Stun is Fun

[Kinneus]

Stun is fun, but should be used sparingly. Like weed. If you use stun all the time, odds are you're just going to spend your whole life sitting around doing nothing and feeling frustrated. Once again, like weed.

However, stun is "the king of conditions" as somebody else said earlier. Weakening it cheapens all those really cool monsters and really cool powers that let you stun. If used correctly, however, stun can really shake up an encounter.

Here's an example. In a dungeon, a black dragon (actually a mechanical dragon-beast, but it was obviously just a reskinned young black dragon) got the drop on our group. At the time, the cleric was separated from us by a good twenty squares or so. The dragon used its Fear attack on the cleric and hit. So we had the Leader stunned, isolated, and adjacent to a dragon who was totally about to wreck his face with an action point-assisted double attack next turn.

Needless to say, drama ensued. My warlock pulled out his Wand of Ray of Enfeeblement and shot it off, hoping to at least reduce the catastrophic damage the dragon was about to do during its next turn. It was a one-in-a-million shot, but it hit! And the rest of the party was double-moving their little hinies off, trying to get to the cleric and help him out, or at least trying to distract the dragon-thing from eating him.

It was a lot of fun, even for the cleric, who had that rollercoaster-like moment of "Oh, crap I'm gonna die" horror. However, I can say with certainty that it would not have been fun if, after our dazzling heroics, we were all just caught in the dragon's fear aura and missed our turn.

The general rules of stun are:

1. Use sparingly. Not every encounter should have stun. Not one in every three encounters should have stun. Stun should be a rarity, and is simply not the stuff random encounters are made of.

2. Stun should only last for a single turn. "Until the end of next turn" or possibly "save ends" if the group has powers that grant saves.

3. Stun should never, ever, ever be on an at-will or an aura. It is a once-an-encounter thing, even in those rare few encounters where it's appropriate to use. Shame on you, Dracolich. Shame on you.

 

[keterys]

3. Stun should never, ever, ever be on an at-will or an aura. It is a once-an-encounter thing, even in those rare few encounters where it's appropriate to use. Shame on you, Dracolich. Shame on you.

Amen to that.

 

[Ryujin]

Indeed. Four out of 5 of our party spent the first 3 rounds of a fight with a Dracolich stunned. The one who didn't was out of range when it maneouvered for the last round of three and messed up its positioning.

There was also a situation in which my character was stunned then tossed into a pit in the next room, where he messily bled and was repeatedly stunned down to 2 points from death, before the rest of the party could stay unstunned long enough to toss a Healing Surge my way. That was 5 rounds and over an hour of sitting on my hands.

Yup, stun sure is fun.

 

[Kinneus]

Yup, stun sure is fun.

Well, obviously, in those situations your DM gave you way too much stun. If you were playing a barbarian and the DM stuck you in an immobilizing zone for the entire fight, you'd be crying fowl, too. Or if he let something truly terrible in, like a "target is dominated until the end of the encounter" power.
It's not the status condition's fault if it's used poorly.

 

[keterys]

It's odd, but I still prefer my options with an immobilizing field on my barbarian (grasping javelin, forced moving an enemy near, forced moving me out, just plain out making ranged attacks) or a dominate for the encounter (okay, let's admit it - beating the crap out of your friends is way more fun than not acting at all) to being stunned over and over.

In very very small doses with lots of care, stun can be okay. Unfortunately, that's not what we have. The carrion crawler version of stunned? Sure, no problem. Dracolich? Hells no.

 

[Ryujin]

Well, obviously, in those situations your DM gave you way too much stun. If you were playing a barbarian and the DM stuck you in an immobilizing zone for the entire fight, you'd be crying fowl, too. Or if he let something truly terrible in, like a "target is dominated until the end of the encounter" power.
It's not the status condition's fault if it's used poorly.

No, it's the fault of the people who created the canned adventures that he was using, I suppose. He didn't make them up; they were from existing adventure paths.

It's odd, but I still prefer my options with an immobilizing field on my barbarian (grasping javelin, forced moving an enemy near, forced moving me out, just plain out making ranged attacks) or a dominate for the encounter (okay, let's admit it - beating the crap out of your friends is way more fun than not acting at all) to being stunned over and over.

In very very small doses with lots of care, stun can be okay. Unfortunately, that's not what we have. The carrion crawler version of stunned? Sure, no problem. Dracolich? Hells no.

