Discussion: Custom saving throws

[Subtext]

Could we not?

Not all of us are div whatevers with 40+ in every save and plenty mundanes are struggling as is with reaching acceptable saves.
(Yay, gearing and hard 5% are fun!)

If anything, tackle the save inflation on other chars because on that point I agree...casters investing in their DCs should have a realistic chance to succeed with them.

Sounds like mostly the same thing to me. +3 to DCs or -3 unisave to everyone is the same thing in vacuum. Also, if you read my post, note that I'm actually on your camp, I was doing fine on a mage, and dont feel like playing another div build so soon after my last one.

It's not the same thing at all.
Divs reach entirely other spheres than regular mundanes when it comes to saves and especially will saves are a problem given how that's what many save or die spells target.

Take your average fighter/wm or even worse a deep rogue or SD. With religiously dweomering unisaves, you're maybe going to end up in the lower 30s and that is already a huge effort.

One can argue if that's fair but with that I'm not too fussed because as said...DCs should be impactful. But any divs reaching the same ballpark plus 10 on top just for existing already relegate any spell into 5% fishing.

That means, hit the divs, but absolutely not the other mundanes.

On a different note...as long as DC casters become more impactful again.
I generally don't mind save or die spells, but...I wouldn't give them to spontaneous casters. Or actually just to INT based casters. Spellswords don't have great DCs to begin with and Wizards are limited by their need for preparation. And WIS and CHA based casters already (potentially) benefit a lot in other ways from their main casting stat.

[Hinty]

So. Just popped in to mention that the example for immunities listed in the Update was a bit of a bad example.

Immunity to Mind Effecting should NOT grant 100% immunity from an Illusionary Fireball.

An Illusionary Fireball comes from the Shadow Evocation spells. Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjurations are both "Shadow" type illusions, "Shadow" illusions are special because they use actual material from the shadow plane to inject actual physical material into their illusions, thus making them partially real. A Shadow Evocation Fireball allows half damage on a will save because the victim realises that it is only half there. Half the damage comes from ACTUAL FIRE the other half comes from illusionary fire.

[-XXX-]

Between spellcraft and +1 unisave on gear anybody can easily get their saves vs. spells to 37 regardless of build. And that's a problem because once the character's saves become 2 less than the average DC of lvl 9 spells, the success rate of all DC spells becomes 5% (i.e. failure only on a hard 1).

A character is never going need higher saves than that, so what abilities like divine grace and dark blessing actually do here is saving the player a bunch of gp while gearing their character and/or opening the runic slots for other enchantments (in this case likely +1 CHA). That's not really such a big deal IMO - certainly not in the "DC spells are a thing, I am being shoehorned to play a paladin now" way.

While I understand that instantly losing to death spells isn't the most fun gameplay experience, DC spells are ATM the only thing that is not being balanced around optimized builds with optimized gear and are instead being kept in a weak state just to protect underleveled, undergeared and suboptimal characters - we've got to at least acknowledge the balance design inconsistency here regardless of how we feel about the matter.


But I digress - this change was a good thing.

[AnselHoenheim]

As the bard nerf was actually a necessary fix, the fact that some spells were ignoring spellcraft was also a necessary fix.

Now, modifying how saves work it's also a very dangerous tweak, if it is minimum, the change will affect nothing, and it is too much, we'll see again save or die spells flourishing once more that are precisely not the most engaging content, be it PvP or PvM alike.

[-XXX-]

Now, modifying how saves work it's also a very dangerous tweak, if it is minimum, the change will affect nothing, and it is too much, we'll see again save or die spells flourishing once more that are precisely not the most engaging content, be it PvP or PvM alike.

Having some of the supposedly most powerful spells in D&D do literally nothing 95% of the time isn't OK either.

DC spells have hard counters - now even moreso with long duration spell mantles.

I also wouldn't worry too much about PvE - most endgame monsters have either very high saves or straight up immunities. The actual usefulness of these spells in PvE is debatable.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

If they standardize the saving throw issue, maybe this paves the way for save-or-die spells to be reworked to the gradient of --

save-"but a scratch"-ouch-die

This is the model that PF2e moved towards, and I think would help the nexus of issues a lot on Arelith.

[Yvesza]

To break down the next part of the update I'll go line by line.

- Successful saving throws against spells cast by player characters now apply temporary penalties to saving throws with the same descriptor

This really enforces much of the same issues we have now, pick only the best spells and do not experiment. If you can't cast the exact same spell 17~ times (Spontaneous casters) then you really can't take advantage of this. It's far too niche and really just pushes people to want to use Save or die spells, as they're all Save vs death.

