"The subject becomes paralyzed and freezes in place. It is aware and breathes normally but cannot take any actions, even speech. Each round on its turn, the subject may attempt a new saving throw to end the effect. This is a full-round action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity"
The wonderful requirement that this spell has of making it a full round action to break the affects has always given me nothing but grief in terms of how gimmicky, exploitable, and annoying it is. To me, it's always seemed to be an unnecessary addendum. I'd like to keep the spell's power where it is without making it so gimmicky. Has anyone ever come up with a way to do just that as a houserule?
I'm not sure why you feel this particular requirement is "gimmicky" any more than any other?
I'm not sure why you feel this particular requirement is "gimmicky" any more than any other?
Because it lends itself to exploitation and overall gimmickiness, including slow- and ready-action- fun?
I dunno, maybe I'm just weird, but I find being able to slow someone, then hold them, as being exploitative and not really a good idea. I also find the idea of succeeding on the save to break the paralysis as still giving you a penalty of taking away your turn. It seems counterintuitive and unnecessary. Why should one failed save take away two turns instead of one?
I'm not sure why you feel this particular requirement is "gimmicky" any more than any other?Because it lends itself to exploitation and overall gimmickiness, including slow- and ready-action- fun?
I dunno, maybe I'm just weird, but I find being able to slow someone, then hold them, as being exploitative and not really a good idea. I also find the idea of succeeding on the save to break the paralysis as still giving you a penalty of taking away your turn. It seems counterintuitive and unnecessary. Why should one failed save take away two turns instead of one?
Re: slow: You can still start a full round action and complete it the next round.
You also still get swift/immediate and free actions as well as a 5 foot step if you succeed on the saving throw.
Zo
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I'm not sure why you feel this particular requirement is "gimmicky" any more than any other?Because it lends itself to exploitation and overall gimmickiness, including slow- and ready-action- fun?
I dunno, maybe I'm just weird, but I find being able to slow someone, then hold them, as being exploitative and not really a good idea. I also find the idea of succeeding on the save to break the paralysis as still giving you a penalty of taking away your turn. It seems counterintuitive and unnecessary. Why should one failed save take away two turns instead of one?
Really? You issue is that somebody that is slowed and held is fubared?!? You know what, when you fail your save vs ghoul touch your pretty boned too. So to you, failing a save vs a level 3 spell and a level 2 spell to result in the same level of screwage as a level 2 spell makes it gimicky...umm yeah....
The fact that it's basically an unintentional combo is what I dislike.
My focus here isn't on the slow/hold person combo, though, so I'd rather not go into it.
My dislike is for the Hold series of spells, and how they require a full round action to escape from, essentially losing two rounds from one failed save, whereas most spells will have breaking free from it be a free or standard action.
So, anyway, criticizing my personal dislikes and likes aside, is there anyone else out there that has a similar dislike for how the spell functions, and how have you modified it to?
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It's actually kind of nice that you have any chance at all of breaking free of the effects of a Hold Person spell, isn't it? It's one of the few kinds of spells you get any kind of chance to break free beyond like the entanglement stuff. Really it's just a more severe version of those too.
No extra saves versus stuff like Blindness/Deafness, Acid Arrow, Waves of Exhaustion or the like after all.
So the gimmick being your not completely screwed isn't all that bad in my book, but to each their own.
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The fact that it's basically an unintentional combo is what I dislike.
My focus here isn't on the slow/hold person combo, though, so I'd rather not go into it.
My dislike is for the Hold series of spells, and how they require a full round action to escape from, essentially losing two rounds from one failed save, whereas most spells will have breaking free from it be a free or standard action.
So, anyway, criticizing my personal dislikes and likes aside, is there anyone else out there that has a similar dislike for how the spell functions, and how have you modified it to?
No most spells don't let you break free at ALL after a failed save. Look at ghoul touch, you fail your save, that's it, your paralyzed for 3-8 rounds. No new save each round no matter how many actions you got.
My dislike is for the Hold series of spells, and how they require a full round action to escape from, essentially losing two rounds from one failed save, whereas most spells will have breaking free from it be a free or standard action.
So, anyway, criticizing my personal dislikes and likes aside, is there anyone else out there that has a similar dislike for how the spell functions, and how have you modified it to?
