Saving Throw Magic

Adding Magic to the Game with a Saving Throw.
"Save verses Death Ray", a phrase that can cause players of the White Box to fear for their characters' lives because failure means death and rolling up a new character. Let's face it, the lives of player characters (not players!) are relatively cheap in white box play. The game can be deadly and I believe is designed to be that way.  A little fear for your character adds tension and excitement at the game table the same way fear of losing one's money adds excitement to gambling. But like gambling, there's the big payoff when what we fear doesn't happen...we make the save in white box play and live to adventure another day!
The Saving Throw as a mechanic seems to be a carry-over from wargaming with miniatures. A saving throw is often awarded in various wargames for having armor or cover that might save a unit or playing piece from the effects of a hit. It is a way to negate bad effects under certain circumstances. I also see the saving throw in D&D as also a way to mitigate or get out of the negative effects of some in-game event. It provides a sort of cliff hanger moment in play when the effect is kinda known (the witch throws a spell), but there is the question of "Will it apply to my character?"- maybe not if I can make this saving throw.
The LBBs list saves verses Death Ray or Poison, Wands, Polymorph or Paralyzation, Stone, Dragon Breath, Spells and Staves. The target number is different for each of these categories according to class and improves with level, thereby making saving throws a unique feature of each character class. The progression as the PC levels-up is somewhat uneven and this further adds to the unique feel of the class saving throws. In typical White Box fashion the rationale for all this is left largely unexplained and it is up to the referee and players to offer any explanation as to why things are the way they are. Is the cleric saved by faith? The fighter by brawn? The magic user by knowledge? You decide! It's part of the mystery, the magic of the game that certain things remain unexplained and often seem to have no logic behind them...they just are. We as players are left to wonder, to speculate and to use our imagination.
Attributes in White Box do not affect saving throws, but can be used to supplement saving throws if the referee calls for a check against an attribute (such as a Dex check to see if the PC catches something thrown to them). This lends itself well to a style of play where the players tell the referee what they want their PCs to do, then the referee figures out how to fit that into the game using the available mechanics. As referee I have frequently enjoyed the task of deciding how I want to use the available rules to determine if certain things happen in-game. This flexibility is one of the reasons White Box has remained my favorite version of the world's most popular role-playing game.