So I want to drop a curse on a player.
the enemy is a tricksy caster who uses heightened spell and other abilities to raise curse to a difficult to resist level.
anyway the caster would like to curse a player to have the extreme desire to urinate when ever he enters battle he is overcome with the need to Urinate.
thematically he must either go pee, do the peepee dance, or fight distracted by the need to pee.
Mechanically he must either suffer -4 penalty on attack rolls, saves, ability checks, and skill checks
do the peepee dance for 2 rounds and get laughed at by the enemy)
or actually go and urinate (about 10 rounds)
I think this fits the rules and theme but I want it to be fun and annoying, not annoying and punishing.
would this work?
Sounds awful and annoying.
Have the curse do something like that out-of-combat.
do the peepee dance
What
do the peepee dance
What
Anyway, it really depends on the player and what type of character he's playing. How serious has the campaign been up to this point?
needs more informations from OP
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*picard_facepalm.jpg*
Mechanically, it is strictly worse than one of the explicitly-allowed uses of bestow curse. So it should certainly be acceptable from that perspective.
Conceptually, I don't think "doing the peepee dance" has ever actually brought relief from the need to urinate, so I'm not sure why twelve seconds of silliness would actually help other than "because curse".
Thematically, without context, this sounds ridiculous. I guess if your players are into that sort of goofiness, have fun with it. Or maybe the caster is a prankster fey who values mischief over his/her own life. But 99 out of 100 wizards and witches would scoff at such a thing unless it had some sort of poetic justice to it, and I'm having trouble thinking of a situation ironic enough to warrant it.
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What are you, 12 years old? I hope your players are either children or have a good sense of humor. That said, I do think it's a funny curse for the right style of game and pretty well within the boundaries of a Bestow Curse spell. Just tread lightly as to not humiliate your players while you're humiliating their characters.
My suggestion would be to drop the peepee dance option. There's no reason for every enemy to just stand there laughing at the guy and the curse can't compel them to so just make the -4 to rolls an effect of the character hopping and squirming and feeling uncomfortable while trying to also participate in combat.
A smart player might ask why they can't just open the flood gates in the middle of the fight without running off behind a bush for a whole minute. Let them do it to avoid the -4, but you could incur a penalty to social skills and make them easier to track until they get cleaned up.
hm...
I expect it won't affect the character for more than a session. at the first chance they will just remove curse it... or force the caster to remove it.
its kind of like baleful polymorphing the main fighter into a bunny. its a funny story to tell about the hedge witch that gave him the water curse and the little dance he had to do.
mechanically its strictly weaker than the recommended effects of Bestow Curse, the point is to limit but not negate the combat power of the group or a party member. The player has to chose between fighting hindered or giving up two rounds per battle.
I can do the same thing by saying the player has some other ailment... like overwhelming uncertainty and the player has to spend 2 rounds focusing to gather his confidence... or I can simply say he has -4 all the time... but i like the idea of a bit of silly that will be remembered for a long time.
context is of course essential. but without telling you the entire story of the adventure take "tricksy caster', imagine a fey with an annoying sense of humor and a grudge against the party, and apply bestow curse.
My gut reaction ...
What are you, twelve?
really?
so... what kind of jokes do you have at your table?
or are your games all about the grim reality of facing the evils of the world wound?
Well said.
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Why can't he just piss while fighting? I can't see that a typical Half-Orc Barbarian would care.
My dog in incontinent. I find this offen...
Oh, no. Nevermind. I don't have a dog.
I'm with Vamptastic on this one. If some of the crusaders could still wreck face while dealing with dysentery in the midst of combat, I don't see why this curse would slow down anyone in a life-or-death situation.
2cp: Unless you really think the player in question is going to find this amusing, I'd go for a different type of laugh.
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This is a great idea if you want your players to actively seek out a new person to run games for them.
This curse does a piss-poor job of introducing tasteful, fun humor to a table.
If my character was hit by this curse, I'd probably go spend my 10 rounds off to the side every combat, perhaps get me a full plate and argue that it should extend the 10 rounds to 15, that's how little I would be playing along.
The curse would probably be fun in a comic or a movie, but putting it on a player character would just be humiliating and demeaning :(
Edit: Oh! And I'd bring a book to every session, since I'd obviously never be in combat anyway ;)
If my character was hit by this curse, I'd probably go spend my 10 rounds off to the side every combat, perhaps get me a full plate and argue that it should extend the 10 rounds to 15, that's how little I would be playing along.
Don't forget to use Total Defense. ;)
If my character was hit by this curse, I'd probably go spend my 10 rounds off to the side every combat, perhaps get me a full plate and argue that it should extend the 10 rounds to 15, that's how little I would be playing along.Don't forget to use Total Defense. ;)
Nooo. I insist on taking all of the hits I can, with no dex bonus to ac as well, since I always pee sitting down to avoid missing the loo ;)
Aha. Going prone. That'll show 'em.
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Well, it's better than Reekwind's curse from Planescape: Torment.
Other than that, I'm going to point my thumb in the downward direction in this case, for reasons adequately voiced above.
How does an eternal case of really, really bad hiccups (so bad they keep momentarily stunning you at random intervals) sound?
I can't stop thinking about why one would use such a curse?
