Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 71 - Debilitating Conditions

Episode Date: May 2, 2021

Certain conditions that affect characters can have a negative effect at your table.  While I don't advocate completely getting rid of some of these conditions, in this episode I talk about how DMs should use them with caution and advice for players whose characters are taken out of the fight or gaming session by one or more of these conditions.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to episode 71 of the Taking 20 podcast, this time all about debilitating conditions. This week's sponsor is Johnson's Hamburger and Hot Dog Thar. It keeps your patties ready and your buns warm. As a reminder, we still have a few weeks for you to enter the contest to win a $50 Amazon gift card. To enter, send an email to contest at taking20podcast.com. Nothing's required to be in the body of the email, but if you'd like to provide feedback or show ideas for future episodes, I'd love to hear them. Also, please give us a like or subscribe or review wherever

you found this little podcast. Every single one of those helped get the word out to other potential listeners and would really help the podcast grow. There are all kinds of conditions that exist in gaming systems. Deafened, frightened, dazed, sickened, and a dozen more that we could list. Most conditions are relatively mild inconveniences, conveying penalties that harm a character's ability to participate and perform, but it doesn't reduce them into a useless, quivering hunk of meat or machine on the battlefield. mild inconveniences, conveying penalties that harm a character's ability to participate and perform, but it doesn't reduce them into a useless, quivering hunk of meat or machine on the battlefield. I'm not here to talk about these conditions. You get dazzled by a laser weapon

and now you have disadvantage on attack rolls? Sorry to hear that. Maybe we can stop by the medic on the way to the next mission and buy you some new retinas or something. What I mean by debilitating conditions are conditions that can take a character entirely out of a fight, thereby making the player almost not needed at the table. Since there are so many that could fall into that category, I'm going to focus on just a few of these conditions during this episode, but just know that this advice could easily apply to other conditions as well. Specifically, I'm going to focus on poisons and diseases, blindness, confusion slash mind control, stunning

and petrification. So what's the problem with these debilitating conditions? To start with, even if they're adjudicated fairly, they can feel unfair to PCs in a lot of ways. There are simply more chances for player characters to be affected because of combat count inequality. Characters will likely be in dozens, if not hundreds, of combats throughout your gaming sessions. Monsters will be in one combat in your campaign, maybe two or three if they're recurring monsters. PCs will have a chance to poison or disease themselves if they try to use poisons or diseases against the monsters. Most monsters are immune to their own poisons and diseases, so there's no chance of them damaging themselves. So there are a lot more opportunities for the PCs to get poisoned or

diseased than there ever were for the baddies. This leads to a feeling of inequality. Remembering to make saves every X period of time for ongoing effects, whether that's rounds, hours, or days, is just annoying. It's just another thing to keep track of by the DM and the player. Good morning! Your character wakes up refreshed and has recovered 11 hit points. Your daily uses of abilities have returned. Oh, and let's go ahead and roll for your character's Space Chlamydia that you've picked up. That's unfortunate. Oh, natural 1. That's a minus 2 to your Charisma and Constitution on top of all the other penalties that you've picked up. That's unfortunate. Oh, natural one. That's a minus two to your charisma and constitution on top of all the other penalties that you've gotten. That just puts a pall over the entire day in the character and the game session for the player.

It can reduce a character's effectiveness as well. This can affect a player's fun during the game session, especially if the effect makes the character unable to take actions. Imagine you drive over to a friend's house and you've been anticipating gaming with your friends when your character is blinded or stunned, petrified, and can't do anything. Why the hell did I even come over? While writing this episode, I actually played a Pathfinder 2 e-game where we fought some mycolloids. These things can poison you with something called purple pox. The stages of purple pox. The stages of purple pox are as follows. At the first stage, you take 2d6 damage in your stupefied 1 condition.

At stage 2, you take 6d6 damage, you're in the stupefied 3 condition, and you're compelled to find the nearest mycolloid colony. And when you reach stage 3, your body explodes into a new mycolloid. We were very lucky that no one failed any fortitude saves, but that could have sucked. In the interest of full disclosure, the DM has been explicit that our characters may die, so we're embracing the potential loss of our characters, making jokes about backup characters that we have ready. I am glad that my druid Moira isn't dying in some mycolloid nest right now, horrible mushroom growths waiting for a mushroom creature to explode out of her chest, HR Geiger style. Another issue with some of these

conditions is that lack of preparation means the PCs have a problem that they can't solve. If the party doesn't have the ability to neutralize the poison or bring someone back from being petrified or paralyzed, they have to spam healing into the afflicted creature to keep him alive. It's no fun for the player if their party member loses 1d4 charisma every morning that can't be cured until they make three consecutive saving throws to shrug off the disease. Most RPGs by their very nature are dice-based. That means sometimes, you know what, bad shit happens to you when you throw the dice. Low-level PCs might have to hope for lucky die rolls not to die because they can't afford the cure or it's simply not available where they are.

