Are you tired of conditions?

[Stalker0]

After my gaming group finished up today, the party fighter was complaining, saying he is so tired of being stunned/dazed/immobilized etc every other round.

I normally DM but tonight I was playing, but I'll admit I have some sympathy. In one fight I was grabbed, restrained, and/or dazed the entire fight.

One of 4e's design goals was to increase each character's ability to participate in a fight. That's why powers that would knock someone out for the entire combat were commonly removed.

But have they? In some cases, they seem to have been replaced by an unending stream of short duration conditions that often amount to the same thing.

For example in the game I run, the party was fighting an iron golem, whose basic attack dazes with a save end duration. The party's fighter was dazed literally the entire fight...and I'm sure that wasn't the most fun for him.


So curious what other people's thoughts are.

 

[chaotix42]

I've had some complaints at my table too. The most recent one was when the party fought a lamia and her banshrae underlings. Pretty much every monster could daze or stun, and the warlord spent 8 of 9 rounds suffering from one or more such conditions!

On the other hand I used githzerai in an encounter - one of the types can stun at-will - and the entire party seemed intrigued and engaged despite the fact that 2 of 5 players were often stunned. Everyone was really trying to put those guys down, and were excited to see one of the other non-stunned PCs put the hurt on 'em. It also helped that the PCs surrounded and ambushed the gith, so when they counter-attacked with crazy stunning fists it made for a tense, back-and-forth combat.

As an aside, was that iron golem a homebrewed creation? The iron golem in the MM2 merely marks a target hit by its basic attack. *is curious*

 

[Stalker0]

As an aside, was that iron golem a homebrewed creation? The iron golem in the MM2 merely marks a target hit by its basic attack. *is curious*

Sorry I got confused, it was a flesh golem, I just reskinned it as a iron golem for flavor purposes.

 

[Dr.Cornelius]

Players have choices too

If players are tired of conditions then they should consider putting more resources into countering conditions. There are plenty of items / powers / feats that can reduce the risk or length of being under a negative condition. Players should invest in these instead of more obvious choices like DPR or AC.

 

[Lauberfen]

You can certainly have too much of a good thing. It's best not to have multiple sources of the same condition.

In particular, players should generally have a way of countering conditions- It's a bit hard when it's the main monster they are fighting. However being dazed is hardly that much of an issue for the fighter, if the monster stays attacking him- you still do your job almost as well.

Also, conditions for one turn are much more reasonable than save ends. Monsters should not have save ends effects as an accurate at will, because that can keep 2 players under the effect the whole time.

That being said, a warden would probably lap it up.

 

[Pickles JG]

However being dazed is hardly that much of an issue for the fighter, if the monster stays attacking him- you still do your job almost as well.

Also, conditions for one turn are much more reasonable than save ends. Monsters should not have save ends effects as an accurate at will, because that can keep 2 players under the effect the whole time.

It's a big if - dazed fighters cannot make combat challenge attacks & often end up charging about marking one guy at a time.

There is some sort of Satyr with a big at will blast that dazes - that was frustrating for my team.

I think the annoying stuff is OK in moderation but not in every fight all the time. The chain AOE debilitation is a bit too much.

I do not see all these feats powers & items that help against dazed & stunned in particular. Leaders can help with saves against the stuff of course & probably should but I do not see a lot of self help.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Yes, they are awful when overused; two incidents stick out in my memory.

The first was when we ran into a pack of ghouls. My fighter spent all but one round immobilized and getting munched on - the damage was obscene - and frustrated that there was nothing I could do to improve my position on the battlefield. Thankfully the DM in that game is an observant chap who noticed how little fun it was to spend the encounter as a stationary meals-on-legs for a pack of ghouls and hasn't put us up against a similar encounter since.

The second was in Thunderspire.

Spoiler

One of the leaders in the first section of the duergar fortress managed to get both of our defenders dazed and due to reapplications of the power and bad luck on saves they remained dazed for most of the fight. This combined with the tight tunnels we were caught in (two squares wide, our strikers couldn't get into position) made for a painful experience even though my character wasn't one of the victims.

However being dazed is hardly that much of an issue for the fighter, if the monster stays attacking him- you still do your job almost as well.

I don't agree. When my fighter is dazed I can't flank to grant the rogue combat advantage and I become much less sticky due to not being able to take immediate or opportunity actions. On top of that I take more of a beating because I'm granting combat advantage to enemies.

 

[FireLance]

Conditions are like spice. Do not add infinite oregano.

I personally avoid at-will or frequent 4: or better) recharge attacks that can inflict serious conditions (e.g. weakened, dazed, blinded, stunned, etc.) on multiple targets. At-will attacks that can inflict serious conditions on a single target are okay, but the number of opponents with such abilities should be no more than half the number of PCs.

Abilities that can inflict serious conditions on multiple targets should be encounter-defining abilities and either used at the start of the battle, to set its tone, or at an appropriate time during the fight, to turn the tide, raise the stakes, or otherwise add tension to it.

This is what I would probably call my one, two, half rule for using conditions in a fight:

Each PC should be affected by no more than one or two serious conditions for no more than half the encounter.​

 

[Bolongo]

Dazed is a good condition to tweak the economy of actions a bit. Stunned is of course much worse and should be used sparingly.

I should perhaps note that in my experience DMing the published adventure series (up to P2 now) and playing in Scales of War (only in the second adventure so far), encounters as written are mostly too easy (also, there's far too many of them, but that's a different - though related - issue).

By Paragon tier, an adventuring party has way more options and nasty combos to unleash than any group of monsters you can put together. Imposing conditions is a way to slow the steamroller down slightly. I find it much preferrable to the other ways of increasing difficulty: higher HP/defenses for opponents just makes it more grindy, and increasing their damage output makes combats swingy instead.

 

[MortalPlague]

This falls heavily into the DM's area of control when choosing monsters to make up an encounter. In the game I'm playing in, we had two fights last session. The first one was against a harpy-type creature who had an aura; anyone taking its ongoing damage was weakened, so long as they were within 2 squares. This proved to be incredibly frustrating, since the harpies almost always hit, and their regular attack tacks on the ongoing damage. So for the whole fight, we were almost perpetually weakened.

The subsequent fight had a monster with an aura 10 that caused a -2 penalty to AC, and a whole bunch of monsters who dazed, slowed, and made people unconscious. One of our PCs spent the whole fight unconscious.

When I DM, I try to only use one or two monsters with dangerous conditions, and I try not to use monsters that throw down crippling conditions on their at-will abilities.