Status effects/conditions

[Morrus]

It's something I really try to limit as the GM... and ask my players to mostly avoid. I have, however, hit PCs with spells like sleep or other such spells... even though sleep doesn't even have a save anymore! The reason is, my group works hard to get people back into the fight, and turns revolve through fairly quickly.

I think the problem is probably exacerbated with games with long turns. It takes about 45 minutes to go round the table in our group (high level Pathfinder), so even missing just one turn means you're watching for an hour and half.

 

[Wik]

I think the problem is probably exacerbated with games with long turns. It takes about 45 minutes to go round the table in our group (high level Pathfinder), so even missing just one turn means you're watching for an hour and half.

Yeah, that's a fair point. We ran Rise of the Runelords until a few months ago, and the endgame was pretty brutal. By 13th level, I was grinding my teeth, and wound up just skipping most of the modules, bumping the PCs to 17th level, and running the last few encounters. The final fight took an entire session, and that was only because I was really pushing things forward.

 

[Skylarks]

Personally, I love status effects. They're great fun! But I also agree that preventing people from playing is a bad idea.

I like the statuses which change the way characters behave without removing their abilities, or statuses which bestow a positive effect at a price. For a straight D&D game, this isn't as easy to get around without some creative interpretation and house ruling, but in a more relaxed environment, this can be fun.

Perhaps while blinded, for example, a character's other senses may heighten in order to fill the gap - so they won't suffer a penalty when fighting creatures who make a lot of noise. Against a silent assassin, of course, they may struggle. Or I could use a character becoming paralysed as a trigger to introduce a near-death experience into the story - they might start 'walking towards the light' and encounter a departed friend or family member.

I also like to think about what causes the statuses - and can I use them to my advantage to create an interesting atmosphere? I like the idea of a chamber filled with monsters whose natural state is to move very slowly, effectively making the player characters very speedy in comparison. But perhaps the trade-off is that these creatures emit a deadly poisonous aura that will infect anyone who comes near, so that great speed is of the essence in order to kill the creatures or move past them to get away from the poison cloud alive.

And what about other conditions (again moving away from strict D&D here)? What about distraction or desire as a status? What if you had a shiny gemstone on a podium imbued with the otherworldly ability to attract the eye, or think only of it? What if its ability was to force all characters to always move towards it each turn? They'd still have all their own abilities functioning normally, but would just get pushed around the dungeon a bit. And if one character picked up the gem, the others would then have to move towards them. Perhaps it affects enemies, too, and you could abuse the gem's status effect by giving it to your strongest character and forcing all the enemies to target them instead of the weaker members of your party.

The possibilities are endless.

Working with pure existing status effects, though, if I was DMing and could see that adhering to the letter of the law was preventing people from having fun, I'd just break the rules by introducing a plausible excuse for the person to recover. Maybe the caster's magic fails for some reason. Maybe an NPC intervenes. As a player - provided I can still act, of course - I enjoy the extra strategic element that status effect afford.

 

[Bagpuss]

So, thoughts? Game effects which effectively prevent the player from playing? Or should players prepare better so that conditions never affect them?

One of the first magic items my Clerics ever try to get is a Ring of Free Action. Most of the spells my cleric memorizes are things like Remove Fear, Remove Paralysis, etc.

Those spells really kill the fun for whoever is hit with them. Yes you can and should prepare for them, but I wouldn't mind a game where you didn't have to.

 

[Morrus]

One of the first magic items my Clerics ever try to get is a Ring of Free Action. Most of the spells my cleric memorizes are things like Remove Fear, Remove Paralysis, etc.

Those spells really kill the fun for whoever is hit with them. Yes you can and should prepare for them, but I wouldn't mind a game where you didn't have to.

Yeah, if their effect is to just create a mandatory tax in terms of nullifying the conditions.

 

[GMMichael]

Like you say, running a monster, or an NPC, or an alternate character. Consider if we ran a Game of Thrones style campaign, you really don't know when you're going to die, and the show is going to change gears as it pays attention to your squire's ninja girlfriend instead. The implication being, there's other PCs you can switch to who can join the action with a reasonable interval for integration.

Back in the day, you'd start gaining minions almost automatically at 9th level, right? Since status condition/save-or-suck situations are really good for scaring players (and are thusly good for generating interest) I'd hate to remove them. Let's bring back Name level!