AD&D saves - anybody understand these things?

[NickCaligo42]

I might be barking up the wrong forum, but I'm sure I'm not the only oldschool Advanced Dungeons and Dragons player here, so I wanted to raise a question to those more experienced than me.

Anyone familiar with the old system knows about things like THAC0 ("To Hit Armor Class Zero") and the strangely specific saving throws. Instead of Fortitude, Reflex, and Will, you have saves specifically against particular groups of effects: paralysis/poison/death, rods/staves/wands, petrification/polymorph effects, breath weapons, and spells.

This I sort of get. It's a typical trait of AD&D that it tends to micromanage rather than generalize. For instance, ability scores tend to have many numbers rather than just one modifier. Strength has different values for bend bars checks, damage adjustment, and accuracy adjustment, taking into account fine differences between damage and accuracy and how physical strength would impact them each on a separate statistical curve.

Likewise there's a hierarchy of what effects and bad status changes would be harder to resist, so that's how saves are organized. Not how I'd design it, but I understand it. What I don't get is the statistical distribution of the numbers in the table.

[img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/khyron1144/SavesTable.jpg" /]

For those not in the know, the lower the number in a save the better. You want to roll over that number on a 20-sided die to resist the effect in question. The weird thing is that Warriors get the best saves of everyone by the time they hit level 20, but other classes start with much better saves and end with much worse ones.

Does anybody understand the logic at play here? Why would a Rogue start with a save of 12 against petrification and end with 8 while a fighter starts with 17 and ends at 5?

 

[kalt_13]

Just guessing but warriors have the hp to survive lower levels where the rest don't. At higher levels Warrior don't have the damage output the others have so they get survivability instead.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Just guessing but warriors have the hp to survive lower levels where the rest don't. At higher levels Warrior don't have the damage the others have so they get survivability instead.

Hmm. I suppose that makes sense. I'm surprised I didn't think of it myself, actually. Awfully metagamey logic, but I guess that would answer my question.

 

[omicron1]

As an additional point, all the non-melee-only classes have plenty of abilities and spells that may (or may not, depending on what you prepared this morning; Explosive Runes probably won't help you pass a will save) supplement where saving throws are lacking. Warriors probably don't.

Plus, yeah, if you're, in essence, a tank, being taken out in a single hit by a random petrification spell really sucks.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Plus, yeah, if you're, in essence, a tank, being taken out in a single hit by a random petrification spell really sucks.

A guy with the 4th edition Tarrasque as his icon WOULD reply to this thread. Very good points, though. Very in-tune with the whole of the game's organization. I shall take this into account as I continue my research. Thank you.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Many classes have far easier access to protection from various effects than Fighters/Warriors, who really only get magical equipment. Mages can protect themselves from just about anything under the sun at max levels, and Rogues have a smattering of different abilities that let them avoid them.

It also depends on the stat modifying the save, and that Warriors typically start with more HP than Mages or Rogues, so they don't necessarily need the saves so much at early levels, when your chances of facing an enemy that will force you to use, say, a petrification save are low. Also, remember that at high levels, when you ARE facing these monsters, a Warrior is typically first into combat and thus probably is going to be rolling for saves the most often, so it stands to reason he'd get the best ones.

 

[Goodbye.Kitty]

Ah, I remember that chart fondly... well, maybe not-so-fondly. My friends and I often discussed why the chart looked as it did; things like the fact that wizards dodge breath weapons better than rogues, for example. Odd as well that the two saves that come up 99% of the time are spells, followed by poison/death/paralysis. The system does a lot to specify very specific save types, while broad categories like "mental effects" are left out entirely, except if they are a spell. I'm pretty sure that rod/staff/wand was never used in all the years I played, and beyond that I'm not sure why a fireball from a wand warrants a totally different save than one from a spellcaster.

