Saving Throws, A Few Thoughts

The long history of saving throws in D&D I shall summarize swiftly. Or not-so-swiftly, if you are familiar with the meandering words of my writing.

B/X saving throws.

Old School Saves

OD&D had five saving throw categories:

• Death Ray or Poison

• All Wands - Including Polymorph or Paralyzation

• Stone

• Dragon Breath

• Staves & Spells

Immediate thoughts upon viewing this grouping:

1. Wands being separated out from Staves & Spells is a curious choice, as there is an obvious similarity between the two.

   
   

2. Dragon Breath being its own saving throw category is a good idea, as it means dragons are special.

   
   

3. Saving throws were originally conceived as derived from the originator of the effect or type of effect rather than the method used by an individual to resist the effect. This is a striking difference compared to the modern view of saving throws.

Most versions of D&D retained this perspective and some permutation of these five up until D&D 3e. B/X changed Staves & Spells to Rods, Staves, and Spells and turned Stone to Paralysis or Turn to Stone. AD&D decided to go with Paralyzation, Poison, or Death Magic, which leads me to believe there was some contention over how paralysis effects should be adjudicated. AD&D likewise created a separate category for Spell and turned Dragon Breath to Breath Weapons.

Various other OSR games have put their own "spin" on saving throws. Swords & Wizardry has a single saving throw and offers classes specific bonuses against types of saving throws (for instance, fighters get a bonus vs. all saves except for spells); Lamentations of the Flame Princess has Paralyze, Poison, Breath Weapon, Magical Device, and Magic; Hyperborea 3e uses a single saving throw but also classes of saving throws (Death, Device, Transformation, Avoidance, and Sorcery) and individual bonuses (for instance, illusionists gain a bonus to perceive illusions); the list goes on and on.

Fixed Saving Throw Difficulties

An important distinction between "old school" (pre-3e) D&D and "modern" (post-3e) D&D is how saving throws difficulties are configured. Old school D&D utilized fixed saving throw difficulties. For instance, in B/X, a level 1 cleric had a saving throw value of 11 vs. Death Ray or Poison. That meant he always needed to roll an 11 or higher on the d20 to succeed on the save. This value improved as the character leveled, meaning that high-level characters were simply more likely to succeed at saving throws.

Certain later additions to the rules included saving throw penalties, such as AD&D 2e's hold person, which stipulated a penalty to saving throws based on the number of creatures targeted.

Armor Class...?

I've said it before and I've said it again: Armor Class is a saving throw against physical attacks. It's just a static number instead of a die roll, and the dice rolling is on the attacker's side rather than the defender's. (On the flip side: an attack roll is a saving throw against "doing nothing" and the difficulty is determined by your opponent's Armor Class.) This is neither here nor there, but I thought you might do well to ponder it, as it may appear on the exam later.

The Great Change: D&D 3e

In OSR games, there could be confusion over what saving throw to utilize in which circumstance, which is why a saving throw priority was established, wherein certain saving throws were given precedence over other saving throws. In my mind, if a saving throw could be covered by two or more categories, let players choose the better save (for more heroic games) or the worse save (for grittier games). Or, better yet, rewrite and clarify the darn categories, which is what D&D 3e did.

Instead of five saving throw categories, characters had but three: Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. These were devised as how the individual character would resist a spell; Fortitude saves being his physical resilience, Reflex saves being his swiftness, and Will saves being his mental resolve. This was clear and simple and fixed all sorts of silliness, but it also created a conundrum: each of these saving throws received a bonus from an ability score (Constitution, Dexterity, and Wisdom, respectively), and thereby elevated those ability scores above others. (The math also got all kinds of wonky at higher levels, but that was just a part of 3e gameplay.)

What to do? D&D 4e had a brilliant idea: allow you to add the better of your two ability scores to your saving throws. Fortitude could be Strength or Constitution; Reflex could be Dexterity or Intelligence, and Will could be Wisdom or Charisma. Brilliant. Problem solved.

Oh, and remember what I said about Armor Class as a saving throw? The authors of 4e decided that this should be done to all the saving throws, converting them to static defenses. Saving throws became a naked d20 roll where an 11 or higher succeeded and a 10 or less failed.

This change (among others) proved unpopular, so it was reverted in 5e.

