I rewatched Conan the Barbarian yesterday. Towards the end, the villain tries to charm Conan with the power of his voice. For a momant, it looks like Conan is about to succumb, but at the last moment he resists an kills the villain.
So yes to saving throws from me.
You might argue tha Conan was always going to be strong willed enough to succeed. But in thst case, where is the tension, what is the point at all? The villain might as well say "oh no it's Conan" and cut his own throught. Without the chance of failure, there can be no success, without peril their is no adventure.
Sutton United played Arsenal in the FA cup. They could have just decided they had no chsnce and not turned up. The spectators could have decided it wasn't worth going to watch since Arsenal was bound to win. But hordes of people turned up to watch, because there was just a slight chance of an upset, and that's what makes a good story.
I really like the Bavmorda and Conan examples. It's not just that the characters are "strong enough to resist" by default. The saving throw represents a way to determine the question of whether the character is "strong enough". And the needed saving throw values get lower and lower the higher the level of the character. Shorties can actually get down into negative values, and other characters can with certain magic items.
Also, I don't think critical failure on saving throws is a thing in BG. If you've got those coveted negative saves, you can save on a roll of 1.
We're talking godlike power at that time. Creatures like dragons and 12+ level adventurers are very powerful, and very likely to resist spells via saving throw, but still nowhere near immune.
I remember reading in my first edition player's handbook that saving throws were just a numerical way to determine what happens in the game. Several examples were given of how to dramatize a successful saving throw - the character dodged the fireball, "shook off" the mind spell, etc.
Save-or-else and save-or-die spells aren't without effect when they fail, because they made the victim need to save in the first place. The failed spell's effect was that a save had to be made, and there was a probability that that save could have failed.
Sorry to double post, but I never gave my two cents about the Vancian magic. I see it as a very, very primitive and simple way to represent mana flow.
I remember reading in the first edition player's handbook that the spell slot/memorization/rest mechanic was a way to balance mages and clerics against fighters and thieves, such that magic didn't represent such an unfair advantage that no one would want to play a melee or rogue class.
For the mana comparison, let's say that casting a first level spell costs five mana under a more modern magic system. Well, that means a first level mage starts out with exactly five mana in D&D. Level two raises the mana total to ten. The fact that decisions have to be made which spells to memorize is analogous to the spending of skill points. Do you spend skill points to cast Magic Missiles, or do you spend skill points to cast Sleep spells? The Vancian system actually has an advantage here in that you can "respec" your spell skills every rest cycle, where a modern mana-and-skill-points magic system would not let you do that.
I realize that'a not a perfect analogy, but when I think about it that way, I'm more than okay using the Vancian system in D&D.
@BelgarathMTH Yeah, still remember 1st ed, explanations for various things, including HP's not necessarily meaning taking damage, but better at shaking off or avoiding it is some way as well. Tough to come up with a standard set of rules but if followed helps the balance and is OK.
That said, as @chimeric mentioned, I enjoyed the older book versions of Howard's work with Conan, magic was a little more rare, but it was the powerful guys that used it and even then it was slightly more subtle at time, similar to LOTR's stuff.
Saving throws are fine. They represent a series of factors that impact one's ability to resist the adverse effects of poison, magic, etc.
Would D&D be better if "save or die" becomes "die"?
Capitalism is fine. It represents one's ability to improve one's lot in life.
Would society be better if "win or lose" becomes "lose"?
And generally saving throws misrepresent randomness. It's true that "nothing is sure in the chaos of combat," as the Dungeon Master's Guide says somewhere when it mentions that any roll of 20 is a success and any roll of 1 is a failure. Yeah, things can take a surprising turn. But they are not random in that sense. When I whip out my pistol and shoot at someone, there is no quantum-mechanics accidentality in a clown costume blowing bubbles for whether I hit or not. What decides it is how trained I am, my emotional state, how nimble the target, whether the target is moving at all or not, the lighting conditions in the room, what we both ate for breakfast - and that's only the tip of the tip of the iceberg of causality.
The iceberg goes down forever, so no single factor guarantees success. But together major factors, the ones on top, bring it extremely close to a foregone conclusion. If I'm blind and deaf to boot, then perhaps I can still hit with my shot, if I have any reason to start firing at all; but the chance should be not 5% - more like 0.0005%. Given that at any moment on this planet there is someone shooting at someone else in all sorts of circumstances, weird stuff will happen. But that is no grounds for counting on random flukes in any particular case. Flukes are not genuinely random at all, they are just events scattered and strange and varied beyond comprehension of any one person, limited and conditioned and self-absorbed as we are.
Was Conan destined to win against that sorcerer, what's his name? Well, in the movie logic that was certainly a foregone conclusion - good guys have to win. If it were happening for real, though, no, he could have resisted or failed to resist the charming... theoretically. Outside of the actual situation (which neither the hero nor the villain knew fully) these characters could be imagined in any number of ways: Conan stronger with his will, the sorcerer with his experience, and then the riddle of steel, on whose side does that come in? You can turn over a mise-en-scene in your mind, assigning weights as you like, but you will feel that you are measuring them arbitrarily, which is quite true. If you ever want to stop and get to acting you are going to have to throw up your arms and go against this uncertainty, "take your chances," as it will seem to you. And indeed you can call that taking a chance if you interpret action as a sort of gamble against a croupier who knows his cards when you don't know yours. I have no objection to looking at risk this way, but where is actual randomness?
The problem with Dungeons&Dragons is that both sides, the referee and the players, are in the same position vis-a-vis the almighty die. It can surprise both of them. But this is not merely a problem, it is also a very fruitful (as they say) mechanic. There are really three parties in a D&D adventure: the players, the DM and the super-referee from the velvet bag (and possibly a fourth if a ready module is being played). The players look up to the DM in awe, but they know they might negotiate with him and placate him sometimes. But the DM looks up to the dice as a cleric to an incomprehensible god, who might have to be ignored on occasion. So there is dancing three-ways between the sides, and this randomness still makes D&D stand out - and old D&D stands out sharply - against modern gameplay ideas. There were adventures when randomness was really taken to the extreme, like the Tomb of Horrors. You push the wrong button and a poisoned needle shoots out, death, no saving throw. The objectivity of this sort of thing (you knew the DM didn't make it up himself!) could be satisfying in a grim roller-coaster sort of way. And still can be.
But if you actually want to take responsibility for your character and the outcomes of adventuring, you need something with more space to maneuver, more control. I argue that D&D, a very early and simple entertainment, substituted randomness, the die, for gameplay possibilities its rules did not cover. The system was never meant for deep drama nor to reflect fully its source materials, fantasy books, movies and comics. It just tried to carry over, borrow really, some elements of style. It was meant for a fun Friday evening with friends. The die was a sort of tumbling beholder, a catch-all for the other things happening never described but let for your, player's, imagination. The form of the game was recital from the DM - a book read out to you where you got to be a character. "After a week in the wilderness you come across a solitary hut..." This form forced you frequently into a third-person relationship with your character, watching him, and so you mostly just accepted the accidents and incidents in the unfolding biography. Any adventure book or movie had to have pitfalls and pratfalls! It is a very peculiar position, really, inside-outside the narrative. Perhaps not quite found anywhere else.
