Moldvay Musings XX: Saving Throws

"Save or die is so stupid! One bad die roll and my PC is dead?! LAME!"

I can't count the number of times I've heard these complaints or some variation of them. It's a hallmark of old-school D&D, like dying during Traveler character generation, that gets repeated as a standard dismissal or condemnation of the older rules sets.

Yes, a saving throw comes down to a single die roll. And yes, a failed one can result in a character dying. But allow me to present some of the rationale behind them and how I interpret them in my games not as a rebuttal necessarily, but at least to show another perspective. I should point out I am far from the first to do this and many of my thoughts are based upon others'.

First of all, what is a saving throw? Well, in Moldvay it's defined as "...the chance that a special attack may be avoided or will have less than the normal effect." (B26). Not to get pedantic, but let's look at the wording of this for just a moment, shall we?

"a special attack may be avoided"

Many special attacks require a successful to-hit before a save is even necessary. Poison attacks are the obvious example of this. The snake must successfully bite you before you need to worry about its venom. So right there you have multiple "buffers" between you and the dreaded Save or Die.

1. You are forced to fight the snake. This isn't a forgone conclusion, what with things like reactions, encounter distances, and running away taken into account.
2. The snake successfully hits you. Depending on things like initiative, marching order, and armor class, the snake might not even get a hit in before being dealt with.
3. Assuming the above two sets of factors go against you, THEN you make your saving throw.

Some attacks have areas of effects (breath weapons) and/or are magical (wands, spells, etc.) and don't roll to-hit. However these are generally from more powerful foes that low-level characters should seriously think twice about facing unprepared. That's not to say sutff doesn't happen, but it should mitigate things somewhat.

Finally, it should be pointed out a couple concepts that have been touched on a bit on this blog before.

1.  "D&D characters die frequently" - Frank Mentzer. In older versions of D&D, it was fully expected to rack up a body count, especially at lower levels. Character creation was simple enough that the loss of your 1st level fighter was a 10 minute interruption at best. Once you got to higher levels and had some investment in the PC, well then point #2 comes into it.
2. Death is a speedbump at mid-to-higher levels. Even if your party doesn't have a cleric capable of casting Raise Dead, you can probably find an NPC that can. Likewise, spells like Resist Fire are going to make that red dragon less scary. Sure, your 10th level Thief might get unlucky with a cockatrice, but Flesh to Stone isn't quite so hard to find as it once was, is it?
3. I wish I could find the original for this, which I believe is attributed to Gary, but to paraphrase, "A saving throw usually means that you've already screwed up and should probably be dead. It's a chance to avoid the worst of the consequences." So when the fireball goes off and you only take half damage, maybe you got luck and were partway behind something. Or maybe you managed to dive out of the way. But it started with you standing there in the line of fire.

Curious Objects: Staff of Withering

There are several cursed objects in the BX magic items lists, but only a few seem to bestow curses or curse-like magic for the wielder instead of upon him. The Staff of Withering is one of them.

I've never placed this item or rolled it randomly. Nor do I recall a game where it appeared. It's strange for several reasons, so let's get to it.

First, it is a clerical item. Yet its extremely malicious nature would make it likely to only be used by chaotic types, so it seems like many PC clerics would avoid or destroy it. Sure, I can imagine scenarios where it could be helpful. e.g. A person has been cursed and turned into a baby and needs to be brought back to their correct age (or closer to it); but mostly, it's for stealing away a person's life a chunk at a time. This also lends itself to torture scenarios. A victim could be threatened with shortened lifespan unless they comply. Another decidedly un-Lawful kind of activity. I imagine many clerical types risking severe disfavor with their gods by employing this stick of incremental doom.

Secondly, there are no hard and fast rules about aging in BX. Not that I feel they are missed or needed, but this is one of the only times the issue of a PC's age comes up. There aren't even ghosts in the BX monster lists to unnaturally age a character. It's not hard to make some simple rulings about a 20-something fighter that suddenly find himself on the wrong side of 50, but as it can drastically affect the rest of the character's career (if any), it bears consideration.

One line stand out about this to me: "The effect of old age will be fatal to animals and most character classes," Now, there are two ways I can interpret this. One is the obvious, that old age kills and that the staff can –even with limited charges– age someone enough to put them in the grave. The other is that the effects of suddenly aging so much so quickly is a shock to the system and warrants a "save or die" roll. Personally, I think it's the former.

Another character aging issue is the line about elves and dwarfs ignore the effects for at least the first few hits. Demihuman lifespans vary from game to game and setting to setting, but I find the inclusion of that caveat interesting. The fact it does not affect the undead makes perfect sense, though a zombie turning into a skeleton would be a fun side effect.

