Continuing on my discussion of Hackbut core mechanics, let’s briefly touch on saving throws. This one did not take a lot of poking around. To begin with, I have no nostalgic attachment to the classic saving throw categories. They strike me as obtuse and needlessly granular. I know the origins of the S&W unified save are primarily legal, but they represent a welcome streamlining in my view. So I decided to port them over into the KéK classes. This was a trivial exercise. If you want to do the same, simply use a base save of 15 minus level for fighters and thieves, and 16 minus level for magic-users and clerics. I also use the +2 save bonuses for the various classes as listed in WBFMAG.
That more or less covers saving throws for player characters. One last thing would be how to handle monster and NPC saves. Here, interestingly, WBFMAG and S&W proper diverge. The former has the basic guideline of using 19 minus HD, whereas the latter has a table listing a save value for each HD.
I had problems with both approaches. While convenient, WBFMAG’s monster save seems high in comparison to those of player characters. S&W’s solution requires a table lookup which is a no-go for me. So I decided to do a quick analysis of the S&W numbers and arrived at an average base save of 16 minus HD. Let’s call it a nice and easy to remember 15, incidentally making them save the same as fighters. This means low-level monsters save a little better than by-the-book S&W, and high-level monsters get off ever so slightly worse. I call it a wash.
As an aside, I could have also gone with Delta’s approach to saves, which in many ways is similar in spirit and mathematically balanced to a comparable level as S&W’s solution. The reason I did not go for it is that it maintains the various save categories which, like I said at the top, are just not something I feel I need in my game.
So that covers saving throws. The point of all of this is basically: a unified saving throw is a convenient and justifiable streamlining, easily hacked into your preferred classic D&D ruleset of choice.
Update: Read on for the final of these three posts on core mechanics, discussing ability checks.