One of the main issues I've been struggling with while creating a Vancian magic, D&D style, structured spell system is the idea of Saving Throws. While many spells can be converted without the concept of a Save, some just didn't feel right or fair without them. I found myself coming up with elaborate advantage and threat triggers to accommodate a mechanic that could be easily replicated with a Save. Here was what I was trying to solve for:

• The effectiveness of some spells should vary depending on the enemy it is being cast on. IE, charming a 1 Willpower goblin should be easier than charming a 5 willpower lich.
• Spell difficulty should typically be around 2-4. This made straight opposed checks undesirable.
• Multi-target spells would ideally require only one roll. The nature of narrative dice makes them more complex than binary systems (d20) and table experience would suffer if fireballing a group of goblins generated a dozen rolls.
• GMs should be able to use any adversary without having to come up with saves for them. IE No save stat block
• Saves need to function for damaging and non-damaging spell effects. So no Saves = Spell Soak

With that in mind, I tested a half dozen different ideas that met some or all of these criteria. In the end, one stood out due to its relatively low complexity and quick and easy implementation at the table. Here is what I came up with:

Quote

Characteristic based Saves

While overcoming the difficulty of a spell ensures that the spell is successfully cast, that doesn’t mean that opponents must stand, passively by, and take it. When the outcome of a spell is influenced by an opponent’s characteristics, these spells will have a Save. Saves offer the target of a spell to reduce or avoid some aspects of the spell.

When a spell with a Save is successfully cast, check the number of s rolled against the Save characteristic of each target. Targets with a value higher in the Save’s characteristic than the number of successes rolled are considered to have successfully saved. Spells with Saves will have their modified affects listed in the spell. Many talents and features can increase or decrease this number. Most common among these are class based save bonuses and Adversary ranks, both of which increase the effective save check.

Example:

Jer’don the pyromancer casts Fireball at a mixed group of goblins and scores sssaa on his casting check. Since Fireball has an Agility save (half damage), the GM checks the 3 successes against each of the goblin’s agility characteristic. Most of the goblins targeted were minions with an agility of 2 and take don’t save, taking full damage. The wizen goblin warlock has only 1 agility but Adversary 2 which increases his effective save to 3. Unfortunately for the old warlock this isn’t enough to save him from the full force of the fireball. Lastly, there are two goblin assassins among the group that both have Agility 3 and Adversary 1. This brings the save check of the assassins up to 4 which is higher than the number of successes rolled. Checking the Fireball spell, we see that the two assassins take only half damage and ignore the effects of the spells Burn trait which Jer’don triggered with his advantage.

One of the things I like most about this systems is that it means I don't need to have a Success scaling effect for every spell I create. One of the issues I was having when converting D&D spells was making extra successes on a casting roll matter. While scaling spells is a fun mechanic, sometimes I just wanted a reasonably static effect but it felt strange to not offer some benefits for excessive success. This also helped with the balance of some spells, like fireball, were scaling by success was a bit too powerful.

Has anyone tried anything like this? How did it work? Please feel free to provide thoughts and feedback.

One last thing. For context, I should mention that my magic system is using a different resource system to power spellcasting than the standard Genesys system and a grid-based combat system. This shouldn't change how these Save rules work but its worth mentioning just in case something in my rules conflicts with the standard system.

Interesting, though IMO overly complicated. *EDIT* actually there are similarities to what we both posted. You are still checking against the skill ranks of the target when handling the situation but requiring a specific amount of successes to be rolled in order for the check to succeed. That IMO makes it more difficult to accomplish than it needs to be but maybe your magic system has ways of making spells easier than the vanilla Genesys system?

If I were to use saving throws in this game, I would just keep the normal game mechanics and designate that spells that require a "save" are opposed checks for the attacker against specific skills of the target.

For instance:

Will Save

Discipline

Reflex Save

Vigilance

Fortitude Save

Resilience

Specific spells could require a specific save depending on how it affects the target. So a mind-affecting spell would be vs Discipline, a debuff would be against Resilience and a damaging attack would go against Vigilance.

