Save vs. Death
Kneller
Member Posts: 438
I'm considering a gnome vs. a dwarf for a run. The dwarf gets the shorty bonus on save vs. death, but the gnome doesn't. What does that mean in game? What are the death saves the PC might face worth mentioning? Thanks.
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Vs. death/paralyzation/poison is supposed to be used against poisons and, death effects, and paralyzation effects. Basically this is supposed to be used against things that attack the life force of the target and such.
Vs. spell is used against most spells and, well, actually a great many other things as well; it seems to be kind of a catchall category.
Vs. petrification/polymorph is supposed to be used mainly against form changing attacks, like petrification and polymorph. It isn't really used too much, I don't think.
Vs. rod/staff/wand is supposed to be used mainly against magical items, but mostly against just wizard weapons like, well, rods, magical staves, and wands. It is often used against other items as well though.
Vs. breath seems to primarily be used against the natural weapons of creatures, both ordinary and fantastic. A dragon's breath weapons are an obvious use, but this save often applies to anything that is a natural weapon of a creature.
The problem comes in when we get to the arbitrarity factor of some of these saves. When an effect overlaps several categories of save, there is often no telling what will be the one that is actually used. There also seem to be a lot of wild card effects in the mix that don't seem to follow the rules at all. A good example of arbitrarity in save effects is seen by comparing the two mage spells Finger of Death and Wail of the Banshee. Both of these spells have essentially the same function: Insta-killing targets, which is clearly a death effect; implying use of save vs. death; but they are both also spells which would also imply use of save vs. spell. As it turns out, Finger of Death uses save vs. spell while Wail of the Banshee uses save vs. death! Incredibly arbitrary, as you can see, and the game is just packed full of this kind of arbitrary use when it comes to saves. Because of all this there is really no hard and fast rule as to what effects use what save type. The question you asked is thus incredibly difficult to answer, and any answer you get will most likely be the guess of a long time veteran of the game who is primarily using their experience to make an estimation. That is, unless someone actually wants to go through every effect in the game to research this for you, which I doubt anyone will (that would be a LOT of work).
and same goes with the save vs spell, since they both get the same great bonus to save vs spell, I believe they hit around 1 when they hit level 17, so again wearing a couple of items of saving throws and that should pit you around -2 or so
if you really want to make sure your saves are superior, if you can make your save vs death/spell both at -3 and then anything that requires you to save at a -4 penalty wont be able to affect you
you don't really need to worry about the other saving throws because they are so situational that the time it comes to save against those effects you can just simply cast the right protection spell on yourself so you cant fail ( like protection from petrification for petrify, the appropriate protection from element spell for breath weapons, etc. )
dwarves are superior when it comes to saving throws, but gnomes are still pretty damn good at it as well, and also remember based on their constitution his how good that bonus is, you need to have at least 18 CON to get the sweetski +5 bonus to those saves, so keep that in mind
Most spells do not require a save vs death, surprisingly even finger of death and disintegrate type spells force save vs spells, even though they kill on a failed save. Only Stinking Cloud and Wail of the Banshee spells force death save, and Irenicus is fond of the latter in vanilla game. Also if you face a real Banshee you need good save vs death as well.