Stunned 1 as a reaction during your turn ... v4.

[Guntermench]

breithauptclan wrote:

Baarogue wrote:

reply 1: I already addressed this above. Two != single

The other one I find strange is that in the entry on Activities, it never mentions 1-action actions.

Assuming you meant 1-action activities, it's literally the first line:

Quote:

Activities are special tasks that you complete by spending one or more of your actions together.

[Ascalaphus]

There's not really any rigorous way to distinguish actions from activities, because we have:

- Things that might be activities, but cost 1 action (Flurry of Blows)
- Basic Actions that take more than 1 action, or a different action type (Release, Delay, Ready, Grab an Edge, Arrest a Fall).
- Actions that contain subordinate actions (Long Jump and High Jump are noted as skill actions, not activities, but both of them use the Leap subordinate action).

And there is no rule saying that You Must Not Mix Up Actions And Acitivities, They Are Meant To Be Separate.

All we can really tell is that activities is a casually used word to suggest that an activity is a bit more complicated or drawn out than an action. There's no places where it clearly says "you can do an action here but not an activity" or the other way around. It just says action sometimes, activity another time, and sometimes switches between them while referring to the same thing.

[breithauptclan]

Quote:

Activities are special tasks that you complete by spending one or more of your actions together.

Oh, the actions that you can spend are the three actions that you are given at the start of each of your turns. The action cost of an action or activity, or the designation of action or activity of a particular event are each something completely different.

Count them. That is three separate definitions for the word 'action'.

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And see, that is my entire point of even continuing to debate this.

Yes, you have some good points for running the game such that Ready can't have anything other that simple single actions used with it.

But the other ruling also has good and valid points to it too.

The rules are ambiguous and neither case falls into the too good to be true or too problematic to be usable scenarios. Without official clarification or errata, we are going to continue arguing this indefinitely.

[Thezzaruz]

Themetricsystem wrote:

Yeah, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how anyone could think that the Slowed condition is supposed to be more severe than Stunned.

In every context I've seen over my lifetime the term Stunned has almost universally meant that your Character gets bonked in some manner and has to just stand there looking stupid for a while, often with little floating rubber duckies and/or stars around their head. Slowed, however, just makes you move less fast or take more energy to do something.

I don't think I've ever encountered a single scenario in tabletop or video games where you get slapped with a Stun and you get to finish whatever you were doing when that happened... if anyone can give me an example of this other than situations where a Character has some kind of like... buff to negate or lessen the stun I'd be happy to hear them out but...

Yeah, I don't understand the concept that people seem to have that its "unfair" like... yeah, it's a STUN, that's the point, it's akin to temporary paralysis not "it's a bit harder to do things."

I think that the main part of the disconnect is that if you read the rules for Stunned (and Slowed and Quickened and gaining/losing actions) then it all flows simply, it clearly tells you when you lose/gain actions, it tells you how many you lose/gain and all such. It never clearly tells you that you can lose more at, or for, a different time because that's all hidden behind the "you can't act" sentence. And that means it all becomes a gotcha moment and that's a crappy way of writing rules.

I'm willing to bet that the people that wrote/designed the mechanics for Stunned/Slowed/Quickened never intended for it to have the "you can't act" part (I mean the "Gaining and Losing Actions" sidebar pretty much spells it out even). But rather that it was added in at some later point when someone decided that being stunned should be more debilitating than being Slowed (because as you say, it almost always is wherever you encounter it). And I don't really mind it being debilitating, I do however think that the rules should have been re-worked so that it was clear that it is.

IMO Stunned shouldn't key of actions, it should key of time instead. So that you are stunned until the start/end of your next turn or for X rounds or for X minutes. Let Slowed/Quickened adjust your actions while Stunned stops you completely.

[Guntermench]

Thezzaruz wrote:

Themetricsystem wrote:

Yeah, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how anyone could think that the Slowed condition is supposed to be more severe than Stunned.

In every context I've seen over my lifetime the term Stunned has almost universally meant that your Character gets bonked in some manner and has to just stand there looking stupid for a while, often with little floating rubber duckies and/or stars around their head. Slowed, however, just makes you move less fast or take more energy to do something.

I don't think I've ever encountered a single scenario in tabletop or video games where you get slapped with a Stun and you get to finish whatever you were doing when that happened... if anyone can give me an example of this other than situations where a Character has some kind of like... buff to negate or lessen the stun I'd be happy to hear them out but...

Yeah, I don't understand the concept that people seem to have that its "unfair" like... yeah, it's a STUN, that's the point, it's akin to temporary paralysis not "it's a bit harder to do things."

I think that the main part of the disconnect is that if you read the rules for Stunned (and Slowed and Quickened and gaining/losing actions) then it all flows simply, it clearly tells you when you lose/gain actions, it tells you how many you lose/gain and all such. It never clearly tells you that you can lose more at, or for, a different time because that's all hidden behind the "you can't act" sentence. And that means it all becomes a gotcha moment and that's a crappy way of writing rules.