So say you want to turn the guy into a newt, you roll your Curse spell with an Ability of 4 and Skill of 2 for YYGG, vs his Resilience, which makes the difficulty, say, RRP. Success means you do the thing, failure means he resists the effect as the normal rules go.

This doesn't further complicate the game by adding much in the way of rules (all that changes is the difficulty of the spell).

Alternatively, if you don't want to mess with the base difficulty of the spell, since you did mention you didn't want to alter the difficulty dice, you could just upgrade the difficulty based upon how many ranks in Discipline, Resilience, or Vigilance that the target has. It does require you to give a rank or two of a skills to the enemy but it seems like less complications in the moment compared to

So in the same scenario, if the base difficulty of the spell is 2 and the target has 2 ranks in Resilience, then you upgrade the difficulty from PP to RR.

Just now, GroggyGolem said:

Interesting, though IMO overly complicated.

If I were to use saving throws in this game, I would just keep the normal game mechanics and designate that spells that require a "save" are opposed checks for the attacker against specific skills of the target.

For instance:

Will Save

Discipline

Reflex Save

Vigilance

Fortitude Save

Resilience

Specific spells could require a specific save depending on how it affects the target. So a mind-affecting spell would be vs Discipline, a debuff would be against Resilience and a damaging attack would go against Vigilance.

So say you want to turn the guy into a newt, you roll your Curse spell with an Ability of 4 and Skill of 2 for YYGG, vs his Resilience, which makes the difficulty, say, RRP. Success means you do the thing, failure means he resists the effect as the normal rules go.

This doesn't further complicate the game by adding much in the way of rules (all that changes is the difficulty of the spell).

Alternatively, if you don't want to mess with the base difficulty of the spell, you could just upgrade the difficulty based upon how many ranks in Discipline, Resilience, or Vigilance that the target has.

So in the same scenario, if the base difficulty of the spell is 2 and the target has 2 ranks in Resilience, then you upgrade the difficulty from PP to RR.

I appreciate the feedback. As it turns out, I tested this option pretty extensively, as it was my initial thought too. My issues with it were:

• Brawn, Agility & Willpower are already really strong stats in a combat heavy fantasy game. Excluding Cunning, Presence, and Intelligence just aggravates that.
• This forces multi-targeted spells to use something like "the highest X among enemies targeted" which seldom makes sense narratively. Having a tough dwarf in a group of sickly children doesn't all of a sudden make the children more resistant to a poison cloud.
• Logically it doesn't make sense for many spells. Sure it makes sense for something like Charm Person where you are directly targeting a single target but it makes a lot less sense for area spells or things that have more ambient effects. If you are casting a poison cloud spell, your likelihood of successfully casting that spells shouldn't be affected by how tough the dwarf in your target area is. A casting check should determine how powerful a spell is and how likely the enemies affected are to resist but the dwarfs toughness doesn't all of a sudden cause you to fail your casting. This is particularly important when trying to recreate spells that have a duration that could cause other creatures to be affected in later rounds.
• Lastly, having the checks opposed results in super swingy difficulties. This was the biggest issue during testing. Opposed checks can result in a huge success, vs a 1 attribute no skill adversary, or a devastating failure, vs a high stat skilled foe, depending on the target of the spell. This resulted in my testers being super meta-gamey in a way that was pretty annoying. This was only augmented by the fact that I was using the best stat among targets for the save, so players were not only discussing enemy stats but were also trying to shape their spells to not include some enemies.

I imagine that your ideas would work in a less combat-focused setting or one that wasn't trying to recreate specific iconic D&D spells, but it wasn't right for what I was trying to do.

I would just upgrade the difficulty by the appropriate characteristic of the target, it spices up the difficulty significantly without introducing a target number system.

So if the target has a 3 in Willpower then the difficulty is upgraded 3 times, this could result in an Average (2) Difficulty check becoming a Hard DCC check, which has a decent difficulty increase with plenty of chances for entertaining things to happen.

I prefer upgrading difficulty dices then upgrading difficulty check. For example: if the target has 3 in willpower then 3 difficulty dices are upgraded. If there is less difficulty dices than the number to upgrade, as much difficulty dices upgraded are added to the dice pool to meet this number.

