Tasha's Hideous Laughter --- Broken?

[Grog]

Sure, until your buddy spends his action delivering a coup de grace on the paralyzed sucker, making sure it doesn't ever get a second save. Then you can move onto other threats.

CDG is a full-round action, so unless your buddy starts out right next to the target, he gets (at least) two saves against the spell.

 

[wildstarsreach]

-4 to AC from being prone + Power Attack = ghetto coup de grace.

True, I like this thinking as I am one for kicking a dog when it's down as well as keeping to continuing kicking.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

CDG is a full-round action, so unless your buddy starts out right next to the target, he gets (at least) two saves against the spell.

Likely to be true. However your buddy, the soon-to-be-CDGer, is going to hammer his Helpless ass with full Power Attack as a little foreplay, just in case. And this will be one tempting target for the Rogue as well.

Being Helpless has its downsides, even if that second save gets his bacon out of the fire for the moment. And he is dead, dead, dead if he fails the second save.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

The Sorcerer in my game has this spell. And it is a pretty damn scary spell considering its very nearly a Save or Screwed situation. Between Hideous Laughter from the Sorcerer and Hold person from the Cleric, I was recently very concerned that they would manage to take down an NPC way too easily.

Happily, Wyrmlord Koth (from Red Hand of Doom) managed to make his saves, and then laid a pretty thorough beating on the players with careful applications of Lightning bolt, Blindness, and Scorching Ray.

There are plenty of ways around this. One suggestion is to simply make sure that Wis is not a complete Dump Stat for your warrior types. Another is to keep a friendly caster handy for your villains with a Dispel Magic handy. And yet another is to have archers use readied actions to pincushion hostile casters as they cast spells.

Ultimately though, using common archtypes with predictable weaknesses will get you destroyed. You will either have to start finding warrior types with some amount of Spell Resistance, or Warriors with strong Will Saves (Knight from PHB 2, Monks). Or just start using something else entirely. A Bebilith is CR 10, has a +9 Will Save, and its solid HP make up for the relatively weak AC.

Also, its a G*DD*MN Demon! By level 10, its not a bad idea to start throwing some of the truly out there monsters. Devils, Demons, Huge Elementals, they are CR appropriate. Their weak saves are not nearly as obvious (Quick, without looking what is the weak save of a Fire Elemental?). They are in the standard books (Unlike the Knight or some prestige classes). And they are quicker to prep than custom classed NPC's.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Infiniti2000]

CDG is a full-round action, so unless your buddy starts out right next to the target, he gets (at least) two saves against the spell.

Not at least two, at most two.

Round N
caster --> hold person
ally --> moves into position (possibly with a std action atk)
victim --> saves (fails)

Round N+1
caster
ally --> CDG
victim ...

The victim only gets two saves when he goes before the ally. Even then he might not get a save if the ally was close enough and has been delaying.

 

[Darklone]

The problem of Hold Person: the CDG buddy has to use two rounds to neutralize someone (who might still escape) while with Tasha he can go kill someone else.

That´s the big thing.

BBEG fails save against Tasha: He´s out of the combat.
BBEG fails save against HP: All his mooks will block the access to CDG him and he´s back in combat after two or three rounds.

Don´t forget that CDG provokes AoOs. That´s pretty deadly if two or three fighter NPCs protect the held person (and one of the reason why most of our PCs use to survive being Held).

Now cast another Tasha next round at the dude who protects his fallen laughing buddy and the combat is won.

 

[Mark Chance]

This really doesn't address the spell per se, and please don't tell my players, but I sometimes simply rule that a BBEG automatically makes all saves for X number of rounds (usually up to 1/2 the BBEG's CR, at most), especially if the BBEG faces the PCs by his lonesome.

 

[Thurbane]

The problem of Hold Person: the CDG buddy has to use two rounds to neutralize someone (who might still escape) while with Tasha he can go kill someone else.

That´s the big thing.

BBEG fails save against Tasha: He´s out of the combat.
BBEG fails save against HP: All his mooks will block the access to CDG him and he´s back in combat after two or three rounds.

Don´t forget that CDG provokes AoOs. That´s pretty deadly if two or three fighter NPCs protect the held person (and one of the reason why most of our PCs use to survive being Held).

Now cast another Tasha next round at the dude who protects his fallen laughing buddy and the combat is won.

IMHO, that reflects more on the gargantuan nerf-bat they've taken to HP in 3E than on THL.

I still remember the look on the face of a gamer in my group when he cast the first Hold Person we'd used in 3E - "What, it only affects one person? WHAT, they get a save EVERY ROUND!".

 

[Corsair]

(Quick, without looking what is the weak save of a Fire Elemental?)

Will. Same as all elementals.

 

[Mark Chance]

Will. Same as all elementals.

Fort and Will. Not the same as all elementals, but only the same as air elementals. Earth and water elementals have weak Ref and Will saves.