They may not have the resources to pay for the potion or scroll or serum or spellcasting services to get rid of these debilitating effects. PCs might be left in a situation where they are days of travel away from civilization, unable to mitigate the condition, and that might result in character death because they didn't buy the right 50 gold piece vial of liquid. Or they have to keep a small arsenal of items around that cures very specific conditions. So, so far I've been talking in generalities, so let's narrow focus to poisons and diseases. In 5th edition, the generic rule of the condition poisoned grants disadvantage on rolls, and that's directly from the player's handbook. More details are given in creature and condition descriptions for other types of more specific poisons. In Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2e, and Starfinder, it is much more complicated.

Each one of these poisons or diseases come with stages that have different damage levels, effects on those infected, etc. Additional details are in each creature's description or poison description. Other systems require endurance checks, they may cause ability damage, it may reduce the number of dice you roll when you make attempts to do things, and so forth. Poisons and diseases are unbelievably debilitating conditions for your characters. Another issue with poisons that cause damage is that the damage will vary widely depending on the die rolls. It's no fun for the player that the character has to take 2d6 damage for two rounds, and then 4d6 damage for two rounds,

and then 6d6 damage for two rounds. Depending on the way the dice fall, it could be 24 damage over the course of six rounds, so chances are your character is going to survive, or 144 points of damage over the same period, which more than likely means they gonna die. As a DM, I tend to use poison sparingly and diseases hardly ever, except for the creatures that absolutely need that capability to be a challenge to the player. Really, for the most part, the vast majority of poisons and diseases could be taken out of the game and it wouldn't bother me at all. Ones that do damage over time, not that big of a deal. But ones that permanently debilitate or kill can really ruin the fun for the players at your table.

So let's shift over to blindness. The vast majority of character builds are reliant on sight to select targets for spells, rapid and accurate movement on the battlefield, and to hit bad guys with weapons. This is not to say that characters can't be built that are effective while being blind, and definitely not to say that blind players are negative for gaming groups. But taking one of my current characters as an example. He's a frontline fighter and tank. His job is to engage the baddies in melee range, absorb their attacks, act as a hit point pool to protect the squishier characters behind him.

He has absolutely no counter for being rendered blind, and would be a marginally effective combatant at best if he were. I'm a veteran gamer though, so if it happens to him, I won't get wildly upset because I've been there before. Newer players, though, may have their fun diminished or ruined by having their character feel useless with every attack at disadvantage or at a 50% mischance, especially when you've built that character specifically for attack and damage. Another condition to discuss is confusion and mind control. Imagine having a character who is still up and combat capable, but you don't have control of them anymore. You'd love to have them

step up, support a fellow character who's in the fight of her life, but depending on the game system, there's only a 20 or 25% chance you'll be able to do that. Instead, you're attacking the nearest creature, hitting yourself with your weapon, babbling incoherently, doing nothing for a round, or having to take directions from a big bad guy voiced by the DM who makes you wander off in a random direction, curl up in your bedroll, and enjoy watching the fight. Or even worse, viciously attack one of your fellow party members. Players losing control of their characters can certainly cause hurt feelings and a sense of helplessness in that player, especially new ones.

Another condition to discuss is being stunned. This one isn't that a big deal until you experience it yourself. Fighting a monster that can repeatedly stun you over and over and over again if you keep failing saving throws. It can become frustrating when you think, ha ha, now I have a chance to act, only thunk, you're stunned again, and you're not going to be able to participate in this combat at the table. There's a term that's bled into tabletop role-playing games from video games called stunlocking. This is when one creature can repeatedly stun another, thereby keeping them from effectively doing any damage or supporting their allies in battle. PCs being stun-locked can lead to frustration very quickly. When PCs do it to my bad guys, I'm all for it and I congratulate them on a strategy well executed.

But especially new players really won't like having it done to them. It makes them feel helpless and like they don't have an opportunity to participate in the gaming activity at all. Moving on to petrification. Oh, this is the granddaddy of debilitating effects, being turned to stone. Back in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons days, petrification even was part of a weird set of saving throws. Very rarely do I do the, You young whippersnappers don't know how good you've got it. But back in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons days,

these were the saving throws. It wasn't fortitude, reflex, or will. It wasn't a constitution saving throw, wisdom saving throw, charisma saving throw. Nope. These were the categories of saving throws. First one, paralyzation, poison, or death magic. Second one, petrification or polymorph. Third one, rod, staff, or wand. Fourth one, breath weapon. Fifth one, spells. Now here's where it gets weird.

Petrification or polymorph excluded polymorph wand attacks because wand attacks were in the rod, staff, or wand section. excluded polymorph wand attacks because wand attacks were in the rod, staff, or wand section. Breath weapon saving throws excluded those which caused petrification or polymorph because those were in the petrification and polymorph section. And the spell section was the catch-all for anything that wasn't death magic, paralyzation, petrification, polymorph. Weird shit. I'm just going to say that probably when Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was designed, there may have been some drugs in the room. That's neither here nor there.