I like the fact that it gives you a chance to break it at all. Nearly all other spells that require a save don't… at least on each round anyway. It's not necessarily a two round loss for the victim or even necessarily a bad situation:
Round 1: Wizard casts hold person on target. Target fails save.
Round 1: Target attempts to break free as a full round action on his turn and succeeds.
Only a 1 round loss in this case. If there were only 2 combatants (the wizard and the target), then it's a wash as the wizard has gained no advantage save a move action.
If you think about it in the opposite way though, say it was only a free action or move action or something. Say a wizard casts Hold on someone and they fail the save. Then on their turn, they, as a free action DO make the save, and break free. Your spell would essentially have felt like a huge waste of time, no?
If you think about it in the opposite way though, say it was only a free action or move action or something. Say a wizard casts Hold on someone and they fail the save. Then on their turn, they, as a free action DO make the save, and break free. Your spell would essentially have felt like a huge waste of time, no?
<Target succeeds saving throw> Damnit!
<Target climbs over wall you just conjured> Damnit!<Target is immune to mind effecting spells> Damnit!
Welcome to the wonderful world of magic. And on the topic of the OP, 1st level spells like Color Spray and Sleep leave you horribly boned if you fail the first save. I've always been irritated with Hold Person as a wizard because it allowed so many saves. Throwing out a "save negates" spell is such a high risk with the way saves & DCs scale that it sucks to quickly have your success turned against you.
<Target succeeds saving throw> Damnit!
<Target climbs over wall you just conjured> Damnit!
<Target is immune to mind effecting spells> Damnit!Welcome to the wonderful world of magic. And on the topic of the OP, 1st level spells like Color Spray and Sleep leave you horribly boned if you fail the first save. I've always been irritated with Hold Person as a wizard because it allowed so many saves. Throwing out a "save negates" spell is such a high risk with the way saves & DCs scale that it sucks to quickly have your success turned against you.
Hold person has certain tactical advantages over the 2 spells you mentioned:
1) Sleep takes 1 round to cast and it affects only weak creatures.2) Color Spray can only be used at close range and against a creature with 5+ HD, it has essentially the same net effect as hold person
While I do appreciate everyone's points on the power of the spell, I really am not interested in debating whether or not it's overpowered, by itself or compared to other spells. My point in making this post was to see if anyone else out there had developed a houseruled version of this spell that removed the full-action to break part of the spell while keeping it at a similar level of power, and had given a little bit of background on my thoughts on the spell to appeal to others of a similar mindset.
Thank you.
No, no house rulings at all. Never saw anything that came close to resembling the need. Doesn't seem gimmicky at all to me.
Agree with the Admiral and Cold Napalm.
I agree, prior to 3.5, you got one save and if you failed it you were held for the duration, I kind of liked that better, as far as I am concerned, the spell has been weakened enough
Hahaha, on that note, that reminds me of an old 3.5 campaign I had played in where I was trying to play test a class I was making. It was a high level campaign however, and I failed the save, so it more or less took me out of the combat permanently until it was over.
While I do appreciate everyone's points on the power of the spell, I really am not interested in debating whether or not it's overpowered, by itself or compared to other spells. My point in making this post was to see if anyone else out there had developed a houseruled version of this spell that removed the full-action to break part of the spell while keeping it at a similar level of power, and had given a little bit of background on my thoughts on the spell to appeal to others of a similar mindset.
Thank you.
No.
If you house-rule it otherwise, you'd basically allow the target of a Hold spell two chances to save in a single round. If you fail your save once, you should at least be gimped for 1 round.
'findel
Since we've reached the "no debate or discussion please" portion of this thread, I have to add my "no", and "don't" as well.
I agree, prior to 3.5, you got one save and if you failed it you were held for the duration, I kind of liked that better, as far as I am concerned, the spell has been weakened enough
Agreed.
After one look of the spell in Pathfinder, i just ignored it afterwords. While i can understand why they did it, nevertheless; at low levels there are better spell options that would be used do to limited spell slots available. If i am going to cast a spell, i would rather cast one that works, or does not. That way i can go on with my next spell, or go onto my next target in battle.
Mord, that's kind of a cool idea. :) I might actually edit Hold in my pathfinder campaign to be more like that if it allows for further saves.
Great, thanks for the suggestions so far, everyone, even the "No"s. :)
Sorry if I seemed grouchy earlier. I guess I didn't really explain my intent well in the original post, and just being told that the change wasn't needed when that wasn't really what I'd asked was a little frustrating after a long day, so sorry about that.