In a way, it was brilliantly economic, to simply let players explain to themselves why their actions succeeded or failed. And it is all well and good still for many people - just read the responses in this thread. Randomness excites them, because they can imagine so many things inside of it. To them, filling in blanks is satisfying. But not to me. I don't want to watch myself in third person and glory in new powers, titles and levels augmenting the image. I don't want to imagine anything. I want to see those sights with my mind's eye, I want to act in them - in first person, from inside myself. I don't want to play someone who is thrilled by a new spell or artifact or an underwater city. I want to actually be thrilled. I want to touch the magic, smell it, grab it, use it, luxuriate in it. I want it strong, or let it be weak but real, and I want it reliable as my own body.
GURPS magic was always better. You have an IQ of 15 and Magery 2, so you learn spells as if your IQ were 17. Most spells are Mental/Hard skills, so if you put 1 character point into the spell you have it at a 15, which means you can cast it by saying a few quiet words and/or making a few small gestures *and* it costs 1 less fatigue point to cast. You have 10 fatigue points (based on your base ST of 10) and you also know Recover Strength (a spell) at 15, so if you sit quietly you can recover 1 point of fatigue in only 5 minutes--even if you spend all your energy just go have a nice, leisurely lunch and you'll be back to full strength. (IQ 15 and Magery 2 is a little costly, so I usually went with IQ 14 and Magery 2, putting my spells at a base of 14 so my spells would be successfully cast on a roll of 14 or less on 3d6).
Saving throws are fine. They represent a series of factors that impact one's ability to resist the adverse effects of poison, magic, etc.
Would D&D be better if "save or die" becomes "die"?
Capitalism is fine. It represents one's ability to improve one's lot in life.
Would society be better if "win or lose" becomes "lose"?
This is to faulty comparisons what singularities are to gravity wells. It has an event horizon beyond which nothing of value could possibly escape.
Also, while randomness might to you represent a third person observer watching your character, immersion differs for others. I don't relate to what you wrote at all.
If you dig Amber or Nobilis or other diceless games that's great. They're brilliant games and definitely worth the time to play them, but to put diceless resolution on a pedestal and declare it superior to randomness is misguided and not really helpful. One wonders why you're complaining about Dungeons & Dragons when you could be playing something more to your taste. Nobody's forcing you to play D&D in any incarnation, no one is holding a gun to your head insisting that you play D&D whether in analog books, character sheets, and dice, or digital video games.
So you don't like D&D. That's fine. Where's the problem? There's no satisfactory solution here, because D&D isn't going to change its spots. What happens is what always happens, people create new games that provide what they (and presumably others) want.
While I mentioned tabletop RPGs regarding diceless play, I want to point out that an action RPG series that might be up your alley is Dark Souls. You have to dodge attacks, block attacks, or take the brunt of those attacks. Everything you do, and everything that impacts your character is a result of the skill you bring to the game. There's little to no randomness of the sort that you dislike in D&D. The most random thing in the game is drops, and not all drops are random.
Of course, Dark Souls is played from a third person perspective, but perfection is unattainable.
@chimeric What I think I am hearing is that you would just like more of the real experience, me as well. I get that myself, PnP is better at it that computers, but computers are easier to get a group together (ourselves), but I unferstand the limitation aspect. I reckon until we get a real life 'Better than Life' game like on the show Red Dwarf, where we plug electrodes into our brain for 'Total Immersion' hehheh, will have to make do.
@BelleSorciere I think its not that he doesn't like it, but just wants there to be more to it, in a way. At least that is what I am thinking. But as it's all we have, I do not think it is a direct attack on the game. But as you mention, and it is a good point I think, we can all have different takes on the matter, and more or less acceptance to the current standards of the various games.
On a more general note to the thread: Sometimes I think a person ( I know I can for sure) can overthink a matter and it can come across as strict criticism but in reality really enjoy it at the same time. I think we can all agree, in our own varying ways, improvement is welcome, it's just that the issue of improvement can vary with folks as @BelleSorciere alluded to I think.
I one size fits all approach is hard to come by in gaming standards but AD&D sure did get on the map back in the late 70's and has made a lastly impression to the gaming world, in one form or another.
Saving throws do take into account the competence of the target: higher-level critters get better saves and are therefore more likely to shrug off a charm effect and so forth. In 3e and beyond, saving throws scale dramatically with levels and ability scores. Casting Finger of Death on a dragon is much, much less random in 3E.
And for what it's worth, the DM can always require two dice rolls for especially improbable events, or even ignore dice rolls entirely. But we use d20s for these things because using d100s or 10d10s, however more realistic they might be, is simply not practical for normal gameplay.
This is how I see it:
Dice rolls aren't there to represent random chance. They're to represent all of the factors that are not already accounted for.
An example: A mage with 16 Intelligence and the Spell Focus: Enchantment feat casts Charm Person on a random peasant with 10 Wisdom (no bonuses to his saving throw). The DC is 16 (10 base, +1 for a level 1 spell, +3 for Intelligence, +2 for Spell Focus), so the peasant has an 80% chance of getting charmed.
But...
Let's say the mage is a foreigner with a weird accent, and this peasant really hates foreigners. That would give the peasant some sort of bonus, right? But the peasant is in a good mood, so the mage also gets a bonus of some sort.
But the mage is trying to cast the spell with gloves that don't fit. But a fortune teller told the peasant to be more trusting of new people. But the mage was kind of tired when he cast the spell. But he casts this spell all the time; it's easy for him. But he lost his spellbook and had to re-create the spell, and now it works a little differently. But the new spell is more effective than his old one, even though it's unfamiliar. And so on and so on.
Dice rolls don't just add unpredictability to gameplay; they account for any tiny variables that the DM and player don't have the time to factor in themselves.
More real experience in magic. In other words, none. Or as Eddie Izzard once said, "So you're claiming these are actual facts about a fictional character."
I will give you a thumbs up for Red Dwarf. I would have to rank Cat as one of my five favorite characters of all time.
In the movie's climax, Willow throws an magic acorn, which turns anything it hits to stone, at the evil queen Bavmorda. She catches the acorn and her hand begins to turn to stone, but she is so powerful that she stops the transformation, reverses it, and pulverizes the magic acorn into dust (i.e., she made her saving throw vs. petrification).
I think your example is an argument against your own case: it's not that Bavmorda might or might not have been turned into stone, randomly, but her superior power let her defeat its effects. I suppose she would have been petrified, had she just surrendered to the acorn, but after she made the effort there is nothing random I see about the outcome. It is just superior power, no dice-rolling. Imagine the same scene when Bavmorda tries very hard but gets petrified all the same. Possible? Of course, but for a different, weaker Bavmorda. Which is indeed what we, viewers, would have concluded from such a scene, that Bavmorda was not that powerful after all.