Lastly, remember that as a staff it has limited charges. 3d10 in fact. That means it can steal a maximum of 300 years before it is used up. That, plus the fact it must touch the target, makes it even less of an adventuring item and for more specialized purposes.

RMA: Giant Scorpion

Okay! Okay! I'm sorry I said this adventure was boring!!

Other people may feel differently, but for me, the scorpion is one creepy little crawly; certainly more so than spiders or other arachnids. Having lived in the southern United States for years, I would come across the unstriped scorpion from time to time, but the sense of alienness persists for me.

In real life, most scorpions' stings are no worse than a bee's (allergies notwithstanding). There are more venomous varieties, of course. The largest real-world scorpions clock in at about 8" long. Most are more like 1-2".

The D&D Giant Scorpion is described in Cook Expert as "the size of a small horse." Labyrinth Lord is comparable, saying 6' long. Which is middling for most of the game's "giant" creatures. Still, six feet of scorpion is ten feet too many!

While not precisely rare in adventures, these monsters are hardly common in my experience. People seem to save these for desert/mummy-type adventures, despite the fact that scorpions live in many climates. In fact, GSs are disturbingly common on the wandering monster tables. They appear on dungeon levels 6-7, and –since they are listed under the insect subtable– they can appear in six of the ten terrain types (and with two listings for insect under "jungle"). Oddly, since "insect" isn't an option there, you won't randomly encounter them in the desert.

The stats:

Giant Scorpion (from Cook)

AC: 2

AL: Chaotic

HD: 4*

Move: 150' (50')

Att: 3 (2 claws/1 sting)

Damage: 1d10/1d10/1d4 + poison

No. App: 1d6 (1d6)

Save: F2

Morale: 11

Chaotic? Really?? I would have thought that it would lack the brains for anything other than animalistic neutral, but I suspect that –and its impressive morale score– reflect its aggressive nature. ("will usually attack on sight.") 

Its poison is –of course– Save or Die, but the real kicker is the fact that a successful claw attack gives the monster a +2 to hit with its stinger. Even leaving the venom aside, 1d10 per claw is pretty rough. The nasty play (DMs take note) is to attack two different PCs, one with each claw, and then follow up with the sting on whomever gets "pinched." 

Their eight legs let them scurry faster than the normal character, closing quickly, and their shells are like plate mail. Round that off with 4 HD for hit points and attacks, and this thing is no pushover. 

Up to six giant scorpions per encounter is a scary time for anyone, but they are still susceptible to Sleep, so don't despair. Their saves aren't terribly impressive either. The best tactics against them is probably to keep your distance, pepper them with arrows, and hit them with spells if you can. 

RMA: Sea Snake

After our recent adventures with snakes, I was reminded of this dilly.

Sea snakes in real life are relatively common only in certain waters. While it is true they are venomous, and some extremely so, deaths from encountering these reptiles are fairly rare.

In classic D&D, sea snakes are an unusual encounter even in an aquatic environment. Their low morale means they aren't going to hang around a fight for long, either. There are a couple things that make this little fella insanely scary, though.

Like all poisonous snakes, you've got a save or die potential. However, with sea snakes, there are a couple of oh-so-fun twists to keep in mind.

1. Half the time, the victim doesn't even necessarily know he's been bitten (tiny teeth).
2. Even if Neutralize Poison is used, 25% of the time the spell fails vs. the venom's potency. That's right. A one in four chance that 4th level clerical spell designed to stop poison from killing you just won't cut it against this stuff!

In the game, sea snakes are aggressive and may even attack a human for food (Moldvay). While I don't know that this makes real-life sense (snakes swallow their prey whole, and a human is a tad big for that), it makes having 1d8 of them swimming toward you more than a bit unnerving.

Kelvernia: Saving Throws

Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord are about 90% compatible with one another. The two areas that I've run into so far that need tweaking are hit point/hit dice, and saving throws. Namely, MF characters start with more hit points and several monsters (especially humanoids) reflect this as well (e.g. Morlocks with 9HD as opposed to 1)

For hit points I'm simply sticking to LL for PCs and will adjust any monsters that need to be  tweaked on the fly. Generally sticking to the lower power levels.

For saving throws, the Mutants & Mazes section has some decent advice, basically giving equivalents for the save types between systems. Rather than bog the players down with it, I'll just keep these equivalents in mind when asking for them to roll.

Character Saving Throws

Mutant Future **** Labyrinth Lord

Energy Attacks **** Breath Attacks

Poison or Death **** Poison or Death

Stun Attacks **** Petrify or Paralyze

Radiation **** Wands

Spells or Spell-like Devices has no equivalent in MF, so I'll just the PCs'/monsters' LL saves for that.

ZAP!

Make sense? Or am I missing something?