Saving throws for the short folk

[Miloch]

According to 2nd edition, dwarves, gnomes and halflings are supposed to get certain saving throw bonuses as follows:

Constitution  Saving Throw Bonus
4-6		   +1
7-10		  +2
11-13		 +3
14-17		 +4
18-20		 +5

This applies to wands/staves/rods and spells (the 2nd and 5th saving throws).

 

However, dwarves and halflings also get the same bonus against poison. This is lumped in the first saving throw, which includes death magic and paralyzation.

 

So my question is: do we also lower the first saving throw for dwarves and halflings, or just ignore the poison bonus? Or is there some other way to handle it in the engine?

[Miloch]

Well I answered my own question. I rolled a dwarf PC and got bonuses in the 1st, 2nd and 5th saving throws; the gnome PC got only the 2nd and 5th save bonuses. Even the manuals (both BG1 and BG2) state this:

Dwarves have a natural resistance to magic and poison.

Gnomes have a natural resistance to magic.

Halflings are highly resistant to poisons and magic.

But, most NPCs (in BG1 and Tutu at least) do not get any of these bonuses, including joinables. (The couple BG2 NPCs I checked were ok.) So I'm going to expand my "Gnomes" mini-mod to account for it. There has got to be some reason you'd want a runt like Tiax or Montaron to tag along with you, hasn't there?

[Avenger]

What happens if the constitution changes later?

Do you get the saving throw bonus at start, and it doesn't change when constitution changes?

[Nythrun]

It's checked on each level-up.

[Avenger]

Ok, then i don't have to handle saving throw changes when race changes mid combat!

 

Phew

[Miloch]

But is it checked on each level-up dynamically or statically? I mean, does the engine look at the existing saving throws and use some sort of algorithm to calculate what they should be at the next level up or does it just re-assign the saving throws to what it thinks they should be, based on class/race/level?

[devSin]

The engine calculates the correct saving throws at each level up and discards the values from the CRE (this is the reason saving throws will correct themselves at level up if a CRE or CHR file has the wrong values).

 

Without storing any previous values, trying to recalculate new bonuses based on the current values wouldn't make much sense.