The Tavern

Hi all,

In a bunch of places, people have had problems stemming from being paralyzed. And it's not surprising why: if you fail a roll and aren't wearing stasis, you're unable to act. If there are even moderately nasty nasties around, you might be unable to act for longer than it takes to die. It's just not very fun.

What do folks think about replacing it, in at least nearly all cases, with petrification, confusion, or sleep? All of them are dangerous, but all of them give you some chance to react: Petrify lets you fire off a tele or summon an ally, sleep ends when you take damage, and confusion lets you heal (unless you're undrinking -- but even then, there's distortion unwields).

For some reason, leaving paralysis as an effect for Giant Eyeballs seems appropriate, but maybe that's just nostalgia talking.

Thoughts?

The second link is more a "death by bug and bad luck" than "death by paralysis". Regarding the 3rd, we've acknowledge that unresistible paralysis is not a good hell effect. I think it's an interesting threat as long as it's resistible or avoidable. Better to just find the cases where it's really unfair or not interesting and remove or replace it there. It's been removed as a possible crystal ball effect for example.
There's also the possibility of reducing the duration.

Yup. What evilmike said. It's funny; I was thinking about this and thought "well, maybe it'd be better if the duration were fixed and short" and then: he'd already said it.

Note that I'm not suggesting paralysis can't be made balanced; it's that every other paralysis-like effect is more interesting. Immediately losing the ability to make any moves is frustrating and not much fun to me.

njvack: I agree that paralysis as an effect is questionable. But the source matters a lot. If you see an eye or a sphinx, you know the danger and can react accordingly. The other thread started with paralysis as a hell effect, where this is not the case.

By the way, another solution would be to un-paralyse the player just before death. Still great trouble, but at least the player could spend an action. Watching helplessly how the character dies is the worst part of paralysis, in my opinion.

Unparalyzing before death is interesting, though I'm not quite sure about the mechanic -- would it cancel the killing blow? Leave you with Death's Door-levels of HP? And really, getting surrounded-and-almost-killed in effectively a single turn doesn't seem a lot more satisfying.

I agree: source matters a lot. One of the other things that's somewhat irksome is paralyze's commonness -- on eyes and sphinxes and a unique or two, OK -- but Ogre Mages? Deep Elf mages? And other than by consulting Henzell, how can you know that the monster in front of you is a paralyzer?

I'm guessing paralysis is as common as it is because it's an older effect, right? It seems odd that it's much more common than sleep, mesmerize, or fear, while being a much more serious effect.

Perhaps some form of accumulating system -

level 1 - cant move but can still attack and cast (like held?)
level 2 - as level 1 plus slowed
Level 3 - as current paralysis
That would give you some warning, while you still had the ability to do something about it.