Alternate Penalties to Conditions?

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Two big dogs (shadow mastiffs) reach us first. One gives us his fear howl and we hold (I think maybe one character at the back of the group might have failed his save). The second dog howls . . . and the whole group panics, drops their weapons and shields, and flees.

Five of the six characters failed a DC 13 Will save (three natural 1s). The one who saved had to flee with us, as he was just a 4th-level cohort. What was set up to be an amazing heroic stand turned into a friggin' rout from two friggin' dogs.

This scene shows a big problem with powers that can affect everyone within an effectively unlimited range. Even if the save DC is low (like 13 in this case), it can sometimes get everyone. For instance, I've seen a harpy charm all five PCs in a party.

My point:
Some monsters have abilities that have an effectively infinite area of effect. (Infinite for most D&D encounters, anyway.) For examples: shadow mastiffs and harpies. When this infinite AoE is combined with an effect that in some way completely neutralizes the victims, an encounter can turn very bad, because there is a chance that *every* character will fail the save and be neutralized.

I was thinking about this, and was wondering, "What's a good alternative?" Now, just so it's clear, here's where I'm coming from...

1. I think it sucks when a character is basically removed from the game because of a crappy roll. It might be temporary because of failing a Fear check, it might be permanent because of failing to save vs some Death effect. Or it could be, "You can't control your character because he's under Charm, so he's going to go along with [blah blah blah]".

2. Yes, a solution is "don't use creatures with those effects" or "just don't use those abilities". It's an easy/obvious solution, and not what I'm looking for.

So it seems to me that the...easiest?... solution would be to turn around and do something like a penalty to actions instead.

No initiative roll, you're automatically at the bottom of the stack. You can only fight defensively. You only get 1 attack a round, regardless of how many you've got. You can only make a 5' move, unless staying in that place will kill your character, in which case they can move away from the threat and then drop back to the 5' move limitation. And of course the obvious, "you're at a penalty of [x] to all your actions for [y] rounds, because you failed your saving throw and you're suffering from [z] condition".

I might be missing something but like I said, I think that going with some sort of penalty (or combination perhaps) might be the easiest/best alternative.

Looking at the condition summary from d20 SRD, there's a bunch of 'em. Of course, it doesn't cover certain "effects" like being turned into Stone.
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/conditions.htm

So, what kind of penalties would/should be assigned instead? The idea being, the character should still be able to do _something_ meaningful.

Sidenote: Maybe some of these conditions should be "collapsed"? I personally am a fan of the way that skills were chopped down for SW Saga and the first Pathfinder. I realize that not everyone likes that, but that's a whole other topic. Bearing in mind that I _am_ a fan of that, perhaps some of the conditions could be combined? Or turned into a function of how badly the character failed the saving throw?

 

[Kerrick]

So it seems to me that the...easiest?... solution would be to turn around and do something like a penalty to actions instead.

It would be, yes.

So, what kind of penalties would/should be assigned instead? The idea being, the character should still be able to do _something_ meaningful.

I've got some revised conditions. This is part of Project Phoenix, my 3.75 revision. The Conditions aren't totally done yet, as you can see, but you can get some idea.

I think scaling them (like shaken/frightened/panicked) would help to smooth things out a bit; Clay's got a thread for that. Also, removing ability penalties would help; there was a thread in GD (IIRC) about internal and external penalties and how they have a trickle-down effect that screws everything up. IOW, applying a Strength penalty not only has an effect on Strength checks, but attack/damage rolls, encumbrance (if you use it), Strength-based skills, and maybe even some class abilities.