That's the problem with the saving throw mechanic, especially one that negates an effect entirely: it is not based on a character's power, because even with very good saving throw numbers high HD creatures like liches and dragons still fail about 3-4 times out of 20, and always 1 time out of 20, but it's also not related to any special actions or maneuvers on the part of the creature. I don't consider trying to resist something harmful coming over you an action, everyone would. In fact by AD&D rules a creature or character must voluntarily decline (its player must announce) its saving throw or lower magic resistance, when it wants to receive an effect, which means that the saving throw, automatic as it is, already represents standard willpower effort. But then, why is it random? Why is it a roll? As for raising a shield, dodging etc., as you say, those cannot be assumed to just have happened. Let a creature, a character actually do those things, let them, for starters, have the time for that in the order of initiative. I'm not opposed to small randomness in determining who goes first in a round, though, in my opinion, this should be by and large a matter of absolute speed.
Combat rules in AD&D are not meant to describe every muscle movement the character takes. The player does not need to specify every step the character takes, every swing of the sword, every adjustment of shield position, etc.. In AD&D, a combat round is one minute long. An attack action is assumed to include many swings, thrusts, parries, shield blocks, etc.. The various mechanics ("to hit" rolls, AC, hit points, saving throws) abstract those details to die rolls. That is at the heart of every version of D&D/AD&D. How one interprets the results of the die rolls is where the mechanics get turned into heroic fantasy.
Take four characters, a warrior, a rogue, a priest, and a wizard, each making their saving throw vs. a fireball. You should just imagine them all standing there, letting the flames wash over them while they get slightly singed. Sounds blah. OR.... the warrior raises her shield at the last second, protecting her face from the flames; the rogue reflexively crouches low, wrapping his cloak around himself for protection; the priest feels the power of St. Cuthbert radiating from his holy symbol, protecting him from the worst of the flames; the wizard quickly makes a magical warding symbol with her fingers, partly deflecting the flames from her. Personally, I prefer the latter interpretations.
And the Willow example was also about how to interpret a successful save. Obviously, there was no die roll when George Lucas was writing Willow (or at least, I assume he wasn't just transcribing a D&D game session with Warwick Davis, Val Kilmer, and Joanne Whalley ). But imagine a similar battle between Irenicus and CHARNAME. CHARNAME hits Irenicus with a Hold Person spell. Irenicus makes his save, and you can imagine either as the spell harmlessly doing nothing, or perhaps you imagine that the spell tried to bind him (imagine the streams of magic flowing around him, trying to bind his limbs), he struggles for a moment, then breaks the magical bonds before they can fully bind him.
Same die roll result. Two ways of interpreting it.
Dice rolls don't just add unpredictability to gameplay; they account for any tiny variables that the DM and player don't have the time to factor in themselves.
The thing is, those tiny variables and many that are not so tiny can just be assumed to be equal. I don't believe for a moment that a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere is going to throw off my aim when I shoot. The larger factors like training, fatigue, physical strength - if we are talking about combat - trump small stuff by far. Bavmorda was simply a sorceress of immense power. That was the reason she was able to resist the magic acorn, not because it was Friday the 13th or the acorn was from a B-grade batch. A game system that accounts for fundamentals on both sides represents a situation adequately, and the totals should just be compared. A die roll, on the other hand, would misrepresent it in that it could suddenly make Willow's trick a much greater success than it had any right to be.
You can interpret mute silence, gaps and nothing-happening to your heart's content. If something happens for no reason, feel free to invent heroics. To me, nothing comes from nothing. To me a heroic feat is not a matter of garlanding a random roll with cliches like raising a shield or wagging a holy symbol. Those are not actions at all, even when they are actually done, because they require no real thinking, no initiative or courage from a player. The player just pulls them from a ready hat - pointy hat if he is playing a wizard, horned helmet for a barbarian, there are stock conventions in abundance for anyone's isometric self-detachment. But to my mind what is heroic is to risk one's well-being not against some die from the sky that may carry you to success when you do not deserve it but against clear odds and absolute dangers. Then, if you act and somehow tip the scale and come out on top, you really deserve cheering. Isn't this just common sense?
More real experience in magic. In other words, none. Or as Eddie Izzard once said, "So you're claiming these are actual facts about a fictional character."
Magic is real, of course. But even if talking about it as complete fiction, there are all sorts of actual facts we know about fictional creatures. It's true about unicorns that they have horns and hooves and true about dragons that some of them breathe fire, even though neither exist. So what? Existence is just another property. Anything that has relevance and value and inflames the human imagination should and can be judged on its own merits. That's where creativity comes in: you either create a magic and do it right, and then it feels alive and feels open to acting within of, or you vaguely sketch out 9 levels of spells, throw in primitive material components, substitute dice for player decisions and let the party defend the time spent in this loveless marriage.
@chimeric - D&D has always relied on the imagination of the players. From the AD&D 2E PHB, regarding saving throws.
More often than not, the saving throw represents an instinctive act on the part of the character--diving to the ground just as a fireball scorches the group, blanking the mind just as a mental battle begins, blocking the worst of an acid spray with a shield. The exact action is not important--DMs and players can think of lively and colorful explanations of why a saving throw succeeded or failed. Explanations tailored to the events of the moment enhance the excitement of the game.
You're arguing that D&D shouldn't be D&D - that the fundamental mechanics of the game are wrong. That's a perfectly valid opinion to hold. But, after 40+ years and 9 editions (OD&D, B/X D&D, AD&D, BECMI D&D, AD&D 2E, D&D 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 5E), I think the basic dice-rolling mechanics aren't going to be shelved any time soon.
@chimeric I think you have a valid point and want to agree with you. For instance, I always believed that a high level illusionist should be able to create really deep and intricate illusions that should basically be only limited by his imagination, wrapping and wrapping levels of false realities to confuse and dominate enemies. D&D magic is just too compartmented in fixed spells, when it should have much more granularity. I have to mention that I haven't played pnp in years, so this feeling I have might be more of a limitation of the BG video game platform, which is the bulk of my D&D experience now.
However I don't understand how else to represent failed or successful actions other than by some measure of randomness. Would you prefer a system where such randomness would disappear ? A system where if you're strong enough to charm the enemy, it would work everytime ? Such system would be boring real fast, because it would leave little surprise to the player. Would you prefer a system with bigger dices, thus giving more granularity to the different actions instead of the base 5% scale given by the d20 ? That actually would be a great idea.
I'm honestly asking what you would consider a better system because, at the end of the day, it's a game meant to have fun, and rolling a critical fail or a critical success around a table with your friends (or even alone in front of your computer against a dragon for that matter) is highly enjoyable.
But to my mind what is heroic is to risk one's well-being not against some die from the sky that may carry you to success when you do not deserve it but against clear odds and absolute dangers. Then, if you act and somehow tip the scale and come out on top, you really deserve cheering. Isn't this just common sense?
