D&D 5E Ranking Conditions

[prabe]

I know you want (or at least have) four tiers of conditions, but Exhaustion has six. You just mentioned this, so you're clearly thinking about it (sorry), but the options seem to be either break the six levels of exhaustion across your four tiers or revise your approach to have six tiers. I think either can work.

 

[dave2008]

I know you want (or at least have) four tiers of conditions, but Exhaustion has six. You just mentioned this, so you're clearly thinking about it (sorry), but the options seem to be either break the six levels of exhaustion across your four tiers or revise your approach to have six tiers. I think either can work.

I think the 6 tier approach might work. I'm at work so I can't think about it to much now, but I look over it more closely this evening or tomorrow morning (when I do most of my D&D thinking).

 

[prabe]

I think the 6 tier approach might work. I'm at work so I can't think about it to much now, but I look over it more closely this evening or tomorrow morning (when I do most of my D&D thinking).

Yeah. Moving to six tiers seems more elegant to me, but I didn't know how committed you were to four tiers.

 

[dave2008]

Yeah. Moving to six tiers seems more elegant to me, but I didn't know how committed you were to four tiers.

My only worry is that it might be to granular, but I guess I don't mind if some of those ranks just have levels of exhaustion in them.

 

[prabe]

Isn't six levels of exhaustion dead? That might reasonably be on its own level, by itself, and leaves you with just five others to fill.

 

[dave2008]

Isn't six levels of exhaustion dead? That might reasonably be on its own level, by itself, and leaves you with just five others to fill.

Yes, check out the new rankings in the OP

 

[NotAYakk]

The reason why grappled is so good is that getting out is a contested attribute check, and requires an action, and bypasses legendary resistance and it has synergy with prone, which also has these features via shove action.

You can nerf enemy attribute checks and boost your own far easier than you can do the same to saves. And burning an action on a BBEG is rather strong.

Hex, Enhance Ability, Expertise, max Str means you are walking around with +13 (level 8) to +17 (level 20) athletics and advantage, while they have disadvantage. If you can arrange to get Huge an ancient red dragon only has a +10 athletics (30 str).

2d20+7 pick highest being beaten by 2d20 pick lowest is rather unlikely. So you then knock prone, and everyone has advantage on the foe, and the foe has disadvantage on all attacks, and cannot get up with 0 speed.

But none of this is due to the condition itself. It is because the condition was weak enough that applying it was made so easy.

---

To that extent, you need to talk about not just the condition, but the duration and how to get out. Paralyzed where you break it on damage, is weaker than paralyzed where you get a save every time you are damaged is weaker than paralyzed save each turn, which is weaker than paralyzed for a duration.

Conditions are not just free form units, but need to make story sense. Petrified doesn't "go away" like stunned usually does. On the other hand, becoming petrified usually is a multi-stage process in 5e, giving people a chance to break free or help.

Charmed, while minor, often comes with riders "while charmed".

Removing that texture -- the connection 5e does with effects to the underlying fiction -- breaks an important part of what makes 5e 5e.

 

[dave2008]

The reason why grappled is so good is that getting out is a contested attribute check, and requires an action, and bypasses legendary resistance and it has synergy with prone, which also has these features via shove action.

You can nerf enemy attribute checks and boost your own far easier than you can do the same to saves. And burning an action on a BBEG is rather strong.

Hex, Enhance Ability, Expertise, max Str means you are walking around with +13 (level 8) to +17 (level 20) athletics and advantage, while they have disadvantage. If you can arrange to get Huge an ancient red dragon only has a +10 athletics (30 str).

2d20+7 pick highest being beaten by 2d20 pick lowest is rather unlikely. So you then knock prone, and everyone has advantage on the foe, and the foe has disadvantage on all attacks, and cannot get up with 0 speed.

But none of this is due to the condition itself. It is because the condition was weak enough that applying it was made so easy.

---

To that extent, you need to talk about not just the condition, but the duration and how to get out. Paralyzed where you break it on damage, is weaker than paralyzed where you get a save every time you are damaged is weaker than paralyzed save each turn, which is weaker than paralyzed for a duration.

Conditions are not just free form units, but need to make story sense. Petrified doesn't "go away" like stunned usually does. On the other hand, becoming petrified usually is a multi-stage process in 5e, giving people a chance to break free or help.

Charmed, while minor, often comes with riders "while charmed".

Removing that texture -- the connection 5e does with effects to the underlying fiction -- breaks an important part of what makes 5e 5e.

I get what your saying (well some of it at least), but I am not sure if your making any suggestions or not. As clarified elsewhere in this thread this rankings are a starting point to create a free-form spell / maneuver system. As part of that I think I will need to eventually look at duration, range, and other factors, but for now I am interested in a base line ranking of conditions.

 

[Gradine]

Obviously the best condition is... <checks notes> Paralyzed? Says here it's paralyzed.

 

[NotAYakk]

I get what your saying (well some of it at least), but I am not sure if your making any suggestions or not. As clarified elsewhere in this thread this rankings are a starting point to create a free-form spell / maneuver system. As part of that I think I will need to eventually look at duration, range, and other factors, but for now I am interested in a base line ranking of conditions.

That conditions shouldn't be divorced from the mechanics surrounding them.

"Petrified" is a condition, but the fact that petrified is a "Save against X, or be Y, then save against Y repeatedly; on 3 failures, you get Petrified, on 3 success you are free" is part of the package for petrified.

Ranking it in isolation (a) encourages non-5e style effects, and (b) is less useful than ranking a package if you want to do 5e style effects.