By realizing I had played here this long, heard enough about D&D and not thought about this.

What is a mage type character supposed to do against characters with a high svs spell? I'm particularly thinking of necromancers and to a lesser extent AP's of more fragile races and shamen. What are some general strategies? Let's assume we're not discussing ragers but rather several goodie characters, assassins, bards and some decked warriors with svs spell gear layered on top of the average -20 you should be able to reach with just your own class abilities generally. So, speaking in the -60 and beyond spell saves range, and in the lesser case, mental.

The most immediate answer is curse. But not only is this hard to land in the first place as well, it only has the benefit of at most +10 svs spell.

The next is dispelling abilities that might be boosting svs spell, which requires more luck punching through the spell saves. Then again a player is less likely to flee and put up Bless than they would Sanctuary or Protection.

My final thought was influencing Morale, in this case raising your own would logically have a better overall effect than lowering their's (according to the helpfiles your *abilities* work better overall, which seems to me this means there's a chance they land more often rather than become more effective) but saves works the same regardless of your morale being Intrepid or Panicked. But outside of bards, shamen, orcs and anti-paladins there aren't too many ways to dramatically change morale and in many cases abilities and gear that temporarily or permanently boost your morale by a set amount might be ignored. So it seems to me morale is too subtle a variable to be prepared to change in a fight to get around svs spell.

While generally a character with this high a saves is hard to kill for other reasons as well, is your solution still to get a giant to bash him for you, or a dagger spec to go to town on them instead of fight this battle on your own? I can imagine it's very frustrating to be in a battle and spend 70% of your mana trying to land only a single maladict.

Is it also possible that depending on the battle you're fighting it the wrong way and you'd be better off trying to directly damage them when their saves are that high, despite the halved damage?

Depends on your class and what you're fighting. Sometimes you have to completely change tactics (a necro might wanna get a zombie army and an exotic with swing and go that route instead of sleep/spellup). Other times, you just have to stick to the gameplan and accept that it won't work as well. Maybe make some smaller changes to your tactics. Less minor maladictions and more direct damage as the latter always has some impact. As an ap, the scale is tipped towards going for preps and physical moves (trip, dirt/disarm). You also become more inclined to set traps using mobs or the environment. An opponent with great saves should be more confident, so they're more likely to bite. Or spend some political capital to gank them down, sac their svs stuff and leave them decent non-svs eq. Then punish their insubordination by spamkilling them until they cry. Or keep an assassin with 100% assassinate, and use it to kill those problem chars. Then log on your mage, and kill them again without being accused of multiplaying.

Just remember that even if your opponent has great saves, they'll still fail the roll a fair bit. Especially against somebody with spellcraft. Of course you could also dispell some saves stuff, as a shaman that's a given if there's anything to dispel.

Sorry, there's no simple answer.

Disclaimer: I am not serious about certain ideas.

This most affects shamans and APs, necros have spellcraft. I found even very high saves characters would fail their vs sleep save enough that it wasn't that bad unless they were someone who was going to have the ability to really make me pay for failing.

As an AP, you've got other options. Cleave, dirt/disarm and maledictive physical attacks which can win you fights.

As a shaman, you're more or less the lesser end of the necro spectrum. You don't get sleep or PWK, but you get sanctuary and protection and can cure diseases/blindness/etc. You pay for that defense with a weakened offense, and its not like you can't still overcome saves to some extent. Though shamans tend to have a hard time killing skilled heroes and are often put in a situation where they have little to no direct means of dealing with some people, on a similar token you have to reconsider your entire gearing strategy when fighting a shaman.

For example, against a necro its more about not getting slept, which can be mitigated without gearing for saves (though its probably a decent idea), and where wearing lightweight (under 3lbs) weapons isn't always a better option than two massive pincerin axes.

For an AP, you can lag them or just brutalize them with damage and if you get slept, you should have a moderate chance at escaping (plus, you've got a better chance off the bat of not getting slept).

For a shaman, you pretty much want to get low weight weapons and high saves. Its going to be a long fight no matter what since the guy's got protection & sanctuary, parry & shield block, so you need to be able to be in it for the long haul. So unless you're fortunate enough to have very good dam/hp/etc items that also grant you tons of saves, you're giving up a lot to gear well for a shaman fight.