I’m currently pondering saving throws. I wonder why the item saving throw categories are different than the character saving throws. I see the exclusions as one category of save gives way to a different one and wonder about that. I love the flavor of the AD&D saving throw names (and roll my eyes at the newer save names). I suspect there’s a more useful or interesting way to organize saving throws, though can’t put any solid ideas forward. Thoughts, anybody?
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I’m the opposite.
The older saving throws sound silly to me, and they’re incredibly specific and arbitrary. The newer ones at least make sense. How good you’re at dodging things, at enduring or resisting things with your body, and at enduring and resisting things with your mind.
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The fun thing about the old saves is that they more fit D&D’s typical abstraction layer. That is, when you save vs. dragon breath, how you do so is contextual to the fiction, much in the same way that losing hp can be a variety of different outcomes.
Contrasted with newer saves, which are more prescrptive over what is going on.
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i barely see the appeal of saving throws as a category separate from other checks tbh. I guess it could be split along “players call for checks, GM calls for saves,” but a lot of games make the GM call for checks anyway?
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Not necessarily in old school d&d-alikes. If and how a referee calls for checks (outside of a very few specific procedures) is largely regulated to optional rules and suggestions, whereas saving throws are a core part of the system we inherit from our wargame ancestry.
Saving throws developed as a means to give narrative importance to specific pieces on the battlefield that typically auto-removed lesser units - the threats that did this directly got ported to saves within D&D - magic spells, dragons breath, the gaze of a medusa, etc. Saving throws were literally the last chance before death.
One concern is that many of the optional methods for determining checks, such as x-in-6 or roll-under-stat, typically do not scale with level, whereas saving throws do.
You can certainly develop around saving throws, and obviously many games don’t use them, but they play as an interesting last-grasp mechanism for a referee to find a character who is dead-to-rights one last chance, at the same abstraction layer as (most of) the other mechanisms, and you can tie it directly to the particular dangers of your setting.
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@pladohsghost for suggestions for saving throws, my opinion is that a setting is most served when the mechanisms reflect the world. So my recommendation is for any game where you do not feel the default sing to you, come up with a category of 3-6 “dangers”, and rank them generally from most impactful to least. These could be anything such as being hurled into the gaping maw of space to being defamed publicly. The saves you come up with will tell the players the kind of threat categories they should be worrying about and leveraging.
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Odd-likes really nail this imho by only having saves. They are essentially core stats but named so you know in those games stats are about resisting bad consequences.
Borg games have abilities function as saves too, though I think they are kinda named so they function as saves (Agility test, Presence test).
Tbh, the more I look at the differentiation of saves and ability scores/stats the more I see it as a relic of older class based design. In case your stats are rubbish your saves are just ‘as written’, (they were provided by default in B/X right?)
There is an argument about splitting protective capabilities and more ‘active’ ones for the purposes of simulation, but I haven’t seen many benefits yet there myself (ymmv).
So maybe the answer to having the cool names of older saving throws is to have cool stat names?
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I’m a big fan of the Classic Categories for one main reason: They advertise.
You have this list of five horrible fates, staring up at the Players from the Character Sheet, reminding them of the dangers that might await the careless or brash. As we’re generating Characters, we talk about them briefly. I answer a few questions sometimes (“What’s Petrification? Well, there are some creatures and foul sorceries out there that can turn one to Stone!”) One minor recommendation I always make is to pencil “Illusions” in next to Spells. They use this Saving Throw, but having them on the Sheet insures that the Players are aware that “Illusions” are a thing and helps a bit with making them feel a little less capricious/frustrating sometimes.
They also Scale with Level/Advancement and factor in a little bit of Class Competency. Unlike other Resolution Methods, like the Optional Ability Check (in typical games, you don’t see a lot of improvement to those Scores, so you’re saddled with something low you rolled for your entire Character’s Career.)
Many Referees “re-skin” them a bit to utilize them for other Hazards. My general rule of thumb for them breaks them out thusly:
- Death/Poison: The Hail Mary, anything that kills instantly.
- Wands: Potentially “Directed Attacks” that are Aimed.
- Breath: Area effects, like a ceiling collapse perhaps.
- Paralysis/Petrification: Anything that inhibits movement or prevents action.
- Spells: Magical Stuff
There’s another feature about them that I enjoy as well: The fact that they are disassociated from the Fiction in an interesting way. We use the Saving Throw to answer the Question “If” Consequences were avoided, but it doesn’t have to tell us “How.”
The method by which a Save was successful isn’t defined (it makes for situations where we get to rationalize it on a per-character bases, based on the fictional spaces/situations that are happening to them). This is sometimes obvious, but other times it might take a bit of creative contributions to rationalize it.
Situation: Dragon Breathes Fire on a Party.
Saves:
Fighter crouches behind their Shield and weathers the blast through sheer force of perseverance. Playing into type.
Thief nimbly dodges behind a rock or pillar or something: Leveraging that fictional space
Cleric guardian angels bathe them in a chilly, protective bubble of divine light Throwing a dollop of Lore at things.
Magic User activating a single use talisman, the Magic User briefly winks out of existence for a fraction of a second, only to return less scathed. Making Magic Users more Magical!
The key here is that the answers we can provide to that “How” are infinite, and usually can be tailored to the fiction or Characters involved, instead of just always “dodging/enduring/shaking it off” etc.