Another option is to add setback dices rather than upgrading difficulty or difficulty dices.

“Increasing” and “Upgrading” the Difficulty are two different things, and I agree that “Upgrading” the difficulty (changing Purple dice to Red) is the better solution.

15 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

I would just upgrade the difficulty by the appropriate characteristic of the target, it spices up the difficulty significantly without introducing a target number system.

So if the target has a 3 in Willpower then the difficulty is upgraded 3 times, this could result in an Average (2) Difficulty check becoming a Hard DCC check, which has a decent difficulty increase with plenty of chances for entertaining things to happen.

Thanks for the feedback @Richardbuxton. While I like the simplicity of your idea, it suffers from many of the same issues as the previous ideas.

20 hours ago, SladeWeston said:

• This forces multi-targeted spells to use something like "the highest X among enemies targeted" which seldom makes sense narratively. Having a tough dwarf in a group of sickly children doesn't all of a sudden make the children more resistant to a poison cloud.
• Logically it doesn't make sense for many spells. Sure it makes sense for something like Charm Person where you are directly targeting a single target but it makes a lot less sense for area spells or things that have more ambient effects. If you are casting a poison cloud spell, your likelihood of successfully casting that spells shouldn't be affected by how tough the dwarf in your target area is. A casting check should determine how powerful a spell is and how likely the enemies affected are to resist but the dwarfs toughness doesn't all of a sudden cause you to fail your casting. This is particularly important when trying to recreate spells that have a duration that could cause other creatures to be affected in later rounds.
• Lastly, having the checks opposed results in super swingy difficulties. This was the biggest issue during testing. Opposed checks can result in a huge success, vs a 1 attribute no skill adversary, or a devastating failure, vs a high stat skilled foe, depending on the target of the spell. This resulted in my testers being super meta-gamey in a way that was pretty annoying. This was only augmented by the fact that I was using the best stat among targets for the save, so players were not only discussing enemy stats but were also trying to shape their spells to not include some enemies.

You still get the logical strangeness and you still get wildly swingy difficulties. If anything, upgrading exaggerates these issues even more. Using this method with my dwarf-poison cloud example from before, the dwarf not only protects these children with his toughness somehow but he adds a ridiculous Dispair chance to the check. I'm not sure I understand how his presence in the target area results in the caster critically failing a casting check, perhaps his dwarven manliness is just that intimidating? As before, you run into the same issue where it encourages the table to metagame who is included in the target area which I'd rather avoid.

So for the Poison Cloud situation, and many other area of effect things like it there are two solid systems in place. First off each character has a Soak Rating (ignored by poison but relevant to other aoe stuff), the dwarf is going to have a much better soak than the sick, the dwarf will also likely have much higher Strain and Wound Thresholds which is the most basic of measurements of a characters durability.

Then you have Resilience, or some other appropriate skill to resist an effect. To quote Realms of Terrinoth:

“Characters affected by poison or within a poison cloud must make a Hard (DDD) Resilience check as an out-of-turn incidental or suffer 4 wounds (not reduced by soak) plus 1 strain per Threat. You or your GM can spend a Despair on the check to inflict a Critical Injury or to force the target to repeat the check at the beginning of their next turn, as the poison continues to wrack their body.”

So as you see there the system already has saving throws for these kinds of things, but instead of being some separate derived number that influences the initial skill check of the attacker, it’s a second skill check that you make to resist which takes the entire awesomeness of your character into consideration.

The poison itself sets the difficulty of the Resilience check, it also determines the number of wounds caused and the area it covers, so tweaking those numbers to get various types of poison is simple. Add Disoriented for a mind altering gas, add Ensnare or even Concussive for knockout gas, give it a Vicious rating of 8 if you want it to be the most deadly gas in the world.

3 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

So for the Poison Cloud situation, and many other area of effect things like it there are two solid systems in place. First off each character has a Soak Rating (ignored by poison but relevant to other aoe stuff), the dwarf is going to have a much better soak than the sick, the dwarf will also likely have much higher Strain and Wound Thresholds which is the most basic of measurements of a characters durability.

