The situation, half of the players are nauseated because of a magical trap, and fighting a giant. I've clearly told them the effects. However neither I nor the players remember to enforce the effects of nauseated.
Would you attempt to fix this? How? or just let it stand and try to be more diligent?
Get a hand-holdable whiteboard where you can write group modifiers like bless spell bonuses and things like this nausea effect. Then it's visible for everyone to remember and use.
you and your players need to keep track if they are poisoned, slowed, grappled , nauseated, etc , gotta get used to it because normally you do this a lot
We've been running 5+ years and it isn't a normal occurrence to miss details like this. Definitely out of character for all of us.
Nauseated is fairly simple, in that it basically means you can't fight. Single move action each round.
My advice: write down which player's characters are nauseated on a post-it note or similar visible cue, and if they try to use a standard and/or swift action, remind them that the trap has prevented them from meaningfully participating in combat. When/if the condition is removed, scrub their names off the list and allow them to take other actions. Noting that they cannot use the Withdraw action as it requires a standard action, thus AoOs will abound if they attempt to retreat.
My other piece of advice is to be highly selective and careful in using disabling conditions such as nauseated, stunned etc, especially immediately before a combat, because unless they have a very short duration it can turn even a moderate encounter into a TPK.
1 - condition cards. We've bought Paizo's, and hand them out and keep them visible at the table.
2 - as the DM, on the scrap paper where you're tracking initiative, add conditions. Typically I have a two-column list like this:
23 Dr
15 Mak
13 Bud
11 Por
10 Fuz
If Buddy becomes nauseated, I scribble that beside him.
23 Dr
15 Mak
13 Bud Naus
11 Por
10 Fuz
That way when it's his turn, I can remind him. Works great for bad guys too.
Yeah, as the GM you should make a note on whatever you keep track of initiative and NPC hp about conditions afflicting players.
When it's their turn remind them, just in case they've forgotten.
The combat pad is really helpful for this.
I would say to look and see if they'd survive if you wanted to go back and fix it so they were all nauseated during the fight.
Personally, my suggestion would be to learn from it and move on. I doubt it'd be much fun for the players to go back and play the fight in even worse shape. Going back and fixing it would only serve to drag the rest of the session on.
Now, if they'd still bE nauseated after the fight, and you stopped the session just after the fight, sure, make them nauseated then.
Keep better track of it from now on, but don't try to retcon previous things if it will turn out to be a lot of work or trouble (redoing an encounter qualifies for that imo). Mistakes happen, but not all of them need to be retroactively fixed.
OP
I would not go back and ret-con it or whatever
just chalk it up to a 'whoops' and move on
then take the advice of all the people who are ignoring your actual question in order to have things like that happen less
If not much has happened since the mistake, and you did want to implement a retro-active continuity, you could always say that the "victorious" fight was actually a hallucination brought on by the sickness of whatever nauseated them.
They imagined they were at the top of their game, when in truth they were rolling around on the ground in total delirium.
Let them me captured or whatnot and work their way out from there.
I must say, though, I think it is fine to just let these mistakes slide and continue on with the game. If the opportunity was there to fairly work it into the story I would do that, but I wouldn't force it.
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I try very hard to NOT retcon unless I catch it before the end of the player's turn. If I make a mistake during the game and do not realize it until after, I just try to make up an explanation of why the affect/condition didn't take place. Then, I try to do better next time.
Redoing scenes can really ruin emersion and flow.
Also, mistakes are going to happen. Pathfinder is a pretty complex game.