A weird thing about monsters

[Segev]

The trick with massed threat low-CR enemies is to make sure it doesn't happen in a white room. It happens with other objectives going on, and party victory/defeat is probably not measured in hit points unless the party throws all notion of defense to the wind. It happens when collateral damage is of concern to at least the party, if not both sides. It happens with terrain and environmental situations that allow more interesting play options and more interesting obstacles.

Then bounded accuracy keeps the low-CR monsters relevant enough that they are not just discounted.

And even if they are blown away in a round or two, they require resources to do that. 20 hp here, a mild-level spell there, time spent short resting so the fighter gets back an Action Surge... all of these add up if the DM is running an endurance race. Usually, these also involve a race against time, so every threat they must stop to deal with is costing them. But they can't just literally ignore it, because bounded accuracy means they Can be damaged or whammied or whatnot if they pretend the massed horde isn't there.

[Blatant Beast]

What baffles me is people saying its "necessary" to have a cleric as if theyre exclusively fighting creatures with DC 21+ wis save effects. Theyre an incredible minority of monsters only intended to be fought by the highest level parties as boss monsters or other climactic fights. It is entirely possible (and even likely, based on the typical campaign level range) to go an entire campaign without seeing any of them.

An issue exist even with large numbers of low DC Saving Throws; eventually you will fail.
A Monster Manual Archmage is CR 12. If we look at the guidance regarding Solo Monsters in XGE, an Archmage would be an appropriate solo creature for a party of 6 PCs of 8th level.

In CQB the party will obliterate the Archmage, so to even make this a viable encounter, the Archmage either needs to start the encounter at a considerable range and pepper the party with tactics like Fireballs and a Meteor Swarm at DC 17, or Initiative Spike, and upcast a Banishment spell or other Action Economy equalizer.

CR 2 minions, often have around 48-78 hit points, can have two attacks, and be a fourth level spell caster as well. A bunch of Bane/Bless/Silvery Barbs spells can make even creatures that high level parties consider 'yard trash' have an impact.

[Segev]

In theory, the archmage has summon spells and other minion-making effects that can be considered pre-cast to add those monsters without adding their CR to the calculations.

[Skrum]

Archmage is a wackadoo stat block. As printed, good chance it loses initiative and gets killed before it can act. Without legendary actions, I would not anticipate the Archmage to be much of a threat to even a level 8 party (unless the battle happened in the Archmage's tower or similar and it had significant homefield advantage).

Action econ is still king. Even if the barb fails their save to banishment, the paladin, rogue, and cleric still close the distance and absolutely demolish the 99 HP, 15 AC Archmage (15 AC??? Is this a joke?).

While some might chalk this up to the power of teamwork, I really think this is a poor encounter. For starters, the barb player gets nuked. Just removed from combat, why did I bother rolling initiative destroyed. Whoops, my charisma save is a -1, guess I'll check the score of the ball game. That's not fun.

The party wins a moment later (as the Archmage literally explodes on contact with the paladin or fighter or second barb), but a character getting hosed is still a character getting hosed. And the crummy part is the reason they're getting hosed is a gross weakness in their character defenses, ergo, they're far more likely to get hosed in a similar way in any given combat.

It would be one thing if there were as many "make this Con save against a poison or shockwave or necrotic ray or be Incapacitated until you can make the save, checking at the end of each turn" as there are "make this mental save or stop getting a turn." But there isn't - even Con saves are fairly likely to inflict damage or reduce max hit points or save you from getting the poisoned condition. Rarely will it outright remove you from combat. That's almost entirely the purview of mental saves.

[Blatant Beast]

Archmage is a wackadoo stat block. As printed, good chance it loses initiative and gets killed before it can act.

I Absolutely agree, but that is part the point I am making.
As written, an Archmage is likely, either a complete push over, or a potential no win scenario due to the Archmage’s planning and preparation.

I brought it up to refute the Keltest’s logic that High Powered abilities can only show up to bedevil high level PCs.

Apprentice type NPC casters, using a Bane spell, can push up effective Saving Throw DCs, rather easily…and this is with just the Bane spell..and not using better options like Silvery Barbs.