I don't believe so. You appear to be saying that there is no role for chance and I think that's unrealistic in real life and would be no fun in fantasy gaming. - in real life fights chance plays a significant role - it's not just skill that determines which of 6 men survive a bomb blast or a hail of bullets. - I recognise that there are games where chance plays no part, e.g. city construction, but that's a very different animal from the heroic fantasy of D&D. I've played BG for many years, but if I always knew what the outcome of all actions would be I wouldn't want to play any more.
I also think you're too dismissive about the ways in which characters might actually be improving their chances of survival (represented as rolling the dice in the game). I'm not really into role-playing at all, but even I can recognise how that thinking can enrich the game (in very much the way you seemed to be suggesting you wanted earlier in this thread). In addition those small gains really do make a major difference to results. A good example is the British cycling team over the last few Olympics. They've based their preparation on the idea of 'marginal gains' - looking at everything that affects performance to try and eke out an extra tiny edge (see for example https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-1-performance-improvements-led-to-olympic-gold). The reason that works is that in elite sports everyone performs to a high level, so small gains make the difference between success and failure (or in D&D terms between life and death).
More often than not, the saving throw represents an instinctive act on the part of the character--diving to the ground just as a fireball scorches the group, blanking the mind just as a mental battle begins, blocking the worst of an acid spray with a shield. The exact action is not important--DMs and players can think of lively and colorful explanations of why a saving throw succeeded or failed. Explanations tailored to the events of the moment enhance the excitement of the game.
What I don't understand is how is that instinctive? Does everybody "blank the mind" as a mental battle begins? What does it even mean to blank the mind? Sounds like a highly specialized skill. And would most people even have a conception of a mental battle? Peasants? Knights? Even wizards with fireballs? If not, why should they receive a saving throw? Or take an acid spray with a shield - I don't know if that action is intuitive at all. I, for one, would be afraid of a splash. And I would need a shield to even attempt that. Diving to the ground? All right, if I am nimble and not some oldish cleric with Dexterity 8. But then, if I dive automatically, wouldn't everyone too? So why do I get to take only half damage and they get the full monty?
As I said, it is a strange and unique feature of D&D that it works backwards: not from actions to results but from results to actions. "DMs and players can think of lively and colorful explanations of why a saving throw succeeded or failed. Explanations tailored to the events of the moment enhance the excitement of the game." Well, this is true, if what you want is to hear an exciting story, a saga unfolding like the Bayeux tapestry, and your character on it. But if you want to act yourself, first-person, erupt in the moment and turn it around, then describing the adventures of dice post factum won't do.
In my opinion, all of these counter-measures above should be actions quickly announced by players. The DM should be able to decide as quickly whether they succeed, measured against some Difficulty Class of the situation he has in his mind. Approximately so, for diving: basic reward for a sensible response +10, large room + 5, old guy -3, low Dexterity -3. There would be no actual totaling point-by-point, that would take too long and burden the DM with endless tables. It's not that the tables in the DMG are useless, but, to my mind, they are the most useful for educating the referee on the general value, rarity, difficulty of objects and actions, so he can form some realistic idea in his mind. On the whole, it is enough for the referee to have a clear sense of the relative power of the combo, acting character and his action, together, versus the severity of the problem. Both in his own estimation, of course! And this kind of approximation would not work exactly the same way every time, it would, of course, vary as the DM's shifts accents and moves weights next time in his mind - all the randomness players require! Nor does the DM necessarily know what he is going to invent or what to throw at the characters next.
I've spent enough time arguing this point, but the shortest statement is: fun comes from real action and response of the DM and players to each other, not from make-belief pulled over a rather passive and mechanistic experience.
This should answer your question too, Arctodus. But let me be more precise. You say "A system where if you're strong enough to charm the enemy, it would work every time? Such system would be boring real fast, because it would leave little surprise to the player." Here you are mixing up two different points of view: what the players see and know and what the DM sees and knows, the god's eye view. Subjective knowledge and objective knowledge (so to speak). The players can reasonably expect to beat, for example, charm, enemies weaker than themselves. If those enemies really are weaker, other things being equal, their characters should succeed always. But the players never know 1) whether other things really are equal... there could be all sorts of influences at play, from morale to magic protections, on both sides, that only the DM will know... and 2) whether these enemies are actually weaker than they or just seem to be. The players only see things through a glass, darkly. But the DM also is no mind reader.
Also consider that even weaker enemies who stand no chance individually can be a problem in large numbers. If there is a crowd of them egging each other on and room for them to encircle the party and flank, the DM can increase difficulty and time it takes to dispatch an enemy. No one says a sure victory is an instant kill. It may be a matter of wearing down an enemy's defense with sure blows to the point where you can get one through. With extra time needed and constant effort to keep slaying these weaklings, fatigue would settle in quickly. This way even a group of strong characters could be overwhelmed by a horde - without turning to dice for supernatural resolution, magical 1s and 20s, to explain it. But on the whole this kind of diceless system, where surprise comes from lack of absolute knowledge, not randomness, is going to have to emphasize conscious involvement on everyone's part. In this system you wouldn't often just say "I fight." Against complete weaklings, perhaps, you could just rely on your default skills and training. But in danger you would want to improve your "chances" by trying to bring the ceiling down on the enemies or tipping over a cauldron or throwing up a cloak and so on, and they - the DM on their behalf - would try some tactics of their own. Ideally it should be as close and intense as "I strike at her legs" - "She jumps on the shelf" - "I try to bring down the shelf"...
I don't box, but from all I've seen, this parallel should be valid: if a champion has to fight some untrained guy, his victory is pretty much automatic. The boxer lets his fists carry out the routine from the gym and wham, the other guy is on the floor. But against another skilled fighter it is something else completely: both need to think, attempt maneuvers, press on or try to stay away, wear each other down, go for the body, go for the weak jaw, bob and weave more, use more crosses and so forth. Combat gets intellectual - not for entertainment but because the opponents are so damn difficult for each other within the rules. They would like to finish it quickly, sure, but they just can't! Their coaches give them tips. Each seeks to gain advantage over the other and press it. And this is why professional fights are fun to watch, because it's more than just honed reflexes. Of course, without safety rules, protective equipment and gloves, but with Roman-style iron-studded belts over the knuckles fights would be much more savage and quicker. So in games, whether we are talking about magic effects or regular fighting, the mechanics should probably also be faster, simpler and deadlier. But we don't need dice for that.
P.S. There would be some situations of inevitable randomness, though. For dice. A hail of bullets. Or arrows. King Harold Godwineson with a shaft in his eye. Would a DM want to subject his players to randomness of this sort? I don't know. Modern warfare is as spectacular as any magic, but it is random in the most horrible and antihuman sense. Medieval combat was much more about strength and skill, but perhaps we would have to go back in time as far as chariot fights between caste warriors to really see "fair" challenges. I think fiction becomes fantasy, an escape, just at that border of make-belief - where we may lead our lives and travel confidently and be in control of them...
Basically, you want to play something that isn't D&D. Fine.
D&D's roots in miniature wargaming using dice as a resolution mechanic go back over 45 years to the original Chainmail published in 1971. That isn't going to change.
