One of the best innovations introduced in 3.5e was a change to the hold person spell whereby the victim gained a save to throw off the spell every round. This was a small change, and applied only to that one spell, but it made a huge difference to the way it worked and brought it back into balance (more or less).
This idea was then adopted much more thoroughly in 4e, and now 5e, where lots of conditions operate on a "save ends" basis. Indeed, in many cases, these effects no longer have a stated duration at all, but last until the victim makes a successful save.
But there was an unfortunate consequence of this, which was that some 4e players responded to the change by seeking out every means possible to boost the save DC of their powers. And this gave rise to the practice of "stun-locking" - hit a target with an effect that stunned it until the save ended the effect, but boost the save DC to a point where the creature needed a nat-20 for the save (which meant that almost no creature ever made the save).
My proposal for the house rule here is quite simple: for every failed save, the target gains a cumulative +1 bonus on the next save.
This means that the save becomes progressively easier as time goes on, and it means that the effect eventually will end. And it means that even a creature (or PC) targetted on a weak save can only be taken out of the game for a limited time.
(That said, I think I actually favour an alternate form of this, especially for effects with no fixed duration but instead a simple "save ends" - which is simply a "three strikes" variant, whereby the target is allowed to suffer the effects of a failed save three times, but is considered to automatically make the fourth save.)
No comments:
Post a Comment