Conditions and gameplay accessibility


Homebrew and House Rules

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Pathfinder has a long list of conditions, such as fatigued, exhausted, shaken, entangled, and grappled. Each of these has different effects, but those effects are pre-defined. That is, a spell or ability can simply say "fatigued" without having to spell out the actual mechanical implications of that effect. However, the downside to that is that until you've memorized all these conditions, you have to go look something up every time such an effect is implemented (or use the handy-dandy Condition Cards).

Now imagine a hypothetical universe in which none of those terms were pre-defined, and instead, any given effect simply told you exactly what it did (such as "you get –2 STR/DEX and can't run or charge"). This would lengthen the word count of new spells/feats/etc, but a given player never has to learn more than what currently is affecting him, and doesn't need to follow up being told a condition with a second step of having to look up what it actually means. But, that also means there could be a potentially infinite variety of conditions, along with some inconsistencies among what it means to, for instance, be magically made tired.

I can see pros and cons to both models. What are the community's thoughts on the topic?

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

Well, you have to look up the effect anyway (whether it can be found in the effect's source or in the glossary hardly matters), so why not use a (more or less) consistent system of conditions (with rules how they interact with each other)?

As a GM, you should know the conditions' effects anyway (or have a quick-reference at hand on your GM-screen). As a player, you can expect the GM to tell you which penalties you take. The condition cards you mentioned are a helpful tool to keep track of these conditions (I use them on a regular basis in my games).

I'd say you would gain very little while messing up a lot of other things (for example, you'd have to come up with new ways how the paladin's mercies work).

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

If these conditions were constantly re-used but unnamed, I'm sure the community would name them.

I prefer having named conditions.

Sovereign Court

I think the named conditions are a good thing. However, you could take a page from MtG's book and use reminder text. For example:

Quote:
[b] ... Targets who fail their save are Sickened for 1d4 rounds. (The character takes a –2 penalty on all attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks.)

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Amanuensis wrote:
Well, you have to look up the effect anyway (whether it can be found in the effect's source or in the glossary hardly matters)

What? When a monster uses its beam of suck ability, you're already looking at the Bestiary/adventure for the monster's stat block. But then if said statblock says the beam of suck inflicts condition X, you have to reference a second book (the CRB) to see what that actually does.

Come to think of it, it's even worse for spells/SLAs. So your monster can cast frostbite 3/day. That's all your statblock gives you. So now you have to go look up the spell itself in the APG (book #2). It says it deals some damage and makes the target fatigued. So now you have to crack open the CRB (book #3) and see what "fatigued" means.

Granted, once you have that all memorized, you end up appreciating the more abbreviated statblocks, without the clutter of full explanations. But there will always be a statblock that includes something you haven't memorized, plus there's the issue of making things accessible for new blood.

I guess I'm just exploring possibilities.

Verdant Wheel

i wish 'severity' was more explicitly defined, possibly folded into the language for 'stacking'

ex. "Intimidate to demoralize is a low-severity fear effect that doesn't stack"

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

My number-one-offender for crossreferencing stuff in the CRB is fog/smoke effects. I spend a whole evening trying to figure out how long it takes for the smoke from an eversmoking bottle to "dissipate normally". And in the end, I had to make a GM call. Seriously.
That is an example of an unclear rule, but it shows the advantages of a unified system that you can reference to whenever you add a new spell/item/monster. Sure, it makes things more difficult for a new GM to figure out on the fly, but then again, I'd expect a new GM to spend more time for preparation anyway. And there are resources to help new GMs (and experienced GMs as well), like the afore mentioned GM screen that serves as a quick-reference.

Sovereign Court

Okay, I wrote a longer post about this yesterday, but it looks like the forum ate it. So here's what I remembers.

Keyworded conditions are a good thing, because


  • It's an application of "write your code right once, then re-use it everywhere". If you have to define a condition only once, you can put in the effort to make sure you got it exactly right. Then, when you re-use it, you know it's correct. The alternative is a thousand abilities that all mean to do approximately the same thing, but with different writers and editors working on them. The result would be more powers with errors in them because someone said something in an awkward manner.

  • Consistent keywords make it easier to quickly read new powers. If someone brings me a character with a new ability that I don't yet know, I can glance through it, see "poison" and "nauseated", and I'll know what kind of thing I'm dealing with and that the construct monster doesn't care.

  • It makes it easier to integrate new material with old material. If your monster has an ability that inflicts a permanent debuff on PCs, you also need to think about how (if) it can be removed. By naming it a Poison, Disease or Curse effect, you can use existing means to remove those afflictions. Otherwise you'd have to write new spells for various classes for it. Likewise, if you're making a new class focused on removing debuffs, you can just list the conditions it can remove, instead of having to write guidelines on what sort of effects it might remove, which you then need to match against descriptions of powers in a bestiary.

    This point is absolutely crucial for a system such as PF, which will grow for many years and be developed by a multitude of writers.

  • It prevents multiple definitions of the same thing. If you have multiple definitions which are slightly different, or of varying degrees of completeness, you'll have no end of rules-lawyering about it.

So, I'm a big proponent of keywords. However, there's an issue with lots of page-flipping of course. Any time you see "Wild Shape", you should actually be seeing bits of Beast Shape and Conjuration (Polymorph) rules as well.

You can't really solve that on the paper medium. However, although it might not be super-easy, it could definitely be solved on the digital format. RPG rules are very much like computer program source code. Programming uses inheritance too, for exactly the same reasons. And there exist various convenient tools for programmers to deal with this kind of thing.

Basically, what would be kind of nice would be to have the rules in a digital format, where you can click on any keyword to have it "fold open" into a section containing the full text. So that you can click on Wild Shape and it expands to contain the text from Beast Shape and Polymorph. That way, you're not duplicating definitions (bad!) but calling them up as reminder text whenever they're references (good).

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