Then you have Resilience, or some other appropriate skill to resist an effect. To quote Realms of Terrinoth:

“Characters affected by poison or within a poison cloud must make a Hard (DDD) Resilience check as an out-of-turn incidental or suffer 4 wounds (not reduced by soak) plus 1 strain per Threat. You or your GM can spend a Despair on the check to inflict a Critical Injury or to force the target to repeat the check at the beginning of their next turn, as the poison continues to wrack their body.”

So as you see there the system already has saving throws for these kinds of things, but instead of being some separate derived number that influences the initial skill check of the attacker, it’s a second skill check that you make to resist which takes the entire awesomeness of your character into consideration.

The poison itself sets the difficulty of the Resilience check, it also determines the number of wounds caused and the area it covers, so tweaking those numbers to get various types of poison is simple. Add Disoriented for a mind altering gas, add Ensnare or even Concussive for knockout gas, give it a Vicious rating of 8 if you want it to be the most deadly gas in the world.

Ahh I appreciate you pointing out the poison rule, I had forgotten about that, but addressing the specific example doesn't really address the case. This could have been a strong-willed person surrounded by weak-willed ones. It could have been one super agile person surrounded by clumsy people. It could be one person with some sort of magic resistance talent in a group without. The point is that area effect spells will often include a very mixed group of characters and being forced to pick the one with the highest stat doesn't make a lot of sense. Not to mention, none of that covers an area of effect spell that is cast with no targets in the area. Such as someone who casts a spell to cover their retreat.

Don't get me wrong, I get what you are saying. Genesys has options for converting just about any spell effect if you are will to sacrifice simulation for simplicity. Of course, this is always the line all RPGs have to tow. For my setting, I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of Genesys nature simplicity to better emulate the crunchy nature of some of the D&D spells I'm converting, although I certainly respect people who would rather stay on the more streamlined side of things. I do think the system I presented does a solid job simulating the feel of a saving throw for people who want that kind of thing in there setting.

I think I didn’t make my point clear enough, the spell in question will define the Skill used to resist it, to quote myself:

8 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Then  you have Resilience, or some other appropriate skill to resist an effect  . 

Each individual rolls a skill check to resist the effects, at the appropriate time, for themselves.

So if it’s mind altering it will be rolling Discipline,

if it’s altering the appearance of something to conceal it (such as changing the appearance of an individual) then it’s Vigilance

If it’s something that can be dodged then its Coordination

If it’s resisted by physical strength (a blast of air?) then it’s Athletics

If it’s resisted by your body on it’s own then it’s Resilience.

The Difficulty of the Spell doesn’t have to have anything to do with the targets, but only when there’s an expectation that the target will at some point make a skill check to resist the effects. If the target never gets a restive skill check then that’s where things like opposed difficulty and defence comes in.

Ill make a few examples based on the situations you suggested:

8 hours ago, SladeWeston said:

T  his    could have been a strong-willed person surrounded by weak-willed ones     .

Charming aura :

You pluck a song on your lyre and sing a sweet melody in an attempt to charm everyone nearby, bending them to you will and making them willing to follow your directions. Make an Average Difficulty Verse skill check, if you are successful then everyone within Short range of you needs to make a Discipline check as an out of turn Incidental with a Difficulty equal to the number of success you rolled. If they fail then they will happily follow your orders for the rest of the encounter, excluding anything that would obviously cause them significant injury.

8 hours ago, SladeWeston said:

It    could        have b  een one super agile person surrounded by clumsy   pe  o   pl  e     .  

Grasping vines:

You scatter a handful of seeds from a pouch at your belt and call forth a nature spirit, make a Hard Difficulty Primal check to accelerate the growth of the vines and guide them to wrap around your foes. If you are successful then everywhere within Medium range of you becomes difficult terrain for 4 rounds. Additionally anyone performing any manoeuvre in the area of the Spell must make a Hard Coordination check or be entangled by the vines, if they fail then they can not perform the move manoeuvre until the Spell ends.

I appreciate you going to such depth and indeed you've made a slightly different point than I thought. Still, I'm afraid it just runs into a different issue I mentioned in the first post as something I was trying to avoid. Namely, I think narrative dice resolution is far too time intensive to just have every enemy make a check in response to a spell.