There are few things worse than wading into a thread of text walls from rules lawyers arguing over inconsequential interpretations. I am thrilled, however, to have skimmed the thread purely for the delight of catching this beautifully condescending dismissal:
If you dig Amber or Nobilis or other diceless games that's great. They're brilliant games and definitely worth the time to play them, but to put diceless resolution on a pedestal and declare it superior to randomness is misguided and not really helpful. One wonders why you're complaining about Dungeons & Dragons when you could be playing something more to your taste. Nobody's forcing you to play D&D in any incarnation, no one is holding a gun to your head insisting that you play D&D whether in analog books, character sheets, and dice, or digital video games.
The problem with saving throws is not that they're random - so are to-hit and damage rolls, - but because there's rarely enough of them being rolled to assume the probability to be mathematically accurate median. You won't fly a plane if it has 1% chance to crash down, but you likely won't mind using a hundred of such planes to transfer cargo. Or, in DnD terms, the chance of failing a save vs disintegration makes it exactly prohibitive, not just dangerous to take on a wizard capable of casting it. You can't even take a parachute to insure against the worst possible outcome. And vice versa, only a dumb wizard would take Disintegrate into a duel against high-level fighter. But if we had 20 fighters vs 20 wizards, then, depending on severity of effect, its DC and target's saves - then we could actually consider it a factor and estimate the risks.
PS Also I wouldn't underestimate diceless systems, even without random effects they can be far, far from being predictable if done right.
I love diceless systems, actually. Some of the most fun I've ever had was in diceless games (or dice-using games with some adoption of diceless mechanics). I wouldn't underestimate them.
This is to faulty comparisons what singularities are to gravity wells. It has an event horizon beyond which nothing of value could possibly escape.
Er, what dies that mean in plain 'kitchen English'?
A faulty comparison is comparing one thing to another that aren't actually related. In this case, comparing saving throws to capitalism. Maybe "false analogy" would be better. It was late when I wrote it.
A singularity is a black hole. The event horizon is the point beyond which nothing - not even light - can escape. Events within an event horizon cannot affect an outside observer. To be fair, a solid object would reach the point of no return before hitting the event horizon because solid objects cannot travel at light speed. Basically, to leave a gravity well you have to achieve escape velocity. That is, travel fast enough to escape from the gravity well. On Earth this is something like 11.186 kilometers/second (per wikipedia) at sea level. No amount of velocity will get anything back across an event horizon.
If you dig Amber or Nobilis or other diceless games that's great. They're brilliant games and definitely worth the time to play them, but to put diceless resolution on a pedestal and declare it superior to randomness is misguided and not really helpful. One wonders why you're complaining about Dungeons & Dragons when you could be playing something more to your taste. Nobody's forcing you to play D&D in any incarnation, no one is holding a gun to your head insisting that you play D&D whether in analog books, character sheets, and dice, or digital video games.
The problem with saving throws is not that they're random - so are to-hit and damage rolls, - but because there's rarely enough of them being rolled to assume the probability to be mathematically accurate median. You won't fly a plane if it has 1% chance to crash down, but you likely won't mind using a hundred of such planes to transfer cargo. Or, in DnD terms, the chance of failing a save vs disintegration makes it exactly prohibitive, not just dangerous to take on a wizard capable of casting it. You can't even take a parachute to insure against the worst possible outcome. And vice versa, only a dumb wizard would take Disintegrate into a duel against high-level fighter. But if we had 20 fighters vs 20 wizards, then, depending on severity of effect, its DC and target's saves - then we could actually consider it a factor and estimate the risks.
(and I forgot to respond to this)
No argument. I do understand what you're saying and that is a flaw. I wasn't trying to argue that D&D is flawless so much as that it works well enough for what it does. I'm not sure how to handle what saving throws do without having saving throws. Not because they're the best solution, but because that solution works within the framework D&D provides.
I could see possibilities in terms of giving people the opportunity to react to spells or other save-inducing events to get a +2 circumstance bonus (say diving for cover when someone casts a fireball or disintegrate or some such at them). But I mean, that's pretty much as far as I'd go, lacking a better solution. And since I'm unlikely to go looking for a better solution because I do not think one is needed, I guess I'll leave it at that.
I think it's best to remember the words of wisdom from the great Patsy: It's only a model.
Keep in mind that D&D and the tabletop war games from which it evolved were simulations of what people thought things might be like. As I said before, you can't track everything, or take everything into account. Even if you could, you'd spend all your time adding and subtracting effects in an infinite series of numbers which, one hopes, would converge to a particular value. Thus things devolve into never ending accounting. So we model it, and back when D&D was started, dice were the model of choice. They were cheap, readily available, quick, easy to use, and easy to understand. If only more choices in life could be so obvious.
And the rules left things to the discretion of the dungeon master and players. If a player was firing arrows from behind a barricade, they could get bonuses for armor class and saves. Wisdom helped fight off mind-affecting spells, but maybe one character had an innate fear of undead or poultry, so you'd adjust saves against an illusion of a skeleton goose.
Now, if you don't like the model, fine. There are things about it I don't like, but it's just a game and they are minor quibbles, so I don't worry about it. Heck, there are things I don't like about quantum mechanics even though experiments show it happens, but the universe is going to keep doing its thing whether I like it or not. Anyway, this is the model used in the games, adapted to a digital computing environment, so there it is.
It seems to me that all the long anti-D&D essays can be reduced to "I don't like D&D, and here's why." Which is fine. But what's the point of arguing with people who do like D&D? Do you want to convince us that because you don't like it, we shouldn't like it either? That won't happen. Or is it just entertaining to argue for the sake of arguing? That I could actually understand, as I have been guilty of doing that myself.
A friend of mine used to run a bar. A couple of winters ago she was attacked by some drink-addled, little pipsqueak as she went for a cigarette after refusing to serve him. When the perfectly-sober, MMA trained bouncer stepped in, he slipped on the ice & broke his leg.
Drunken, reeling pipsqueak kicked him in the head and left without a scratch (until the police picked him up off the CCTV).
Comments
Would D&D be better if "save or die" becomes "die"?
So yes to saving throws from me.
You might argue tha Conan was always going to be strong willed enough to succeed. But in thst case, where is the tension, what is the point at all? The villain might as well say "oh no it's Conan" and cut his own throught. Without the chance of failure, there can be no success, without peril their is no adventure.
Sutton United played Arsenal in the FA cup. They could have just decided they had no chsnce and not turned up. The spectators could have decided it wasn't worth going to watch since Arsenal was bound to win. But hordes of people turned up to watch, because there was just a slight chance of an upset, and that's what makes a good story.
Also, I don't think critical failure on saving throws is a thing in BG. If you've got those coveted negative saves, you can save on a roll of 1.
We're talking godlike power at that time. Creatures like dragons and 12+ level adventurers are very powerful, and very likely to resist spells via saving throw, but still nowhere near immune.
I remember reading in my first edition player's handbook that saving throws were just a numerical way to determine what happens in the game. Several examples were given of how to dramatize a successful saving throw - the character dodged the fireball, "shook off" the mind spell, etc.
