If it hasn't, people here seem quite willing to rub my face in whatever is wrong with it. And that sounds like something helpful for my future homebrews.
So anyway, I know the focus here lately is largely on TNE or 4.0 hate, but since I have no desire to play 4.0 and TNE isn't in playable form, I'm gonna spend my time dealing with 3.x crap and trying to fix some of the bigger holes in the system. Like saves. They be broke. They lead to rocket launcher tag. So what can be done about them?
I'm sure someone has spent more time explaining why they're broke, but in case no one has, here's the short short explanation of what I think is broke with them: you need a cloak of resistence to even sorta keep up, and that's crap cause that's an item that you have to buy that doesn't add anything to your personality or flavor. Casters need to do everything they can to boost their save DCs to deal with monster save bloat, and that just makes things worse for the rest of us. Situation is shit.
Here's the longer explanation, spoilered so people who don't care or already know better don't have to look at it:
Full casters and monsters get a boost to their DCs every two HD or so. They also get stat boosts from levels, or level appropriate items, and these wind up giving them a +2 to the relevant stat every 4 levels or so. Net result, their save DCs go up by 3 every 4 levels, excluding crazy shit like wishes or DC boosting feats, which aren't really crazy but just make things worse for everyone else.
Good saves go up 1 every 2 levels. With a few exceptions (rogues and dex, cler/dru and wis, etc.), most characters don't focus exclusively on the stat that boosts their good saves, so 1 every 2 levels is about as good as most characters get. The +2 bonus you get will probably cover the stat difference that the caster/monster has on you, so that's worthless. If you add a level appropriate cloak of resist, you get boosted to 3 points every 4 levels. Yay, you need an item to keep up with the caster DCs. Sucks to be you.
Poor saves go 1 every 3 levels, and might get boosted by stats, but even if they did they don't keep up with the caster and monster DCs. Even with the cloak of resist, they don't keep up.
Yes, you can dumpster dive for feats to try to shore up your saves, but you still never get ahead on your poor saves. And caster's don't get to dive as much to boost their DCs, but they still wind up ahead anyway. Sure, they don't get a whole ton of their high DC stuff, but they don't need much of it to murder anyone else they run across.
Advantage, caster and monsters. And because the gap grows, things get worse as you grow in level. When the big SoD/SoS start showing, is when your save gap starts being more than an annoyance. And thus begins the save based rocket tag.
Good saves go up 1 every 2 levels. With a few exceptions (rogues and dex, cler/dru and wis, etc.), most characters don't focus exclusively on the stat that boosts their good saves, so 1 every 2 levels is about as good as most characters get. The +2 bonus you get will probably cover the stat difference that the caster/monster has on you, so that's worthless. If you add a level appropriate cloak of resist, you get boosted to 3 points every 4 levels. Yay, you need an item to keep up with the caster DCs. Sucks to be you.
Poor saves go 1 every 3 levels, and might get boosted by stats, but even if they did they don't keep up with the caster and monster DCs. Even with the cloak of resist, they don't keep up.
Yes, you can dumpster dive for feats to try to shore up your saves, but you still never get ahead on your poor saves. And caster's don't get to dive as much to boost their DCs, but they still wind up ahead anyway. Sure, they don't get a whole ton of their high DC stuff, but they don't need much of it to murder anyone else they run across.
Advantage, caster and monsters. And because the gap grows, things get worse as you grow in level. When the big SoD/SoS start showing, is when your save gap starts being more than an annoyance. And thus begins the save based rocket tag.
Good saves: 3 every 4 progression. No save bonus at level 1.
Poor saves: 1 every 2 progression. No save bonus at level 1.
This would shrink the gap between good and poor to 5 instead of 6 at top levels, and boost the poor saves by a couple of points. Good saves keep up with ability DCs, and poor save trail but not by as much. You could actually patch poor saves with an item, but it's already such that the crappy save feats actually bring the saves closeish to the DCs, especially if it's a scaling feat (not necessary, but nice).
More people making more saves nerfs casters, and that isn't an objective here at all. Giving casters the ability to further boost spells sorta fixes this (a la 3.0 focus feats), but could just as easily result in a zero sum numbers game. Or maybe you could add to Heighten Spell so that for every 2 levels it's heightened, you add an extra 1 to the DC (Heighten level + bonus Dc <= max spell level you can cast) and an extra 5 to the die cap (cause it is a spell of that higher level). It makes lower level spells more useful, since you can bring their effect and DC up more easily, and that makes heighten not useless, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. Spell effects are a harder target to hit, but I think they do more of what I'm trying to achieve.
What I'm getting at is casters, like every other character in the game, should not waste an action ever, and if more people are going to make saves this is exactly what will happen more often. Save negates spells needs to mostly go byebye as a result, easily done by adding some effect to successful saves for most of the spells out there. That's a crap load of work, but I can cheat and just append a generic effect based on school or subtype, adjusting for the special cases out there (but I'd rather avoid it). SoDs might remain the sole save negates out there; spells where if they fail you win might be worth the potential of losing an action to use. No save spells might need a bit of tweaking to be brought into line, but that's a different issue entirely.
And since evasion and mettle are basically save negates abilities, it means that those need to be nerfed as well. Bringing them down to 1/4 on successes, instead of 0, would probably work. That sorta blows for those characters, but they'll be making more of their other saves so hopefully that evens out.
So, here's what I think I've got:
- Good saves that actually keep pace with caster DCs.
Poor saves that keep up better, are still actually worse than caster DCs.
A setup that gives mid/high level characters the ability to ignore a cloak of resist and get something interesting.
Spells that do stuff more often, even if that stuff isn't always Save or Lose. Even against characters who used to be basically immune to them.
The murder of multiclassing for level 1 save bonuses boosts.
