Building Bhakashal - Saving Throws
AD&D saving throws are a mixed bag. On one level they are class specific, so they help reinforce class choices and differences in the game. The cleric’s save table entries are a thing to behold. And it has some neat bits. Magic users get better saves versus magic as they can kind of try and counteract it or take control of it, that explains their better numbers.
Cool beans.
But it also has a few bits I don’t like. The main issue I have is that it’s kind of baroque, it links saves to class, but not in ways I always like. For example, I think thieves should be pretty good at breath weapon saves, as that seems like a DEX kind of save to me, but fighters outperform thieves, even if you keep XP distribution in mind.
The other issue I disliked is that the increases are linked to level spreads. It means that you get magic-users who don’t see improvements in their saves until 6th level. If you run a 1e game anywhere near BTB, 6th level is a long time. If saves are kind of like “D&D luck”, then it seems oddly unevenly distributed how often your luck improves.
I find that in a level based system, having things stay the same over long periods of time strains the tradeoff between formal class based and fully customized skill based systems. In a skill based system, the player can customize their skills and improvements, in a class based system the class structure does that. It has been my experience that players prefer steady, incremental improvement rather than stretches of levels when nothing but HP changes.
The last thing I wanted to do was to get away from tables for saving throws. I love tables, but for something that comes up this regularly, the freedom of not needing a table is appreciated.
I have chosen a “Target 20” system for this, originally I got it from Talislanta, but I found out subsequently this is now a separate thing. So to make ANY saving throw you have to roll 20 or more on a 20 sided die, with various bonuses.
Where it gets interesting is the source of the bonuses.
To get to that, I have to explain something first. But the operating principle here is that saving throws in Bhakashal are worse compared to baseline AD&D, but the various bonuses improve them from this baseline.
Ability Scores
Ability scores are technically disposable, Talislanta drops them and just keeps the bonuses and penalties, and it works just fine. I have kept them as they allowed me to apply rules for stat generation in a more granular way. I needed to be able to do THAT, as stats are important to Bhakashal. I wanted to make them so, if you are going to have them, make them work!
First, I narrow the definitions a bit:
Ability scores in Bhakashal are understood in the following way:
STR - Physical power
INT - Intellect
WIS - Willpower
DEX - Agility
CON - Endurance
CHR - Personality
These definitions matter for the saving throws later
One of the things about AD&D I wanted to change was that bonuses are concentrated at the upper end. Things like exceptional strength for 18 STR fighters, all that led to was people choosing 18’s, or quite elaborately creating systems to get 18’s in STR for fighters. Bhakashal spreads out the bonuses, as it has been my experience that players like lots of small bonuses that add up. And if they are spread out, then there is no need for a system that supports higher stats.
Bhakashal Stat Modifiers:
3: -3
4-5:-2
6-8: -1
9: 0
10-11:+1
12-14: +2
15-17: +3
18: +4
For Charisma use +1=5%
So in essence, anything over 9 gets some bonus, anything under some penalty. And since bonuses are tied to stats, stat generation also needs to be considered.
Bhakashal Stat Generation
For each stat roll 3d6
Apply class based stat minimums
Switch any two stats (you cannot produce a result less than a minimum)
Apply playable group bonuses
NOTE: 18’s may only be generated naturally, e.g. by unaltered dice roll
A system like this, with a dice average of 10.5 for most stats, will generally not produce exceptional stats except where class minimums apply. Playable group (race) bonuses are all in the +1 range, so don’t impact things much. Class minimums are the way to ensure that every class gets some bonuses related to the stats associated with that class. Note that this also means you pick your class, you don’t have to “qualify” for it. This is a big deal for me, gaming time is precious and hard to find, you should get to play the class you want, particularly in a class based game.