Save-or-else and save-or-die spells aren't without effect when they fail, because they made the victim need to save in the first place. The failed spell's effect was that a save had to be made, and there was a probability that that save could have failed.
I remember reading in the first edition player's handbook that the spell slot/memorization/rest mechanic was a way to balance mages and clerics against fighters and thieves, such that magic didn't represent such an unfair advantage that no one would want to play a melee or rogue class.
For the mana comparison, let's say that casting a first level spell costs five mana under a more modern magic system. Well, that means a first level mage starts out with exactly five mana in D&D. Level two raises the mana total to ten. The fact that decisions have to be made which spells to memorize is analogous to the spending of skill points. Do you spend skill points to cast Magic Missiles, or do you spend skill points to cast Sleep spells? The Vancian system actually has an advantage here in that you can "respec" your spell skills every rest cycle, where a modern mana-and-skill-points magic system would not let you do that.
I realize that'a not a perfect analogy, but when I think about it that way, I'm more than okay using the Vancian system in D&D.
Tough to come up with a standard set of rules but if followed helps the balance and is OK.
That said, as @chimeric mentioned, I enjoyed the older book versions of Howard's work with Conan, magic was a little more rare, but it was the powerful guys that used it and even then it was slightly more subtle at time, similar to LOTR's stuff.
Would society be better if "win or lose" becomes "lose"?
And generally saving throws misrepresent randomness. It's true that "nothing is sure in the chaos of combat," as the Dungeon Master's Guide says somewhere when it mentions that any roll of 20 is a success and any roll of 1 is a failure. Yeah, things can take a surprising turn. But they are not random in that sense. When I whip out my pistol and shoot at someone, there is no quantum-mechanics accidentality in a clown costume blowing bubbles for whether I hit or not. What decides it is how trained I am, my emotional state, how nimble the target, whether the target is moving at all or not, the lighting conditions in the room, what we both ate for breakfast - and that's only the tip of the tip of the iceberg of causality.
The iceberg goes down forever, so no single factor guarantees success. But together major factors, the ones on top, bring it extremely close to a foregone conclusion. If I'm blind and deaf to boot, then perhaps I can still hit with my shot, if I have any reason to start firing at all; but the chance should be not 5% - more like 0.0005%. Given that at any moment on this planet there is someone shooting at someone else in all sorts of circumstances, weird stuff will happen. But that is no grounds for counting on random flukes in any particular case. Flukes are not genuinely random at all, they are just events scattered and strange and varied beyond comprehension of any one person, limited and conditioned and self-absorbed as we are.
Was Conan destined to win against that sorcerer, what's his name? Well, in the movie logic that was certainly a foregone conclusion - good guys have to win. If it were happening for real, though, no, he could have resisted or failed to resist the charming... theoretically. Outside of the actual situation (which neither the hero nor the villain knew fully) these characters could be imagined in any number of ways: Conan stronger with his will, the sorcerer with his experience, and then the riddle of steel, on whose side does that come in? You can turn over a mise-en-scene in your mind, assigning weights as you like, but you will feel that you are measuring them arbitrarily, which is quite true. If you ever want to stop and get to acting you are going to have to throw up your arms and go against this uncertainty, "take your chances," as it will seem to you. And indeed you can call that taking a chance if you interpret action as a sort of gamble against a croupier who knows his cards when you don't know yours. I have no objection to looking at risk this way, but where is actual randomness?
The problem with Dungeons&Dragons is that both sides, the referee and the players, are in the same position vis-a-vis the almighty die. It can surprise both of them. But this is not merely a problem, it is also a very fruitful (as they say) mechanic. There are really three parties in a D&D adventure: the players, the DM and the super-referee from the velvet bag (and possibly a fourth if a ready module is being played). The players look up to the DM in awe, but they know they might negotiate with him and placate him sometimes. But the DM looks up to the dice as a cleric to an incomprehensible god, who might have to be ignored on occasion. So there is dancing three-ways between the sides, and this randomness still makes D&D stand out - and old D&D stands out sharply - against modern gameplay ideas. There were adventures when randomness was really taken to the extreme, like the Tomb of Horrors. You push the wrong button and a poisoned needle shoots out, death, no saving throw. The objectivity of this sort of thing (you knew the DM didn't make it up himself!) could be satisfying in a grim roller-coaster sort of way. And still can be.
But if you actually want to take responsibility for your character and the outcomes of adventuring, you need something with more space to maneuver, more control. I argue that D&D, a very early and simple entertainment, substituted randomness, the die, for gameplay possibilities its rules did not cover. The system was never meant for deep drama nor to reflect fully its source materials, fantasy books, movies and comics. It just tried to carry over, borrow really, some elements of style. It was meant for a fun Friday evening with friends. The die was a sort of tumbling beholder, a catch-all for the other things happening never described but let for your, player's, imagination. The form of the game was recital from the DM - a book read out to you where you got to be a character. "After a week in the wilderness you come across a solitary hut..." This form forced you frequently into a third-person relationship with your character, watching him, and so you mostly just accepted the accidents and incidents in the unfolding biography. Any adventure book or movie had to have pitfalls and pratfalls! It is a very peculiar position, really, inside-outside the narrative. Perhaps not quite found anywhere else.
In a way, it was brilliantly economic, to simply let players explain to themselves why their actions succeeded or failed. And it is all well and good still for many people - just read the responses in this thread. Randomness excites them, because they can imagine so many things inside of it. To them, filling in blanks is satisfying. But not to me. I don't want to watch myself in third person and glory in new powers, titles and levels augmenting the image. I don't want to imagine anything. I want to see those sights with my mind's eye, I want to act in them - in first person, from inside myself. I don't want to play someone who is thrilled by a new spell or artifact or an underwater city. I want to actually be thrilled. I want to touch the magic, smell it, grab it, use it, luxuriate in it. I want it strong, or let it be weak but real, and I want it reliable as my own body.
Also, while randomness might to you represent a third person observer watching your character, immersion differs for others. I don't relate to what you wrote at all.
If you dig Amber or Nobilis or other diceless games that's great. They're brilliant games and definitely worth the time to play them, but to put diceless resolution on a pedestal and declare it superior to randomness is misguided and not really helpful. One wonders why you're complaining about Dungeons & Dragons when you could be playing something more to your taste. Nobody's forcing you to play D&D in any incarnation, no one is holding a gun to your head insisting that you play D&D whether in analog books, character sheets, and dice, or digital video games.
So you don't like D&D. That's fine. Where's the problem? There's no satisfactory solution here, because D&D isn't going to change its spots. What happens is what always happens, people create new games that provide what they (and presumably others) want.
While I mentioned tabletop RPGs regarding diceless play, I want to point out that an action RPG series that might be up your alley is Dark Souls. You have to dodge attacks, block attacks, or take the brunt of those attacks. Everything you do, and everything that impacts your character is a result of the skill you bring to the game. There's little to no randomness of the sort that you dislike in D&D. The most random thing in the game is drops, and not all drops are random.
Of course, Dark Souls is played from a third person perspective, but perfection is unattainable.
