went looking into the book to check if there were any strength or encumbrance caps for hobbits and I found nothing. I started reading to check how the fact that you are a 90 cm person is portrayed in the context of combat and such, and I realized that there is no real downsides at all. Suddently I found it so weird.  

My last houserules are too complex to be summarized like NOW!, but basically I run them as thieves with better saving throws (like a fighter four levels above), with STR capped at 12, and encumbrance based on STR. I intend to make a full post about them soon. Just remember that 12 dwarves picked up a hobbit once because they needed a thief to go into the dragon's lair. 

Art taken from Pits & Perils by James and Robyn George. 

On Rules-lite or Rules light

 

stephanie grunwald - drive by night

After reading both Prince and Noisms take on rules-lite games, I wanted to write my own article on the subject. To make it clearer, I won't adress their points in here, I already did on their comments, suffice to say that while I enjoyed their reading, my point of view is tangential. 

I have collected tons of One-Page rpgs, starting back in 2012. I don't like all of them, of course, but as a design fanatic, I often like how they have resolved a certain mechanic (like alignment in Jung Guns), or how they have evoked a certain feeeling with a paragraph or a layout (Raygun Gothic, Travel Journal of Short Tales). It is true that they are often highly unplayable.

As Prince attests, many of them fall back on D&D to cover their gaps. Many more are innocent attempts at fixing D&D forever or just novel ideas that sound awesome in the author's head but have no sense on the page, and much less on the table (I love those. I have made a bunch of those too). Others (more and more everytime) are just made to look nice, with little care of the actual rules, probably because their author doesn't even think on playing it.

As I see it, the problem with rules-light games is not about they having little space or little rules. The problem is that they usually cut off the wrong rules. 

As I pointed out on previous articles, the core rules of a game are those that create and push the game's biorhythm, as opposed to its conflict resolution rules. 

The core rules of D&D are XP for gold, the dungeon generation rules that create rooms with gold alongside rooms with monsters, monsters and gold, dangers and traps, and the "level up" boon-unlocking dynamic for characters and dungeons. You play to level up, and adventure happens in the process. Using a d20 to hit or 2d6 vs an adjusted TN can have interesting effects, but won't change the game's nature in the slightest bit. 

Most published games, even rules-heavy ones, don't even have core rules. They just have conflict resolution rules. And that is frustrating because that is not gameable. They have lore bricks instead, and you must make a mission-based game with whatever you can assemble from it. Rules-light games often go the same road, working on innovative, clean or personal resolution rules (usually chargen+combat+equipment) and vague or absent procedures to conduct the game.

No, Maze Rats tables may be a great oracle, but are not a game procedure. It does have rough guidelines, though, on how do dungeons, cities and wildernesses look, and at least mentions the use of wandering monsters. But having XP per session + extra XP for abstractly overcoming a difficult challenge, the game can or cannot feature dungeons or loot of any kind. In fact the game can be about anything. Which seems liberating yet also kind of aimless: players must set their own drives, in a world they don't really know yet. But I am sure it works in the end.

Knave doesn't even have that. I think it was maybe conceived as an alternate chargen/combat/spells for D&D and was considered a full game by some at some point. In any case, OSR-related games have an advantage: the more a game gets closer to the OSR purity, the better it can use its resources: falling back on D&D to fill the gaps or using published modules. I think Searchers of the Unknown was built for the latter in mind too. 

But it would be unfair to accuse rules-light games of this sin, when big games do commit it constantly. Lamentations of the Flame Princess, for example, is written in two big tomes (player guide and referee guide) and somehow forgets to fit any setting, a bestiary, procedures for generating monsters, dungeons, adventure sites or adventure of any kind. It offers some advice on the tone the author wants to convey, but the advice feels short and falls on a void. 

World of Dungeons: Turbo Breakers, being three pages long, achieves to include useful gameable setting elements (the rifts, a countdown to the Cloud of Woe, an archmage called Kai Shira Kai, a Bestiary and a guide to create monsters, etc). 

Into the Odd: One page version, on a single page, allows you to run a dungeon without any preparation, filled with monsters, social encounters and traps; and teaches you to make a similar one by altering the tables therein. If you put simple advancement rules (maybe +1 to an attribute if you roll over it, and +1 to hp for each dungeon completed) and you have enough depth to make a long campaign using that rules alone. 

And as a word of advice: for people who has already read some Lovecraft enough to be familiar with the setting, will find the same or more useful stuff in the 4-page Cthulhu Dark and its companions than in the classic Chaosium tomes, all ripe with an astounding amount of nothing. You will still have to come up with an adventure yourself, but at least you will save time and effort.