[tokek]

Archmage is a wackadoo stat block. As printed, good chance it loses initiative and gets killed before it can act. Without legendary actions, I would not anticipate the Archmage to be much of a threat to even a level 8 party (unless the battle happened in the Archmage's tower or similar and it had significant homefield advantage).

Very few monster stat blocks are glass cannons as much as this one. I found you just can't throw it in, you have to lead up to it and put it into some context where an archmage makes sense

I ran the slightly adjusted on in Candlekeep Mysteries and it worked well enough in that context. So its possible to use it but really as a solo encounter its awful. But then most solo monster encounters are awful in my opinion.

[Slipjig]

While some might chalk this up to the power of teamwork, I really think this is a poor encounter. For starters, the barb player gets nuked. Just removed from combat, why did I bother rolling initiative destroyed. Whoops, my charisma save is a -1, guess I'll check the score of the ball game. That's not fun.

The party wins a moment later (as the Archmage literally explodes on contact with the paladin or fighter or second barb), but a character getting hosed is still a character getting hosed. And the crummy part is the reason they're getting hosed is a gross weakness in their character defenses, ergo, they're far more likely to get hosed in a similar way in any given combat.

Hmm. I'd say that this is explicitly a case of a tanky class doing his job. Especially if the Barb pops back into existence the same round he was Banished, I'm not really sure he has anything to complain about. He didn't even take any damage, and if he lost initiative he didn't even spend a Rage. He was basically the Offensive Lineman of this winning team.

I mean, sure, if something like that happens EVERY COMBAT, it would become annoying. But if that's the case, it night be time for an in-character talk with your casters about them throwing you a bone with an occasional Counterspell.

True enough, but I can tell you that in the moment, failing that save to a fear effect and not getting to move or having to drop your weapon and run away, like that just sucks. It's about the opposite of heroic, and it's frustrating to get hit like that.

Fair. If I were designing the system, I'd allow some effects to be resisted with at least two different saving throws, defenders choice. e.g. "Fear can be resisted through WIS (your faith helps you shake off the effect) or CON (your natural resilience helps you stand firm in the face of peril)" or "Hold Person can be resisted with WIS (your iron will overcomes the magic) or STR (you are TOO MIGHTY for a puny spell to hold you!)".

[Skrum]

Fair. If I were designing the system, I'd allow some effects to be resisted with at least two different saving throws, defenders choice. e.g. "Fear can be resisted through WIS (your faith helps you shake off the effect) or CON (your natural resilience helps you stand firm in the face of peril)" or "Hold Person can be resisted with WIS (your iron will overcomes the magic) or STR (you are TOO MIGHTY for a puny spell to hold you!)".

I agree, but why bother having good and bad saves at that point? If many/most/all effects are pick the better of two saves, and each character is very likely to have at least one option be a good save for them, like why do we even have 6 different saves. Go back to Fort (Con or Cha), Ref (Dex or Int), Will (Wis or Str). And then a character can pick a save to be proficient in at 1st level, or something like that

[Theodoxus]

I find it hilarious that people are complaining about having a +5 Save vs a DC 15 effect, or a +8 Save vs a DC 21 effect. What's the point of monsters having effects if you always save against them? Just play without status effects if you never want to be affected by one.

I get having an 8 Wis, no WIS save proficiency and getting tagged with a DC 20+ effect, yeah, you can't save against that. But who plays something to level 20 - where such DCs are going to be common enough that you might face one every session or two - without grabbing a Ring and/or Cloak of Protection or having a scroll/potion/ring/buddy to get you Mind Blank or others. Sure, 10% chance to save is pitiable, but it's not zero.

And 50/50, which is far more common, isn't horrible either. Oh, your Barbarian got Banished? And you're crying about it? If you're that worried about it, but unwilling to shore up the weakness, stay out of 60' from the casters... or don't make like the big bad Barbi and scare them so that their first act of the combat is Banishing you.

Progressive saves, which ultimately become regressive could use a modernization.

