Other useful conditions

[Sadrik]

I felt like the list of conditions that are in PHB do not encompass enough of the conditions that are commonly used in the game. Here are a couple more that can be added to the list. Let me know if there are any errors or if there are additional conditions that should exist.

PHB listed conditions:
Blinded, Charmed, Deafened, Frightened, Grappled, Incapacitated, Invisible, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained, Stunned, and Unconscious and the Exhaustion track.

Additional conditions:
Concentrating
Maintain one spell. If you take damage make a CON save equal to half the damage or 10 whichever is higher. Fail lose the spell. Other things may also cause you to lose concentration.

Dodging
Disadvantage to attack you and Advantage on DEX saves.

Encumbered
Your speed drops by 10 feet. (carrying 5 times STR score in weight or STR requirement not met for armor)

Encumbered, Heavily
Your speed drops by 20 feet and you have disadvantage on STR and DEX checks, attacks and saves. (Carrying 10 times STR score in weight)

Encumbered, Over
Your speed drops to 0 and you fail any STR and DEX checks, attacks, and saves. (Carrying 15 times STR score in weight or more)

Difficult Terrain
Each 1' of movement costs +1'

Climbing
Each 1' of movement costs +1'

Crawling
Each 1' of movement costs +1'

Swimming
Each 1' of movement costs +1'

Stealth
Each 1' of movement costs +1'

Jumping, Long
With at least 10' of movement before, jump feet equal to your strength score or 1/2 that from standing.

Jumping, High
With at least 10' of movement before, jump 3 + your strength modifier in feet or 1/2 that from standing.

Squeezing
Each 1' of movement costs +1' and Disadvantage on attack rolls and DEX saves. Attackers have advantage against squeezing opponents.

Dying
At 0 HP, unconscious, and roll death saves each round until stable or dead. 3 successful saves they become stable, 3 failed saves they are dead. '20' you recover with 1 HP and a '1' is two failures and damage is one failure and a critical hit is two failures.

Stable
At 0 HP, unconscious, and after 1d4 hours you recover with 1 HP.

Unseen Attacker
Advantage against targets that cannot see you.

Unseen Target
Disadvantage and if the target is not in the location you target you automatically miss.

Hidden
Give away your location when you attack. Give away your location if you make a noise. Give away your location when you move out of total cover or heavily obscured, DM may allow you to remain hidden though.

Shoved
Knocked prone or pushed 5' away from you.

Cover, Half
+2 AC and Dexterity saves

Cover, Three-Quarters
+5 AC and Dexterity saves

Cover, Total
Cannot be targeted with an attack or spell. Can try to hide.

Obscured, Lightly
Disadvantage on sight checks such as Wisdom (perception) checks

Obscured, Heavily
Blinded. Can try and hide.

Opportunity Attack
When a creature leaves your reach, use your reaction to make an attack against them.

Suffocating
Hold breath a number of minutes equal to 1 + Constitution modifier (minimum 30 seconds) after that it survives a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum 1) and then drops to 0 HP and is dying.

Starving
One pound of food per day, can go without food a number of days equal to 3 + Constitution modifier (minimum 1) after that the character receives one level of exhaustion for each day they do not eat. eating 1 pound of food resets this.

Dehydrated
One gallon of water per day (2 in hot conditions), drinking half that requires a Constitution save (15) or gain a level of exhaustion, if less than that is drank exhaustion level is automatic.

Armor Non-proficiency
Disadvantage on Strength and Dexterity ability checks, saves, and attack rolls. Fail all spellcasting.

 

[wrenofwar]

I'm not sure if lumping all of these as conditions is particularly helpful. Some seem more like actions (opportunity attack for example) and some are more a class feature (or lack thereof) than a condition (I'm thinking of Armor non-proficiency). However, I think Encumbered, Dying, Starving, Suffocating, Dehydrated work more or less as conditions, but then you have to look at how conditions are used throughout. For instance, would adding all of these as conditions cause you to add condition immunities throughout the monster manual? I think probably the best definition of a condition is something that is likely to affect monsters as well as PCs (I don't keep track of a dragon's encumbrance, for instance) typically something the creature doesn't choose to do and rolls to avoid, and something not tied directly to a class feature or action taken.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

According to the designers, keeping the conditions to a very short list is intended. They see it as a feature that accords with 5e design philosophy. So, feel free to change it, of course, but I think all of that stuff was intentionally left out.

