FrankenFourth: Defenses vs. Saves

Oh hey look yet another thing I'm mulling over, this time whether to keep static defenses for Fortitude, Reflex, and Will (a la 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons) or go back to saving throws (a la 3rd Edition, though I could also see making every stat its own save).

Personally I can see a case for both.

On one hand, rolling against a static defense value has a consistency that I really like: whether you're swinging a sword, loosing an arrow, channeling the might of your god, or unleashing bolts of lightning (or charming someone or trying to transform them into a frog), you're attacking/actively trying to do something, so you make the attack roll.

On the other hand, I've heard that players simply enjoy making saving throws; it's fun to roll dice, and/or it gives you the impression that you the player are attempting something to avoid your fate (even though in a static defense system your character is still trying to avoid harm, it's just that who does the rolling gets flipped).

That said, I can see cases where saving throws would make just as much if not more sense. For example, in 4th Edition if you, say, got bit by a giant spider with a venomous bite, it would first make an attack roll to hit (against your AC), and if it hits it would then make a secondary attack against your Fortitude: I think it'd make more sense for you to make a Fortitude/Constitution save to resist the poison's effects.

At this point it'd be a simple matter to go through the rules and just flip everything over to saving throws (and even include variant/optional rules so that groups could go with whatever), so what would you prefer: static defenses or saving throws? As with the poll on armor-as-AC-or-damage-resistance, this is another one of those things where I really only need to know what you'd prefer to see (but if you want to tell me why, go for it).

Announcements

If you're curious about FrankenFourth and/or Dungeons & Delvers, you can find public alpha documents here and here respectively.

Just released our second adventure for A Sundered World, The Golden Spiral. If a snail-themed dungeon crawl is your oddly-specific thing, check it out!

Hot on the heels of The Blackguard, The Troll is out! The Rogue is up next: we should have an alpha draft ready soon.

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).