Taking Unfun out of Dazed and Stunned Conditions

[brainstorm]

After listening to the Gen Con podcast, I started thinking about house ruling the Dazed and Stunned conditions in a similar way to how the WotC guys briefly mentioned. They didn't go into much detail, which is unfortunate, so I thought I'd brainstorm here and get suggestions from the general En World population. So, here's a start; feel free to modify, tinker, suggest, trash, etc.

Dazed:
- You grant combat advantage.
- You lose a standard action or a move action - your choice. You can't take immediate actions or opportunity actions.
- You may still take a minor action.
- You can't flank an enemy.

Stunned:
- You grant combat advantage.
- You may only take a move action or two minor actions. You can't take immediate actions or opportunity actions.
- You can't flank an enemy.

 

[Mesh Hong]

One of the practical uses of Stun and Daze is to shut down or increase the burden of sustain powers. If you change Daze to still allow a standard and a minor action, and change stun to allow 2 minor and a move action then PCs (and monsters for that matter) will still be able to maintain ongoing powers such as zones and buffs.

This will remove a layer of tactics from effects use and might actually unbalance sustain powers.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I agree that the sustain piece is important.. and would tweak the wording slightly to read:


Dazed:
- You grant combat advantage.
- You lose your move action and can take a standard action and a minor action on your turn.
- You can not take immediate actions or opportunity actions.
- You can not flank an enemy.
- You can not sustain any effects.

Stunned:
- You grant combat advantage.
- You may only take a move action on your turn
- You can not take immediate actions or opportunity actions.
- You can not flank an enemy.
- You can not sustain any effects.

 

[Mesh Hong]

Primitive Screwhead: I think you should be able to sustain powers when dazed, at the cost of any other action. Sustain powers are often so good that you would prefer to keep than up and do nothing else rather than have a standard action.

Generally:
I'll come clean here, I like dazed and I like stunned. I find them perfectly fit for purpose as status conditions at the top of the threat tree, and as they are at the top of the treat tree you should just keep an eye on how often you use them. In my opinion you could probably get the lesser effects you are proposing without changing Daze and Stun, just by using other conditions, or by not using stun or dazed on a specific monster and inserting your new condition variables.

Another thing I would look at before changing Daze and Stun would be the use of a heal check to grant a bonus save. If absolutely necessary you could house rule it to a move or maybe minor action each with a higher difficulty. This would encourage movement and tactics over softening the initial effects.

But really I feel there are enough powers available to the PCs that grant extra saving throws to allow reasonably threatening creatures to use reasonably threatening powers with reasonably threatening effects.

As always though this is just my opinion, and I dare say not the opinion of the OP.

As an aside (and I realise I am being pedantic here) I would like to know what you would propose to do with attacks that have the effect "target is reduced to 0 HPs"? If you don't like stunned then how do you like that?

 

[brainstorm]

I should probably define "unfun". From the player's perspective, unfun means they are unable to do anything or their actions are severely limited for one or more rounds. From the DM's perspective, unfun means a solo or elite opponent is rendered ineffective for most of a combat*.

* I don't want to get into a discussion of how a solo shouldn't actually be used as a solo in an encounter and how there should be minions and terrain effects and so on. Bottom line: A BBEG should not be taken out of a fight because PCs can pile a bunch of debilitating conditions on him. Period. Slightly inhibited, yes. Rendered completely ineffectual, no.

 

[ZephyrTR]

Mesh, the way I see it, sustaining is an unbroken stream of attention to maintain some kind of magical effect. I like to see it as a chant. If someone comes in and clocks you in the head, thus dazing you, you'll stop chanting.

Especially charm and illusion abilities that stun, they mean to pull your full attention away from what you were doing. When hit by one of these powers, the target essentially forgets what he was doing.

The short is I've always made daze and stun halt sustained powers and effects. I can't envision situations in which they wouldn't break your focus, and since we no longer have a "Concentration" skill, you need something to interrupt magic.

 

[Mesh Hong]

I should probably define "unfun". From the player's perspective, unfun means they are unable to do anything or their actions are severely limited for one or more rounds. From the DM's perspective, unfun means a solo or elite opponent is rendered ineffective for most of a combat*.

* I don't want to get into a discussion of how a solo shouldn't actually be used as a solo in an encounter and how there should be minions and terrain effects and so on. Bottom line: A BBEG should not be taken out of a fight because PCs can pile a bunch of debilitating conditions on him. Period. Slightly inhibited, yes. Rendered completely ineffectual, no.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to tell you that you are wrong and I can understand the reasoning behind the post.

That being: when a player is denied the opportunity to contribute to a combat encounter for more than 1 round it can be frustrating, this coupled with the way that each round can take a fair amount of time to resolve can mean, in some cases, that a player has no direct influence on the game for an hour or so.

Also: on the other side of the table it can be frustrating for the DM when an important monster is rendered useless for a significant enough number of rounds to be reduced from a serious threat to a waste of time.