[Skrum]

I find it hilarious that people are complaining about having a +5 Save vs a DC 15 effect, or a +8 Save vs a DC 21 effect. What's the point of monsters having effects if you always save against them? Just play without status effects if you never want to be affected by one.

Definitely not complaining about a 55% chance of success, or even a 40% chance of success.

I get having an 8 Wis, no WIS save proficiency and getting tagged with a DC 20+ effect, yeah, you can't save against that. But who plays something to level 20 - where such DCs are going to be common enough that you might face one every session or two - without grabbing a Ring and/or Cloak of Protection or having a scroll/potion/ring/buddy to get you Mind Blank or others. Sure, 10% chance to save is pitiable, but it's not zero.

Ring and cloak give +1. So maybe you have a +1 to save now. Against DC 18, 19, maybe 20. A 10% chance to save. That's horrible. You're extremely likely to fail, but worse than that, you're ~50% likely to *still be affected* 3 turns later. Sitting out for turn after turn is exactly what I dislike about this dynamic.

And 50/50, which is far more common, isn't horrible either. Oh, your Barbarian got Banished? And you're crying about it? If you're that worried about it, but unwilling to shore up the weakness, stay out of 60' from the casters... or don't make like the big bad Barbi and scare them so that their first act of the combat is Banishing you.

Progressive saves, which ultimately become regressive could use a modernization.

I would love if saves were 50/50, or close to it. That sounds great. 50/50 would entirely fix my problem with saves - not only do I actually feel like my character belongs there, I'm very unlikely to get stuck in the effect for round after round after round.

[Keltest]

I would love if saves were 50/50, or close to it. That sounds great. 50/50 would entirely fix my problem with saves - not only do I actually feel like my character belongs there, I'm very unlikely to get stuck in the effect for round after round after round.

You apparently don't feel strongly enough about it to actually do anything to make it happen with your character resources.

[Skrum]

You apparently don't feel strongly enough about it to actually do anything to make it happen with your character resources.

It has been explained, ad nauseum, by myself and others that the depth of this problem is well beyond the "fixes" offered by the system. Either say something new that hasn't been addressed a million times or agree to disagree.

[Keltest]

It has been explained, ad nauseum, by myself and others that the depth of this problem is well beyond the "fixes" offered by the system. Either say something new that hasn't been addressed a million times or agree to disagree.

You have said it is inadequate. What you have not done is explain why in any capacity.

[Skrum]

You have said it is inadequate. What you have not done is explain why in any capacity.

Bro

Let me get this straight -
The solution on hand is classes that often struggle with mental saves, through a combination of having no defenses against them AND often operating at a range that puts them in the line of fire, need to spend an ASI in order to improve a single mental save by ~15% points. It doesn't improve Int saves (hey mind flayers!) or Cha saves (I love being banished!), and it likely comes at the cost of -2 to their main stat, but that, to you, is a sufficient answer. Like there's not a sliver of doubt in your mind that me or any of the other people in this thread that expressed similar concerns, none of us have a leg to stand on.

[Keltest]

Bro

Let me get this straight -
The solution on hand is classes that often struggle with mental saves, through a combination of having no defenses against them AND often operating at a range that puts them in the line of fire, need to spend an ASI in order to improve a single mental save by ~15% points. It doesn't improve Int saves (hey mind flayers!) or Cha saves (I love being banished!), and it likely comes at the cost of -2 to their main stat, but that, to you, is a sufficient answer. Like there's not a sliver of doubt in your mind that me or any of the other people in this thread that expressed similar concerns, none of us have a leg to stand on.

I mean, yes. Managing opportunity cost is like, the game. I think your complaints are missing the point entirely. If everybody is good at all saves, then having different saves is pointless, to say nothing of the fact that save based enemies cant be good without always being completely overwhelming, because everyone has good defenses against them!

[Skrum]

I mean, yes. Managing opportunity cost is like, the game. I think your complaints are missing the point entirely. If everybody is good at all saves, then having different saves is pointless, to say nothing of the fact that save based enemies cant be good without always being completely overwhelming, because everyone has good defenses against them!