Humiliating your enemies is fun, yes. But doing so during combat doesn't seem like the smart thing to do, it will not make them go away nor surrender. If anything, it just makes them more determined to either kill you, or capture you and make your imprisonment so horrible that it rivals the Game of Thrones series...
I find it interesting that people are not just against the idea but seem personally offended by it.
I honestly makes me self examine. I have never actually done this kind of joke in game before and thought people would disagree with the mechanics more than the the attics. But most of you seem ok with the mechanics and pretty upset about the thematics.
Well... Guess i will modify the thematics. The mechanics are still fine.
Rocket, i once bale full prolly morphed a player into a bunny mid combat. It's still one of the legends of the table. The people i play with dont take things too personally unless the gm kills them in their sleep with their own pet or something ( happened to me once ^_^)
The problem is that this isn't just a joke. You're giving the affected character a severe debuff AND you're forcing him to either look stupid, or leave combat for 10 rounds.
You're basically dictating what the character can and cannot do in combat until the curse is removed and what you're telling him is " look retarded or suck", that's the uncool part.
I can support baleful polymorph, it takes an enemy out of combat right now as well as leave you with a handy prisoner to question later, it's good tactics.
What I question about the curse, any curse really, is: why would a sensible, spellcasting, villian use this spell? A spellcaster will know how easy it is to counter with magic, or just buff through.
I've always used bestow curse as a means to harass the players from a distance, not a combat debuff. At least not for villians, it's damn nice to use as a player.
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Well... Guess i will modify the thematics. The mechanics are still fine.
Remember: Mechanics exist to be a vehicle (as well as a sort of invisible wacky chauffeur, like Jeeves on a light dose of angel dust) for the story - at least make a serious double-take at the mechanics once you've settled on your new idea to see if they still fit the bill.
To each their own. The dancing kobolds sound pretty damn funny for our current table, but I can remember tables where that joke would wear thin quickly.
If a player knocks over the statue of a trickster god and this was his punishment it'd be okay.
Well... Except for the part where they might think its not fun, and if the table couples it by laughing at him personally, as immature people sometimes do, then that would be pretty not okay. If someone at the table thinks "Pee pee dance" jokes are immature, not funny, and really ruins the mood for them, then it might not be so okay. That's not say you shouldn't bestow curses, just that you might want one of a different sort that "Lol, you said Pee. Twice."
In general if it looks like it won't be fun its not okay under any situation.
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This curse actually reminds me of a rule I've implemented at my table.
N. Jolly's Joke Rule:
If you make a (semi) permanent character decision based upon a joke, and that joke would be unfunny after having heard it three or more times, you may not make that decision. (Note: three is an arbitrary number used to describe that the joke in question has a finite life span that players would most likely abuse.)
You want to make a halfling called Short McButtsniffer? That's not going to be funny after the 0th time someone has said it, so no, you can't do it. I don't run a super serious table, but I also don't run a table that has no sense of seriousness.
Using Prestidigitation to make it look like the knight captain peed himself is funny...once. Any more than that, and it starts to get old fast. And notably creepy.
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We got a bunch if George R R Martins on this topic, I think it is hilarious and think your players would both hate and live it at the same time, the mechanical penalty is such that it would be agitating to an optimizer and the role play aspect would be fantastic that said u would drop the peepee dance and just have the distraction or the relief
There are just so many more elegant ways to accomplish a humiliating and debilitating curse. I'll admit that I'm making some guesses as to the caster's motivation, but I don't have that much to work with.
For instance, a curse that makes the character trip over every time they move faster than a slow walk (10 ft/round should do it) is a nasty curse which allows the caster to keep ahead of the man and taunt him relentlessly. It immediately allows the caster to avoid retaliation from the guy he's just cursed, something that the curse of the full bladder does not, plus is debilitating.
Alternatively, if this is supposed to be a curse that simply humiliates rather than disables, then have the curse make every combat action he takes be accompanied by three stooges sound effects, or the curse applies very feminine makeup with every swing, or have any weapon he picks up constantly berrating him about how he shouldn't have slacked on his education and now he's just some dime-a-dozen fighter instead of a wizard. simple, effective, and since it's not debilitating to their fighter mechanically it's harder for him to convince the team to divert from their quest to make removing the curse a priority.
Really, I don't know the caster's agenda or goals here, but I am sure that the curse of the full bladder is not way to do it.
I have to agree with the people who aren't being offended. Incontinence might be a morale blow to the character, but even the most hoity-toity PC isn't going to disappear from the fight for a full 10 rounds in the name of good manners. The holding-it-in penalty is fine, but gamist players, or practical/shameless characters, aren't going to worry about urine-soaked trousers during life-or-death combat unless there is a very compelling reason (such as during some important gala where the behavior of the PCs will be taken into account by royalty or a stiff clergy or the like).
You could try to apply penalties for the pools of urine created by the event, buuuut that either means your campaign will feature magical pools of piss, or that urinating on the battlefield is going to become a viable tactic against enemies, and both options are going to come off as incredulous or immersion shattering to some groups of players.
That being said, making a character piss himself sounds like a great way to make the party hate a villain, mechanical disadvantage or otherwise.
why cant he just wet him self and fight at the same time?
Some people can't talk or concentrate on other things while they go do their thing, others can't swing a greatsword.
... Don't judge?
I like what you're attempting with the thematic aspect. If the player's ok with it, I'd say go for it, but make a way to remove the curse available very quickly.