Saves and Morale in Shadowdark
Some house rules I'm implementing for Shadowdark are a confluence of my dissatisfaction with the RAW morale rules, and a conversation with Evangeline about her post on minimalist monster stat blocks for B/X type games.
Issue 1
B/X (or I suppose Shadowdark) saves are great for adding texture to your scenarios and game world, when they're player facing. Evangeline was expressing her frustration that including 5 saves per stat block makes them read much less cleanly, especially when they're just reproducing lines from the Fighter stat block over and over again. You can either transcribe the line from the table for every monster, or force the GM to flip to the fighter saves table every time a monster needs to make a save. I pointed out that 99.x% of the time the monster is only rolling a save vs. spell anyway, why not just include that one value.
This is of course far from a new idea. Swords and Wizardry condenses all saves into a single value. Nick LS Whelan talked about the value of using a single save more than a decade ago. However, like my colleague Josh, I quite like what the 5 saves from B/X can tell us about the world. I also like the way Shadowdark treats saves in the mold of 5E's bounded accuracy, even though I think using the 6 stats is a bit anodyne and joyless.
Luckily, I have a solution! You've probably already figured it out, I've been telegraphing. There's no real reason for NPC stat blocks to have as much information density as player character ones, and having 6 different saves per monster has no effect on my player's perception of them. I'm giving all my Shadowdark monsters/NPCs a single saving throw value.
Issue 2
From the Shadowdark core rulebook Morale entry:
Enemies who are reduced to half their number (or half their hit points for a solo enemy) flee if they fail a DC 15 Wisdom check.
Large Groups. Make one check using the leader's WIS modifier.
I don't really like that Shadowdark morale rolls are +Wis to stay in the fight. Why is a wiser monster more likely to stay in a fight? Luckily reducing monster saves to one value saves me this cognitive dissonance. The other thing I want is a second morale check for when a side takes it's first casualty.
So my modified Morale rules look like this:
When a group of enemies takes their first casualty they flee if they fail a DC 9 save.
Enemies who are reduced to half their number (or half their hit points for a solo enemy) flee if they fail a DC 15 save.
Large Groups. Make one check using the leader's save modifier.
Better? Maybe not, but it better fits my preference for play, so until I change my mind I'm running it this way.