D&D 4e's saving throw rules.

Variable Saving Throw Values

It should be noted likewise that D&D 3e introduced modular saving throws as opposed to fixed values. D&D 3e decided to take the fixed saving throw system with occasional penalties and streamline it into a system with variable save DCs, so no longer were you rolling against a fixed value, you were rolling a d20, adding a bonus, and comparing it to a "Difficulty Class" (a 3rd-level spell had a difficulty class of 13 + the caster's spellcasting ability modifier, as an example).

D&D 5e

D&D 5e decided to split the middle between these approaches: saving throws were based upon ability scores, and if you were proficient with a saving throw, you added a bonus to the saving throw and compared it to the saving throw DC. This system functions adequately, but it still retains the previous issues whereby certain saving throws are simply better/more common/more useful than other saving throws. (Con-Dex-Wis are better than Str-Int-Cha.)

Meandering Thoughts

Now that the history lesson is over, I have a few thoughts on saving throws.

What exactly is a saving throw? Well, we know based on their implementation that saving throws are always used against deleterious effects. There is no (non-outlier) situation where a character wants to fail a saving throw. If you fail a save, something nasty occurs.

From Gygax himself, a saving throw "represents the chance for the figure concerned to avoid (or at least partially avoid) the cruel results of fate."

A saving throw is likewise mutable within the fiction, as Gygax notes that a successful saving throw may represent "skill, luck, magical protections, quirks of fate and the aid of supernatural powers" (which is not dissimilar to his perspective on Hit Points).

Gygax goes on to spend quite a bit of time elucidating (and justifying) saving throws as a mechanic, but the long and short is that game is better if characters survive, and also try using your imagination.

That being said, let us consider saving throws from a mechanical standpoint. They are a lever that adjusts the difficulty and "balance" of the game, both the existence of the save itself and the potency of the effect upon a failed save. Generally speaking, we can group effects in the following format:

• No Save. The doesn't allow a save to avoid or resist it.

• Save Partial. The effect allows a save to partially mitigate its effect.

• Save Negates. The effect allows a save to totally mitigate it.

Broadly speaking, these are ordered in the order of "acceptable" power of effects. That is, if you have something that takes place without a saving throw, it should be less powerful / destructive than an effect that allows a saving throw to negate it. As an example of each of these:

• Magic Missile (No Save). Costs a spell slot and does a paltry amount of damage.

• Fireball (Save Partial). A reasonable amount of damage on a successful or failed saving throw.

• Hold Person (Save Negates). Total loss of character control that sets a character up for an execution.

D&D has a history of breaking this rule, but modern iterations are a little better about this. As a an example from 5e (2024), many of the monsters have an ability that allows them to grapple a creature of X size or smaller upon hit. No saving throw is allowed because the grappled condition isn't particularly brutal, instead serving to allow a monster to use one of its other abilities, such as a vampire grabbing and then biting. Most effects that add damage (e.g., a giant spider's venomous bite) do not allow a saving throw unless they are imposing another condition, such as Poisoned or Frightened. Any effect that inflicts a large amount of damage (fireball, lightning bolt, cone of cold, various monsters' "death throes") grants a save to reduce its effects, and any effect results in a loss of control over one's character (hypnotic pattern, command, banishment, any monster's "fear aura") allows a save to negate its ill effects. Furthermore, "game over" conditions like the basilisk's petrifying gaze allow two saving throws before a character suffers the full weight of their effects.

One can see a gradual tapering of effect potency with these effects, and fearsome foes have abilities that combine these: the Tarrasque's bellow causes damage, frightens, and deafens on a failed save, and even a successful save causes partial damage despite mitigating the fear and deafness.

With all this being said from a design and mechanics perspective, saving throws are more than "just" a design choice. More importantly, they represent a sense of fair play. They're a psychological trick to palliate the distress of something bad happening to your character. If a spider bites your character and you die automatically, that's a bum deal. If a spider bites your character and he fails his save vs. poison and dies, well, that's still a bum deal, but that saving throw offered a second chance to avoid certain death and you (yeah, you!) biffed it. (Not that you could do anything but roll the die, of course.) It is "no fun" to watch Your Dude take a hit and go down without any sense of control over the situation, and the saving throw creates a sense of control over the character's fate (even if you don't really have any).