Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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As part of the effort to dial back the power of spellcasters a bit, esp. in the land of "save or you're screwed" spells, we talked about recovery saves. Basically, spells that resulted in ongoing conditions would follow something like the hold person principle, giving a new save each round to shake it off. To make it a uniform mechanic, we talked about something you do at the END of your turn, which could mean one of several things:
1.[b] As a character, you can make a recovery save as a swift action at the end of your turn vs. a condition affecting you. This limits it to one roll per round (and imposes a slight cost, as it prevents you doing other swift actions on your turn, like quickened spells), and you would have to choose which effect to save against if more than one is on you. This decouples it from spells and makes it so you don't have to alter any text in the spells themselves. Everything can work as written.
[b]2. As #1 above but it's a free action that you can do at the end of your turn vs. EVERY condition that is on you.
3. You can make it an inherent quality of the spells that they allow recovery saves. This model would be a free action at the end of your turn, and you'd roll for each effect. This might be more effective in reducing the 'I win' power of these spells because the spells themselves would stipulate their 'recoverability' (like hold monster does). Maybe it's just a psychological distinction.
Thinking about recovery saves leave you with a couple of things to think about as far as types of spells:
A. Effects that are just flat-out damage effects. Most of these are instant. A few are ongoing. I suppose if we'd led a person shrug off a charm spell, they should be able to quench ongoing damage from an acid arrow. I dunno, though, I'm really thinking much more about status conditions than just damage, or even ability damage (whether poison or disease or straight ability-attack spells). I think that's where the problem area lies, more so than raw hit points.
B. Effects that are instantaneous/permanent conditions. These are the real hardcore screw-you effects. Bestow curse, blindness/deafness*, flesh to stone, feeblemind, insanity, finger of death, imprisonment, baleful polymorph, plane shift (to some instalethal plane; although I should say I always thought that was a chump use of the spell; it should only affect willing targets). These are iconic types of effect, and it would be kinda weird for somebody to just instantly snap out of it when they've been turned into a statue or a corpse. Still, the game should acknowledge that failing a save vs. a super-bad effect like this is worse than failing a save vs. fear or contagion or eyebite or whatever.
Long story short, following the precedent of psychic crush, insta/permanent take-out effects should give a +4 bonus on their saving throw. Yes, they are more powerful and lasting effects than comparable-level spells, but the target has a better chance to resist. There's your trade-off as a caster.
* Can we please separate blindness and deafness back into separate spells like in 1st Ed? The game-mechanical effect of deafness is so piddly compared to blindness, they really should be different levels. And, for that matter, blindness is so hardcore in 3rd Ed that there is no way a 2nd/3rd level spell should be able to PERMANENTLY lay that on somebody.
C. Effects that normally allow no save. How do you make a new save vs. a spell that didn't give you one in the first place? To make it no different than a spell where you had to save seems a little weenie. Perhaps require two successful recovery saves to shake off the effect of power word stun or irresistible dance.
D. Spells with open-ended durations. These mostly make me think of mind-control spells like suggestion, geas, and charm/dominate person/monster, where you might give instruction that takes a variable and unpredictable amount of time to complete. How exactly would you reconcile this with recovery saves. That is an excellent question. My answers would probably be that:
- Suggestion and geas have a sort of self-limited duration already in that their duration is limited to a specific task. I dunno. Those are both hard to say.
- Charm I have been thinking of recasting as a skill spell that you cast on yourself to improve your Dip, which would moot the point.
- Dominate I could reasonably see allowing recovery saves each round, though that already sort of exists with the resaves allowed for "actions against your nature" stuff.
I dunno, if those sound like underwhelming explanations to you, that makes two of us.
E. Everything else. Any other spell you can just keep saving til you throw it off. True, this makes pretty much all combat condition-imposing spells have a duration of rounds rather than minutes or hours, but I think that is all to the good. I would include effects like ability penalties (say, ray of enfeeblement) in this category, but not ability damage/drain. Negative levels, I'm not quite sure whether you'd call that damage (I think I would) or a condition (I could see that too, though). I think everything else this side of instapermanent conditions would work just fine with a recovery save mechanic.
So, recovery saves as a mechanic?
What do people think?
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I liked the idea back in whatever other thread it was discussed a while back, and still like the main idea now. I think the big problem is that to impliment this the best way IMO, would require an entry in the saving throw line of each spell, which is a lot harder of a change, and makes it harder to use spells from other sources. This would give the advantage of allowing some spells to not allow recovery rules, other to have penalties or bonuses to recover vs. the standard save to sucumb to the effects in the first place, etc.
Also, there is another category of effects, that can continue to affect a creature because they actually affect all creatures in the area, such as stinking cloud, entangle, etc. I would want these to not allow recovery checks until the creature is out of the area. (Which would be moot for entangle, but for stinking cloud it wouldn't be.)
I would really love to see this implemented, but like JoelF847 said, it would be very hard to do. As such, I think the best way is to house-rule it, but again, I would love to see this finally put into the game.