Ok. Agree to disagree

[Ignimortis]

I find it hilarious that people are complaining about having a +5 Save vs a DC 15 effect, or a +8 Save vs a DC 21 effect. What's the point of monsters having effects if you always save against them? Just play without status effects if you never want to be affected by one.

I get having an 8 Wis, no WIS save proficiency and getting tagged with a DC 20+ effect, yeah, you can't save against that. But who plays something to level 20 - where such DCs are going to be common enough that you might face one every session or two - without grabbing a Ring and/or Cloak of Protection or having a scroll/potion/ring/buddy to get you Mind Blank or others. Sure, 10% chance to save is pitiable, but it's not zero.

And 50/50, which is far more common, isn't horrible either. Oh, your Barbarian got Banished? And you're crying about it? If you're that worried about it, but unwilling to shore up the weakness, stay out of 60' from the casters... or don't make like the big bad Barbi and scare them so that their first act of the combat is Banishing you.

Progressive saves, which ultimately become regressive could use a modernization.

The issue here is twofold:
1) Your best saves eventually become a 50/50 without external support. I do not consider having a 50% chance to succeed at a save to be "good".
2) Every other save (which are usually 5 or 4 other saves that aren't your "best") is even worse off. Spending 3/5 ASIs (potentially the only charbuilding budget you even have) just lets you bring it up to 40-50% success chance as well.

The probabilities I would consider decent, since we have six saves to take care of, would be something like:
1) 75 to 95% success rate on your "best" save (favored by both class stat and proficiency). This save is your best, you should be borderline invulnerable to effects of this nature. In a d20-based game, competence begins at either being able to take 10 or having a 75%+ chance of doing something. Having only one of six saves at a level of "you can't fail this unless you're severely overmatched" is fine.
2) 55 to 70% success rate on your "second best" save (possibly two). These are not bad saves, but you simply don't have resources to pump every save to "best" levels. You should be seeing some failures, but mostly successes. This is something like Fighter's CON save or Wizard's WIS save - they aren't supremely focused on those stats, but they're quite decent at those saves and possibly have secondary stat investment into them.
3) 25 to 40% success rate on the rest of them. Those are your "bad" saves, and having three weak saves, one of which is guaranteed to be a "major" save (DEX/WIS/CON - you can only cover two with class prof and Resilient) sounds like very much enough to me. And yes, having a 25 to 40% chance of success is quite bad, especially when we're talking about effects that can potentially take you out of the fight for several rounds straight.

If we were to go back to Fort/Ref/Will, this is easily extrapolated to "one good or medium save, one medium or bad save, one bad save".

[Blatant Beast]

You apparently don't feel strongly enough about it to actually do anything to make it happen with your character resources.

“Yet because the player character is all-important, he or she must always--or nearly always- have a chance, no matter how small a chance, of somehow escaping what otherwise would be inevitable destruction.” -Gary Gygax, pg 80 of the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide.

In 1e, every class advanced all of their Saving Throws, as well as received adjustments for high ability scores.

It just does not strike me as unreasonable, nor particularly powerful, (and certainly not overpowered), for every PC to have at least a +2 native bonus in all Saving Throws by Tier 4 play.

Saving Throw Advancement is the one area, where 5e is more hard@ss/hardcore than 1e AD&D.

1e Clerics and Thieves had the worst Saving Throws against spells, but under 5e both clerics and rogues do well against Wisdom Saves, and Rogues laugh at Dexterity saving throws.

A large part of the issue is the 5e usage of ability scores, pigeon hole effects in a difficult manner. A high level 1e Fighter had natively robust defenses against spells, be it Charm Person or Burning Hands.

The high level 5e Fighter sucks against both spells. 5E’s Saving Throws mapping to Ability Scores sorta sucks, and has from day one.

[Skrum]

2) Every other save (which are usually 5 or 4 other saves that aren't your "best") is even worse off. Spending 3/5 ASIs (potentially the only charbuilding budget you even have) just lets you bring it up to 40-50% success chance as well.

