stunned freedom of movement

[carborundum]

Tricky situation in the game last night. The party fighter was stunned by a mind flayers while flying just above the ground. He had a freedom of movement spell active. The mind flayer decided to go for brains, and carefully sent its tentacles into position. (touch attack no damage as opposed to damaging melee attacks).
Luckily, only three tentacles found his head before the wizard dimension doored him out of there. Otherwise we would have had a tricky situation.

My question, could the mind flayer attach or extract from stunned character with freedom of movement on him?

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Tricky situation in the game last night. The party fighter was stunned by a mind flayers while flying just above the ground. He had a freedom of movement spell active. The mind flayer decided to go for brains, and carefully sent its tentacles into position. (touch attack no damage as opposed to damaging melee attacks).
Luckily, only three tentacles found his head before the wizard dimension doored him out of there. Otherwise we would have had a tricky situation.

My question, could the mind flayer attach or extract from stunned character with freedom of movement on him?

Freedom of Movement
Abjuration
Level: Brd 4, Clr 4, Drd 4, Luck 4, Rgr 4
Components: V, S, M, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal or touch
Target: You or creature touched
Duration: 10 min./level
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
This spell enables you or a creature you
touch to move and attack normally for the
duration of the spell, even under the
influence of magic that usually impedes
movement, such as paralysis, solid fog, slow,
and web. The subject automatically succeeds
on any grapple check made to resist
a grapple attempt, as well as on grapple
checks or Escape Artist checks made to
escape a grapple or a pin.
The spell also allows the subject to move
and attack normally while underwater,
even with slashing weapons such as axes
and swords or with bludgeoning weapons
such as flails, hammers, and maces,
provided that the weapon is wielded in the
hand rather than hurled. The freedom of
movement spell does not, however, allow
water breathing.
Material Component: A leather thong,
bound around

I would say that a character can't be stunned with Freedom of Movement. Now if you still aren't sure about that aspect then just know that the Mind Flayer wouldn't be able to extract the brain because in order to do that the Mind Flayer would need to succeed at a grapple check and this spell causes those checks to auto fail.

If you don't agree with the movement part, you could still say that for some reason the Mind Flayer's tentacles can't seem to get a grip on the fighter.

Either way the spell protects the fighter from having his brain extracted.

 

[carborundum]

Wow - I hadn't thought of stretching the definition so far as to prevent a stun

I agree it saves his brains - it needs to make a grapple check to get the brains out, and automatically fails. It's the hanging on to him while stunned that I'm struggling with a bit. He's not paralysed, so it can't hang onto him as if he was an unattended object

***delete delete delete***
... have to think about this some more - thanks for the new angle!

 

[Greenfield]

The grapple doesn't auto-fail. He auto-succeeds when he resists that grapple. It's a subtle difference but an important one. He has to resist.

As for Stun: It prevents you from taking an action, but doesn't impede movement, so it wouldn't prevent you from being stunned. Again, the difference is whether you get to try. If you try to move, you'll succeed, but Stunned doesn't let you try.

 

[jefgorbach]

Comes down to HOW he was stunned.

Freedom of Movement prevents magic preventing movement from working, so if magic and psionics affect each other then FOM should have prevented both the stunning effect and subsequent grapple attack.

OTOH it would not apply if he was stunned by a secondary effect such as slamming into a suddenly appearing wall, concussive area effect, etc in which case he WOULD be stunned and unable to apply FOM vs the grapple attack.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Comes down to HOW he was stunned.

Freedom of Movement prevents magic preventing movement from working, so if magic and psionics affect each other then FOM should have prevented both the stunning effect and subsequent grapple attack.

OTOH it would not apply if he was stunned by a secondary effect such as slamming into a suddenly appearing wall, concussive area effect, etc in which case he WOULD be stunned and unable to apply FOM vs the grapple attack.

I'm assuming it's from the Mind Flayer's Mind Blast which is directly from the Monster Manual.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

The grapple doesn't auto-fail. He auto-succeeds when he resists that grapple. It's a subtle difference but an important one. He has to resist.

As for Stun: It prevents you from taking an action, but doesn't impede movement, so it wouldn't prevent you from being stunned. Again, the difference is whether you get to try. If you try to move, you'll succeed, but Stunned doesn't let you try.

Yeah your right! You would actually need to take an action in order to break the grapple.

So I guess it would be down to the stun issue.

 

[carborundum]

Indeed - stunned by Mind Blast.

[MENTION=6669384]Greenfield[/MENTION]: I like the way you're thinking. If stun = cannot resist, then f.o.m. would not help in this one situation, even though it's exactly why they used the spell. Hmmm.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Indeed - stunned by Mind Blast.

@Greenfield : I like the way you're thinking. If stun = cannot resist, then f.o.m. would not help in this one situation, even though it's exactly why they used the spell. Hmmm.

I would say that being stunned is along the lines of being paralyzed so I would say that Freedom of Movement allows you to be immune to stunning. When you see the words "such as" in a description, that means thing that usually reside in this category.

 

[the Jester]

I would say that being stunned is along the lines of being paralyzed so I would say that Freedom of Movement allows you to be immune to stunning. When you see the words "such as" in a description, that means thing that usually reside in this category.

Stunning doesn't impede movement, it prevents you from acting. Freedom of movement does not apply.

EDIT: PH 3.5, pg. 313: "Stunned: A stunned creature drops everything held, can't take actions, takes a -2 penalty to AC and loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any)." No mention of movement.