For a homebrew project I’d like to add the ability to re-try a saving throw against some ongoing effect under certain conditions. This was a very-common sort of ability in 3.5e, but I can’t find any examples of it in 5e. For example, the core 3.5e rogue had the option of taking the slippery mind special ability:
This ability represents the rogue’s ability to wriggle free from magical effects that would otherwise control or compel her. If a rogue with slippery mind is affected by an enchantment spell or effect and fails her saving throw, she can attempt it again 1 round later at the same DC. She gets only this one extra chance to succeed on her saving throw.
But the rogue class feature by the same name in D&D 5e instead gives proficiency on Wisdom saving throws.
So, my question is, does any ability give the ability to make another saving throw against an effect, some time after the effect has been applied and its initial save failed? I don’t mean advantage on the initial saving throw; obviously the game has that. Likewise, immediate rerolls are easily found, e.g. from the Lucky feat, but don’t serve the purpose I’m looking for. And spells that have multiple saving throws built in, like dominate person, aren’t what I’m looking for—what I’m really looking for is some ability (class feature, feat, spell, whatever) of the target’s that effectively makes other spells work kinda like dominate person even when they haven’t been written that way.
In my case, I was giving the class advantage on saving throws against things that would move you (the class is focused on standing your ground), and I realized that ongoing effects might not move you immediately (and so would not get advantage), but then could cause you to move later (and I want to give you another bite at the apple, so to speak, since you didn’t get advantage originally). I’m looking for wording on this—if the answer to my question here is “no,” I’ll likely be asking a new question about how best to word this. But for right now, I’m after the official language for such an ability, if it exists, both for this project and, at this point, out of simply curiosity.
Best Answer
There are some similar concepts, but there are no extant mechanics that do exactly what you're looking for.
The closest to this is probably the Giant Snapping Turtle:
So if you shove the snapping turtle and win the contest, the snapping turtle then gets to make a saving throw to avoid being knocked prone.
Wish has an effect that seems to be similar to what you are looking for. It reads:
The language of this mechanic is arranged around actually undoing the past, which is not what you are looking for.
In a way, the spell dispel magic is somewhat similar:
This allows you to attempt to end an effect at your discretion, using an ability check, rather than a saving throw.
Of course, proving a negative is pretty difficult in this case. The best I can do is to say that I am pretty well read on the D&D 5e corpus and have pretty good research skills when it comes to working with texts in D&D Beyond's dumpster fire of a search function, and I can't come up with anything better than the two effects quoted above.