So yes, rules light doesnt have to mean depth-light. I actually think they are a good paradigm for designers to learn and test things: the shorter a game is to write, the faster you can test it and re-shape it as needed. Minimalism has no inherent value on itself, but there is a limit on how complex you can make a ruleset without it becoming unwieldy. As I like to see it: the more minimal your rules are in one aspect, the more you can complicate the game in another. For example, getting some minimal rules for combat allows me to make extensive and fussy rules for handling horses without overloading players with information. This way you can add simplicity and complexity to things depending on how you want to portray them on the game you have in mind. 

Recently I put down the advancement rules for Monks and Mummies, one of my many chimeras. I found out that it was actually the hardest part of the game to come up with, and possibly the most important. Now that I know what the game is about, I think I can put the rest together """easily""". The rest of the game is sort of falling into place by itself. And thinking about this ruleslite things this days I have realized that it might not fit in one page, but I can see all the concept fitting on four or five. Let's see. 

How I do Treasure Types

 

This is the B/X table for generating monster treasure. I assume that Gygax intended to use it when you are generating dungeons, at home, chilling alone with a cup of tea: It has a ton of rolls to do. Some of them are even PERCENTILE. 

I found myself having to generate treasure a lot of times during the game. Also I strongly dislike having so many types of coin: I only use silver (the standard) and gold coins (armor and other specific things are still keeping their gold prices). Copper is a nuisance and electrum can go fuck itself. I don't even want to know what the fuck it is, but it is surely something I don't want everywhere around on my fantasy world. 

I spent a lot of time calculating the averages of each treasure type. Someday I found out casually that they were already calculated for me, right at the preceding page:

To give it a little randomization, multiply the result according to this table. Note that I use silver standard, so that is the value in silver for me.

1 - 25% treasure
2 - 50% treasure
3 - 75 % treasure
4 - 100 % treasure
5 - 150% treasure
6 - 200% treasure

The numbers add to 600%, divided by six results so its 100%. This means that stastically the treasure amount doesn't change.

Then I roll 1d6 in this other table: The treasure is composed mostly of..:

1 - Gold coins (value as 10 silver coin each)
2 - Gems and jewelry. Depending on my mood this can be a single jewel or a myriad of small gems
3 - Valuable but small items (books, weapons)
4 - Valuable but bulky items (armor, statues, art)
5 - Silver coins
6 - Silver coins

For bigger treasures I divide the treasure into 2, 3 or 4 roughly equal parts and roll separately for each part.

Magical items are rolled normally but I approximate the results with d6. Not because I cannot roll percentile, but is a question of principles (for example, a Type A treasure with a 30% chance of magic treasure becomes 33% chance: 2 in 6). Percentile rolls feel ugly in D&D and the exact numbers are arbitrary after all.

EDIT: for convenience, I also calculated the averages of unguarded treasure rooms per dungeon level:

level 1: 158 gp

level 2 or 3: 483 gp

level 4 or 5: 1553 gp

level 6 or 7: 3205 gp

level 8+: 6256 gp

Average value of 1 gem: 194 gp 

Average value of 1 jewel: 1050gp

Avoid the balance

twitter: pixelartjourney

I've realized that I am really averse to game balance. I can understand the importance of it in some kind of games (computer or strategy games, for example, need all their factions to be balanced so they all remain viable) but I think that its a concept that is erroneously ported to tabletop rpgs causing only confusion and evil. 

I love unbalance in character creation. There is a dogma in the OSR that you cannot put too much mechanical weight on ability scores, because they are randomly generated. But that is not really aligned to B/X at all! 

A simple +1 in strength is +1 to hit AND damage! if we consider the classic conversion of every damage +1 becoming a +2 to-hit bonus, this means that a slightly stronger level 1 fighter hits as hard as a level 4 one. And that is just a +1. Providing you sell your INT or WIS to increase your prime attribute to +1, you will then be in disadvantage to the guy who rolled that +1 and did the same to reach +2 or +3

What about dexterity? it modifies both ranged to hit and AC. Getting a good dexterity sure makes a difference; so does a good constitution. Even rolling your first HD for hit points can make for a big difference: 1d8 hp can make you a 1 hp loser or a 8 hp guy that can withstand carelessly a sword thrust. 

The very "starting money" roll can decide if you start with the best armor in the game or just a shield. 