I reckon until we get a real life 'Better than Life' game like on the show Red Dwarf, where we plug electrodes into our brain for 'Total Immersion'
On a more general note to the thread:
Sometimes I think a person ( I know I can for sure) can overthink a matter and it can come across as strict criticism but in reality really enjoy it at the same time. I think we can all agree, in our own varying ways, improvement is welcome, it's just that the issue of improvement can vary with folks as @BelleSorciere alluded to I think.
I one size fits all approach is hard to come by in gaming standards but AD&D sure did get on the map back in the late 70's and has made a lastly impression to the gaming world, in one form or another.
And for what it's worth, the DM can always require two dice rolls for especially improbable events, or even ignore dice rolls entirely. But we use d20s for these things because using d100s or 10d10s, however more realistic they might be, is simply not practical for normal gameplay.
This is how I see it:
Dice rolls aren't there to represent random chance. They're to represent all of the factors that are not already accounted for.
An example: A mage with 16 Intelligence and the Spell Focus: Enchantment feat casts Charm Person on a random peasant with 10 Wisdom (no bonuses to his saving throw). The DC is 16 (10 base, +1 for a level 1 spell, +3 for Intelligence, +2 for Spell Focus), so the peasant has an 80% chance of getting charmed.
But...
Let's say the mage is a foreigner with a weird accent, and this peasant really hates foreigners. That would give the peasant some sort of bonus, right? But the peasant is in a good mood, so the mage also gets a bonus of some sort.
But the mage is trying to cast the spell with gloves that don't fit. But a fortune teller told the peasant to be more trusting of new people. But the mage was kind of tired when he cast the spell. But he casts this spell all the time; it's easy for him. But he lost his spellbook and had to re-create the spell, and now it works a little differently. But the new spell is more effective than his old one, even though it's unfamiliar. And so on and so on.
Dice rolls don't just add unpredictability to gameplay; they account for any tiny variables that the DM and player don't have the time to factor in themselves.
I will give you a thumbs up for Red Dwarf. I would have to rank Cat as one of my five favorite characters of all time.
Take four characters, a warrior, a rogue, a priest, and a wizard, each making their saving throw vs. a fireball. You should just imagine them all standing there, letting the flames wash over them while they get slightly singed. Sounds blah. OR.... the warrior raises her shield at the last second, protecting her face from the flames; the rogue reflexively crouches low, wrapping his cloak around himself for protection; the priest feels the power of St. Cuthbert radiating from his holy symbol, protecting him from the worst of the flames; the wizard quickly makes a magical warding symbol with her fingers, partly deflecting the flames from her. Personally, I prefer the latter interpretations.
And the Willow example was also about how to interpret a successful save. Obviously, there was no die roll when George Lucas was writing Willow (or at least, I assume he wasn't just transcribing a D&D game session with Warwick Davis, Val Kilmer, and Joanne Whalley
Same die roll result. Two ways of interpreting it.
You can interpret mute silence, gaps and nothing-happening to your heart's content. If something happens for no reason, feel free to invent heroics. To me, nothing comes from nothing. To me a heroic feat is not a matter of garlanding a random roll with cliches like raising a shield or wagging a holy symbol. Those are not actions at all, even when they are actually done, because they require no real thinking, no initiative or courage from a player. The player just pulls them from a ready hat - pointy hat if he is playing a wizard, horned helmet for a barbarian, there are stock conventions in abundance for anyone's isometric self-detachment. But to my mind what is heroic is to risk one's well-being not against some die from the sky that may carry you to success when you do not deserve it but against clear odds and absolute dangers. Then, if you act and somehow tip the scale and come out on top, you really deserve cheering. Isn't this just common sense? Magic is real, of course. But even if talking about it as complete fiction, there are all sorts of actual facts we know about fictional creatures. It's true about unicorns that they have horns and hooves and true about dragons that some of them breathe fire, even though neither exist. So what? Existence is just another property. Anything that has relevance and value and inflames the human imagination should and can be judged on its own merits. That's where creativity comes in: you either create a magic and do it right, and then it feels alive and feels open to acting within of, or you vaguely sketch out 9 levels of spells, throw in primitive material components, substitute dice for player decisions and let the party defend the time spent in this loveless marriage.
However I don't understand how else to represent failed or successful actions other than by some measure of randomness. Would you prefer a system where such randomness would disappear ? A system where if you're strong enough to charm the enemy, it would work everytime ? Such system would be boring real fast, because it would leave little surprise to the player. Would you prefer a system with bigger dices, thus giving more granularity to the different actions instead of the base 5% scale given by the d20 ? That actually would be a great idea.
I'm honestly asking what you would consider a better system because, at the end of the day, it's a game meant to have fun, and rolling a critical fail or a critical success around a table with your friends (or even alone in front of your computer against a dragon for that matter) is highly enjoyable.
- in real life fights chance plays a significant role - it's not just skill that determines which of 6 men survive a bomb blast or a hail of bullets.
- I recognise that there are games where chance plays no part, e.g. city construction, but that's a very different animal from the heroic fantasy of D&D. I've played BG for many years, but if I always knew what the outcome of all actions would be I wouldn't want to play any more.
I also think you're too dismissive about the ways in which characters might actually be improving their chances of survival (represented as rolling the dice in the game). I'm not really into role-playing at all, but even I can recognise how that thinking can enrich the game (in very much the way you seemed to be suggesting you wanted earlier in this thread). In addition those small gains really do make a major difference to results. A good example is the British cycling team over the last few Olympics. They've based their preparation on the idea of 'marginal gains' - looking at everything that affects performance to try and eke out an extra tiny edge (see for example https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-1-performance-improvements-led-to-olympic-gold). The reason that works is that in elite sports everyone performs to a high level, so small gains make the difference between success and failure (or in D&D terms between life and death).
As I said, it is a strange and unique feature of D&D that it works backwards: not from actions to results but from results to actions. "DMs and players can think of lively and colorful explanations of why a saving throw succeeded or failed. Explanations tailored to the events of the moment enhance the excitement of the game." Well, this is true, if what you want is to hear an exciting story, a saga unfolding like the Bayeux tapestry, and your character on it. But if you want to act yourself, first-person, erupt in the moment and turn it around, then describing the adventures of dice post factum won't do.
In my opinion, all of these counter-measures above should be actions quickly announced by players. The DM should be able to decide as quickly whether they succeed, measured against some Difficulty Class of the situation he has in his mind. Approximately so, for diving: basic reward for a sensible response +10, large room + 5, old guy -3, low Dexterity -3. There would be no actual totaling point-by-point, that would take too long and burden the DM with endless tables. It's not that the tables in the DMG are useless, but, to my mind, they are the most useful for educating the referee on the general value, rarity, difficulty of objects and actions, so he can form some realistic idea in his mind. On the whole, it is enough for the referee to have a clear sense of the relative power of the combo, acting character and his action, together, versus the severity of the problem. Both in his own estimation, of course! And this kind of approximation would not work exactly the same way every time, it would, of course, vary as the DM's shifts accents and moves weights next time in his mind - all the randomness players require! Nor does the DM necessarily know what he is going to invent or what to throw at the characters next.
