Lost Galmagia: Saving Throws

I’ve been doing some reading in OSR literature on Saving Throws in theory and practice and am ready to embrace, if slightly tweak the old school design for them (for example, https://thedwarfdiedagain.blogspot.com/2022/11/in-defense-of-classic-d-saving-throws.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email). In part to play into the design truism that high attributes are nice to have and not need to have, and keep things more tied to class.

That being said, I am changing the terminology and technology a little to keep with my other design principles. The saving throws are divided into five categories that are both specific and evocative.

·  Death, Disintegration, or Poison: basically, anything that makes your character keel over dead. This is also what you roll to avoid death if a fight ends with you at untended 0 HP.

·  Wands, Traps, or Lightning Bolts: your chance to dodge out of the way of things that need to be aimed at you, or that pure reflexes would protect you from, that armor wouldn’t normally stop.

·  Paralysis, Petrification, or Polymorph: The three p’s of taking away your bodily autonomy, essentially anything that changes your physical form without your consent.

·  Dragon Breath, Cave-in or Fireball: anything that your need to leap clear of a larger area or find cover to avoid or mitigate the effect.

·  Fear, Charm, or Spells: this is essentially any other magic, these are usually resisted based on willpower at the last moment as there’s no sign of what is coming your way, unlike other magics.  

The goal here is for players to immediately know what they would need to save against vs. what’s happening, just by looking at their sheet, while also letting them know that some of this $#!^ exists in the game world. “Dragon Breath? Petrification?! Disintegration!?!? Oh My!”

As for numbers, I’m going to give one set, and they state that while you’re 5-8^th level if you’re dealing with a save from a 1-4^th level threat you have a +3 on the roll. When you’re 9^th level or higher you get a +3 on saves vs. 8^th-9^th level threats and +7 vs. 1-4^th level threats. This is pretty much 13^th Age tiering but it standardizes some of the rules, means that spells are still effective against high level PCs (provided they are high level spells!), and sticks with my 1 in 6 chances motif. I do vary between 14+ and 15+ because of the gap in translating 1d6 to 1d20.

Your Divine Favor attribute provides a modifier to all saves. This is a change from the willpower aspect of Wisdom providing bonuses to just some saves: if the gods love you, you’re more likely to survive. If they hate you, not so much.

I’m also splitting out dwarves from halflings to give halflings and edge on the reflexes aspect of Wands/Traps/Bolts.

Class	Death, Disint., Poison	Wands, Traps, Bolts	Paralysis, Petrification. Polymorph	Dragon Breath, Fireball	Spells
Cleric	11	11	14	15	15
Dwarf	8	11	11	14	11
Elf	11	14	14	15	11
Fighter	11	14	14	15	15
Halfling	8	8	11	14	11
M-U	14	14	14	15	11
Rogue	14	11	14	15	15
Normal	14	15	15	18	18