I like when some characters are stronger than others. Its okay. I think that the perceived importance of balance is that it allows everyone to have something to contribute equally at the table. But this is actually a mirage. The labor of GMs and games is not to give every character equal power: that would not even be possible, if we get deeper into that: Who's got more power? the character that can fight very well or the one that has a red hat? Well, you can say that fighting is more important, but that really depends on the setting. Maybe the campaign has no perspective of fights, but instead features a tribe of minotaurs that are hypnotized everytime they see something red. We cannot know. 

And that is ok too.

You can balance the thief vs the fighter, but for it to be meaningful, you have to make a campaign where there is as much important fights as there are locked doors to be picked. And, at that point, that presumed balance is shown to be a mantained illusion.

I made this houserules sometime ago, where all classes are dismantled and the weight is put on the ability scores, and they work. A high roll in constitution at the start makes you as capable of a level X fighter, both in attack bonus and health. A high roll in dexterity makes you a very competent thief. The only thing that remained tied to level was saves and XP necessary to level up. And some of the lowest rollers were just normal fighters and thieves and wizards. And everybody was ok with it. It is true that attributes could be raised over time with a roll-under mechanic, so the highest attributes were harder to raise, but that is more about a feeling of justice than about balance. 

When we played the Street Gang game, there was characters that were terribly unbalanced with others in combat, as there were some who picked a lot of useless skills (it was part of the fun). But balance, as everything does, also tends to sprout itself from its opposite. In an imbalanced party, balance appears very quickly: For example, the one that tends to fight better, also tends to fight more, thus, putting him or herself at risk much more than the ones that fight worse. This makes him much more likely to die fighting than a non-combatant in the long run.

In the same way, a thief is much more likely to be caught pick-pocketing than a character that doesn't know how to pickpocket in the first place: the skill is a skill and a curse, because an adventurer party is not composed by isolated peoples: it is ideally a group in which everyone pools their abilities together. There is balance in asking the tank to lead the way, or in refusing to accept a part in a plan if you feel that you don't have enough HP, skill, etc to succeed at it; and you propose a different approach instead.

Merry wasn't balanced at all with Legolas, yet both of them played an equally important part in their adventure. Legolas killed a lot of people in the battle of the Pelennor Fields, yet the one kill that Merry achieves alongside Eowen is the one we all remember better. It is not about giving your PCs the same firepower, be it real firepower, magic or thieving firepower. It is about putting them on an equally compelling situation and giving them the freedom to act as they see fit, inside their capabilities. You cannot fight the orcs as well as an elf archer? well, maybe you can try to negotiate with the ents. You don't need levels on anything for that! 

The worst kind of balance is like in 4e/5e and other modern games, when the balance is done blatantly around combat. I understand that you do that in a game that is solely about combat, but D&D is much more than that. You can argue that it is about retrieving treasure. But beyind that, it is about living adventures in a strange fantasy world. By balancing around combat, you are letting combat swallow the whole.

I remember some idea I had for running Searchers of the Unknown. I didn't knew why I liked it then, but I know why now. That game has no classes (just one: adventurer) or attributes whatsoever: the only difference among characters was the amount of HP rolled and your name. I devised some d6 table like this:

6: You start with 4000 XP (level 3). You are also cursed. The first time you get a natural 20 you will miss the roll instead.

5: You are a veteran: start with 2000 XP (level 2)

3-4: You start as normal

1-2: You are a kid: start with 1000 negative XP. You need to get those to get to level 1, and you have -2 hp until then. In exchange, you can once per life turn any roll into a success. 

I never ran SotU in the end, but it gives you an idea on how a little imbalance can be used to create nice dynamics on a game. What does it give that a character is more powerful than the rest? they are a team after all. Somebody being stronger is beneficial to every single one of them, because they can have powerful Aragorn who leads them and assumes greater risks in behalf of everyone. And at the same time, the same high capacity of their member can take the PCs into places too dangerous believing that their tank can carry them, until the tank dies or is wounded and they must carry their body back to the surface, through a zone that is 2 levels beyond them.

Note that the automatic success and the curse will only function once: they are secondary: ornamental complements to the real reason: this creates much more interesting in-game dynamics, assigns natural roles and draws much more potent images in the player's mind than just "you are 4 very similar fighters". 

If, for the contrary, they have a weakling on the group, they can still play around it searching for non-combat approaches, interacting with the game world, taking risks and try to improve with time, and even use their one-time roll in an epic moment, representing the victory of their raw innoncence. Because thats how a good "imbalance" is done: limiting an aspect of the character, but not in a way that stripes the game of the fun. If possible, do the opposite. 

