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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zinovia" data-source="post: 4931801" data-attributes="member: 57373">I believe this discussion arose precisely due to the Face of Death wizard spell.  Prior to its introduction in Arcane Power, Helpless was generally only a rider on the Unconscious condition, and the definition on pg 277 of the PH worked fine.  Once it became possible to apply Helpless as a standalone condition, that definition became ambiguous and inadequate.  I'm sorry for the tone of my last post back in July, but I had spent some time searching for supporting evidence for my argument, found some and posted it, and was dismissed with the "They'd have fixed it by now if it were a problem."  It only became a problem after the publication of Arcane Power and really only in the case of that one spell.  The PH section I quoted is pretty clear on the fact that a helpless enemy can't attack you.  You can stand in the same square with them and they can't do anything about it.  They cannot attack.  There are a multitude of terms defined in the books that have engendered arguments about interpretation in specific cases and have not been errata'd (i.e. Free actions after a charge).  The lack of errata does not mean that there isn't a problem with the original definition of the term or rule.  There's a lot of stuff that could be stand to be clarified.  The fact that Face of Death imposes Helpless after a failed save doesn't make that power too good, even if Helpless is interpreted to mean "lying there on the floor not moving".  Even if you have to save to get rid of it, so what?  It's a 9th level daily spell versus Sleep at 1st level.  It ought to be better somehow, although I know that isn't always the case with higher level spells versus lower.  I believe that spell is intended to totally eliminate the target's ability to attack if they fail that initial saving throw.  It's unlikely to work on solos (aside from the initial Immobilize) because of their bonus to saves, unless you have an Orbizard casting it and applying all their ridiculous penalties to saves.  That's more of a problem with the orb of imposition class feature rather than that one spell however.  If people want to interpret Helpless to mean "Coopdegrable" as defined by Flipguarder in a post above, that's your call.  I feel you are dismissing the other usages of the word in the Player's Handbook.</blockquote>

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