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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5550962" data-attributes="member: 58197">There's a crucial distinction between "making a PC's life painful" and "making a PC's life boring." The former is just fine, and every DM should do it on a regular basis. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" /> The latter should be avoided when possible.Suppose there's an effect that turns a PC into a stone statue for the duration of the encounter, while being surrounded by an aura 50 that inflicts a -10 penalty on enemy attacks and defenses. That's quite beneficial to the PC, but it's also very boring. You just stand there and emanate while your friends mop up the bad guys. Conversely, take an effect that sends a PC into an extradimensional maze to battle a higher-level foe, with a clock ticking down that will leave her lost in the void forever if she doesn't beat her enemy and escape in time. That's a massive "screw you" to the PC, practically a death sentence--but it sure ain't boring!Stun is a problem, not because it makes your life hard, but because it makes your life boring. You don't have any decisions to make or dice to roll, you just skip your turn. Dominate is better than stun, because you get to do something... but it's not much better, because you don't get any say in what that something is. Daze is the least boring of the three; your options are limited but by no means negated.One possibility that might help with "fugue state" effects (daze, stun, dominate) would be to institute a "shock therapy" rule. The idea here is that you can deliberately cause yourself pain (cutting yourself with a dagger, burning yourself, et cetera) in order to snap out of a fugue. At the start of your turn, you voluntarily take damage equal to your healing surge value, and make a saving throw. If you make the save, the fugue state ends. If not, you just wasted a bunch of hit points. It's a nasty choice, but it is a choice, giving you something to do.</blockquote>

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