Well specifically, I was thinking of the situation where a Fireball spell is opposed by each targets coordination check. What you proposed is basically the same thing but adds a caster check in addition to a per enemy roll. That might work for small veteran groups but you get a group of 6 with a newish player with a caster and you're going to run into a nightmare of checks. I guess you could put the burden of those rolls on the GM (which is what I think you are proposing) but that's a lot of extra work to ask of a GM. I think I may use that system for some lingering effects, but I don't think it's a good solution for what I'm trying to solve for.

So what you want is a way for each target of a fireball to have a way to completely avoid being hit, without using a skill check for everyone?

Just remember that Soak is Brawn and therefore anything that causes Wound or Strain Damage is normally opposed by Brawn.

You would be completely removing the mechanics of Defence and Dodge if that’s how it will work, If a caster just has a set difficulty that’s unaffected by the target.

6 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

So what you want is a way for each target of a fireball to have a way to completely avoid being hit, without using a skill check for everyone?

Not just that. I want a mechanic that allows spells to resolve differently based on the target's stats that can be evaluated quickly for multi-target effects. Also, it doesn't have to be completed avoided, in fact, most saves won't be full avoidance. Fireball for example, would likely be half damage and no burn (if it triggers).

10 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Just remember that Soak is Brawn and therefore anything that causes Wound or Strain Damage is normally opposed by Brawn.

Not at all. There are plenty of ranged attack spells in D&D that will translate to ranged attack spells in Genesys. While some spells might bypass soak, I suspect most won't. When balancing damage for Fireball, for example, I'm taking standard enemy soak into account.

8 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

You would be completely removing the mechanics of Defence and Dodge if that’s how it will work, If a caster just has a set difficulty that’s unaffected by the target.

Well no, as mentioned, there will still be spells that target like a ranged attack. Plus, you know, there will still be plenty of things that defence and dodge are good for. I mean, it's not like just because a few spells disregard those stats that they lose all value. Also, as I suggested in my example, things like Adversary could still apply to the check and of course this opens up the possibility for new talents or enemy abilities to boost them as well.

So Soak literally halves the Damage of a fireball, yet you want another mechanic in between that potentially halves the damage.

So you throw a fireball at each target, there’s either a somewhat randomised chance that each individual only takes half Damage (they make a skill check), or there’s a static reduction in damage before applying the other static reduction from Soak.

It can’t be a separate dice pool calculation for each target as that takes a lot longer.

Perhaps just go back to what you started this thread with, Uncanceled Success vs an attribute of the character, but I would change it from Characteristic to Skill Rank. Skill ranks typically start much lower, and can be increased throughout play. There’s also more skills to choose from for more Spell varieties.

Sorry, I’m just trying to dig down to the core of what you want to understand it.

calling it a saving throw really confuses the matter since there’s no dice roll involved.

I would call it Resist, it would be listed with spells like Concentrate is;

Resist: Yes (Coordination)

or

Resist: No

or even better:

Resist: Full (Coordination)

Resist: Half (Coordination)

Resist: Special (Coordination)

Resist: No

Full means the effect is completely ignored if Coordination is high enough

Half means all Damage is halved if Coordination is high enough

Special means there’s unique effects if you resist, such as not being Ensnared or not taking Burn Damage

No means no Resist.

5 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

So Soak literally halves the Damage of a fireball, yet you want another mechanic in between that potentially halves the damage.

So you throw a fireball at each target, there’s either a somewhat randomised chance that each individual only takes half Damage (they make a skill check), or there’s a static reduction in damage before applying the other static reduction from Soak.

It can’t be a separate dice pool calculation for each target as that takes a lot longer.

Perhaps just go back to what you started this thread with, Uncanceled Success vs an attribute of the character, but I would change it from Characteristic to Skill Rank. Skill ranks typically start much lower, and can be increased throughout play. There’s also more skills to choose from for more Spell varieties.

Sorry, I’m just trying to dig down to the core of what you want to understand it.