To answer the original question (and with a lot of recent reading of the 30 year D&D history book that was made before the horrible descent into 4e) I'm fairly certain that the chart wasn't made with class roles in mind (eg. tank, DPS, etc) so much situations that actually came up during the games that were being played while the rules were being written. By that, I mean that the saves vs. polymorph likely came into existence during a brainstorm session about what spells could do, and some numbers were jotted down to resist it. Otherwise, I can't see any logical explanation for what classes get what saves. The addition of the psionics handbook's save chart just made the above system even more confusing, and until the reflex/will/fortitude system came along saving throws were really just a random mess. At least, that's what I think!

 

[Dom1]

For a vaguely sensible in-game explanation, how about something like this:

Rogues are inherently pretty agile, crafty people (otherwise they wouldn't be doing that job). So to begin with they have a big natural advantage against something unexpected like a petrification spell. Essentially their whole pre-adventuring life has prepared them to expect the unexpected. But because his skill set generally keeps him out of the fighting, he doesn't improve all that much (he has the wits not to get into situations where people are slinging petrification at him).

A warrior, on the other hand, is likely to begin his adventuring career as a big, dumb hunk of muscle - the farm boy tired of ploughing. So for the first few levels, he's just going to stand there and gape while the wizard points the strange glowy stick at him. But at higher levels, he's been around the block a few times. He's seen enough buddies turned to stone at close range to understand what it means. To have survived that long, he's developed some very impressive survival abilities, and far surpassed the rogue's initial natural advantage.

I'm sure you could shoot this argument down in flames relatively easily, but it works in my head.

 

[barbzilla]

If you are looking for a roleplay reason for the save distributions I would suggest that a warrior typically starts off as a barely trained brute while other classes typically display more skill. As a warrior progresses though they are the most likely to be hit by the effects in question and thus build better defenses as they grow in skill. Meanwhile other classes will use augmentations to help save them and don't have the same need to develop the defenses as far as the warrior. Just a guess though

 

[Deacon Cole]

Most of the stuff in AD&D could be chalked up to "seemed like a good idea at the time." None of it makes sense probably because they made up a rule when the situation suddenly came up in a game and then simply wrote it down if it worked. It didn't have to make sense. Looking for sense in it is like a Jewish kid searching for Easter eggs. You're not going to find anything you want.

 

[Slycne]

Does anybody understand the logic at play here? Why would a Rogue start with a save of 12 against petrification and end with 8 while a fighter starts with 17 and ends at 5?

Because the game is not individually balanced evenly on each level like modern editions. Which to start sounds bad, but in my experience actually makes for a more interesting game. So rather than everyone being roughly equal all the time, advancing at the same rates, etc. Many of the older editions had level caps for powerful classes or the experience curves were different. This results in classes having varying degrees of power in relation to one another in different level ranges.

For example, in the question you posed you also need to consider that the rogue would likely be 1 maybe 2 levels ahead of the warrior. At 1,000,000 xp the thief class is level 14 and the fighter class is level 12. This is due to a lot of factors, but not the least of which representing the risk/reward of playing a thief. They were much harder to keep alive because of their limited armor and limited hit points.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Because the game is not individually balanced evenly on each level like modern editions. Which to start sounds bad, but in my experience actually makes for a more interesting game. So rather than everyone being roughly equal all the time, advancing at the same rates, etc. Many of the older editions had level caps for powerful classes or the experience curves were different. This results in classes having varying degrees of power in relation to one another in different level ranges.

I actually agree with you on that, and in that regard I find 2nd edition really fascinating. It's actually the one I prefer to play by for those reasons and a few others. The rules are so concise. Not consistent, but if you know what you're doing then you never have to look a damn thing up.

 

[Da_Schwartz]

Personally i think this is a much better system. Yea, I'm old school like that. But it defines strengths and WEAKNESS between classes. Weakness is something that i'm afraid is missing big time in modern d20 rules. Tabletop games have turned into a very short race to be epic n leet then enjoying the growth of your character and just rolling some dice with friends.

As far as what your confused about i don't understand, as in like why don't we all just get +1 (-1 depending on how you want to look at it... =/ ) every level and be done with it? IDK. That's just how it was. There's no math or formula to it that I was ever aware of. Just the design of the character advancement.