I'm willing to bet that the people that wrote/designed the mechanics for Stunned/Slowed/Quickened never intended for it to have the "you can't act" part (I mean the "Gaining and Losing Actions" sidebar pretty much spells it out even). But rather that it was added in at some later point when someone decided that being stunned should be more debilitating than being Slowed (because as you say, it almost always is wherever you...

I'd bet that stunned is meant to apply to both. You lose the actions only on the following turn when you pay it off, and therefore lose the condition, but you also can't act at all until you do so. This like Paralyze if for some reason they ever add a way for you to remove someone else's Stunned condition as a Reaction you could remove it if they got it on their turn and they could continue as if nothing happened. Or if you went right after them you could remove it and they'd at least be able to use reactions and free actions again.

The vast majority of times you get stunned will not be on your own turn. Ignoring the "you can't act" just makes it a s~!$ty slow that's harder to apply. That makes zero sense. Like it overrides slowed. Clearly it's meant to be more crippling not less.

Especially since it has a Power Word. Why have a Power Word Stun if it's not going to kick you in the teeth?

[Thezzaruz]

Guntermench wrote:

I'd bet that stunned is meant to apply to both. You lose the actions only on the following turn when you pay it off, and therefore lose the condition, but you also can't act at all until you do so. This like Paralyze if for some reason they ever add a way for you to remove someone else's Stunned condition as a Reaction you could remove it if they got it on their turn and they could continue as if nothing happened. Or if you went right after them you could remove it and they'd at least be able to use reactions and free actions again.

As it ended up probably, but not as it started out. If you look at the "gaining and losing actions" sidebar it says;

Quote:

Some conditions prevent you from taking a certain subset of actions, typically reactions. Other conditions simply say you can’t act. When you can’t act, you’re unable to take any actions at all. Unlike slowed or stunned, these don’t change the number of actions you regain; they just prevent you from using them. That means if you are somehow cured of paralysis on your turn, you can act immediately.

There is just no way that you write that sentence if you intend to have Stunned be one of the conditions that says "you can't act", it wouldn't make any sense.

And that I think is its problem, the mechanics is written envisioning the condition working one way but then when they changed their mind about it and added the "you can't act" but didn't alter anything in the mechanics of the condition that meant it just lost all logic and stopped being internally consistent.

Guntermench wrote:

The vast majority of times you get stunned will not be on your own turn. Ignoring the "you can't act" just makes it a s#$#ty slow that's harder to apply. That makes zero sense. Like it overrides slowed. Clearly it's meant to be more crippling not less.

Especially since it has a Power Word. Why have a Power Word Stun if it's not going to kick you in the teeth?

Oh I'm not saying that Stunned shouldn't be a kick in the teeth, I'm just saying that the mechanics of "you can't act" are very different from the mechanics of "lose some actions when you start the turn" and since it is only the latter part that is actually spelled out in the rule it becomes not just a kick in the teeth of the character but of the player too when they do get stunned and end up losing a lot more than the rule says they should lose.

[aobst128]

Yeah, this is a giant mess. I'd run it as some others have suggested; just remove the actions at the earliest opportunity. No point in doubling the effect for seemingly no reason.

[Ascalaphus]

Yeah I feel like it's inconsistent in how it's got different fragments of rule spread across the book. It's the sort of thing that if it was computer code would cause the occasional system crash.

It's possible that some of the writers thought that "you can't act" is flavor text that describes when you lose most of your actions. Although I don't think there's really any effects that do it, the writing seems to consider seriously that you might be stunned with a value higher than 3 and need multiple turns before it's paid off.

That'd be a difference with Slowed, which never takes away all of your actions in a turn. Slowed would be paid off in equal installments over a minute or so, while Stunned is paid off as fast as possible.

It's also very rare to be Slowed more than 1. Most of the effects that do that simulate increasing petrification and turn you completely to stone once you're so Slowed that you'd be unable to regain any actions.

There's other conditions too, that have similar effects. Frightened and Sickened both cause a status penalty to all d20 oriented stats. But they're caused by different things and overcome at a different speed. So Slowed and Stunned aren't unique in being such a pair.

[Guntermench]

Quote:

It's possible that some of the writers thought that "you can't act" is flavor text that describes when you lose most of your actions.

Maybe, but it's (I think) more likely they just didn't think this would be common or is a problem. Not exactly the only condition that causes you to be unable to act, and they early view that as being separate from losing actions.

It seems mostly likely stunned is supposed to do both and the real unfortunate thing is the use of the word "unlike" in the sidebar.

Timing can vastly improve the efficiency, but it's not exactly going to be something you can count on - especially if you think you can't use activities with Ready - but that's already the case with a number of conditions. Fascinated is useless, unless it's against a spellcaster and you do it right before their turn, stunning an enemy with a problematic reaction right after their turn is much more effective than stunning them right before their turn, etc.