B/X Monk

Monks are humans who train their body, mind and spirit for the sake of beating other punks improving themselves, and their belief that those trainings are complementary. Not really skilled in the arts of combat as war, like a Fighting man would, but can sometimes outperform them on certain conditions. Their prime requisite, if you really need that (I don't use them) is Wisdom.

Thry cannot use armor; save for certain special armors specially suited to their arts which consist mainly on a set of bracers, shin guards and pauldrons (+1 to +2 AC, depending on the quality). Their AC will go up as they level, anyways, representing the monk getting better at avoiding hits.

Monks have a d6 Hit Dice and XP/Attack/Saves as Cleric, and do 1d4 damage when unarmed. When they use small weapons (those that would normally deal 1d4) they deal 1d6 instead.

Monks can use any weapons, but can use their Counterattack ability only when unarmed, or using nunchucks or staves (the latter makes you drop initiative as per the Variable Weapon Damage B/X rules, but allows you +1 attack bonus on counterattacks). Other monkish weapons can appear in the monk's path, but these are the only ones which are available at the start.

SPECIAL MONK WEAPONS take the form of an improvement of the punch, typically gloves, claws or cestus. They give you +1 to hit when unarmed and do not improve damage. Its easier that way.

COUNTERATTACK is conceptually based in the Final Fantasy monk: When attacked in melee, an monk that hasn't spent his turn, be it because the enemy has the initiative or because he has chosen to held his action, can preemptivelly attack first. On a succesful hit, deal damage as usual, and the enemy attack is also deflected.

You can see the enemy roll before you choose to counterattack, and you can counterattack infinite times per turn, providing you dont die, get stunned, trip or something like that.

This is also an additional defense that complements their low AC at first levels (though only versus melee attacks) and could be a risky form of crowd control. It's the classic kung-fu scene in which Bruce Lee defends himself against a lot of mobsters.

Using a dagger won't give you any bonus, but your enemy might get scared of you. Even goblins know that punch damage is likely to be non-lethal at the discrection of the GM, but a knife is another story

SECRET TECHNIQUES can only be used when unarmed (no nunchucks no staves this time). These are abstracted by giving you one extra die from the plethora of the common dice sets (d4 to d20): when an attack is succesful and you do damage, you can roll a secret technique and add its damage to it, then the die is expended. These are only refreshed at downtime, or very slowly during the adventure: Whenever you rest, you roll all your exhausted dice: if any of them shows a 1, you recover it.

Level Progression

Level 1: 

Counterattack, 

Technique: 1d4 (some sort of high kick, maybe)

You can double your normal movement per turn by passing a petrification save; on a fail you must still move the normal amount.

Level 2: 

Technique: 1d6

AC +1

Level 3: 

Awareness (only surprised on a 1)

You take half damage from missiles and dragon breath effects, and can save for no damage at all.

Level 4:

AC +1

Your unarmed base damage becomes 1d6

Level 5:

Your fists can harm enchanted creatures at -2 (reduce this penalty for each Wisdom modifier)

Technique: 1d8

Level 6:

AC +1

You get access to a spell: Magic Missile, Mirror Image, Levitate, or any appropiate spell your GM gives to you. You can cast it at will by passing a save vs spells, with a failure being that you spend your turn for no effect. I'm not sure about this one and I think I should make an actual spell list for the monk.

Level 7:

Technique: 1d10

If you are lawful, you can turn undead

If you are chaotic, you can make enemies of less your hd save vs death when they are hit.

If you are neutral, it's a good time for you to choose your alignment

Level 8:

+1 AC (you have armor as chainmail by now)

Maybe another spell

Level 9: 

Technique: You get the other 1d10 (the one with the tens). You can use this die to damage or to heal yourself at anytime by the amount rolled.

At this point you can make a dojo and attract followers as cleric

Level 10:

+1 AC

You can increase any attribute score by +2 (in order to get those cool bonuses. STR, DEX or WIS are probably the ones you want)

Level 11: 

Technique: 1d12

Level 12:

+1 AC. Immunity to Geas and Quest spells 

Your base unarmed damage is now 1d8

Level 13: 

Technique: 1d20. You can at this point try to take down really big monsters with a single punch

Level 14:

+1 AC. Your naked AC is equivalent to a knight in shield and full plate

Level 15: 

Technique: You get an additional 1d20, or an 1d30 if you can provide one.

Level 16:

+1 AC

and unarmed you might deal less damage per turn, but you can use your asploding techniques at any moment

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.