First my little henchman gets blasted by a color spray, getting stunned. Now the PCs are wanting to hit him with their flaming sphere. Do I get a reflex save while stunned?
Funny, this reminds me of a guy who had a stunned character hit some water. I noted he probably doesn't get to hold his breath since he gets to take no actions.
However, Rynjin pointed out that holding ones breath is not an action, even a free one. Reminded of this, I looked at saves. From what I can see, a (reflex) save is not an action either. So, insanely enough, the stunned creature gets to make the save.
I'd house rule against both supposed non-actions, but as written the character gets the save.
If a character is stunned/paralyzed/unconscious, I've ruled that they take a penalty to their reflex saves as though they had a 0 dex.
I can still rationalize it as the spell/effect doesn't take up every single cubic foot of the area of effect.
But, you may have different ideas.
Very Respectully,
--Bacon
A stunned creature does get a reflex save and there is no penalty to dexterity on this save. All they have is a penalty to their AC. They still get the benefits of Evasion as well.
However, if they are unconscious or otherwise helpless, then they still get a reflex save but with a dexterity of 0 and they cannot use abilities like Evasion.
As for the drowning rules a stunned character can indeed hold his breath for a number of rounds equal to twice his constitution score. An unconscious or helpless character cannot and must begin making constitution checks immediately to avoid drowning.
Sounds weird but those are the rules and it just shows that stunned is not entirely helpless.
Awesome! Thanks!