But as far as I see it, it isn't necessarily the effects fault, in this case daze or stun. Yes it is easy to point at Daze and Stun and say its all their fault, but as effects go they are simple, elegant and have definite uses. In my opinion it is their use (or over use) that can cause a problem.

Also remember that PCs and Monsters are designed using different rules, one has strict systems and powers (PCs), one has a few guidelines and a lot of leeway (monsters). While stun and daze have the same mechanical effect on PCs and monsters there application and consequences are subtly different.

Monsters:
With monsters you have complete control of how often and to what extent you use powers with daze and stun. If you find them Unfun then use them a lot less, but you will want to keep the threat of them there to bring out on a few occasions when appropriate.

PCs:
Here you have less control and here is where we get to the nub of the matter. Players love powers that stun, powergamers will instinctively be drawn to ways of stun locking enemies (to be fair by epic even reasonable parties will be able to do some chain stunning between them). The interesting thing is that human nature leads me to suspect that the same players that say it is fun to stun or daze enemies are usually the ones that think it is unfair to do it to them.

Personally my rule of Fun/Unfun is that whatever the players can do the threats in the world can do as well. If the PCs can do something it is perfectly reasonable for the monsters to do it once in a while too. I also point out that the plot and the threats they face are designed proportionally to them, if they are optimised killing machines they are going to have to face seriously engineered killing machines in return.

Once you point that out to a group they are usually a little more responsible about their power/item selection and you can reach a Fun balance.

I will also point out at this point that monsters have no restrictions on traits or powers and you can develop saving throw mechanics to balance stunning powers (or other tricks the players develop).

As an example my own personal preference for important plot creatures is:

Saving Throws +5, monster may make an unmodified saving throw (+0)
against any one effect it is subject to at the start of its turn (this
includes effects that usually would not allow a save)

This give a monster a reasonable chance of removing one troublesome effect before it acts, but by no means makes it impervious, which I think is a respectful solution to both players and DM.

Now reading back through this post I realise that my own mental contortions and design ideology will probably land me in ultimately the same position that your design goal will. Reduce Unfun and maintain Fun. And to tell you the truth I am not 100% sure which is the most elegant solution between changing the status effect or changing the attitude towards the game.

Like all things I suppose it is whatever works for you. I will end these ramblings with the footnote that both stun and daze are important tools in epic tier, by that level PCs are nightmarishly efficient and can pretty much cope with anything. I wouldn’t want to face epic level PCs without the brief respite of the odd daze or stun effect.

Similarly dominate is another tool of the epic threat as should probably receive the same scrutiny.

 

[erf_beto]

Compromise?

What if when dazed/stunned every sustainable ability became a standard action (think "fulll round action") instead of minor, move, free or whatever, AND you needed to roll a "sustain saving throw" to keep it active. Fail and loose the zone/buff and you just wasted your standard action.

It is still possible to sustain, only harder and riskier. You might as well break concentration and move or basic attack.

 

[Mesh Hong]

Mesh, the way I see it, sustaining is an unbroken stream of attention to maintain some kind of magical effect. I like to see it as a chant. If someone comes in and clocks you in the head, thus dazing you, you'll stop chanting.

Especially charm and illusion abilities that stun, they mean to pull your full attention away from what you were doing. When hit by one of these powers, the target essentially forgets what he was doing.

The short is I've always made daze and stun halt sustained powers and effects. I can't envision situations in which they wouldn't break your focus, and since we no longer have a "Concentration" skill, you need something to interrupt magic.

For stunned yes, I wholeheartedly agree, complete loss of concentration and you are disorientated, (no actions).

For dazed no, you are disorientated but are heroic enough to be able to concentrate on doing one thing (minor, move or standard action). That one thing can be continuing your chant (sustaining a power), but if you do then you havn't got the where-with-all to move or attack.

As far as a concentration skill goes I like to think that the PCs are heroic enough to hold onto one train of thought when bashed over the head with a frying pan (dazed) but there are limits even to an adventurers fortitude, and that is what stun is there for.

 

[brainstorm]

Good discussion

Great points being made!

My experience so far has been that the Dazed / Stunned conditions are by far the worst when it comes to taking the fun out of a combat, which is why I'm focusing on them. The "reduce opponent to 0 hp" attack hasn't really come up in my games yet, though I can see how this would be unfun. I guess I'll have to ponder that one.

Here is another possible solution. Instead of eliminating actions, how about imposing penalties on actions?

Dazed:
- You grant combat advantage.
- You are at a -2 penalty to all attacks and saves.
- You can't flank an enemy.

Stunned:
- You grant combat advantage.
- You are Slowed.
- You are at a -5 penalty to all attacks and saves.
- You cannot sustain any effects.
- You can't flank an enemy.
- Stunned replaces the Dazed condition, it does not stack.

This alternative doesn't nerf the powers of those PCs that went out of their way to pick powers that have these conditions. Thoughts on this?