Status Conditions

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Status Conditions

In DnD and Pathfinder, status conditions date all the way back to the mighty Gygax. But old EGG was kind of a jerk, to be honest. (Seriously? A Sphere of Annihilation trap in the FIRST ROOM?! Dick move, man.)

So we are addressing status conditions, with an eye to the overriding point of all gaming: Having Fun.

Frankly, missing an entire combat or gaming session because you rolled a '1' at the wrong time sucks. Bad luck is part of gaming, but bad luck that ruins your fun should not ever have a place at any gaming table that doesn't involve money.

The Status Array

The first thing we did was examine all the status conditions in Pathfinder and categorize them as Strong, Medium, or Weak.

A Strong status condition is a hard control: If you are hit with one of these, you are out of the game. These are things like petrification, stun, and nauseated. You generally lose all your actions and for particularly onerous conditions, you run away screaming like a little girl. Fear sucks.

A Medium status condition is a partial hard control: If you are hit with one of these, you are pretty severely degraded. Things like entangled, grappled, and prone fall here. You generally have a negative modifier to any actions you can take, and you usually lose some portion of your actions.

A Weak status condition is a soft control: They are debuffs to your rolls which make you worse at being an adventurer. Annoying, but not nearly as crippling as a Medium or a Strong status. But be careful, getting several Weak statuses stacked up on you will, indeed, ruin your ability to be effective. Although it can be kinda cool to see a dude keep on operating under a pile of troubles.

In the Status Array, we listed out all the Strong, Medium, and Weak conditions and associated them in ranks of severity. Namely, all Strong conditions now have a 'lesser' version which is a Medium condition, and then a 'least' version which is a Weak condition.

At-Risk

This allows the DM to, as an optional rule, declare that all monsters and spells which inflict a Strong condition upon a failed save to now inflict the associated Medium condition instead. This removes most cases of 'instant suck' from the game. To maintain balance, Strong conditions also place the victim in an At-Risk state. To resolve At-Risk, use the following progression.

When a condition is applied, if it is a Strong condition, instead bump it down to the associated moderate condition and allow a save at the listed DC. If this is successful, resolve as normal. If this save is failed, the character is affected by the Moderate condition and is At-Risk. An At-Risk character must roll a second save at the end of their NEXT turn against the original DC of the status. If this second save is successful, the Moderate condition changes to the associated Weak condition. If this second save is failed, the Strong condition is applied as normal. The Weak condition gained from At-Risk always lasts one round, ending at the end of the characters next turn.

Similar conditions from any number of sources do not stack, as per the normal rules. It is possible (if your DM hates you) to have multiple At-Risk rolls to make, as long as they are from different rows of the Status Array. All these rolls and effects are resolved separately at whatever DC applies to each one. Note that if two different Strong conditions have the same Medium effect, you are only under the single medium effect but you are still At-Risk for BOTH Strong conditions. Even though under only one Medium effect, you must resolve both At-Risk rolls and suffer the effects of both, which may or may not lead to the same condition again.

Only Strong conditions can place a character At-Risk. A medium or a weak condition which is applied directly from a monster is not affected by these rules, they are only triggered by 'save or suck' Strong conditions.

Spells or abilities which cure the strong status condition also cure the moderate and weak sub-conditions of that condition's array. Creatures immune to a strong condition are generally afflicted with the moderate condition of its array instead. Some abilities, such as the paladin's immunity to fear protect against multiple conditions.