I'm not sure about a save against things like Acid Arrow, evocation has little enough power compared to other schools. As for permanent effects, I would prefer to just see them gone (a steep demand, I know) but since this wont happen, I am in support of a different way of using it. I don't think I like the idea of making it have a +4 to save against though, since there's still the chance that it'll just remove the target from the encounter (which I despise!). I want to eliminate that chance entirely, but this may be too great of a tweak.
Perhaps if effects like petrification *slowly* turned you to stone, then we could have saves maybe stop or delay the effect until a real cure can be provided. That way its not such an instant "Oh god, I'm useless now, lemme grab my gameboy."
I'm quite amenable to recovery saves for most status effects. I believe that most of the examples that you've provided would all be much more balanced spells if they allowed a saving throw every round. But that being said, I do believe that there should be some spells that should retain their current level of lethality (Imprisonment, Flesh To Stone, Finger Of Death), but with the +4 bonus to the initial save against the spell that you have suggested.
I think that in most cases, the best way to handle these recovery saves would be to allow characters to take a free action to make saving throws against all of the conditions that are affecting them at the end of the round. But I'm not sure you can easily implement a uniform mechanic to handle this. I still believe that you'll have to look at each spell on a case-by-case basis to properly adjucate them. For example: I think that Enchantment/Charm spells like Dominate Person should grant a cumulative bonus to your saving throw to resist the spell every round. This is because you're not only taking a character out of combat, but you're also turning them into a combat asset.
Another question: would this also apply to illusionary effects? The rules state that characters can disbelieve illusions after interacting with them or studying them carefully. Would characters also get a saving throw against illusionary opponents every round to automatically disbelieve them?
insta/permanent take-out effects should give a +4 bonus on their saving throw. Yes, they are more powerful and lasting effects than comparable-level spells, but the target has a better chance to resist. There's your trade-off as a caster.
I like this idea. I think that even if some spells get subsequent saves to escape the effect, there's still an important place for spells that take you out of combat until an ally intervenes to remove the effect. Tactically, this makes a very interesting trade-off.
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As part of the effort to dial back the power of spellcasters a bit, esp. in the land of "save or you're screwed" spells, we talked about recovery saves. Basically, spells that resulted in ongoing conditions would follow something like the hold person principle, giving a new save each round to shake it off. To make it a uniform mechanic, we talked about something you do at the END of your turn, which could mean one of several things:
[b]1.[b] As a character, you can make a recovery save as a swift action at the end of your turn vs. a condition affecting you. This limits it to one roll per round (and imposes a slight cost, as it prevents you doing other swift actions on your turn, like quickened spells), and you would have to choose which effect to save against if more than one is on you. This decouples it from spells and makes it so you don't have to alter any text in the spells themselves. Everything can work as written.
Jason N, I loved this idea when we discussed it back on the Fighters discussion.
Since then I have designed a model which I have been playing by - it's not perfect perhaps, but effective.
Most such spells as you suggested (mostly those that leave a lasting and/or permanent condition) allow a save as a swift action to overcome one "condition". The target "ready's an action" so that he goes just before the caster now. He gets a new save after the initial round and failed save just before the casters turn on the subsequent round and each round thereafter. (the reason for moving the initiative is in the case the wizard goes on 16 and then the subject fails, and then its his turn on init 15 and gets a chance to break out almost instantly before anyone else in the round was able to take advantage of the creature with that condition.) [An alternate system to this is the creature's initiative stays the same, and chooses to use his "Swift" action to attempt to save - but the save isn't resolved until the beginning of the casters next turn. We've tried it both ways.]
Here's how it works: I've developed "trees" of conditions that progress to better conditions with each save. The character starts at whatever condition the spell causes; each round makes a save at same DC. If subsequent save(s) is successful, he moves to the next improvemed condition. He makes a new save the next round; if succeeds gets better again. If a subsequent save fails, he goes backwards to the next worst one. (but never worse than the original). This continues until he either shrugs off all conditions on the tree, or the spell expires. (slipping backwards is a fair compromise IMO since the spell is now allowing a chance to break free when most didn't use to; these ensure the casters spells havevn't been completely nerfed - allowing for very short durations....)
CONDITION - SUMMARY
Cowering - Remove Fear spell will remove. Will Saving Throw to progress.
• Panicked – Will Saving Throw to progress.
• Frightened – Will Saving Throw to progress.
• Shaken – No Save allowed to progress.
Nauseated - Cure Disease will remove. Fortitude Saving Throw to progress.
• Sickened – Fortitude Saving Throw to progress.
• Malaise – Will Saving Throw to progress.
Paralyzed - Remove Paralysis will remove. Fortitude Saving Throw to progress.
• Slow – Will Saving Throw to progress.
• Fatigued – Fortitude Saving Throw to progress.
• Sluggish – Will Saving Throw to progress.
Petrified - Break Enchantment spell will remove. Fortitude Saving Throw to progress.
• Slow – Will Saving Throw to progress.
• Fatigued – Fortitude Saving Throw to progress.
• Sluggish – Will Saving Throw to progress.
Sleeping - Remove Paralysis spell will remove. Will Saving Throw to progress.