'Xactly. Mr. Dracolich stuns everyone in front of him, needing something like a 7 to hit the toughest target. The Barbarian was behind him at the time and tries to attack? Immediate interrupt: Stunned. Fun, fun, fun. We did better the second time because we broke for the cardinal points of the room, so it could only effect 2 party members at a time, at most, and didn't do too badly. The first situation had limited options for movement.

 

[unan oranis]

Interesting takes, all.

Regarding the mathematical analysis; in merely the attempt to define a system of measuring (value of individual pc's attack being a factor etc) I think it is demonstrated that some strategic depth must be added by what I'll call the most dangerous (to fun) effect.

Also if you were to compare notes you would have to define a few things;

- Is the standard heal check a waste or loss of action? I think this depends on weather you are looking for strategic analysis or play-experience analysis. After all, dominate is actually stronger than stun but there is no issue because most people have no barrier to fun times with it.

- Is a successful removing of stun a waste or loss of action for the enemy that caused it? Should that be factored in to the total amount of actions for the opposing strategies? If it is, declaring a heal check as "last resort country" seems too harsh a judgment.


Other thoughts...

Stuns that last longer than 3 rounds (or saves) are in odd territory, because that's how many saves it takes to die, or be snuffed out by other monster abilities. Unless one also has an issue with those rules, you should be prepared to tap out on three saves anyway.
That is the default level of lethality - YMMV.

Stun is more dangerous (to fun) than I had thought when I first posted; the issue of slow turns is definitely exacerbated by stun.
I've been putting a lot of effort into speeding turns up, my players may suffer less "fun damage" than others from this effect.

I had not considered that in some cases, the focus fire target might not be the stunner, and so there again is a choice to switch priorities and bust up the potential monotony of focus fire. A choice with pros and cons, not necessarily an easy choice (which is ideal!).

 

[Kinneus]

No, it's the fault of the people who created the canned adventures that he was using, I suppose. He didn't make them up; they were from existing adventure paths.

That's a fair point, actually. The Dracolich is just a straight-up terrible creature, as are any that make frequent use of stun.
That doesn't mean that stun is bad, though. It just means that WotC used stun incorrectly. A skilled DM can still use stun correctly, and make it fun.

 

[fba827]

I used to think (as both a DM and a player) that stun was bad; even so much that when I DM I would (behind the scenes) house rule out a stun and replace it with a daze condition that had a penalty to saves to end it, or something along those lines (maybe keeping it for one or two really bad-ass enemies.. but it's the exception rather than the norm).

However, a couple posts in this thread at least convinced me that stun might be fun for other players. For the other players it adds tension with a possible change in tactics or use of those help-a-buddy type abilities.

But, even with this perspective, I can not agree that stun is fun for the player who gets stunned. And the other players can still do stuff that involves not saving the stunned player so they are still having some sort of fun. Thus, my overall opinion of whether or not (or how much) to use stun has not changed.

An interesting read on different viewpoints none the less.

 

[Amaroq]

You really need to show your math if you want to get exact like that.

Very well.

Case 1:
Non-helpful "PC A" = 100% chance of acting.
A = 1

Stunned "PC B" = 0% chance of acting in Round 1, 0.55% chance saving at end of turn N-1 and then being able to act in turn N.
B(1) = 0
B = B(n-1) + ((1 - B(n-1)) * 0.55)

Case 2:
Helpful "PC C" = 0% chance of acting in Round 1 as he rushes to friend to help, giving friend a 0.55% chance of saving and acting in Round 1.
Subsequent chance of "acting" in later rounds based on whether friend had saved by end of friend's turn in N-1:
C(1) = 0
C = D(n-1) + ((1 - D(n-1)) * 0.55)

Stunned "PC D" = Starts stunned.
Chance of acting in later rounds based on whether he had saved by end of friend's turn.
D(0) = 0
D = C + ((1 - C) * 0.55)

Rd   PC A   PC B    PC C  PC D
 1  1.000  0.000   0.000 0.550
 2  1.000  0.550   0.800 0.909
 3  1.000  0.800   0.959 0.982
 4  1.000  0.909   0.992 0.996
 5  1.000  0.959   0.998 0.999
 6  1.000  0.982   1.000 1.000
 7  1.000  0.992   1.000 1.000
    ------------   -----------
Tot 7.000  5.188   5.746 6.436
    ------------   -----------
NET       12.188        12.182