They can't even hold onto whatever is in their hand but they're still able to resist mental controls and dodge lightning bolts with the same alacrity?
Thats right.
Yes, it can reach ridiculousness in some situations, but the conditions are meant to hinder creatures, and can't possibly seem realistic in every situation. You can house rule use or apply a situational save penalty if you like.
This has bugged me too.
Can you think of any unexpected consequences of hourseruling that when you have lost your dex bonus to ac, you also lose your dex bonus to reflex saves?
I suppose it would make sense to lose ability score bonuses to AC and saving throws.
This type of rule would be used when you want increased lethality/autokill situations. If that's not the goal i'd suggest against it.
Heh - I don't think even paralyzed foes get a penalty to Reflex saves... but if you're shaken or sickened you do.
Heh - I don't think even paralyzed foes get a penalty to Reflex saves... but if you're shaken or sickened you do.
Being paralyzed is treated as helpless which treats you as an effective Dexterity of 0 so that penalizes reflex save quite a bit.
Heh - I don't think even paralyzed foes get a penalty to Reflex saves... but if you're shaken or sickened you do.
paralyzed creatures are helpless... a helpless character has a dex of 0, so their dexterity modifier is -5. Thus a paralyzed character at best has a much worse chance of making a reflex save then when he is not paralyzed.
Necro.
Does penalty to a stat affect the save?
For instance entangled creature moves at half speed, cannot run or charge, and takes a –2 penalty on all attack rolls and a –4 penalty to Dexterity.
Does that equate to -2 to reflex?
Yes.
This has bugged me too.
Can you think of any unexpected consequences of hourseruling that when you have lost your dex bonus to ac, you also lose your dex bonus to reflex saves?
Yes, I can.
Right now the game rules are fairly balanced. If you want to nuke someone with a fireball, that target gets a chance for it to fail (or only partially succeed).
Change the rules so that there are easy ways to rob him of his defenses, and suddenly a Stun/Fireball combo (or any other "lose DEX"/"REF Save" combo0 becomes significantly more deadly.
Your players will exploit that. Then you'll have to exploit it with monsters and bad guys to stay even in the "arms race". Pretty soon everyone will be doing these combos because other tactics are inferior.
Breaking balance can have far-reaching consequences. I've made that mistake, and exploited the mistakes of other DMs, far too often.