The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term1962

Saving throw

A roll made to avoid or reduce a sudden danger such as poison, a dragon's breath, a trap or a spell. The save represents a character's luck, reflexes or willpower rather than an attack, and a success typically negates or halves the effect.

A roll made to avoid or reduce a sudden danger such as poison, a dragon's breath, a trap or a spell. The save represents a character's luck, reflexes or willpower rather than an attack, and a success typically negates or halves the effect.

Origin

Wargame usage; the term is traced to Donald F. Featherstone's book War Games (1962), and entered roleplaying with Dungeons & Dragons (1974).

Quick answers

What does "Saving throw" mean?
A roll made to avoid or reduce a sudden danger such as poison, a dragon's breath, a trap or a spell. The save represents a character's luck, reflexes or willpower rather than an attack, and a success typically negates or halves the effect.
Where does the term "Saving throw" come from?
Wargame usage; the term is traced to Donald F. Featherstone's book War Games (1962), and entered roleplaying with Dungeons & Dragons (1974).

Nearby in the archive

Polyhedral dice

Tabletop term

The set of four-, six-, eight-, ten-, twelve- and twenty-sided dice used by roleplaying games, written in shorthand such as 3d6 (three six-siders added together) or d20. The icosahedral d20 became the emblem of D&D and gave its name to the d20 System of 2000.

Hit points

Tabletop term1974

A number measuring how much damage a character or creature can take before it is defeated. Attacks subtract hit points and rest or healing restores them, turning the drama of a fight into a steadily falling total. Nearly every Western Computer RPGs (CRPG) and Japanese RPGs (JRPG) inherited the idea, usually as a shrinking health bar.

Painting: three small plain tan rulebooks in a wood-grain cardboard box beside strange new polyhedral dice, pencils and a graph-paper dungeon map.

Dungeons & Dragons

Tabletop RPG1974

Three little booklets in a woodgrain box, hand-assembled in Lake Geneva in January 1974: the first published roleplaying game, and the template for every tabletop and computer RPG since.

Miniatures & Board Wargames

Tabletop genre1812

Painted soldiers on sand tables, cardboard counters on hex maps: the game of generals that trained Prussian officers, amused H. G. Wells and, in a Minnesota basement, gave birth to the roleplaying game.

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