Right, y'know, remember that in earlier versions ghouls simply caused paralysis with a claw. It wasn't defined by what mechanic that happened; it's just the nature of things. Dragons breathe fire, ghouls paralyze with a touch.
4e just downgraded that to immobilize to avoid the whole "Oh, good, now I get to do nothing for a while" garbage. I mean, they can still paralyze (well, stun) you, but it's a lot more difficult.
I'd be fine with the DM declaring it to be a necrotic effect, frankly, since it does seem like there'd need to be some sort of energy involved. I don't know if that'd even make a difference, though, since Resist doesn't work against non-damage effects, and I don't know of anything that gives you a save bonus against necrotic effects; as far as I know, conditions don't have any keywords attached after the initial power has been resolved.
Acutally, ghoul paralysis dates back to Chainmail, the original wargame from which D&D derived, and there's a funny story about that. In Chainmail, undead were the "zerg" of the game -- most of the units were very cheap, but weak, so you buy tons of them and come in at your enemy with a huge horde. Elves were the "protoss" of the game, individually expensive but powerful. (Humans fall in the middle, as usual.) The problem came up, though, that an elf force could be easily defeated by a ghoul rush -- with two or three ghouls around him, the elf was almost guaranteed to get hit at least once a turn, which triggered the ghoul paralysis effect, and then the elf was just stuck there, unable to act, as the undead slowly whittled his HP down to nothing -- and three ghouls cost much less than one elf!
So they just decided elves are immune to paralysis. And that element stayed in the game all the way up to 3rd edition! For no reason other than that elves have "always" been immune. It wasn't there to reflect something in Tolkien or some common myth about elves... it was just a balancing factor for a game that's thirty years removed from the latest edition of D&D...
4e just downgraded that to immobilize to avoid the whole "Oh, good, now I get to do nothing for a while" garbage. I mean, they can still paralyze (well, stun) you, but it's a lot more difficult.
I'd be fine with the DM declaring it to be a necrotic effect, frankly, since it does seem like there'd need to be some sort of energy involved. I don't know if that'd even make a difference, though, since Resist doesn't work against non-damage effects, and I don't know of anything that gives you a save bonus against necrotic effects; as far as I know, conditions don't have any keywords attached after the initial power has been resolved.
Acutally, ghoul paralysis dates back to Chainmail, the original wargame from which D&D derived, and there's a funny story about that. In Chainmail, undead were the "zerg" of the game -- most of the units were very cheap, but weak, so you buy tons of them and come in at your enemy with a huge horde. Elves were the "protoss" of the game, individually expensive but powerful. (Humans fall in the middle, as usual.) The problem came up, though, that an elf force could be easily defeated by a ghoul rush -- with two or three ghouls around him, the elf was almost guaranteed to get hit at least once a turn, which triggered the ghoul paralysis effect, and then the elf was just stuck there, unable to act, as the undead slowly whittled his HP down to nothing -- and three ghouls cost much less than one elf!
So they just decided elves are immune to paralysis. And that element stayed in the game all the way up to 3rd edition! For no reason other than that elves have "always" been immune. It wasn't there to reflect something in Tolkien or some common myth about elves... it was just a balancing factor for a game that's thirty years removed from the latest edition of D&D...
Last edited:
