Hacking 2e: Saving Throws – Part 2

In Part 1, I looked at issues with the current 2e saving throw ruleset. This time, I’ll be desecrating a beloved game mechanic to ‘fix’ those issues. I hold no deep affection or nostalgia for the original construction of these saving throws, but I absolutely adore the concept of saving against a threat over the modern design of saving with an ability. The following is an attempt to preserve that feel, but in a way that makes sense to me and that serves the game I seek to build from 2e’s design. 

Hacking 2e: Saving Throws – Part 1

He's a big boy.

Judging by how often they’ve changed through the history of the game, the rules for saving throws might be the least sacrosanct of the D&D mechanics. For more details on the origins and changes throughout the editions, DM David and Grognardia talked about that years ago, but the rundown is this: TSR-era D&D uses saves against specific perils, with static values based on class and level. OD&D, AD&D, and Basic each have different groupings and values for these saves, with Paralyzation wandering about the table as the years passed. WotC threw it all out with 3rd Edition and created Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves, now adjusted by your ability score. 4e turned these three into static defense numbers on par with AC, and used saving throws as a state-tracking mechanic. Finally, 5e reintroduced saving throws as a reactionary tool, but just made them modified ability checks. In short, the saving throw mechanic managed to save vs Petrification over the past 50 years.

The OSR approach to saves is anywhere between reverential and heretical. The faithful go no further than renaming the categories and maybe tweaking some numbers (though a notable exception is Swords and Wizardry, which cut saves down to a single column). The hacks, and other OSR content not wed to the sacred texts, just use 3e or 5e save mechanics or excise saves entirely. The dividing line is compatibility to older material; if you want your game to work with X1 or whatever, you’re going to make sure it has a ‘save vs Poison’ of some sort. Otherwise, keeping this system can only be a preference, either due to familiarity or in an attempt to evoke ‘the old school.’ Without such a need, a designer might discard them in favor of ‘better’ approaches.

Dolmenwood serves as an interesting case study in having your cake and eating it, too. Here, the Basic D&D saves are presented in an altered form: Doom, Ray, Hold, Blast, and Spell. The categories have been simplified in their presentation to the player, yet still retain their original assigned purpose – Doom still covers Poison and Blast still includes Dragon Breath. More than this, they’ve been expanded to include new meanings (Hold for falling rocks, Blast for explosions, etc.), moving beyond specific, proscribed events. In this way, the game maintains technical compatibility (well, at least with saves) while forging its own path.

I think that’s sufficient to say we have a bit of room to play around in this space. First, let’s look at some problems present in the 2e Saving Throw system. 

Hacking 2e: Charisma

The primary ability of bards and face-characters across many editions, Charisma gets a fair shake here, with three adjustments that tie to “a character’s persuasiveness, personal magnetism, and ability to lead.”

Of course, this is assuming your game uses henchmen, morale, and reaction rolls. Online discussion makes it clear this was not always the case. The 90s was the era of story-driven games and director-DMs, the age of Vampire: The Masquerade. Rules that inflated the party or harkened back to D&D’s wargaming roots were no longer in vogue. The 2e core books themselves present morale and reactions as optional (while not calling them that), encouraging DMs to make calls on how the NPCs behave based on common sense, rather than relying on random rolls.

Obviously, if these rolls do not exist and these extra NPCs are not available, Charisma becomes the ultimate dump-stat, useful only to meet the prerequisites of the paladin and bard. It also threatens to turn Charisma into the ‘make them like me’ ability check, wherein the player may expect to ‘beat’ social interaction via direct check, since there is no mechanic to adjudicate this otherwise. As these are both undesirable outcomes, retaining these adjustments requires reinforcement of the rules which they modify. That comes later; for now, we’ll address the columns as they stand.

Hacking 2e: Wisdom

Wisdom has always been an odd bird. In OD&D this ability doesn’t do squat, serving only as the prerequisite score for Clerics and their access to an XP bonus. There’s not even a description of what Wisdom is until the Player’s Handbook drops in ’78. Yet that edition’s description didn’t remain static in the same way that Strength has always represented physical power or Intelligence has represented learning. To see how this has changed over the past five decades, let’s look at the keywords each edition uses to describe Wisdom:

Edition	Description of Wisdom
AD&D 1e	enlightenment, judgement, wile, will power, intuitiveness
Basic D&D (81)	inspiration, intuition, common sense, shrewdness
AD&D 2e	enlightenment, judgement, guile, willpower, common sense, intuition
D&D 3.5e	willpower, common sense, perception, intuition
D&D 4e	common sense, perception, self-discipline, empathy, willpower
D&D 5e	awareness, intuition, insight, perception, willpower

This doesn’t take into account 2e’s nonweapon proficiencies, which tie Wisdom to animal skills, sensing direction and weather, tracking, healing, religion, and… mining. However, it’ll serve for our discussion.

There’s some interesting takeaways here. ‘Willpower’ is common in all editions except Basic, though this is only implied in 4e with its contribution to Will defense, while 5e shoves the concept exclusively into the DMG. ‘Intuition’ is also common aside from 4e. ‘Common sense’ is another baseline that appears everywhere aside from 1e and 5e. Many Charisma-like descriptions are applied to Wisdom as well, such as wile (1e), shrewdness (Basic), guile (2e), and self-discipline and empathy (4e).

Of course, the most notable change is ‘perception’ in 3rd Edition, which carries on into all later editions. As these editions had strictly defined skills, Wisdom became a tool for auto-finding (Spot, then later Perception) and lie-detecting (Sense Motive, then later Insight). Much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments has occurred over this by those who portray it as the natural end-game of the ability check, devolving the game into thoughtless, push-button ‘rollplay.’ This, in my opinion, is bunk – you can read my thoughts about that argument here.

It makes sense that this ability would eventually find its way toward an actionable definition. Aside from the entirely reactive Constitution score, the other scores allow you to lift, push, sneak, steal, remember, solve, command, and schmooze. Meanwhile, AD&D gives Wisdom only the static ‘willpower,’ which can only serve as an adjustment to saving throws, and the utterly useless ‘intuition’ and ‘common sense,’ which is the purview of the player rather than the character.

In other words, much of Wisdom is stored in the character’s head and doesn’t translate well to play in the same way as the other mental scores; using Intelligence to remember or know something provides an excellent opportunity to distribute an occasional lore-dump, but using Wisdom to use one’s gut can only serve to give up information that the player should be figuring out for themselves.

In short, I don’t find the shift surprising, and given that it has become an acknowledged domain of Wisdom for the past quarter century, we should probably retain it.

Well, that’s a hideous amount of preamble, but I wanted to peg down this ability before we moved on to the columns. I have no idea if I’ve done that. Onward!