Saving Throws

After observing an online discussion about saving throws and their place in Dungeons & Dragons, I soon found myself taking a closer look at the saving throw tables in all the editions of the game with which I have the most experience. Here are the original tables from 1974:

The 1977 Holmes-edited Basic Set includes this version of the table:

There are several things worth noting about the Holmes table. First, it explicitly includes the category of "normal man," which represents beings with less than one hit die. Second, for reasons I've never discovered, thieves are treated as fighting men, whereas Supplement I clearly notes that "with regard to saving throws treat Thieves as Magic-Users." Third, while the saving throw categories are the same, albeit with slightly different nomenclature, their arrangement is unique to this edition. 

AD&D's saving throw tables appear in 1979's Dungeon Masters Guide and reveal some divergences from OD&D (and Holmes, despite its being presented as an "introduction" to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

The changes here are significant. First, and most obviously, the categories are not the same as in OD&D. Paralysis has been shifted to the poison and death ray (renamed death magic) category; staffs – now staves – has been separated from spells and lumped together with rods and wands (the latter its own category in OD&D) to form a new category; polymorph is now joined with petrification; and dragon breath is redubbed breath weapon. Second, the numbers are, therefore, not the same as in OD&D, with AD&D fighters, for example, having noticeably higher numbers than their OD&D equivalents. Also noteworthy is that thieves now have their own distinct saving throws that advance in steps like the cleric but nevertheless have their own unique progressions.

There's quite a bit to take in and I can't do it justice in an overview post such as this one. Looking at the AD&D charts, I find myself wondering why Gygax made the changes he did. Off the top of my head, there are two not mutually exclusive explanations. Of the two, the most likely is that he made the changes in light of his own experiences refereeing the Greyhawk campaign. Like any good referee, he no doubt noticed how the rules shaped what was happening in the campaign and came to some conclusions about how better to implement saving throws to get the results he preferred. It's also possible, particularly given the late of the DMG's publication, that the categories, progressions, and numbers were changed to bolster the argument that AD&D was distinct from OD&D, the tack taken by TSR in its legal wrangling with Dave Arneson (his lawsuits having been launched in February 1979, I believe). Regardless of the rationale, I don't think there can be any argument that AD&D differs significantly with regard to saving throws.

1981 saw the appearance of Tom Moldvay's Basic Rules, which have the following saving throw tables:

Moldvay's categories hew pretty closely to those of OD&D, but you'll nevertheless see what I take to be AD&D influences, such as, for instance, the explicit inclusion of rods in the category previously covering spells and staffs (here staves, as in AD&D). Paralysis, meanwhile, has been shifted from wands to turn to stone. The saving throw numbers are nearly identical to those of OD&D (and differ slightly from Holmes), but, when it comes to dwarves and halflings, there's a difference, owing, I think, to an interpretation of what OD&D says on this matter. OD&D notes that dwarves "add four levels when rolling saving throws (a 6th level dwarf equals a 10th level human)" and employs similar language for halflings. Holmes presents this in exactly that fashion, with dwarves and halflings of levels 1–3 having the saving throws of an OD&D fighting man four levels higher (though this raises another issue, since fighters have three-level step increases and a 3rd-level dwarf should have the saves of a 7th-level fighter). Moldvay simply gives dwarves and halflings +4 to the saving throws of a fighter of equivalent level. The results are nearly the same as in OD&D and Holmes but not exactly. Elves work exactly as in OD&D, getting the better of the saves for fighters and magic-users.

I should reiterate here that the foregoing is a very cursory examination of these four tables in relation to one another and I've no doubt overlooked or even misconstrued certain details. I'll be returning to the tables in future posts, with a closer look at each of them, but, for the moment, what's quite clear is that the saving throw tables of Dungeons & Dragons, expansively defined, are not static, even within the first half decade of the game's existence. Each edition has its own idiosyncrasies and variations, even if certain elements (five categories, step increases based on class) remain constant.