 

[Lancelot]

Some other useful conditions, from my own experience over the last 3 months:

Abjured (a.k.a. "I'm playing an Abjurer Wizard")
Base AC 13, +15 HP, +5 AC and +5 HP as a reaction, hostile spells are prevented from harming the character, spell slots cannot (will not) be spent on any offensive spells to help the rest of the character's party. Thanks, buddy. You're really earning your XP.

Cidered (a.k.a. "Beered", "Whiskeyed", etc)
Player (not character) is Intoxicated, and has asked the DM to remind him who this NPC is again... for the 4th time. Also, the player is rolling at Disadvantage on all checks to understand the rules, the tactical situation, and which mini is supposed to represent his character.

Old-Schooled
Player has spent too many years playing 3e or 4e, and has just seen his 5th level character slaughtered in one round by a handful of hobgoblins. Player is Frightened and Stunned, and automatically Disbelieves any attempts to explain this is how the game used to be played back in the "good old days".

Ragequitted (a.k.a. "Fantasy First World Problems")
Player is currently fixating on one easily house-ruled paragraph of text that somehow invalidates 1,000 pages of terrific material, and is unable to take any reactions other than fall Prone and Frenzy.

Rolling For It (a.k.a. "Highest Roll gets the Phat Lootz")
Player believes that a magical item has been found and is already reaching for a d20. The entire game will be Delayed until the players have gone through this ritual which, even after the dice are rolled, will result in bitter arguments, bad blood, and poor teamwork ("Hmmm... I can always take it off his dead body"). DM smiles, knowing that he has killed more characters with treasure packets than with tarrasques.

Sadvantaged
Player has recently rolled with Advantage, failed both rolls, and is now carefully explaining what "Sadvantage" means to other puzzled players. Stop trying to make "Fetch" happen, bro.

 

[77IM]

Wait, since when did Stealth cost extra movement in combat??? I thought that was a specific high-level rogue ability. And in the exploration rules you move 2/3 speed when sneaking, but that is not the same as each foot moved costs 1 extra foot of movement.

 

[Henrix]

Having a plethora of condition makes them an abyssal lot more difficult to remember, and obscures the common ones.

Most of those things are situational modifiers that are only used in very specific circumstances.

 

[aramis erak]

Having a plethora of condition makes them an abyssal lot more difficult to remember, and obscures the common ones.

Most of those things are situational modifiers that are only used in very specific circumstances.

agree on both points.

The only one that really has value to be added is Stabilized... but only if one is adding condition tickboxes to one's sheet ala Mouse Guard, Torchbearer, or Lady Blackbird...

 

[Nebulous]

Having a plethora of condition makes them an abyssal lot more difficult to remember, and obscures the common ones.

Most of those things are situational modifiers that are only used in very specific circumstances.

Those are good rules to know, but they don't need to be in the Conditions list.

 

[Cadriel]

The key with conditions is that they are inflicted on characters and monster, whether by spells or other abilities.. From your list, I think suffocating and maybe starving / dehydrated are conditions, because I could see something inflicting them on someone, like a spell that chokes or drowns its target. The rest are temporary things that happen to characters but aren't analogous to conditions.

 

[77IM]

If a condition can only be caused by one specific situation, it's not a useful condition. Other rules can interact with the situation directly without needing a defined condition as an intermediate abstraction.

I think the most useful condition that you also missed was asleep since several effects cause this. I think there might be room in the system for diseased or cursed although the effects are so varied maybe that's why they left them out. I think there are also lots of things that caue "all attacks against you have advantage" and it would be a useful way to flag targets, but it needs a better name.