Are save-based attacks too overpowered in OOTs-verse?

[Quizatzhaderac]

Having read OotS first, and 3.5e rules second, I can say my expectation o how saves work (from OotS) doesn't really match the 3.5e rules.

Not to say that's a bad thing; c'est n'est pas un jouie de gorgons et gendarmeries. In many ways, I'd say OootS rules seem better, but questions remain of actually implement the apparent principles in a real game system.

The principles as I see them are thus:

1) People typically have good or bad saves. It's very rare for people to fail if they have a good save (see ultimate cleric duel) and very rare for one to pass with a bad save. This is somewhat true in 3.5e rules, but the degree is much more extreme in OotS.

2) There's a tradeoff where more devastating spells have less of a chance to succeed. This is actually the opposite of the rules since the power of the effect goes up with DC (as both are tied to spell level). But in OotS save or die spells tend to hit much less than save or annoyance spells.

3) Roy has a good will save. Not 15% more than Belkar, but enough to have several times the chance of saving the Belkar does.

Why are we talking about save-or-dies being op when d% random effects up the CR of an encounter by an order of magnitude?

Pedantic nitpick: an order of magnitude is ten times, which would mean instead of a CR 13 encounter they got a CR 130 encounter