Anyway, petrification was one of the original tear-up-your-character-sheet effects. You got turned to stone? Yeah, you might want to go ahead and start rolling up a new character. Even in modern systems, it's one 20-sided die roll for all the marbles against a Medusa's G gaze or Cockatrice attack, putting so much on a single die roll may cause problems with some of your players and hard feelings if they happen to fail. So let's get to the tips. DMs, how can you use these conditions against the players? The first general piece of advice I have for you is use them with caution and use them sparingly.

general piece of advice I have for you is use them with caution and use them sparingly. Unless your adventure revolves around something that is rife with petrification monsters, like they're going up against a nest of Medusa, make sure you only use these conditions sparingly. Don't just throw them out willy-nilly because they have serious deleterious effects. Also talk to your players during session zero to let your new players know that these effects could happen. Dovetailing off of that, if an adventure or quest will have a lot of monsters capable of blinding, petrifying, or other permanent conditions like this, drop hints to the players and allow their characters to make a check to know how they can prepare before they

leave on this adventure. If the players miss the hints or choose not to make the checks or choose not to take precautions, hey, you got a clear conscience at this point. You tried. Another thing you can do as a DM is to sprinkle more curative solutions around in treasure piles. It makes sense that if you've got bandits that are operating in an area where a Medusa lives,

they would keep more de-petrification oil in stock. If you're rooting for your players to succeed, and you really should be, be rather giving with curative solutions. I'd rather my party get back to town and have to sell a whole bunch of potions that give advantage on wisdom and intelligent saving throws than be short of them when the time comes. If early on in the party's existence they're being hired by some rich muckety-muck to go find the, I don't know, the Goggles of Guinness Godot, then it might behoove them to want to keep the party alive until they can complete that activity. For those of you wondering at home, the Goggles of Guinness Godot make every person that you look at as physically attractive as Gal Gadot.

To activate this magic item, it requires you to consume 12 pints of stout beer in 10 minutes. The effects wear off by the next morning. Anyway, you, the DM, can prepare a new item called something like, I don't know, the Delver's Friend. It contains one to two doses of Cure Bad Shit poisons, and have the party sponsor supply one of these to the party at the beginning of the adventure. Another thing you can do as a DM is consider using an alternative method of applying these effects like I discussed in the Save or Suck episode, episode number 30. These conditions could be gradual effects rather than

all of it taking effect immediately. That way it's not just one die roll and you're done. Another thing you can do as a DM is to prepare yourself for a range of reactions from your players. Depressed resignation, acceptance, anger, grief, frustration. Hopefully you have a bunch of mature players at your table who will still engage with and root for their fellow players who are still in the fight. But I've seen negative reactions. Everything from tuning out what's going on at the table to throwing dice and stomping off. If one of your player's characters is affected by a debilitating condition and would be out of the fight or maybe even permanently removed from the party by this condition, consider allowing them to play some of the NPCs and monsters that participate in the battle until they can get

another character of their own. Their barbarian is dead, turned to stone by a basilisk, but they can still have fun trying to kill their friends, taking over the witch that was keeping the basilisk as a pet, while you run the pair of fighters that are protecting her and the basilisk. There's nothing wrong as a DM inflicting debilitating conditions on your adventuring party at your table, but never forget the perspective of your players. Being crippled for the rest of a game session or maybe even more sucks. Being stuck at a gaming session and not able to do anything because your characters are drooling more on sucks.

Having to remember the repeated fort saves every hour, round, minute, day, whatever sucks. A single die roll that can disable a fully healthy party member for a combat or worse forever sucks. Having to make an errand if you can't cast Remove Disease or Poison sucks. Forcing the party to guide Fartnar the syphilitic, blind, feeble-minded fighter back to town, continually changing his diaper, trying to keep him from shoveling silverware into his hoo-hoo, is funny, but it also can suck. So players, I want to give you some tips for these conditions. First of all, realize that if you try to use poisons or alchemical items against the baddies,

you're opening the door for the bad guys to do the same to you. I would encourage you to embrace these conditions as a player. Use them as role-playing moments. Getting angry or upset about bad die rolls only makes for a less fun night for everyone else at the table. In role-playing games, much like life, sometimes you're the dog, sometimes you're the fire hydrant. The vast majority of the time, the PCs are the dog. If it's your night where you're getting pissed on by the dice, you know what? Try not to get pissed off about it. Find a way to stay involved at the table. For

example, you could volunteer to help keep track of things for the rest of the party. What creature is bleeding? What character is on fire? When do they need to roll damage? Ask your DM if he can roleplay one of the baddies in combat and then roleplay them to the best of your ability. DM if you can roleplay one of the baddies in combat and then roleplay them to the best of your ability. In summary, DMs give your players every opportunity to have adequately prepared for encounters that could inflict conditions that effectively take them out of the fight, out of the adventure, or out of their lives. Players, if you do catch one of these afflictions, don't act like the sky is falling and that you'll never have fun again. Stay engaged at the table and enjoy spending time with your friends. Remember, players and DMs, when it comes to role-playing games, it's all about having fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening to Episode 71, All About Debilitating Conditions.

I once again want to thank our sponsor, Johnson's Hamburger and Hot Dog Thar. Nothing ruins a day of skiing like a frozen wiener, so next time, remember your Johnson Thar. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.