I've spent enough time arguing this point, but the shortest statement is: fun comes from real action and response of the DM and players to each other, not from make-belief pulled over a rather passive and mechanistic experience.
This should answer your question too, Arctodus. But let me be more precise. You say "A system where if you're strong enough to charm the enemy, it would work every time? Such system would be boring real fast, because it would leave little surprise to the player." Here you are mixing up two different points of view: what the players see and know and what the DM sees and knows, the god's eye view. Subjective knowledge and objective knowledge (so to speak). The players can reasonably expect to beat, for example, charm, enemies weaker than themselves. If those enemies really are weaker, other things being equal, their characters should succeed always. But the players never know 1) whether other things really are equal... there could be all sorts of influences at play, from morale to magic protections, on both sides, that only the DM will know... and 2) whether these enemies are actually weaker than they or just seem to be. The players only see things through a glass, darkly. But the DM also is no mind reader.
Also consider that even weaker enemies who stand no chance individually can be a problem in large numbers. If there is a crowd of them egging each other on and room for them to encircle the party and flank, the DM can increase difficulty and time it takes to dispatch an enemy. No one says a sure victory is an instant kill. It may be a matter of wearing down an enemy's defense with sure blows to the point where you can get one through. With extra time needed and constant effort to keep slaying these weaklings, fatigue would settle in quickly. This way even a group of strong characters could be overwhelmed by a horde - without turning to dice for supernatural resolution, magical 1s and 20s, to explain it. But on the whole this kind of diceless system, where surprise comes from lack of absolute knowledge, not randomness, is going to have to emphasize conscious involvement on everyone's part. In this system you wouldn't often just say "I fight." Against complete weaklings, perhaps, you could just rely on your default skills and training. But in danger you would want to improve your "chances" by trying to bring the ceiling down on the enemies or tipping over a cauldron or throwing up a cloak and so on, and they - the DM on their behalf - would try some tactics of their own. Ideally it should be as close and intense as "I strike at her legs" - "She jumps on the shelf" - "I try to bring down the shelf"...
I don't box, but from all I've seen, this parallel should be valid: if a champion has to fight some untrained guy, his victory is pretty much automatic. The boxer lets his fists carry out the routine from the gym and wham, the other guy is on the floor. But against another skilled fighter it is something else completely: both need to think, attempt maneuvers, press on or try to stay away, wear each other down, go for the body, go for the weak jaw, bob and weave more, use more crosses and so forth. Combat gets intellectual - not for entertainment but because the opponents are so damn difficult for each other within the rules. They would like to finish it quickly, sure, but they just can't! Their coaches give them tips. Each seeks to gain advantage over the other and press it. And this is why professional fights are fun to watch, because it's more than just honed reflexes. Of course, without safety rules, protective equipment and gloves, but with Roman-style iron-studded belts over the knuckles fights would be much more savage and quicker. So in games, whether we are talking about magic effects or regular fighting, the mechanics should probably also be faster, simpler and deadlier. But we don't need dice for that.
P.S. There would be some situations of inevitable randomness, though. For dice. A hail of bullets. Or arrows. King Harold Godwineson with a shaft in his eye. Would a DM want to subject his players to randomness of this sort? I don't know. Modern warfare is as spectacular as any magic, but it is random in the most horrible and antihuman sense. Medieval combat was much more about strength and skill, but perhaps we would have to go back in time as far as chariot fights between caste warriors to really see "fair" challenges. I think fiction becomes fantasy, an escape, just at that border of make-belief - where we may lead our lives and travel confidently and be in control of them...
D&D's roots in miniature wargaming using dice as a resolution mechanic go back over 45 years to the original Chainmail published in 1971. That isn't going to change.
Mostly though I think it contributed to the OP ignoring the rest of my post.
This is to faulty comparisons what singularities are to gravity wells. It has an event horizon beyond which nothing of value could possibly escape.
Er, what does that mean in plain 'kitchen English'?
You won't fly a plane if it has 1% chance to crash down, but you likely won't mind using a hundred of such planes to transfer cargo.
Or, in DnD terms, the chance of failing a save vs disintegration makes it exactly prohibitive, not just dangerous to take on a wizard capable of casting it. You can't even take a parachute to insure against the worst possible outcome. And vice versa, only a dumb wizard would take Disintegrate into a duel against high-level fighter.
But if we had 20 fighters vs 20 wizards, then, depending on severity of effect, its DC and target's saves - then we could actually consider it a factor and estimate the risks.
PS Also I wouldn't underestimate diceless systems, even without random effects they can be far, far from being predictable if done right.
A singularity is a black hole. The event horizon is the point beyond which nothing - not even light - can escape. Events within an event horizon cannot affect an outside observer. To be fair, a solid object would reach the point of no return before hitting the event horizon because solid objects cannot travel at light speed. Basically, to leave a gravity well you have to achieve escape velocity. That is, travel fast enough to escape from the gravity well. On Earth this is something like 11.186 kilometers/second (per wikipedia) at sea level. No amount of velocity will get anything back across an event horizon.
Anyway, sorry about the digression.
No argument. I do understand what you're saying and that is a flaw. I wasn't trying to argue that D&D is flawless so much as that it works well enough for what it does. I'm not sure how to handle what saving throws do without having saving throws. Not because they're the best solution, but because that solution works within the framework D&D provides.
I could see possibilities in terms of giving people the opportunity to react to spells or other save-inducing events to get a +2 circumstance bonus (say diving for cover when someone casts a fireball or disintegrate or some such at them). But I mean, that's pretty much as far as I'd go, lacking a better solution. And since I'm unlikely to go looking for a better solution because I do not think one is needed, I guess I'll leave it at that.
Keep in mind that D&D and the tabletop war games from which it evolved were simulations of what people thought things might be like. As I said before, you can't track everything, or take everything into account. Even if you could, you'd spend all your time adding and subtracting effects in an infinite series of numbers which, one hopes, would converge to a particular value. Thus things devolve into never ending accounting. So we model it, and back when D&D was started, dice were the model of choice. They were cheap, readily available, quick, easy to use, and easy to understand. If only more choices in life could be so obvious.
And the rules left things to the discretion of the dungeon master and players. If a player was firing arrows from behind a barricade, they could get bonuses for armor class and saves. Wisdom helped fight off mind-affecting spells, but maybe one character had an innate fear of undead or poultry, so you'd adjust saves against an illusion of a skeleton goose.
Now, if you don't like the model, fine. There are things about it I don't like, but it's just a game and they are minor quibbles, so I don't worry about it. Heck, there are things I don't like about quantum mechanics even though experiments show it happens, but the universe is going to keep doing its thing whether I like it or not. Anyway, this is the model used in the games, adapted to a digital computing environment, so there it is.
Drunken, reeling pipsqueak kicked him in the head and left without a scratch (until the police picked him up off the CCTV).
Chance plays a part in real life fighting.