Two of my favorite cousins of the world’s most popular fantasy role playing gamer are Swords & Wizardry and Castles & Crusades. And the neatest thing are the Saving Throws.
Swords & Wizardry boils it down to its most simple. One Save to rule them all. Modified by class, race and level. You get better at resisting things as the character progresses in levels.
Castles & Crusades almost takes the opposite approach and one similar to 3.X games. Ability modifiers added to racial, class and level bonuses against ever increasing difficulty levels. The joy of this is that every ability has a Saving Throw tied to it. To put it mildly, a dump stat can kill you.
The problem I see with the 3.x model is that you end up with ever increasing bonuses but you’re rolling against every increasing target numbers. You can sit down and crunch the numbers but it basically boils down to bigger numbers with roughly the same chance of success. It almost seems pointless. In older iterations, characters get better at resisting various hazards. Extremely powerful opponents can reduce the chance for a character to resist.
So here I am attempting to take these two seemingly opposite ideas and kit bash them into one system without messing too much with the underlying system.
First a simple ability modifier. Ability scores higher than 13 grant a character a +1 bonus. Ability scores lower than 8 cause characters to have a -1 penalty. You can use a different scale of modifiers but for this I’m attempting to do it with as little change to Swords & Wizardry as possible. If you opt to use a different scale for ability modifiers (say +3 or +4 for the very top end of 18 like in 3.x/Pathfinder) then you should adjust the racial and class based bonuses. I’d say adjust them down by half rounded up. But YMMV on this.
Second, what does each ability mean and what kind of saves should go with it:
Strength: Grappling, Constriction, Crushing
Dexterity: Traps, Area Effect Spells
Constitution: Poison and Disease
Intelligence: Illusions, Arcane Magic
Wisdom: Confusion, Divine Magic
Charisma: Fear, Charm
Of course, in case you’ve been living under a rock, they are playing around with a similar set up for DND Next. And like so many things this is a work in progress. Nothing is ever written in stone.