- The amount depends on the spell's innate level:
- 2 for spells of innate levels 7 and above, and
- 1 for spells of innate levels 4 to 6.
- Weaker spells do not increase the penalty, but also refresh its duration.

It's hard to make a comment on this currently, so I'll refrain

- This penalty stacks over multiple casts and lasts for 3 rounds. Successful saving throws against spells with the same descriptor refresh the duration.

Three rounds is pitifully low, even the slightest interruption and all of the work you've done is gone. Refreshing on recast doesn't aid at all, there are too many ways to mitigate this penalty for players.

- The penalty cannot lower a character's effective saving throws below 35, which means that only characters with higher saves are affected.

35 is considerably high, this leaves the average spellcast of DC39 (A 9th circle spell) a pitiful 20% chance to succeed. Any spell of 6th level and below will never rise above a 5% chance to succeed.

- Saving throws against persistent areas of effect and spells cast via items do not increase or extend the penalty.

Persistent AoE effects now do not benefit you at all outside of saveless effects that they might have, divine casterslost all offensive potential with this change alone.

- Greater Restoration and the -pray command clear the current penalty.

Not only can you -pray away the first failed save you have, you'll completely refresh your saves back to full *and* you can use greater restoration (A spell that is avaliable as a scroll, or usable from a crafted item at instant speed) to undo any penalties you might have. Not only is it exceptionally hard to stack the debuff high enough to threaten anyone, the debuff won't ever be particularly dangerous *and* it's easily cleansed away.


The numbers are not just conservative, a caster needs to jump through hoops to even come close to competence and all of that can be washed away with ease. Why would anyone attempt to use control spells when save or die spells will kill the victim and not give them potentially multiple opportunities to reset their saves and by that, make all of the limited spells you have per day far less valuable.

There's no world in which a caster can functionally take advantage of this update in any meaningful way, the maths alone speak to how ineffective it is to try to use DC spell as they are now.


To summerize,
- persistent AoE spells are now exceptionally weak and don't even really contribute towards the overall goal of lowering saves.
- All saves are expected to sit at 35, every spell of 6th level and below that checks DC's has limited to no use.
- Save debuff duration is so low that you're expected to stand still and cast at your target constantly, if you happen to have a threat run towards you at all (Player versus Player) then all of the work (And the many spells you've used to try to debuff their saves) will all have gone to waste.

The duration on the save debuff needs to be far longer, the "soft cap" of 35 on saves is still way too high, persistent AoE effects need to contribute to failing saves and the restriction on descriptors is yet another hoop that shouldn't exist. Casters aren't just weakened by these two updates, they're crippled and resigned to summons, hastes and dispells.

[JustMonika]

As noted above, this seems like a very, very minor buff.

In contrast to the above however, I'm interested to see how this plays out in real terms. It seems to me this is a deliberately cautious update with multiple numbers that can be gently nudged until the right ones are hit.

[ReverentBlade]

I like the direction of the latest update. It has lots of small numbers that can be nudged around until it feels good. I would personally remove the exemption for AOE clouds. Positioning correctly and not running through a cloud repeatedly and stacking up your debuff SHOULD be a thing you have to get good at when facing a mage. I am cautiously optimistic about this update. The above poster "Yvesza" does have good points, but I -can- think of a few ways I could make use of the debuff.

Timestop-Acid Cloud-Mind Fog-Start spamming Weird...it could be a thing, maybe.

[Exordius]

To break down the next part of the update I'll go line by line.

- Successful saving throws against spells cast by player characters now apply temporary penalties to saving throws with the same descriptor

This really enforces much of the same issues we have now, pick only the best spells and do not experiment. If you can't cast the exact same spell 17~ times (Spontaneous casters) then you really can't take advantage of this. It's far too niche and really just pushes people to want to use Save or die spells, as they're all Save vs death.

- The amount depends on the spell's innate level:
- 2 for spells of innate levels 7 and above, and
- 1 for spells of innate levels 4 to 6.
- Weaker spells do not increase the penalty, but also refresh its duration.

It's hard to make a comment on this currently, so I'll refrain

- This penalty stacks over multiple casts and lasts for 3 rounds. Successful saving throws against spells with the same descriptor refresh the duration.

Three rounds is pitifully low, even the slightest interruption and all of the work you've done is gone. Refreshing on recast doesn't aid at all, there are too many ways to mitigate this penalty for players.

- The penalty cannot lower a character's effective saving throws below 35, which means that only characters with higher saves are affected.