To those that have put in suggestions so far, I've been playing around with a number of similar ideas so far myself, and none of them really panned out. The problem is that the spell automatically allows to saves, essentially, so the original developers probably but in the full-round action requirement to prevent someone from getting two chances to completely negate an effect, which is a perfectly reasonable desire, as several have stated. What I was hoping to come up with was a way to make it only one save the first round, while taking away the full-round action requirement.
An idea my group had come up with (most of us dislike how the ability works), was similar to what Liporteryu suggested. Make it a free action at the start of their turn. What we then amended was that the save isn't taken until the character actually takes a turn. Sort of a delayed effect. Which then leads into a slight problem with attacks of opportunity and characters needing to delay to take advantage of the paralyze effect, and essentially losing their place in the initiative order if the creature makes a save, which isn't really ideal.
Another idea was to make the save immediately upon the casting of the spell, make it a free action to break free, but to not get a save that first round. Essentially you get a "save advance" for the first round.
There were a few other ideas that were bounced around (this happened after this thread was made), but I rather like the latter one I just stated. The problem that we were having with Hold was that it sort of incentivized the caster to cast it as a ready action as soon as it was the target's turn. Otherwise they DO get two saves to resist it, and being paralyzed for a round and losing a round are fairly different in terms of effect. At the time, our ninja had the feat that made coup de grace a standard action.
For those that ARE on a similar wave-length to what I'm trying to do here, what do you think about the above rule?
Great, thanks for the suggestions so far, everyone, even the "No"s. :)
Sorry if I seemed grouchy earlier. I guess I didn't really explain my intent well in the original post, and just being told that the change wasn't needed when that wasn't really what I'd asked was a little frustrating after a long day, so sorry about that.
To those that have put in suggestions so far, I've been playing around with a number of similar ideas so far myself, and none of them really panned out. The problem is that the spell automatically allows to saves, essentially, so the original developers probably but in the full-round action requirement to prevent someone from getting two chances to completely negate an effect, which is a perfectly reasonable desire, as several have stated. What I was hoping to come up with was a way to make it only one save the first round, while taking away the full-round action requirement.
An idea my group had come up with (most of us dislike how the ability works), was similar to what Liporteryu suggested. Make it a free action at the start of their turn. What we then amended was that the save isn't taken until the character actually takes a turn. Sort of a delayed effect. Which then leads into a slight problem with attacks of opportunity and characters needing to delay to take advantage of the paralyze effect, and essentially losing their place in the initiative order if the creature makes a save, which isn't really ideal.
Another idea was to make the save immediately upon the casting of the spell, make it a free action to break free, but to not get a save that first round. Essentially you get a "save advance" for the first round.
There were a few other ideas that were bounced around (this happened after this thread was made), but I rather like the latter one I just stated. The problem that we were having with Hold was that it sort of incentivized the caster to cast it as a ready action as soon as it was the target's turn. Otherwise they DO get two saves to resist it, and being paralyzed...
If it is only due to the ninja then I would keep in mind that that feat is not always there(an assumption, feel free to correct me), and at higher levels monsters will be immune to it, and SR will come into play. Once again I am assuming you will play to a higher level. I think looking at how something works all the time as opposed to just the current session before I change it.
With all of that said, how does the ninja player feel about the change?Finally to answer your question, if the saves are really high, and the ninja/hold person combo are trumping encounters then change it, maybe on a trial basis to see how it works. If it makes the spell not worth casting then it may be too much of a nerf, but if the player(wizard) still wants to use the spell, but the encounters are not too easy then a balance has been struck.
Future thought:What do you do if the ninja finds another way to set people up for coup de grace's?
Okay I get what you are getting at a little better. I still don't think it is enough of a problem to worry about in my game, but I do have two suggestions for you:
1) Replace "This is a full-round action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity" If the creature makes it's save it can take no further action this turn.
2) Replace "Each round on its turn, the subject may attempt a new saving throw to end the effect. This is a full-round action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity" with "Beginning on the spell caster's next turn, after the spell caster takes their action, the subject of the spell may attempt a new saving throw. If the spell caster's initiative changes then the saving throw takes place on the initiative the spell was originally ast on." This guarantees at least 1 full round of being held.
I hope these suggestions are helpful.