I just bought the book today, so this hasn’t been play tested in ACKS, but this has been my house rule for Classic for many years. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
I have re-named the Saving Throw categories simply to make them more generally applicable and easily understood by players. It’s a lot more obvious which save applies in novel situations. I don’t make any changes to the advancement tables, this is simply for the player’s (and my) benefit of understanding. Each save is modified by something, but not always a stat.
Poison/Death - Fortitude (Con) - Pretty much the same as 3e.
Paralysis - Grapple (Str) - For anything you’re trying to bust out of. Like pythons eating you. Still includes fighting off paralysis and petrification.
Breath Weapon - Block (Shield) - For any “Incoming!” you can deflect/block. Like a hail of darts or an explosion. Cover also modifies.
Wands, Staves - Dodge (Dex) - For any incoming attack you can’t block. Like laser beams or falling boulders.
Spell - Mind (Chr) - All attacks to the mind/soul (no difference), from telepathy, to Magic Jar to psionics.
That’s a very neat set of house rules for saves. I think it will adapt well to ACKS, which already uses a very similiar system. The biggest difference in ACKS is that we didn’t split Block and Dodge, but instead split “Mind v. Spells” and “Mind v. Magic Items.”
I like these ideas, as I also was considering adding Ability score modifiers to the saves like the DnD BECMI/RC optional rule. Also very much considering just going with the D20 save categories of Fortitude, Reflex and Will. This was one area I thought 3e was a major improvement.
One question I had for you though, is whether you still also apply the by the book WIS modifier to all Spell based saves on top of those you have listed?
3E’s concept of “functional” saves was a huge improvement over the old categories, IMO. These categories are explicitly modeled on that.
You could use either Chr or Wis to modify the Mind/Spirit category, but not both. Each category is only modified by one Stat.
Irda, I liked your save house rules so much, that it inspired me to make a set of my own. I decided to have 5 saves like ACKS and have each one modified by an ability mod. I also took the average of the 5 saves from ACKS to give each class a “base save” which is then modified by the character’s stats. I also use 3.5’s ability modifiers (scores of 16-18 are so rare on a straight 3d6 I’m finding…less than 5% chance… that if some one manages to actually roll one, the small boost won’t hurt).
Holds (Str)
Will (Wis)
Reflex (Dex)
Fortitude (Con)
Ego (Cha)
I’m going to try it out this Friday.