• Fatigued – Fortitude Saving Throw to progress.
• Drowsy – Will Saving Throw to progress.
(I created a few more conditions to fill in the blanks)
NOTE: Some of these conditions affect the saving throws negatively, too, making it in the casters favor that the spell won't as easily be broken.
Drowsy: A Drowsy character is suffer a -2 on AC, and has a -1 to all saving throws and skill checks.
Malaise: The creature is suffers a -2 on attack rolls, and suffers a -1 to all skills, saving throws and ability checks.
Sluggish: A sluggish creature has their movement in squares reduced by half (round-down), and may not take full-round or full-attack actions; but may perform a double move (each at half-movement).
(Spells that produce one of these conditions are simple (such as Hold Person causes Parlyze. Flesh to Stone is depicted as the creature slowly turning to stone, then breaking the magic forcing it out, then it starts to consume him again, then he finally breaks it out, but is slowed.....)
Regardless, there have been many other spells that dont have said conditions that have had their descriptions written to integrate these condition trees. Such as:
Hideous Laughter. "Subject makes a save each round while laughing. If successful, the creature stops laughing and can act, but he is slowed." (then you use the tree to determine the progress.)
The rule of thumb for applicable spells are those with lasting durations that continue to maintain their effect; especially if it takes the creature mostly or completely out of combat - and the spell doesnt already have a built-in mechanic for improving (like Web or Entangle does). Spells like Stinking Cloud etc that leave a creature Nauseated - cannot allow a subsequent save to better its condition until it leaves the affected area first - if it reenters, it needs to make a new save or go right back to Nauseated.
NOTE: Slowed is part of two trees. If creature was paralyzed and saves to become slowed and further on that tree, a remove paralysis spell will remove all conditions. If the creature was petrified and moves to slowed and beyond a remove paralysis would not remove the slow, but a break enchantment would. (because of the parent condition).
It's made for a lot more fun, and spells don't kill the players buzz as much when these type of spells affect them - because they now have hope that they can get better, and can at least do SOMETHING instead of just waiting for someone else to do it.
EDIT: you'll note that usually saves of FORT and WILL are needed to shrug off a condition completely - making most spells and conditions effective against most creatures/characters.
Robert
You know, there has been a LOT of discussion in the Spells section regarding Save Or Die Spells, Status Effects, Enchantment Spells, and Recovery Saves. I have to wonder what the designers' thoughts on these matters are?
Well, just to get my two cents in, I do NOT agree with nerfing SoD and SoS spells. I agree that I hate it when my character gets hit with these spells, but I enjoy the flavor and roleplaying aspects of these spells. I feel that if these spells are weakened, it will leave damage as a spell-caster's only good option, and I don't want to see that.
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Well, just to get my two cents in, I do NOT agree with nerfing SoD and SoS spells. I agree that I hate it when my character gets hit with these spells, but I enjoy the flavor and roleplaying aspects of these spells. I feel that if these spells are weakened, it will leave damage as a spell-caster's only good option, and I don't want to see that.
Well, personally, I can find just as much flavor and more in the notion that magic is swirling around for a number of rounds trying to cause the creature to die/turn to stone whatever, and the creature continues to battle and struggle and ward it off as it slowly either destroys him, or is diminishing.
Sure it may not result in as many deaths; but its no less flavorful and can be even more if described right and well.
You can only describe "your heart explodes" once and its over.
Robert
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As part of the effort to dial back the power of spellcasters a bit, esp. in the land of "save or you're screwed" spells, we talked about recovery saves.
I can grudgingly deal with recovery saves as a nerf to spellcasting, because it seems as there's quite a bit of in a snit about "Save-Or-Sit-Around," whether from the player end or worries for the BBEG, so it's probably already a done deal.
Personally, if that goes through, I'd really like it to be focused on spells only, rather than also gelding creatures' extranormal effects, like gaze weapons and the like. The idea of rewriting so that you die in a couple rounds from, say, a banshee's scream (assuming that you don't get buffed in the interim) or 'get better' from looking at a medusa by making a recovery save in the 2nd round of the effect strikes me as hopelessly videogamey/MMOish and not very true to the mythical feel and roots of the creatures.
I also don't know that I like the idea of making them an end of round swift action if the spells are going to be save-every-round-until-you're-all-right. I'd almost feel better off with a move action or (I'd even be okay with a standard action, but I can imagine the response to that) made on your turn. That way, if you make the save, you can still make a partial action, but shaking off the effect is taxing, so you don't go from fully affected to pulling off a full attack.
(Of course, given my preference, I'd keep spells with SoD/SoE's as they are. I think it gives more of a real dangerous flavor than the cop-out MMO "damage" that I feel a couple of my favorite spells have turned into and the flat-out impotence most appear to be in danger of becoming, if public opinion is to be believed.
the mechanic is already there for fatigued and exhausted as an example, just follow suit,
it hits in an instant, an interrupt action as all saves are
the penalty is the change of state, they limit actions
adding an arbitrary action cost anymore than that is double dipping ;)
also would entail inserting a lot of "except in the case of spells..." all over the place