Why I Like The Original Saving Throws

Whenever someone sets about updating the classic rules of D&D, one of the game elements most commonly seen on the chopping block is the original list of saving throws. In the Rules Cyclopedia the saves are listed as “Poison or Death Ray”, “Magic Wands”, “Paralysis or Turn to Stone”, “Dragon Breath” and “Rod, Staff or Spell”. This rather haphazard list has been replaced in many modern iterations of the game by the simpler and more realistic “Reflex, Fortitude, Will”.

This change seems to make sense at first glance—but I can’t help feeling that something valuable is lost when the original saves are discarded. Firstly, they have the advantage of being traditional. Some people might see this as irrelevant or even as a negative point. It’s true that there are many cases (in gaming and in society in general) where tradition has to be swept aside to get rid of things that just aren’t working anymore, or never worked in the first place. But when a tradition is still serving its purpose and isn’t causing any serious problems, it’s worth trying to preserve it.

The clumsiness of the original saving throws is also what gives them their charm. If, as is commonly believed, the rules of the game were invented gradually through play, then these five phrases might very well be a list of the first five bad things that ever happened to player characters in a game of D&D. To my mind there is something rather beautiful about the idea that the game still contains a trace of the earliest days of the hobby, like tree-rings encoding the history of the seasons the tree has lived through.

It is not only the past that is encoded in the original saving throws, however, but also the future: they contain an implicit preview of the kinds of dangers that players can expect to face in the game. What better way to present the call to adventure than to say: “here is the number you will need to roll when a dragon breathes fire at you”?

Because the saving throw list can be seen as a kind of primer for the action that will happen in the game, it’s interesting to see how other games with D&D’s DNA have created their own unique saving throw lists. Flying Swordsmen, while hewing fairly close to the original five categories, has renamed them after the five Chinese elements (Wood, Water, Metal, Fire and Earth). And James Young’s extensive LotFP houserules have replaced the “Spells” and “Magic Wands” categories with “Chaos” and “Law” to emphasise the Moorcockian cosmology of his game world. I’d be curious if anyone knows of other examples like these.

I love the idea of different games or campaign settings having their own saving throw lists based on the most common (or most iconic) dangers present in the game world. A campaign based on Greek mythology might have a saving throw list like: “Poison, Gaze Attack, Madness, Transformation, Divine Wrath”. Carcosa’s list could be: “Mutation, Madness, Cosmic Fate, Tech Weapon, Energy Burst”. For a Paleolithic setting: “Fear, Weather, Disease, Nature Spirits, Evil Eye”.