2

What are you talking about my dude? I haven't changed my mind. My original post stands. Some spells will have a Save as I outlined in that post. I never said anywhere that I was going to change anything about my system. I like my Save mechanic and I thought I'd share it. While feedback is always welcome, sometimes I wonder why people bother posting anything. These types of threads just end up full of posts from people posted the first idea that comes to mind as an alternative. I mean why wouldn't their 30 seconds of thought come up with a better idea than the OPs well considered and playtested one?

Look, I appreciate that you are trying to help, but that isn't what my post was about. I was just posting to say "Hey, I had this problem X and after some playtesting, I came up with the solution Y. Has anyone else tried it? How did it go for you?" If you don't like my system, that's cool. If you see a logical reason why it won't work well, I'd love to hear about it. Just please don't assume that I lack a basic understand of Genesys nor suggest solutions that obviously don't address the basic problems I was looking to address in the OP.

18 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

calling it a saving throw really confuses the matter since there’s no dice roll involved.

I would call it Resist, it would be listed with spells like Concentrate is;

Resist: Yes (Coordination)

or

Resist: No

In my system I never actually call it a saving throw; I just call it a Save. I think I may have said that I was looking to recreate the mechanics of a Saving Throw but I don't think I ever called them that. Although looking through the thread I see several other people did, so I suppose that means that the name is confusing enough that I should consider changing it. I called it a Save mainly because I am using it in a D&D Eberron conversion and they play a similar role. I don't hate the name Resist. My worry is that I could see possibly wanting the keyword Resist for something like elemental resistance, down the road, and I'd hate to waste it. I'll have to google up what other games call Saves to see if there is a better name I'm missing.

On 6/9/2018 at 12:31 AM, SladeWeston said:

Please  feel free to provide thoughts and f  eedback 

This is why people started making suggestions. Your idea will definitely work, but inviting feedback then telling us later on that you don’t even plan on changing your system is kinda wasting everyone’s time.

I would highly suggest making the change from Characteristic to Skill for my previous reasons, it’s something that can progress from 0 to 5 throughout the life of a character, so a player can actually do something to make themselves better. A characteristic can only ever change by 1, so really the character will either be highly resistant from the start, or never be able to be.

Anyway, you seem like you have your plans so I’ll find another thread to pester.

I'm not sure that is fair when the full statement was:

On 6/8/2018 at 9:31 AM, SladeWeston said:

Has anyone tried anything like this? How did it work? Please feel free to provide thoughts and feedback.  

Regardless, I understand that you were just trying to help and I'm sorry for my rudeness. I frustration was more to do with my bad day and the general state of the internet and had little to do with you. Please accept my apology.

18 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

I would highly suggest making the change from Characteristic to Skill for my previous reasons, it’s something that can progress from 0 to 5 throughout the life of a character, so a player can actually do something to make themselves better. A characteristic can only ever change by 1, so really the character will either be highly resistant from the start, or never be able to be.

1

Regarding your suggestion. I have two concerns about this. One, it forces GM's to completely develop an adversary's skill list. As a GM, that generally isn't something I always take the time to do, particularly if I only plan on using them as fodder in a combat. Two, it puts extra weight on skills that are already, typically, pretty good. Resilience, Coordination, Discipline, etc. don't generally need a reason for players to take them as they are already pretty important skills. Plus that adds a new layer of skill balancing to class building that I'm not sure I'd want to deal with.

On the flip side, I do see how scaling could be a concern. My plan was to put in some talents for boosting this but maybe that wouldn't be enough.

One thing that might work would be to make a Save: Agility(Coordination)

That would address the GM prep issue as enemies could always just default to their characteristic. Unfortunately, that doesn't really address the skill valuation issue and I'm a little worried about how quickly a player could scale their saves.

Another way to do it could be to allow a player to level it up like a skill or characteristic. I'm not 100% sure how that would work, as I'd still want it to have a default value but its something to consider.

Perhaps have a list of Saves that are derived atributes, each one is based on the highest of your Skill/Characteristic. No idea what you would call them since most of the good names are already tied up in other things. But one for Mental resistance, one for physical resistance, one for your reactions, and a forth for noticing an altered environment. You are going to end up with high numbers that way though