Death to the Saving Throw, Part 2

  Sorry it's taken so long to post this, but I've been busy with real life stuff for the last week & a half. Some General notes:

• All spells that allow saving throws are considered automatically failed unless the player takes some specific action to attempt to negate the spell's effect. For example, taking cover behind a suitably large enough pillar, or under a table may negate a spell's damaging effects from affecting the character entirely(or may automatically reduce the damage by a set amount)
• Shields Shall be Splintered: direct damage spells like lightning bolt, melf's acid arrow, etc. should be subject to this rule.
• Armor Shall be F%$#ed: Non-magical armor should be able to provide the benefits of a passed save(1/2 damage) if the player chooses to sacrifice the armor vs. AoE attacks like breath weapons, fireballs, & the like.
• Magical Armor is Spiffy: There are a couple of ways of handling this, and I'm still testing them out. The first is that magical armor automatically reduces the damage of magical spells by 1 point of damage per die per plus that the item provides. The second option is that each plus provides 1-10% magic resistance (depending on how spiffy you want the armor to actually be).
• Disbelieving Illusions: If the player has cause to believe that  a given spell is an illusion, a flat intelligence check should be enough to prove it one way or another. A penalty to the roll can be applied equal to the spell level.

Individual Spell Notes:
Charm X/Domination:  Automatic failed save when the spell is cast, but there's a % chance per day of the spell giving out equal to the victim's Intelligence + any magical defense pluses + # of days the spells has been active.
Entangle: Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll to be able to move 10 feet in that round.
Grease:  Rather than a saving throw, a Dexterity check makes more sense.
Magic Jar: Possession of new body should automatically succeed unless certain precautions are taken(a magic helm, circlet, etc. that prevents the takeover from occurring).
Polymorph: All these spells still require a system shock roll.

Next time: Monsters

Death to the Saving Throw, Part 1

  Note: These are not the final version of this, just my hastily scrawled ideas.
   I don't know about anyone else, but I dislike the saving throw systems found across the various editions (The TSR edition ones turn the game too superheroic at high levels, and the d20 ones always make me wonder, 'why didn't they use flat ability checks?').
   Part of my dislike of the system is that it's a bit of a get out of jail free card. You or your character fucked up, and it's the game's way of insulating you from your own stupidity. That's all well and good for heroic games, but I don't play that sort of game. In my games player characters are not heroes, they're adventurers, and high level heroes are special enough in that they have that great big heaping pile of hit points to begin with.
   As such, below are the rules I've come up with to replace the 5 score system used in 2e. I'll only be
dealing with the core rules(PHB, DMG, MM)

Races:

• Elves and Half Elves still get their % chance to resist sleep and charm spells
• Dwarves, Gnomes, & Halflings get Magic/Poison Resistance equal to the Constitution Scores. Been debating whether or not to just add this percentage on to the Magic Malfunction chance for the appropriate races. I'll have to do more playtesting before I decide one way or the other.

Classes

• Paladin: Paladins get a flat 10% Magic Resistance with a +1% bonus per class level. This actually makes more sense to me than a save bonus because I've always seen Paladin as a state of being akin to a race rather than 'just a class'.
• Ranger: Rangers get to double their charisma(to a max of 25) when dealing with animals.
• Bard: To influence others, the Bard gets to make a charisma check. If he passes, he gets to re-roll his encounter reaction, with a bonus equal to 1/3 his bard level rounded down. He takes the better of the two rolls. If he fails the Cha check, no change. A natural 20 results in a reroll, with a penalty, and the worst of the two rolls is taken. Countersong automatically works.

Combat

• The DM needs to state up front, before characters determine their actions that casters that can be seen are attempting to cast spells (if the spellcasting is obvious), or that the creature is attempting to use a breath weapon. 
• Gaze Attacks: If your character isn't trying to protect himself, he automatically falls victim. If he tries to look in the general direction rather than directly at the creature, there's still a 20% chance he's still automatically affected. If he completely averts his gaze, then he suffers blind fighting penalties as normal.
• Breath Weapons: Breath weapons are already variable damage as is. I see no reason to actually grant a saving throw. If the character however manages to find a significant cover however, the damage should be mitigated either by 1/2, taking 1 dmg per die off, or negated completely.
• Massive Damage: A System Shock Roll should cover this. 

Poison
   For damage poisons, you take 1d8 damage for each onset increment until the listed damage is dealt. Example: Type A poison would do 1d8 damage in the first 10-30 minutes, then another 1d8 damage the next, and so on, until the total damage done is 15.
  Death poison: There are two ways of handling this. If you are using the death's door rules, the poison instantly drops the character to 0 hp, and the character starts dropping 1 hp per round as normal. In order to stop this, the character must be cleansed of the poison, at which point he may heal naturally. The second method of handling it is that the poison does 1d8 damage every
round starting with the poisoned round, and continues until the character is cleansed of poison, or slain.
   Paralysis: Reduce the length of time paralyzed by 1 for each bonus HP the character gets from high Constitution(all characters get the warrior con bonus for this purpose).

  I'll be posting Spells in the next post.