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And can people stop acting like this is a balance issue? Getting transported away from a fight while paralyzed is practically a boon. It saves you from easy coup de graces. Paralysis is basically as bad as it gets—who cares if you're paralyzed from twenty feet down?
This was a non-issue until we had to make it an issue. I have found this thread unpleasant and pedantic from beginning to end. I find its conclusion to be patently ridiculous, but it's certainly a triumph for the persnickety rules lawyers of the forums, so congrats.
You know, in many respects I feel that the rules lawyering was coming from the party saying "the rules say you jump, if you can't jump you don't get a save" faction. The other side were arguing from a game balance position rather than the letter of the law.
KC- I feel you might be on the side of RAW is LAW on this one... :)
I think (note I think, i.e. just a supposition on my part) that part of it goes simply to how we look at saves in general. I believe that the intent of the devs (and this would go back a long way to the D&D days) was that Saves were more or less passive "abilities". i.e., they just worked. For the most part, we accept this when it comes to Fort and Will saves. "Even though I'm unconscious I still make my save vs. mind control because I'm just that mentally tough" or "I'm a hearty enough individual that even though I was paralyzed, weakened, nauseated, etc., I still made the save vs. poison." However, when it came to Reflex saves most of us felt like it should be more proactive as opposed to passive, which, in and of itself, does rather make sense. Heck, even if you just call it "instincts" it would, in theory, still require conscious thought and action on your part. However, its my belief that the Devs intended along that all the saves be treated the same way (hence why they were never really broken up in the rule books).
Now of course, this does lead to situations where logically, it doesn't always make sense. But if you think of the saves as more passive (or as essentially a "to hit" roll) then it makes more sense. In the case of Create Pit vs. a Paralyzed target that makes it's save, it could easily be flavored by the GM as "the caster missed his to hit roll -- i.e. as the ground warped underneath the paralyzed dude, it slid him forward enough that he was no longer over the open pit."
No because the spell requires you to jump and if you're paralyzed then you can't move.
A reflex save is a reflex save. It's up to the GM to work out the niggly bits.
You know, in many respects I feel that the rules lawyering was coming from the party saying "the rules say you jump, if you can't jump you don't get a save" faction. The other side were arguing from a game balance position rather than the letter of the law.KC- I feel you might be on the side of RAW is LAW on this one... :)
Which is the exact problem with the law is raw crowd. The RAW never says just one thing.