New status effects?

[Thornir Alekeg]

This one could be really hard to make work without excellent players:

Aphasia: The affected person loses the ability to understand and communicate spoken or written words.

Basically the PC can still take the actions they want, but they lose any ability to verbally communicate with others, so team coordination is hampered.

 

[RangerWickett]

Exhausted - You cannot regain hit points by spending healing surges. (You could still be healed by Cure spells and regeneration, though.)

Obsessive - You repeat the same standard action each turn. If you could not normally repeat it because the power wasn't at-will, you do repeat it, but lose a healing surge.


What about positive conditions?

Enhanced - You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls and defenses. (I dunno, maybe a weird monster causes ongoing 20 and enhanced, and you can choose at the end of your turn whether to end the effect? Or perhaps 5th edition could use enhanced as an easy catch-all for powers that boost your buddies, like the inverse of combat advantage.)

 

[Moogleproof]

Reckless - enemies get +2 to hit you with their opportunity attacks.

 

[the Jester]

There are already some new rare status effects that are inflicted by some monsters- the shadar-kai in MM2 inflict the "shrouded in gloom" condition, for example, which inflicts a -2 penalty to attacks and you only gain half the normal benefit of a healing surge.

Lots of monsters have weird custom effects like that; some are called out as statuses that are defined in their stat blocks, while others are stuff like "and -2 to saving throws (save ends)."

 

[Fanaelialae]

Antagonized- On your turn, you must attack the creature that inflicted you with this condition on you or lose your standard action. You gain a (+2?) bonus to attack and damage rolls, but a (-2?) penalty to your defenses.

Basically, a risky but superior version of marked.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

One way to get new status effects might be to replace existing ones that enforce hard constraints on PC actions with ones that merely provide disincentives. For example, instead of Dazed, a condition in which taking more than one action causes something bad to happen: a minion appears, an enemy shifts, a monster power recharges. The PC can still chose to take all his or her actions, but the additional consequences make the choice more interesting.

Along the same lines, modify a condition by allowing the PC to overcome it with a check. For example, instead of being Slowed, a PC may need to make Athletics checks to overcome the grasping tendrils or a Charisma check to overcome a curse of sloth.

 

[Wik]

Infected: You suffer a -2 penalty on all attacks or defences. If you end your turn adjacent to a living creature and fail your saving throw against this effect, that creature also gains the infected status.

Intoxicated: You suffer a -1 penalty on all attack rolls, skill checks, and defences. However, any time you spend a healing surge, you heal an additional 1d6 points of damage. You deal 2 extra points of damage on all attacks at the heroic tier, 4 at paragon, and 6 at epic. Any time you move more than half your speed or shift, you must make a saving throw or fall prone. Also, for some reason, you think you're funny.

 

[airwalkrr]

What if you have an enraged status effect that makes a character act as if bloodied for one round? Some characters let down their guard while they are bloodied, allowing them to be affected by powers that require a bloodied target, but at the same time their emotion and adrenaline might allow them to trigger special powers that are only usable when bloodied.

Maybe there is already something like this. If so ignore me. I don't know a whole lot about 4e. All I have is the PH.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Overwhelmed: You have so many conditions to track that it is driving you to distraction. If you need to ask a question about conditions on your turn, roll a d6:

1-3: lose minor action
4-5: lose move action
6: lose standard action

 

[Steel_Wind]

Actual confusion would be cool, but random actions are unpredictable and therefore unfun.

You mean "unfun to me".

Going back to 1st ed, Potion Miscibility, the Deck of Many Things, the Wand of Wonder (Stand back or I'll use it!)... these are but a few exmples of unpredictability in the genetics of D&D.

"Unfun?"?

To you, maybe. Not to me.