Good post, but just want to point out - Resilient cannot be taken more than once. Setting aside the utter ridiculousness of characters having to spend *multiple ASI's* just to get to what I'd call the very minimum of competence, it's not even an option. Especially under point buy rules, fighters, barbs, and the like will almost certainly have a -1 Int and Cha save for their entire career.

[Telok]

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. At 11th level you may face an archmage, lich, other spellcaster, or other random status effect tosser. We ignore for the moment lair effects, auras, traps, glyph of warding, and any weird GM added environmental effects like trying to fight in a hall of magic mirrors that requires int/wis checks to pick out real targets each round. 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. 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.

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.

[Blatant Beast]

The issue seems to be Point Buy/Standard Array issue to some degree.

The Fighter I played, was in a rolled stats game.
I rolled a great set of Ability Scores, and decided to play a Fighter precisely because of that. If you have low stats, play a Wizard.

Level 1 Vhuman: S:18 I:15 W:14 D:16 Con:16 Cha:10

Living the dream!

[GloatingSwine]

I would love if saves were 50/50, or close to it. That sounds great. 50/50 would entirely fix my problem with saves - not only do I actually feel like my character belongs there, I'm very unlikely to get stuck in the effect for round after round after round.

TBH 50/50 is still pretty bad for something a character is good at. If you had a character whose best odds of success at things they were supposed to be good at (proficient saves) were "fails half the time" you'd probably regard them as an incompetent bungler.

[Ignimortis]

You apparently don't feel strongly enough about it to actually do anything to make it happen with your character resources.

And it's been repeated several times - even if you dump a pretty significant amount of your resources into it (3 ASIs out of 5, considering you need at least 2 to cap out your actual main stat most of the time - that's all of them gone), you're still looking at a bonus of, at best, +11 vs something that reaches DC20 quite easily. Unless, of course, you're suggesting that everyone go Paladin 6 and max out CHA.

I mean, yes. Managing opportunity cost is like, the game. I think your complaints are missing the point entirely. If everybody is good at all saves, then having different saves is pointless, to say nothing of the fact that save based enemies cant be good without always being completely overwhelming, because everyone has good defenses against them!

I wish everybody was good at least at one or two saves. Because most classes don't even get good at one.

Good post, but just want to point out - Resilient cannot be taken more than once. Setting aside the utter ridiculousness of characters having to spend *multiple ASI's* just to get to what I'd call the very minimum of competence, it's not even an option. Especially under point buy rules, fighters, barbs, and the like will almost certainly have a -1 Int and Cha save for their entire career.

Yeah, I know. I meant that one would dump Resilient and 2 straight ASIs (for a +8 boost from before). If the game doesn't have feats (and, reminder for everyone, 5e professes that feats are not part of the core design and thus core math!), then it's even worse.

TBH 50/50 is still pretty bad for something a character is good at. If you had a character whose best odds of success at things they were supposed to be good at (proficient saves) were "fails half the time" you'd probably regard them as an incompetent bungler.

QFT.

[Blatant Beast]

TBH 50/50 is still pretty bad for something a character is good at. If you had a character whose best odds of success at things they were supposed to be good at (proficient saves) were "fails half the time" you'd probably regard them as an incompetent bungler.

To be fair, a professional baseball player would be ecstatic to have a .50 Batting Percentage. Context matters.

Very few things in 5e cause instant death. Gygax didn’t say all PC should have at least a 75% of success…he said, PCs should almost always have a slim chance to not die.

[Skrum]

To be fair, a professional baseball player would be ecstatic to have a .50 Batting Percentage. Context matters.

Very few things in 5e cause instant death. Gygax didn’t say all PC should have at least a 75% of success…he said, PCs should almost always have a slim chance to not die.

My main calculation is "how likely is it that I fail this save and then I'm still stuck 3 turns later."

10% chance of success (-1 save against DC 18 for example), there's a 90% chance I fail the initial. There's a 81% chance I'm still stuck at the end of the following round. There's a 73% chance I'm still stuck at the end of the following round. There's a 66% chance I'm still stuck at end of the round after that.

