Huh That Is Borked?

[Zardnaar]

I have not played C&C to the higher levels but 2 things give me cause for concern. Dragon hit dice and the add level to spell DC combined with uncapped damage dealing spells.

In AD&D 1E and 2E your saves got better relative to the difficulty of making a save. 2E nerfed the uncapped damage dealing spells limiting fireball for example to 10d6 and magic missile to 5 missiles.

In C&C you get to add your level to the spell DC so 12 or 18 for a level 10 caster becomes 22 or 28. Yes I know a level 10 PC gets to add +10 to their saves but that is a reasonably crappy chance to make a weak save against an equal level spell caster. If you roll some great stats you might have an additional +1-3 on your saves here and there.

This is roughly as bad as 3.5 let alone 3.0 where save or suck spells you could twink them out at 95% chance of failing a save. 85% is not really that much better but in 3.0 that required some effort to get the save chance that high. Is this an intentional design aspect of C&C as it is one of the main things I like about AD&D over 3E and 5E at higher level.

[Brad]

I don't like the low chance to save myself, so I just use the AD&D save table.

As far as dragons go, well, they're dragons...good luck killing an ancient wyrm by blasting it to death with fireballs. And uncapped damage from spells just means you don't f with high level casters.

[Rigon]

The challenging saves vs high level/HD enemies is a design aspect of the game. However, there are a couple of easy "fixes" for that. Instead of using full caster level/HD, you can use 1/2 level/HD or in the case of spells, use the spell level instead of the caster level.

Personally, I like the more challenging saves. It makes higher level enemies a continued threat.

R-

[serleran]

Maybe I mis-remember, but dragons don't add (full) HD for spell casting. They use age. So 1 - 12. Not anywhere near as bad as a level 20 wizard...

That said, though, you can produce an arbitrary max difficulty. Perhaps 15. Something like... from levels 1 - 12, the difficulty increases at +1 / level; but only by +1 / 3 levels thereafter.

[Omote]

Keep the rules the same. Add +1 to saving throws for every 2/3/4 characters levels (depending on how easy you like saving throws).

~O

[Brad]

Keep the rules the same. Add +1 to saving throws for every 2/3/4 characters levels (depending on how easy you like saving throws).

~O

It's almost like the initial comment implies the rules are immutable!

[slimykuotoan]

I like the high save requirements for non-primes. For me, it highlights the necessity for varied party compositions.