35 is considerably high, this leaves the average spellcast of DC39 (A 9th circle spell) a pitiful 20% chance to succeed. Any spell of 6th level and below will never rise above a 5% chance to succeed.

- Saving throws against persistent areas of effect and spells cast via items do not increase or extend the penalty.

Persistent AoE effects now do not benefit you at all outside of saveless effects that they might have, divine casterslost all offensive potential with this change alone.

- Greater Restoration and the -pray command clear the current penalty.

Not only can you -pray away the first failed save you have, you'll completely refresh your saves back to full *and* you can use greater restoration (A spell that is avaliable as a scroll, or usable from a crafted item at instant speed) to undo any penalties you might have. Not only is it exceptionally hard to stack the debuff high enough to threaten anyone, the debuff won't ever be particularly dangerous *and* it's easily cleansed away.


The numbers are not just conservative, a caster needs to jump through hoops to even come close to competence and all of that can be washed away with ease. Why would anyone attempt to use control spells when save or die spells will kill the victim and not give them potentially multiple opportunities to reset their saves and by that, make all of the limited spells you have per day far less valuable.

There's no world in which a caster can functionally take advantage of this update in any meaningful way, the maths alone speak to how ineffective it is to try to use DC spell as they are now.


To summerize,
- persistent AoE spells are now exceptionally weak and don't even really contribute towards the overall goal of lowering saves.
- All saves are expected to sit at 35, every spell of 6th level and below that checks DC's has limited to no use.
- Save debuff duration is so low that you're expected to stand still and cast at your target constantly, if you happen to have a threat run towards you at all (Player versus Player) then all of the work (And the many spells you've used to try to debuff their saves) will all have gone to waste.

The duration on the save debuff needs to be far longer, the "soft cap" of 35 on saves is still way too high, persistent AoE effects need to contribute to failing saves and the restriction on descriptors is yet another hoop that shouldn't exist. Casters aren't just weakened by these two updates, they're crippled and resigned to summons, hastes and dispells.

Have to agree, this change does nothing to mitigate the disaster that the first change represents.

[AstralUniverse]

The second part seems reasonable to me. I think that 3 rounds is a long time to kite a bit and refresh the debuff. Personally if my character is fighting a mage and is getting down to 35 saves I'm getting nervous and might even panic Pray off the debuff if I see some death spell being casted at me. This is all speculation still but I'm under the impression that 3 rounds is a reasonable amount of time to keep in tempo. If you cant find the time to cast at least 1 offensive every 1 or 2 rounds then I dont think you're winning anyway. I believe that casters will have to adapt the tactic and include more saveless slows on the ground and other kiting methods will raise in value but the current state seems reasonable to me on paper. We'll see.

[Yvesza]

The second part seems reasonable to me. I think that 3 rounds is a long time to kite a bit and refresh the debuff. Personally if my character is fighting a mage and is getting down to 35 saves I'm getting nervous and might even panic Pray off the debuff if I see some death spell being casted at me. This is all speculation still but I'm under the impression that 3 rounds is a reasonable amount of time to keep in tempo. If you cant find the time to cast at least 1 offensive every 1 or 2 rounds then I dont think you're winning anyway. I believe that casters will have to adapt the tactic and include more saveless slows on the ground and other kiting methods will raise in value but the current state seems reasonable to me on paper. We'll see.

Casters won't win, you're correct. They're expected to cast every three rounds with spells that work five to fifteen percent of the time. You cannot do anything to stop or slow peole with anything that isn't saveless or fishing for ones.

Prior to this change against any decent martial fights would last two to four minutes as we traded breaches for immunities as I attempted to find exactly the right moment to disable and kill them... Now they just click on a caster and they die as all of their control spells are non-functional outside of fishing for 1's.

The full sum of these changes make low AC casters entirely unviable, a caster without 60+ AC cannot stand still to gamble on a 200 to 300 damage flurry. Higher AC AC casters will just double down on saveless, or save vs death spells.

We're moving from an imperfect but relatively balanced system to something that perpetuates save bloat and relegates casters to being haste bots.

[AstralUniverse]

Casters won't win, you're correct.

Something I never said anywhere? I think you misunderstood my post maybe. I think casters have a fair chance here and that it's a skill game from this point.

[Yvesza]

Casters won't win, you're correct.

Something I never said anywhere? I think you misunderstood my post maybe. I think casters have a fair chance here and that it's a skill game from this point.

There's nothing skillfull about the system provided, casters do not have functional tools at this point and there's certainly no skill in fishing for ones. Nevermind that spellbooks are simply not large enough even as a spontaneous caster.