Bhakashal Class Ability Score Minimums
Beastial (Druid) WIS 15 CHR 15
Cavaral (Monk/Magic-user) STR 12 INT 15 DEX 12 CON 14
Chimerist (Magic-user, alteration magic) INT 15 DEX 10 CHR 16
Conjuror (Magic-user, all/only conjuration magic) INT 15 WIS 14 CHR 16
Gyre (Magic-user, generic magic) INT 15 WIS 10 DEX 10
Jinx (Thief/Druid) WIS 14 DEX 12
Justiciar (Paladin) STR 12 WIS 13 CHR 17
Mercenary (Fighter) STR 10 DEX 10 CON 10
Myrmidon (Fighter/Magic-user) STR 10 INT 15 CON 10
Necromancer (Magic-user, all only necromantic/abjuration magic) INT 15 DEX 10 CHR 16
Phantasmist (Illusionist) INT 15 DEX 16 CHR 15
Seer (Cleric) WIS 13 CHR 14
Slayer (Ranger/Assassin) STR 13 INT 13 WIS 14 CON 14
Spartan (Monk) STR 15 WIS 15 DEX 15 CON 11
Spellbinder (Magic-user, natural magic) STR 10 WIS 13 CHR 14
Spider (Thief) INT 10 DEX 10 CHR 10
Thaumaturge (Thief/Magic-user) INT 15 DEX 10
Theurgist (Fighter/Illlusionist) STR 10 INT 15 DEX 10 CHR 15
Vox (Bard) INT 15 CON 13 CHR 16
Warlock (Magic-user) INT 15 DEX 10 CHR 16
And these are the basis of the differentiation in results in the saving throw table. I’m not sure how AD&D decided on the level breaks and the values of the changes for their tables, but for Bhakashal it is transparent, your class determines your minimums, and your minimums determine your bonuses to make saves. So it preserves the class based structure of saves, but it changes the mechanics.
That also gives more granularity for influencing saving throws.
The bonuses to saves are as follows. You get a +1 bonus per level of experience / HD, everyone gets this. So every time you level, all your saves improve by 1, rather than some of the time when you level, all of your saves improve by different amounts.
In addition, you get saving throw bonuses based on your stats as follows:
Paralyzation - STR and CON - Paralyzation through poison is treated as poison, paralyzation through magic requires physical power and endurance to push back against the magic
Poison - CON and DEX - Poison attacks your body, if you have the endurance you might be able to fight it off, and the DEX component is pulling back or away to avoid being fully stung/bit
Death Magic - WIS and CON - Death magic, magic that ends life force, is resisted by mental and physical might
Petrification - STR and CON - Magical petrification attempts to make the body rigid and solid, you need strength and endurance to push back against that magic
Polymorph - WIS and CHR - Polymorph uses magic to transform the body, your willpower, and your sense of who you are (your personality) determine if you can resist the magic and maintain your form
Breath Weapon - DEX and INT - Avoiding breath weapon attacks can be done by being smart and finding a place to hide behind or avoid the attack (e.g. finding something in the environment to block a gas from being inhaled) or by being agile enough to dodge it
Spell - WIS and INT - there is no separate save for rods/staves and wands as opposed to cast magic in Bhakashal, as the saving throw for spell involves pushing back against the spell’s magic with willpower and intellect, the delivery method doesn’t matter. The intellect directs the willpower, so to get a big bonus you need some of each.
With these combinations, and the existing class minimums, you get the different results between classes. Note that this means that the class minimums are very important. Some classes have multiple minimums so will get multiple bonuses and have overall better saves. But, just like in 1e, the classes with the most bonuses also have the slowest experience advancement. So there are advantages to running the base classes of fighter (mercenary), magic-user (warlock), cleric (seer) and thief (spider).
To see how they stack up versus AD&D saving throws, see the charts below. However, there are a few more caveats to keep in mind.
The actual save numbers are much lower than what they seem, as there will be more overall bonuses applied. The listed numbers below are the baseline - for a PC with class minimums in their bonus stats, so most characters will have better than these numbers.
Also, Bhakashal has a luck system, tied to HP. In short, HP are lower than standard AD&D in the game, but you can spend HP directly to change saves or to hit numbers. Essentially you apply exertion and it drains you, but you can nudge results. The key to making that work is that HP are reduced, for example, warlocks get a d6 for HP, you can take the average of 3 or you can roll. HP progression stops at level 5. So the average HP of a 5th level warlock will be 15. Healing is also less common in Bhakashal, so spending HP is no simple decision. And there is no CON bonus to HP either, so even an 18 CON PC doesn’t get any HP bonus.
