Spoofing Confused

[Justin D. Jacobson]

(Cross-posted from the Scramble.)

My honorable work on the Codex Venenorum, Ed. IV continues. Now in 3e, we had the always fun, but quintessentially fiddly confused condition. If you need a refresher, here’s what confused looked like in the last edition:

A confused character’s actions are determined by rolling d% at the beginning of his turn: 01-10, attack caster with melee or ranged weapons (or close with caster if atacking is not possible); 11-20, act normally; 21-50, do nothing but babble incoherently; 51-70, flee away from caster at top possible speed; 71-100, attack nearest creature (for this purpose, a familiar counts as part of the subject’s self). A confused character who can’t carry out the indicated action does nothing but babble incoherently. Attackers are not at any special advantage when attacking a confused character. Any confused character who is attacked automatically attacks its attackers on its next turn, as long as it is still confused when its turn comes. A confused character does not make attacks of opportunity against any creature that it is not already devoted to attacking (either because of its most recent action or because it has just been attacked).

That is so not 4e. Yet, confused is a worthwhile condition to have in the game for both plot and strategy purposes. So how do we spoof confusion for 4e? We can start by looking out how the wizards at Wizards did it.

Confusion: The 27th-level wizard spell is an obvious place to begin. Essentially, it lets you dominate the target, moving him and making a basic attack against one of his allies.

Umber Hulk: The master of confusion himself is another obvious example. The target slides and is dazed.

I’m not a fan of these iterations. They don’t actually model confusion all that well since the enemy dictates the actions. In the case of the wizard’s spell, the player always gets a strategic advantage from the effect. Likewise, for the umber hulk, the DM gets to position the PC as best he can. These effects lack the randomness that should be inherent to confusion.

So, a couple more:

Beholder: The confusion ray forces the victim to charge his nearest ally and make a basic attack.

Black Lotus: This DMG poison is particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. Basic attack against the nearest creature (whether friend or foe).

These are good. They have that randomness. But I think we can do better. Here are some confused effects I’ve come up with:

• The target drops all items he is carrying and pulls off any clothes or armor he is wearing (perhaps simulating hallucinations of crawling bugs).
• The target uses an encounter attack power to attack a phantom enemy in an empty square.
• The target attacks himself with a basic attack.
• The target moves double his speed, changing direction each square and never entering the same square twice, provoking attacks of opportunity as normal.

So what can you come up with?

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

4E is specifically averse to save-or-suck effects, much like confuse tends toward. That being said, confuse should be a status ailment, hands down. My idea doesn't really look like anything done before as far as I know but I think captures the random element well enough without being ludicrously unbalancing.

Confusion: For each round a character is confused, assign numbers to the players at the table as well as the DM. Roll a die that will generate values in this range. The player (or DM) whose number is rolled chooses the course of action for the PC that turn. The character may treat any combination of entities on the field as allies or enemies. The PC's original owner controls the PC when it is not that PC's turn.

Rough draft. Very weird. Thoughts?

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

To clarify, I'm not personally looking for a singular representation for confused, like we had in 3e. And I don't think you can do a good confused condition under the 4e design philosophy. I'm looking for a variety of effects that could reasonably represent any form of confusion conceptually.

So, as Fred Hicks pointed out on the Scramble post, the lose-an-encounter-power effect is pretty hosing at lower levels. But I think it would be suitable on, say a 25th-level poison.

 

[Alex319]

Confusion: For each round a character is confused, assign numbers to the players at the table as well as the DM. Roll a die that will generate values in this range. The player (or DM) whose number is rolled chooses the course of action for the PC that turn. The character may treat any combination of entities on the field as allies or enemies. The PC's original owner controls the PC when it is not that PC's turn.

Rough draft. Very weird. Thoughts?

Well, what this basically does is give a 1/(N+1) chance (Where N is the number of players) of the DM getting to control the character, and in that case it would be effectively just like the existing dominate effect. The other N/(N+1) of the time, it will be a player controlling it, so it will not be harmful to the players at all since they are all on the same side.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Well, you could do a real simple randomized effect along these lines:

Pick a square adjacent to the target. Roll a d10. Starting at the selected square, count clockwise a number of squares equal to the number rolled. The target moves his full speed in the direction of the selected square. If he runs into a creature, he stops and makes a basic melee attack against that creature. On a 10, the target falls prone and takes no further actions.

That would come up with some neat results: fleeing, running wildly into the flaming pit of doom, attacking an ally, etc. The problem is, as I said above, that kind of randomized, extra-die-roll mechanic is very much against the 4e design aesthetic. It just feels wrong to me. Can you think of any mechanic in 4e analogous to something like that?

 

[PeelSeel2]

1-2 Does something against allies (DM Control)
3-4 Does something for allies (another player control)
5-6 does a funny no action
7-8 hurts self in some way.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

1-2 Does something against allies (DM Control)
3-4 Does something for allies (another player control)
5-6 does a funny no action
7-8 hurts self in some way.

Not my cup of tea personally (as I'm trying to avoid die randomization), but I have to know: Why did you make it a d8 instead of just a d4?

 

[PeelSeel2]

Not my cup of tea personally (as I'm trying to avoid die randomization), but I have to know: Why did you make it a d8 instead of just a d4?

Because d4's are so fiddly. d8 roll nice. They play well with others.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Because d4's are so fiddly. d8 roll nice. They play well with others.

In that case, I'd go with the oft-ignored d12 and use multiples of 3.

Hey, look, I just 'jacked my own thread.

 

[ppaladin123]

Check out the enemy called, "Grell philosopher," in the compendium. It has a confuse attack of sorts:

Any melee or ranged attacks the character makes have a random target. (save ends)


Of course you can simply choose not to make ranged or melee attacks.