I cannot stress how imbalaced this is, the only people casters will threaten will be inexperienced and ungeared players. Everyone else knew the counterplay and even prior to this casters would run dry of spells against competent players.

[Vangrave]

Just some brief thoughts on all these changes. I understand it's a work in progress, but I can only comment on the changes I know about, not unknown future changes.

- These changes further pigeonhole casters into buff and summon bots more than they already were. Not engaging.

- There are no spells with saves below level 5 worth using anymore. Hell, probably nothing below 6. Maybe grease and web if your opponent somehow has no FoM potions.

- The only DC spells worth using are now high level save or die, as even if you blow multiple spells to tear someone's saves down to 35, you cannot afford to do it twice, which means your DC spell must be impossible to pray out of, i.e. it must kill them.

- This change disproportionately harms caster clerics and wizards, which don't have the spell slots or flexibility to pack a significant amount of damage spells. I think most people vastly overestimate how many high level spell slots wizards have.

- Following up on that, I'm not sure casters actually have enough spells to kill a competent player with the current state of these changes. If your target knows how to handle summons, I'm not sure you have enough spell slots to actually put an opponent down barring instant death spells since you can't put them in a vulnerable enough situation to pray without ground cc.

- The list of classes that will benefit from the current 3 round save reductions is: invokers. That's it. It's too limited to be useful for other casters due to requiring the same descriptor, the incredibly limited floor, the short duration, and the loss of any protection vs melee casters had. Even after debuffing you can't get persistent ground based effect saves to the usefulness they were at before.

- Casters have lost any significant way to dissuade a warrior from walking up to them and critting them. Premonition is certainly not stopping much these days and besides that breaches have proliferated to the point that damage shields are also not particularly reliable.

Maybe these changes will be accompanied by further changes to balance of DC spells and everything will be adjusted in the future, but in my experience changes for consistency (e.g. tenser's changes, removing the ability to use planar conduit from abjurers, transmuters, and evokers and killing the ability to play them as anything other than reanimators) aren't usually followed up with any kind of compensatory buffs - the class is left hobbled and newer things are worked on.

[Morgy]

I think currently, as I maybe read already, spells like: WoF, Harm, IGMS and Acid Fog are the way to go. Spells that can be countered, but require planning/breachable protections to do so. DCs are just a very old fashioned system that are way too ‘coin flip’ (which is fine for PnP, but this is real time).

That would take a lot of work, but altering a few more spells at a time to have either potent, but short-lived effects; or simply be damage spells with mitigating protections (igms with shield), seem more balanced/useful.

[Edens_Fall]

I would like to see an increase in spells slots for casters (wiz and sorc) as a result of this update. Currently there just aren't enough slots to go fishing for 1's or blasting away in an effort to reduce saves on a target. As it is, one must buff a summon and run behind them, saving all your attack spells for the final boss.

That or maybe dropping the truely useable spells down a few lvls to those slots never used anymore? Not sure if that's a feasible idea though.

[TurningLeaf]

Fort: 34
Reflex: 29
Will: 31

These saves seem really high for a sorc/ranger that also needed charisma, but it seems like you're saying they're average.

[-XXX-]

Fort: 34
Reflex: 29
Will: 31

These saves seem really high for a sorc/ranger that also needed charisma, but it seems like you're saying they're average.

There are +2 UNI save items in the game.

That means it's not difficult to get +14 saves from gear. Additional +6 saves vs. spells can be gained simply from hard spellcraft ranks = +20 saves bonus cap can be reached without much trouble vs. spells regardless of build. It's just a matter of gear.

Let's try some napkin math here: fortitude save for lvl 30 human sorcerer

11 = Base Save (sorcerer; fort = LOW save)
+9 = CON modifier (16 CON base +12 gear)
+14 = Gear UNI Saves modifier
+6 = 30 spellcraft ranks
---------------------------------------------------------------------
40 fort save vs spells (34 fort vs everything else)

For comparison if they had ESF: Necromancy and 38 CHA the DC of their WoB would be 39


The gear needed to reach these numbers uses greater runes (+1 CHA, +1 CON, +1 UNI and enchantable +2 UNI rings and amulet exist), so it's not even hard 5% masterwork runic stuff.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I didn't really read what others have written, because there are more than likely a lot of knee jerk reactions along the way. But me personally, I am excited to see how this plays out even if I am concerned that it could be a disaster. While the idea of lowering saves is great to me, and I think that lowering the saves with spells is a neat idea, it really does put a lot of strain on the caster to know more than they already have too. As it stood, you already had a lot of guess work when using dc spells since some are better than others against certain classes. Now I have to figure out how high your saves are too as a caster? It seems like a lot, so hopefully there's some feedback in the logs on what's happening with this as it plays out.