-1 save against DC 18 Banish (or other save or suck effect), 2 out of 3 times I will lose 3 turns. That's the entire combat, in most cases.

But let's say I have a 35% chance to succeed. 65% of the time, I fail the initial save. But there's only a 27% chance I'm still stuck after 3 rounds. Still bad. Still not screaming "HERO!!!" But a very large difference in the likelihood I'm gonna be entirely removed from a combat.

IMO, 30, 35%, that should be the floor on saves - at least against save or suck effects. Taking damage, suffering penalties, I'm way more willing to say those effects can be much harder to resist, because it doesn't remove a character from play in the same way.

[Theodoxus]

I mean, yes. Managing opportunity cost is like, the game. I think your complaints are missing the point entirely. If everybody is good at all saves, then having different saves is pointless, to say nothing of the fact that save based enemies cant be good without always being completely overwhelming, because everyone has good defenses against them!

Couple of options here, but sticking with core 5E, you'd just boost the DC on the one or two effects that you really want to have a decent chance to stick. If DC21 is a 50/50 chance for all characters, boost that one you really want to DC28. This would apparently match Skrum's desire to not be stuck in limbo for multiple rounds while still having a chance for the DM to knock a PC out of combat for a bit.

(for Homebrew, see below)

The issue here is twofold:
1) Your best saves eventually become a 50/50 without external support. I do not consider having a 50% chance to succeed at a save to be "good".
2) Every other save (which are usually 5 or 4 other saves that aren't your "best") is even worse off. Spending 3/5 ASIs (potentially the only charbuilding budget you even have) just lets you bring it up to 40-50% success chance as well.

The probabilities I would consider decent, since we have six saves to take care of, would be something like:
1) 75 to 95% success rate on your "best" save (favored by both class stat and proficiency). This save is your best, you should be borderline invulnerable to effects of this nature. In a d20-based game, competence begins at either being able to take 10 or having a 75%+ chance of doing something. Having only one of six saves at a level of "you can't fail this unless you're severely overmatched" is fine.
2) 55 to 70% success rate on your "second best" save (possibly two). These are not bad saves, but you simply don't have resources to pump every save to "best" levels. You should be seeing some failures, but mostly successes. This is something like Fighter's CON save or Wizard's WIS save - they aren't supremely focused on those stats, but they're quite decent at those saves and possibly have secondary stat investment into them.
3) 25 to 40% success rate on the rest of them. Those are your "bad" saves, and having three weak saves, one of which is guaranteed to be a "major" save (DEX/WIS/CON - you can only cover two with class prof and Resilient) sounds like very much enough to me. And yes, having a 25 to 40% chance of success is quite bad, especially when we're talking about effects that can potentially take you out of the fight for several rounds straight.

If we were to go back to Fort/Ref/Will, this is easily extrapolated to "one good or medium save, one medium or bad save, one bad save".

I'd do one better... (Below)

TBH 50/50 is still pretty bad for something a character is good at. If you had a character whose best odds of success at things they were supposed to be good at (proficient saves) were "fails half the time" you'd probably regard them as an incompetent bungler.

As already noted, context is king here. Personally, I would consider magic quite fallible if it only worked 50% of the time. If you were playing a video game, lets say, and you only damaged critters with your Wizard-toon half the time, would you still play it? Would you not demand higher accuracy from the devs? D&D is a co-op game, despite the slight antagonistic nature of players vs DM. The DM wants to have fun too. Watching every. single. spell. fail sucks too. If the success rate were 30%, that's barely tolerable as a DM, yet apparently a 70% success rate is deemed intolerable on the player side...

My main calculation is "how likely is it that I fail this save and then I'm still stuck 3 turns later."

10% chance of success (-1 save against DC 18 for example), there's a 90% chance I fail the initial. There's a 81% chance I'm still stuck at the end of the following round. There's a 73% chance I'm still stuck at the end of the following round. There's a 66% chance I'm still stuck at end of the round after that.

-1 save against DC 18 Banish (or other save or suck effect), 2 out of 3 times I will lose 3 turns. That's the entire combat, in most cases.

