Wave of Despair

[Karishi]

Some spells have replacement text as they move from Crit to Crit Fail, while others have additive text. The text of Wave of Despair makes it a little unclear which it is:

You inflict despair on creatures in the area. The effects for each creature are determined by its Will save.

Critical Success: The creature is unaffected.
Success: For 1 round, the creature can't use reactions and must attempt another save at the start of its turn; on a failure, it is slowed 1 for that turn as it sobs uncontrollably.
Failure: As success, but the duration is 1 minute.
Critical Failure: As failure, and the creature is automatically slowed 1 for 1 minute.

Can one rewrite the Critical Failure text as this:
Critical Failure: The creature is slowed 1 and cannot use reactions for 1 minute as it sobs uncontrollably. Each round during that time, it must attempt another save at the start of its turn; on a failure it is instead slowed 2 for that turn due to the overwhelming despair.
or as this:
Critical Failure: The creature is slowed 1 and cannot use reactions for 1 minute as it sobs uncontrollably.

I'm inclined to think the former - that the latter would read "As failure, BUT the creature..." - but I'm not 100% certain.

[HammerJack]

The latter. Nothing in that spell ever suggests that Slowed 2 would be an option. As normal for conditions, you can't read "Slowed 1" twice as adding to become "Slowed 2", so no way that you could try to parse this spell would ever get there.

[shroudb]

as Hammerjack said: conditions do not stack unless explicitly called out to stack.

reading 2 is the correct one:

original success text: for 1 round can't use reactions, and make a save at start of turn or slowed 1 for that turn

for failure, we change the duration from 1 round to 1 minute:

failure: for 1 minute can't use reactions, and make a save at start of turn or slowed 1 for that turn

for crit failure we remove the save (automatically slowed instead):

critical failure: for 1 minute can't use reactions, slowed 1 for the duration.