HP are not just “meat points”, they are “hero points”, representing physical toughness, luck, speed, favor of the gods, etc. What Bhakashal has effectively done is remove some of the PC’s “luck” from saves to HP, and allow players to assign that luck themselves, either to physical HP or to saving throw or hit rolls, rather than allowing it to be assigned by default to saves or HP.
The main reason I did this was that I noticed something. Periodic failure is fun, it makes things challenging, constant failure is not. So the game needs, IMO, some small mechanic for adding to your luck, and I think that it’s better to give the player some control over it, so it represents a resource management decision, not just a simple bennie.
So while the overall saves for all PCs have gotten worse with Bhakashal in comparison to AD&D 1e, the scope of bonuses and the ability of the player to control where those bonuses are applied, has increased, giving them more control over the kind of benefits their PC has.
Let’s take a quick example. I will generate a PC’s stats with the Bhakashal system (using a Discord bot to generate the die rolls), in this case for a mercenary (fighter). The "fighting man" is the baseline for most metrics in AD&D, so it is good to start here.
Rolls:
S - 2,6,3 = 11
I - 5,6,3 = 14
W - 5,2,2 = 9
D - 4,1,2 = 7
C - 3,3,2 = 8
C - 2,6,1 = 9
Apply stat minimums for Mercenary STR 10 DEX 10 CON 10
S - 11 / I - 14 / W - 9 / D-10 / C-10 / C-9
Switch any two stats, I’ll swap STR and INT:
S - 14 / I - 11 / W - 9 / D-10 / C-10 / C-9
Apply playable group bonuses +1 CON/+1 WIS
S - 14 / I - 11 / W - 10 / D-10 / C-11 / C-9
So that gives me mods of
S +2 / I +1 / W +1 / D +1 / C +1
With these mods, here is a table comparing the saves for this system / saves for AD&D 1e. For ease of comparison I list the number on a d20 you would have to roll in each system to get your save.
Mercenary (Bhakashal/AD&D1e)
So with a randomly generated set of ability scores give you, for the most part, worse results, however if you add in the ability to modify individual rolls by spending HP, the systems are roughly equivalent. Bhakashal ties your results to your class and your ability scores, and gives some degree of control to the players as they have partial control over ability score arrangement and application of “luck points”.
Note also that the way this presents on a character sheet is a bit different than D&D, for example, for our human fighter above at first level would have this on their sheet, each of these is a bonus applied to a d20 roll, with a 20 as the target:
Paralyzation [+4]
Poison [+3]
Death Magic [+3]
Petrification [+4]
Polymorph [+2]]
Breath Weapon [+3]
Spell [+3]
By fifth level all of these numbers would have increased at a rate of one point per level, so:
Paralyzation [+8]
Poison [+7]
Death Magic [+7]
Petrification [+8]
Polymorph [+6]
Breath Weapon [+7]
Spell [+7]
Any bonuses from magical items can just be rolled in, and when you next level up you just add one to the bonus amount. So like many other aspects of Bhakashal, you front load the complexity and after that things are smooth as buttah.
For your reference, here are the tables for the base “classic” classes (fighter, magic-user, thief and cleric) using the class minimum ability scores, remembering that most PCs will get more than the minimum, and that Bhakashal’s “luck mechanic” can make a difference. The numbers here are supposed to be worse than AD&D 1e, as there are more bonuses and an optional luck mechanic in play.
Finally, note that the seer gets a flat +1 bonus to all saves to reflect their god’s favor, and rather than stat out EVERY MONSTER IN THE GAME, Bhakashal assigns a +2 bonus on STR, DEX and CON to every monster saving throw.
Mercenary - Min Stat Bonuses +1 STR +1 CON +1 DEX / +1 per level - TARGET 20
Seer - Min Stat Bonuses - +1 flat bonus - WIS 13 CHR 14, +1 per level - Target 20
Spider - Min Stat Bonuses - INT 10 DEX 10 CHR 10 - +1 per level - TARGET 20
Warlock - Min Stat Bonuses - DEX 10, INT 15 CHR 16 / +1 per level - Target 20
Monster - 2 point bonus on each of STR/DEX/CON +1 per HD
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