Talk:Standardized Saves (3.5e Variant Rule)

Resistance Items

Rather than saying your base saves don't stack with resistance items, you should probably just remove them. As it stands a +2 resistance item is only helpful at level 2 and a +5 stops being useful by level 6, long before you can even afford them. Why not just dump them entirely instead of leaving them in as a wealth trap? - TarkisFlux 18:51, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

I thought it was obvious, but if you think I should mention it specifically, I'll do so... --Ghostwheel 22:07, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Starting Saves

Instead of making people hate their low starting stats even more (because now they have no hope of raising their saves), why not just remove stats entirely from saves? Give them a strong save +4, a moderate save +2, and a weak save +0.

Or, make it based on class in a way that they still pick a strong save (an extra +2) and if the class had a save as strong, it raises that save from +0 to +2. If they gain classes later with different strong saves, it will do the same thing. So a cleric would get +2/+0/+2 as normal (with an extra +2 bonus chosen by the player at creation), a cleric 1/fighter 1 would still be at +2/+0/+2, but a cleric 1/rogue 1 would be +2/+2/+2.

Continue capping the +2 from other abilities that add ability modifiers to saves, but don't make it be locked down.

Also a potential pitfall is that reducing stats were a good way to reduce saves. I like using Dex poison in combination with blasty spells on PCs. --Andrew Arnott (talk, email) 19:05, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

A few reasons; I still want ability scores to matter, classes already have a very strong effect on saves due to how they decide one's primary ability score, and giving just the primary save from first level essentially makes everyone the same--everyone would just get +2 to all saves, period. I personally strongly dislike ability, and prefer just straight penalties to specific saves--and that still works well. The difference with this is that the -2 is less likely to push someone off the RNG, where before they were already off the RNG, if that makes sense. --Ghostwheel 22:11, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Divine Grace and the Like

Should I up the maximum bonus from Divine Grace and the like from +2? (If so, to how much? +3? +4? +5 would be the max I'd consider...) If so (or not), why? --Ghostwheel 07:05, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

I would say simply make it direct replacement. As in, Divine Grace allows you to use Charisma as an additional calculable stat for any given save. Under this, Fort would become Str, Con or Cha; Ref would be Dex, Int or Cha, etc. It could be very powerful, but I think a replacement effect is better for this. MisterSinister 22:48, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Right now it's like getting all 3 of the save feats at once, or Luck of Heroes twice. And in a setup where the only way to get ahead in the save game is to take feats or get class features, that's not bad. So I don't think there's a compelling reason to boost it, but you could if you felt like it. - TarkisFlux 23:19, April 1, 2010 (UTC)