Crowfield House Rules: Saving Throws

James asked, "Have you decided what game you're going to use?"  I didn't have an answer for him, but the answer is "I will be using White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game, but with a lot of house rules." It's so many house rules, in fact, that I wonder if I'm making my own OSR game.

One of the rules I'm changing is the is the rule for savings throws.

Wikipedia says that a saving throw "...is a roll of dice used to determine whether magic, poison, or various other types of attacks are effective against a character..." In other words, it gives a player a chance to avoid some sort of terrible fate, like characters in a novel do.

What Other People Have Done

I'm not trying to re-invent the wheel here.  In fact, I very much want Crowfield to feel like an old-school gaming experience. So let's look at how it's been done before.

Dungeons & Dragons Method (1974)

When D&D first came out in 1974, it had five rather arbitrary categories of saving throws:

• Death Ray or Poison
• All Wands - Including Polymorph or Paralization
• Stone (i.e. being turned to stone by a medusa or similar)
• Dragon Breath
• Staves & Spells

In my mind, these categories suck. They're all well and good for things that easily fit into one of the categories, but most situations do not. For example, let's say that Jalice accidentally triggers a trap while trying to disable it. Suddenly a huge, razor sharp blade swings across the hallway! The DM wants to give Jalice a chance to roll out of the way. What category does that fit in?

Because this method was in effect until the second half of the year 2000, this is the method used by most OSR retro-clones.

Tunnels & Trolls Method (1975)

In 1975, Ken St. Andre fixed a lot of D&D's stupidity when he wrote Tunnels & Trolls. The saving throw mechanic was one of those things he fixed.

In T&T, characters had another ability score: Luck. In essence, this ability score was that character's saving throw no matter what danger they faced. That was both the strength and weakness of this system.

If Jalice is trying to roll out of the way of a swinging scythe, surely her high Dexterity should help her. It doesn't.

If she pricked her finger on a poisoned needle trap, it seems her low Constitution score should hurt her. It doesn't.

To be fair, the D&D system had the same issues. So, this system was much better than D&D's, but it still had its problems.

The Swords & Wizardry retro-clone uses a system kind of like this.

The Fantasy Trip Method (1980)

In 1980, (the American) Steve Jackson designed what I feel to be the perfect system for saving throws. It's a lot like T&T's method, except that instead of having a separate ability score the player rolls against the most appropriate one.

So when Jalice tries to avoid the swinging blade, she rolls against her Dexterity. If she's trying to survive the poison, she rolls against her Strength (in TFT, Strength served as the Constitution score as well). If Jalice wants to resist an evil sorcerer's attempt to control her mind, she would roll against her Intelligence.

A very simple system that's intuitive. It's easy for the GM to determine what roll to ask for, and it keeps the game moving.

This system was carried over into Steve Jackson's GURPS in 1986. It was adopted into Tunnels & Trolls with its 7th Edition in 2005 and it's what Dungeons & Dragons started using in 2014 with the publication of its 5th Edition.

As far as I know, no D&D retro-clone uses this method. There's a good reason for this, too. Part of D&D's core design is that characters start off weak and grow in power. In this system your saving throw only improves if your ability scores improve.

The d20 System Method (2000)

In the year 2000, the d20 System was used to power the 3rd edition of D&D. Saving throws in this edition are essentially the same as the 1974 method, except the categories have changed:

• Reflex
• Fortitude
• Will

I like these a lot. Much like the TFT method, it's fast and easy to use: Jalice tries to avoid the swinging blade with a Reflex save, she survives the poison with a Fortitude save, and she resists the evil sorcerer's mind control with a Will save. Nice and simple.

As far as I know, no retro-clone uses this system. In fact, dislike of this system by some "grognards" was one of the things that led to the OSR and retro-clone movements.

What I'm Going to Do

While I like the d20 System method, I like the one based on ability scores better. My plan is to roll saves as follows:

Roll 1d20 + ability score modifier + experience bonus - difficulty factor. 

If the result is 11 or better, the character makes the save.

I think that's simple and to the point. What do you think?