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In the old-school game variety, the saving throws I’ve found most appealing to me, and to new players, is that of Swords and Wizardry Complete Revised. That is a single number, roll over (or DC), that varies with class and with background / origin. Besides the fact that i hate keeping track of 5 different saves for monsters / npcs (let alone designing them), I just found it easier to grasp and a bit more customizable. Experience, background, class traits can add modifiers to this Save number in specific situations - vs. pierce damage / vs poison / in the dark, whatever. To be honest I’m surprised that the single or universal saving throw number is not used more often.
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I think saving throws are fun to consider.
I dislike the 5e approach to a save for every type ability score, mostly because it feels too granular and that the game was never really designed to take advantage of all six. So you get a weird distinction between offensive and defensive stats that is inconsistently applied. I dislike that part of learning the games is learning which saves are important and which aren’t. Unlike BX characters, these will never get any better at their bad saves which feels like a missed opportunity.
It greatly amuses me that 3e D&D which is one one of the most mechanically complex versions of the game has the same type and number of saves as Into the ODD / Cairn which I consider the simplest. I think games that only have three saves are a great way to streamline play and not get too bogged down while still adding distinction to characters who may be strong, willful, or quick.
I think right now my sweet spot is the BX saves as they are renamed in Dolmenwood: Doom, Ray, Hold, Blast and Spell. I consider the original save names a silly kind of gate keeping at this point. Its not apparent to new players of the game that you use Dragon breath for every kind of similar attack or what exactly the is distinction between Wands and Spells is. Sure you learn these things in time but it seems like an unnecessary speed bump. I really like that these saves are part of a standard progression largely decoupled from stats except for a few bonuses. It helps reinforce the idea that anyone can learn from their experiences and become a hero not just those with lucky stats.
Despite my feelings I enjoyed reading the comments defending the original names as a form of advertising. They’ve give me some food for thought and I will have to question my assumptions.
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I like 4E approach where you had Fortitude, Will and Reflex but they each pulled from two abilities.
Your modifier for Fortitude was from the highest between Strength or Constitution. Same with Wisdom or Charisma for Will, or Intelligence and Dexterity for Reflex. I really like the flexibility it offers.
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I am really no expert on this but find the discussion fascinating as someone who only has come to the older editions from 5e via Cairn. To me the BX saves really appeared as a cryptic hurdle that became my main reason for avoiding the OSE for a long time. I felt more drawn towards S&W with its single save + modifiers. To me that just seemed more logical rather than adding a bunch of additional values to the character sheet when you can clearly make do with less (e.g. Cairn, DCC, etc). How do you guys feel about the single save in S&W?
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I don’t really see how that’s different. I haven’t played S&W, but after a quick peek on google, it seems that in OSE you have a handful of values for the different saves, where in S&W you have a base value with a handful of modifiers. The only difference that comes to mind is that at character creation, have a single value and just the modifiers relevant to the class is a bit simpler, but at play I much prefer to have the list of final calculated saving throws.
But once again, I didn’t play S&W. Do they do something else with Saving Throws that would justify this design choice?
I like this “Five Horrible Fates” framing… and the score being resistance to the fates. In world mechanics, I love.
I wish this was what saving throws were!
The only other thing that I like about saving throws, is the sorta OCCULT VALUE, of the rules being kinda weird and obfuscated. Makes playing/learning a bit more fun. The push to make everything smooth and digestible is not always best; it can make things bland/generic.
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S&W ends up being roughly equivalent to save categories, as the various classes and ancestries can modify different kinds of saves, as well as wisdom (depending on the version of S&W been used).
I just find the single save easier from the referee’s standpoint, as you only have really one value for monsters/NPCs.
Hmm, I’d be careful categorizing a mechanical expression in an inert rulestext as a form of gatekeeping. It unfairly demonizes preferences, ignores the fact that someone can just hack or play a different game, and also recreates a pretty annoying historical form of tribalism in the shape of “reduced mechanisms to my preference, no more no less.”
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One really fun thing to do is to change the names of them to telegraph Setting.
If I hand you a Character Sheet with the following Saving Throws scrawled upon it:
- Witty Retorts
- Vicious Slander
- Swooning
- Strange Cuisine
- Domestic Servants
Or one that features:
- Plasma Beams
- Psionic Psetbacks
- Radioactive Mutation
- Spoiled Supplies
- Forbearer Tech
You get a pretty nice preview of what kind of dangers there might be and what this game might be about 
Second to Equipment Lists, I think that Saving Throw Categories can do quite a bit of that heavy lifting when it comes to providing a Player Facing way to convey Setting!
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That’s my main takeaway from this conversation. It is true that having more evocative name does communicate expectations more than the 3E, 4E or 5E style. I might actually be convinced!
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I think this is a kind correction! Thank you.
I used charged language that did not appropriately convey what I wanted to say. Overall I think “presents barrier to entry” is more in line with my original intention. Even still I’ll try and be more careful.
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If the single save is modified for all the original categories, then I’d be OK with it. Whether the base is the same for all and the modifiers adjusted by bonuses, or, each class has a chart with the appropriate numbers and progressions, works out to the same in math terms. In flavor, it’s likely be the same. I’m anold grognard, though, so prefer flavorful names for the categories.
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