But let's say I have a 35% chance to succeed. 65% of the time, I fail the initial save. But there's only a 27% chance I'm still stuck after 3 rounds. Still bad. Still not screaming "HERO!!!" But a very large difference in the likelihood I'm gonna be entirely removed from a combat.

IMO, 30, 35%, that should be the floor on saves - at least against save or suck effects. Taking damage, suffering penalties, I'm way more willing to say those effects can be much harder to resist, because it doesn't remove a character from play in the same way.

So, I did note that saves should get a bit of modernization at the end of my post. If we take the core 5E saves and flip them, so that they're all static, and you have a 50% base rate of success - so an 11 on the d20 roll, and you add your attribute mods to that, so you're looking at 45% to 75% base chance to save. Then, instead of dealing with DCs that tend to make no sense anyway, you're just increasing or decreasing the final number. A very weak monster might be +5 to save against, so whatever you roll, add 5 to it (basically succeeding on a 6+ on the d20. An extremely strong monster might be -10 to the save, but probably anything in the CR2 to CR12 range would be flat outside of particularly strong effects.

At that point, you could create a sliding scale of results if you wanted, or just keep the 'pass/fail' of 10- / 11+.

[Amnestic]

One option that could be done without affecting initial numbers (since that would require retooling players as well as enemies) would be to make ongoing effects or repeated effects have diminishing returns by lowering the DC.

Drop a Hold Person on someone, DC15. Next round, they've got a DC12 to end early. Round after that, DC9.
Drop a Stunning Strike on someone, DC15, Stunned. Next round's DC12, unless they get a round absent of stun, at which point it resets back to 15.

-3 to the DC per round was just the number I plucked out of the hat, but could be -2 or -5 or whatever. Would require more "active tracking", but would also encourage diversification of conditions across the party.

This would, indeed, make Hold Personing someone for 1 minute nigh, if not mathematically, impossible and like
I dunno
that's probably fine
If you Hold Person someone for a minute they're probably a corpse anyway.

[GloatingSwine]

As already noted, context is king here. Personally, I would consider magic quite fallible if it only worked 50% of the time. If you were playing a video game, lets say, and you only damaged critters with your Wizard-toon half the time, would you still play it? Would you not demand higher accuracy from the devs? D&D is a co-op game, despite the slight antagonistic nature of players vs DM. The DM wants to have fun too. Watching every. single. spell. fail sucks too. If the success rate were 30%, that's barely tolerable as a DM, yet apparently a 70% success rate is deemed intolerable on the player side...

Yeah, but also part of the context is that it's very different for a DM to have one of several pieces disabled for 1-3 turns and a player to have their only piece so disabled.

Consequences are asymmetric between the players and DMs, and availability and reliability of high-consequence effects should follow that.

[Theodoxus]

Yeah, but also part of the context is that it's very different for a DM to have one of several pieces disabled for 1-3 turns and a player to have their only piece so disabled.

Consequences are asymmetric between the players and DMs, and availability and reliability of high-consequence effects should follow that.

And we're back to the game vs world dichotomy.

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.

Yet as a game, if the 2 caster hobgoblins manage to magically remove two of the PCs (Hold Person, Hypnotic Pattern, Banishment, heck, Sleep) that's "bad" for team PC. The opposite isn't "bad" for team NPC, just par for the course.

[Slipjig]

I agree, but why bother having good and bad saves at that point? If many/most/all effects are pick the better of two saves, and each character is very likely to have at least one option be a good save for them, like why do we even have 6 different saves. Go back to Fort (Con or Cha), Ref (Dex or Int), Will (Wis or Str). And then a character can pick a save to be proficient in at 1st level, or something like that

My thought was that with this system, MOST characters would be good at MOST things, but every class would still have at least a few effects they are vulnerable to. Characters who excel at everything are boring, both in fiction and RPGs.

But if we assume an even distribution of saving throws across the six attributes, characters would expect to have good saves against 60% of effects instead of 33%. And for people who want to be extra-safe, Resilient would raise that to 80% of effects.