Thinking about saving throws for NPCs, after a comment last night (thanks Tuck!). Now, there needs to be some mechanism to account for monsters having special responses particularly to spells and area of effects, so I’d been including Saving Throws as Class, like in some versions of B/X.

But Psionic Combat opened a new angle on this for me, because it uses blackjacks, like some other popular games like Errant.

The average saving throw rolled by a PC will work out about 10, with a standard deviation of about 2.5. That can give us a few convenient zones for monsters, who save as a warrior equal to their hit dice. So, if I abstract this out to a Blackjack, we can give each monster a “Safe Zone” for special effects. We can place these at saving throws of 12, 15 and 18 to represent increasing levels of difficulty, and render those instead as a blackjack number of 2, 5 and 8.

For our poison resistant creature, 8 (Poison). For spell-casters, we might give them 2 (Spells). We’ll key these into the saving throws generally, I think, but there’s flexibility here. Like, for our agile monster who can avoid areas of attacks easily, we might give them a safe zone of 5 (Breath weapon).

Actually, now that I think about it, we can tie these straight to HD, which relates to how AD&D 2e actually does it. So, the strength of an 8 HD creature’s safezone would generally be 8; half that for a weak safe zone.

Monsters that have special defences have a safe zone. This safe zone is generally equal to half their hit dice, or half that again if it’s not a primary part of their theme. Safe zone is the number you have to roll higher than in order for them to gain the full brunt of certain attacks. If a PC rolls lower than the safe zone (but also lower than their ability score) on the attack, the monster takes half damage or limited effect. If a PC rolls higher or equal to the safe zone (and lower than their ability score) on the attack, the monster takes full damage or effect. Safe zones are typically equivalent for saving throws, but can often be more specific.

Ok, this is my quick revision of saving throws. I keep figuring out new things, so keep revising hahaha. I guess it’s good Marcia B persuaded me to make some monsters then.

The Advanced Fantasy Dungeons index is here!

Idle Cartulary

Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.