This post is (obviously) a follow-up to 5e is wrong about Charisma. If you haven’t read that post, this post is going to confuse you. If you aren’t familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, or what a roleplaying game is, or what saving throws are, this might be a bit of a stretch.

I haven’t dug deeper into the abilities of various monsters here. I have gone through every spell in the 2014 Player Handbook (PHB) which targets a mental saving throw. That means any spell that requires an Intelligence (INT), Wisdom (WIS), or Charisma (CHA) save. I’ve laid out a table with the spell names (sorted by level, alphabetized), what the original / current saving throw is, and what saving throw I suggest. Where further expansion on my thinking seems necessary, I’ve added notes below the table.

I’ve also laid out my thinking about what the mental attributes represent in their respective saving throws. Strangely the 2014 PHB doesn’t lay out much guidance on this front. The relevant pages are p179 and p205 PHB, and both entries are quite short. The pages preceding p179 are useful for descriptions of attributes, but they run afoul of my gripes aired in my previous post. The 2014 Dungeon Master Guide (DMG) has better guidance in a table on p238, but it seems clear (from comparing that table to the required saving throws of many 5e spells) that many of 5e’s spells from the 2014 PHB only loosely follow the guidance on that page.

So… what are the underlying principles that I’m trying to follow?

• If a spell is coercing the will of its target, that should require a Charisma save.
• If a spell is attacking the mental integrity of its target, that should require an Intelligence save.
• If a spell is lying to its target about the nature of reality, that should require a Wisdom save.
• A spell’s description of how it works matters. If the spell describes its mechanism to influence a target as illusory that’s different than a spell that simply forces action against the target’s will, even when the resulting actions are the same.

This division IS imperfect, subjective, and creates new problems. It WILL sometimes require us to choose from multiple viable options. It WILL NOT satisfy us in every case.

My hope is that, first, this new division will be slightly more satisfying (to me) than the current array of spell saving throws. And second, that sharing my reasoning will help you do something like this for your own games in a way that you find satisfying. If you change nothing, at least you might have a better sense of why you’re ruling how you are in your own games.

Your own approach could be on the fly, or it could be sitting down and cranking through a big list of spells. Do whatever works for you.

There are limits here. As mentioned above, I’m not covering every 5e spell in current circulation. My source is dndbeyond’s spell list, and I focused on spells from the 2014 PHB which force Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma saving throws. If you’re able to access dndbeyond.com/spells you should be able to recreate this (and maybe you can just follow this link).

TL;DR: I suggest that many more spells target CHA than used to. I may have over-corrected. Some saving throws could go any which way. Following my suggestions below continues to leave INT saves underrepresented, but makes Charisma a more meaningful attribute for adventurers.

• Vicious Mockery
  • This feels like it could be forced to work with any saving throw, but WIS works well enough. Vicious Mockery also fits with Dissonant Whispers.
• Charm Person
  • Rereading the spell description, WIS makes sense. Charm Person doesn’t change the target’s nature or control their actions, but instead creates an illusory emotional connection. What the target does after that is up to them.
• Command
  • This spell directly coerces the target’s behavior, a contest of will against will over one specific action.
• Compelled Duel
  • This feels like an inverse of Command, where the target’s will must oppose the spell’s guiding constraints.
• Dissonant Whispers
  • This spell does coerce movement on a failed save, but that movement is described as an instinctive reaction to the awful pain created by the spell rather than any kind of puppeteering.
• Sanctuary
  • This spell forces everyone to make a saving throw before directly attacking the target. The WIS save feels like a stretch, a CHA save (akin to the application of Magic Circle or Planar Binding) might be more appropriate.
• Tasha’s Hideous Laughter
  • This spell alters or interacts with the target’s perceptions to produce its effect. WIS makes sense.
• Calm Emotions
  • This spell could be understood as altering perceptions, or as altering elements of the self. Either CHA or WIS feels appropriate to me here, but I don’t feel a need to change this.
• Crown of Madness
  • This spell directly coerces the target’s actions to follow your instructions. This parallels Command.
• Hold Person
  • This spell paralyzes the target. The Dominate spells feel like clearer examples of meriting a CHA save, but this feels parallel to me; resisting coercive control of one’s body feels more like CHA than WIS.
• Phantasmal Force
  • This could be WIS, but given the spell description’s depiction of automatic rationalization of the illusion by the target the preliminary INT save feels more like a single free reflexive Investigate check.
• Bestow Curse
  • The target must resist a magical attack to avoid self-altering penalties (beyond inducing the Frightened or Incapacitated effects, or similar). CHA feels marginally better to me, but WIS could still work.
• Magic Circle
  • This spell pits the magical prowess of the caster against the will of the target. Magic Circle controls the movement of the target—in this case, preventing the crossing of a magical boundary whether via normal means or via teleportation or interplanar travel. CHA makes sense.
• Spirit Guardians
  • This spell doesn’t have a clear rationale for the saving throw it specifies. In my personal conception of the attributes CHA makes more sense than WIS for resisting hostile magical energy, but I don’t feel strongly about this change.
• Confusion
  • This spell is specifically described as operating via illusions, delusions, and altered perceptions. WIS makes sense.
• Dominate Beast
  • This spell coerces the behavior of the target and allows the caster to specifically direct and control the target. Resisting with CHA makes more sense to me than resisting with WIS.
• Phantasmal Killer
  • This spell conjures terrifying illusions in the mind of the target. As it alters perceptions, WIS makes sense.
• Polymorph
  • This spell parallels Bestow Curse, in that resisting its effects means resisting a self-altering change rather than resisting an alteration to the target’s perception (see Tasha’s Hideous Laughter). There’s not much reason for WIS here.
• Modify Memory
  • In my eyes, this spell could force either a WIS or a CHA save. I don’t feel strongly, and could be convinced either way.
• Seeming
  • This spell creates illusions. I would expect either a WIS or an INT save rather than a CHA save, but I can see using the CHA save if it is intended to show the target shrugging off a magical effect altering them. For continuity with my other rulings re: perception altering, I think this should be WIS.
• Eyebite
  • This spell produces multiple different effects, including unconsciousness, fear, and sickening. If I were rewriting the spell I would require different saves for each effect (CHA, WIS, and CHA) but to simplify I recommend changing the saving throw to CHA.