Either way, win lose or draw when it's all said and done, I do commend you for trying such a drastic step.

[Mattamue]

An interesting approach to spell DCs. Individually tweaking the spells would be an even more thankless and impossible task. Looking forward to seeing it play out.

[TurningLeaf]

These saves seem really high for a sorc/ranger that also needed charisma, but it seems like you're saying they're average.

There are +2 UNI save items in the game.

That means it's not difficult to get +14 saves from gear. Additional +6 saves vs. spells can be gained simply from hard spellcraft ranks = +20 saves bonus cap can be reached without much trouble vs. spells regardless of build. It's just a matter of gear.

So what you're saying is that it's common to be running around in full +1 stat/+1 stat/+2 uni gear? Or just that it's achievable?

[Vangrave]

These saves seem really high for a sorc/ranger that also needed charisma, but it seems like you're saying they're average.

There are +2 UNI save items in the game.

That means it's not difficult to get +14 saves from gear. Additional +6 saves vs. spells can be gained simply from hard spellcraft ranks = +20 saves bonus cap can be reached without much trouble vs. spells regardless of build. It's just a matter of gear.

So what you're saying is that it's common to be running around in full +1 stat/+1 stat/+2 uni gear? Or just that it's achievable?

The numbers are a bit off because most people don't 5% those items and as far as I know there aren't +2 saves for every slot, but on the other hand people do put spellcraft ranks onto their gear and there are other non gear ways to boost saves. Casters will also empower zoo spells sometimes to push up their saves further, protection from evil/good provides more saves, etc. etc.

Only the devs actually know what the average saves for level 30s are, and our own guesses are going to be highly colored by the people we play with (or against, as it were).

Well, ultimately, the crux of the issue comes down to

1) Spells and dispels are limited
2) There are potions and abilities that are often unbreachable and completely protect from most instant death effects (clarity, lmb, death ward, etc.)
3) These protections are effectively unlimited over the course of a single combat as long as the player is prepared,
4) There is no equivalent method available to prevent physical damage aside from breachable damage resistance and damage shields, which are significantly weaker in scroll form and can sometimes be bypassed entirely.
5) The way DC casters got around this was by using highly efficient spells (tentacles, spellcraft ignoring ground effects) that had a decent chance of working and could potentially force the enemy to use -pray.

These highly efficient spells are now highly reduced in power or effectively unusable, depending on the spell, and so casters are more likely to lose battles of attrition, as all of their methods of combat (summons & spells) are highly limited, while the counters to them are effectively unlimited.

We also know there's some kind of conduit nerf in the works, but don't know just how strong it will be. I'm personally trying to examine the changes in the context of the idea of conduit losing some damage and ~3 AB, but it's possible it will lose more.

It's a tricky situation to balance because there are classes (e.g. rogues) who have at least one cripplingly low save and lean heavily on the unbreachable protections.

[-XXX-]

So what you're saying is that it's common to be running around in full +1 stat/+1 stat/+2 uni gear? Or just that it's achievable?

Yes, people are maxing their saves.

A +1 stat, +1 stat, +1 UNI gear piece requires a lesser rune and costs around 8K to make.
Any build can use such gear get their saves vs spells to 37 on their low save (which is functionally the same as having higher saves as the character will fail the DC39 of lvl 9 spells only on a roll of hard 1 in either case)


Yes, people are using +2 UNI gear.

One can get 3x +2 UNI gear pieces (there is an amulet and there are rings - all of which can be bought from an NPC vendor).
Enchanting these items requires a hard 5% enchantment and a lesser bejeweled rune, so they are less common, but they too are used fairly frequently.
My character alone has created over a dozen of these items for other characters on request - they rarely cost more than 100K a piece to make.
This is particularly useful for melee characters who do not necessarily want to put a +1 UNI save on their main hand weapon - but even they can get +13 UNI save bonus from their gear without much trouble.

[AstralUniverse]

And then how much Discipline are you left with? How many 'prime' stats can your build have with all this unisave? 2 at best? I will once more reiterate that while saves in vacuum are *possibly* very high, in reality, they just arent (unless you enter hard 5s and full masterwork runed gear territory). Like.. Not gonna lie.. a fully geared mundane character with hard 5s and masterwork runes is going to rekt casters in 1v1 and probably not just 1v1. No one is denying that. But do people actually play their characters long enough to reach it is a different story and the reality is that for every mundane character in this game you probably have 2-3 casters.