Recently I've been toying with the idea of making spells work the other way around, kinda like 4th edition.So saves are static and casters roll for their spells. The thing is PFRPG spells tend to have more powerful effects, as levels go up and casters would get an increase in successful spell attacks by 5% since the ties go to the die roller. My other concern is that the players tend to like the "idea" of having control over their characters, especially against spells like Finger of Death.
I want to hear your thoughts on the matter.
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I tried this once...didn't work out so well for one very big reason.
Critical Hits
How do you manage critical hits, especially with spells that were not designed as such. To tell you the truth, i never thought the idea that touch spells (or range touch) could crit was very fair. Why can a ray of disintegration crit, but sneak attack can't. This is why we (at our games) did away with spells that can crit to begin with.
Then again, you may find a completely different result then us, try it out, have fun with it. If it doesn't work, don't do it again.
An issue with this idea in general is that the DM knows all of the monster's stats, and you don't. So you have to roll every attack for, say, fireball, and ask him every time unless it was higher than one that hit if the attack hit, then roll the damage. other way around, DM does the rolls against the DC you tell him, then he mentally divides damage in half if they made it or just takes the secondary effect. It's a lot more work for players, who as a general rule aren't crunching math as often as the DM. On top of that, the PCs are more complex than a monster and have more fluctuating variables, which makes basing that off of them an even worse idea. Attack rolls don't have this problem because they remain the same unless strength/dex is reduced.
If you can find a solution to this issue, then more power to you. But that's the #1 reason defenses don't work for me.