A weird thing about monsters

[KorvinStarmast]

You want to play a barbarian. It is a str/con save class that needs all three plysical stats to function and is impotent outside of melee charing range.

Barbarians are proficient with martial weapons. Longbow is a martial weapon. Not impotent, but certainlyl not as good as up close and personal. (Two of the players in my brother's world who play barbarians have used their longbows to good effect on many occasions: one is when my brother DMs and the other is when I DM).

Therefore you may, in any one fight, and possibly within a single turn, be affected by two or more of int/wis/cha saves that include but are not limited to paralysis, stunning, mental control, banishment, plane shifting, fear, and confusion with DCs of 17-19 any of which may or may not be a spell.

Yep. (Mind you, a bless or intellet fortress spell cast by an ally can help with that.

In addition your party is a fighter, warlock, sorcerer, ranger, and cleric, of which normally one or two players will not make it to game. Finally, when combat starts, the caster who you wish to have buff you may (in addition to just not making it that night) be out of range, hit by a spellcasting disabling effect like swallow whole or darkness, or cast a buff on you and then drop concentration when hit by a monster that takes a turn after them but before you in the initative circle.

Yep. But barbarians have advantage to initiative starting at 7th level, FWIW.

With standard array, race, subclass, two ASI, and effectively random magical loot without a magic mart, how do you "mitigate" three bad saves that you may need to make multiple successful rolls on or else sit out one or more of the fights each session. Because I have a friend who would be super happy to learn the secret sauce of not failing more than half of the int/wis/cha saves after taking resilient wis, and hoping in vain to find a cloak or protection.

Good points on how vulnerable Barbarians are to mental spell attacks in Tier 3 and beyond. This is in substantial contrast to how in TSR editions one's saving throw pass rate improves as one leveled up, and how the barbarian (in particular in the AD&D 1e UA) had some benefits against magic users.

[Witty Username]

As a game, you're 100% right. But for verisimilitude, it makes no sense. In universe, there shouldn't be any fundamental differences in how magic works between a party of 5 diverse humanoids and a party of 5 hobgoblins, two of which have some casting ability.

There is a note here that PCs are generally considered exceptional. Weapons lose inherent relevance over time, so it could also work for spells. On the hobgoblin's end, a hobgoblin would likely recognize the difference between a basic hobgoblin soldier and captain, and know they have significantly different capabilities.

As for 50% accuracy, we accept that most of the time for weapon attacks on the regular, for those of us that use SS and GWM.

I personally would keep using spells like hypnotic pattern as such, because only affecting half of my targets is still a good deal. And many save effects have half damage built in, so 'misses' are still relevant.

[Theodoxus]

With standard array, race, subclass, two ASI, and effectively random magical loot without a magic mart, how do you "mitigate" three bad saves that you may need to make multiple successful rolls on or else sit out one or more of the fights each session. Because I have a friend who would be super happy to learn the secret sauce of not failing more than half of the int/wis/cha saves after taking resilient wis, and hoping in vain to find a cloak or protection.

Easiest would be to go Gnome for the advantage on mental saves, then go Beast to be less tempted to use heavy weapons at disadvantage (2024 ruleset can't come fast enough in this instance). Or, go around with a maul and Reckless Attack to offset the disad... riskier than going TWF, but since you're less worried about getting Meslocked into inactivity, being the center of attention for being the easier to hit punching bag will make you quick friends with the squishies in the party. All good things come with tradeoffs, right?

There is a note here that PCs are generally considered exceptional. Weapons lose inherent relevance over time, so it could also work for spells. On the hobgoblin's end, a hobgoblin would likely recognize the difference between a basic hobgoblin soldier and captain, and know they have significantly different capabilities.

I get that, though I would counter that magic should be agnostic to who is wielding it, and be based on the level and competence (casting stat) rather than if the universe has gifted a specific individual with 'hero status'. Again, the game aspect ends up overriding the world aspect, it just requires massaging the message to explain the gamey aspects in universe. Not usually too hard, but necessary.

[Witty Username]

I get that, though I would counter that magic should be agnostic to who is wielding it, and be based on the level and competence (casting stat) rather than if the universe has gifted a specific individual with 'hero status'. Again, the game aspect ends up overriding the world aspect, it just requires massaging the message to explain the gamey aspects in universe. Not usually too hard, but necessary.

This is on the saving throws end though, where PCs are already in-world exceptional, since most monsters and NPCs don't add proficiency to any saves.

Specialized training accounts for some of this, for example we have no issue with a paladin or monk having superior saving throws (or rogue for that matter) and this doesn't pose an issue for the common tactics of hobgoblin forces.

All PCs have some of this fiction, a fighter could be a common soldier but they are generally more than that, and a soldier could be a fighter but that is not the norm.

This does drift into my actual oppinions on the subject, stuff beyond numbers indicate this and does this match others experiences. I don't mind saving throws as is so much as they seem to have different values depending on role.
For example, the wizard that fails a strength save and becomes entangled is still potential ly contributing to an encounter, either by ranged combat or concentrating on a clutch spell.
A fighter in similar situations is often taken out of a fight completely, be it a banishment, charm or frighten, or a similar entanglement to a wizard.

In my oppinion, characters that are expected to specialize in melee should just have better saving throws. It better carries the fiction of stalwart warrior, limits the dead time of the character in combat, and mitigates the inherent disadvantages of specializing in melee.

Characters that don't fit this criteria, like most casters, are served adequately by the save system, at least in part that they have access to a much wider range of tactics.