Sickened/Nausea Escalation

[Know(Nothing)]

I never really looked at these conditions too closely until recently, and I guess I had been operating under the assumption that they worked the same way that fear and fatigue work. So someone who is already sickened, and is affected by another, different sickening condition, becomes nauseated.

Would this be a bad house rule? What consequences might come of this? Apparently it hasn't come up in our games yet.

[T.G. Oskar]

Actually, sickness and nausea, while not exactly an escalating status effect as the states of Fear, are pretty similar that they could be mixed up.

It all depends on a few factors. Fear, if scaled to its maximum, is an incapacitating effect, but one that's oddly resisted very easily. To explain further: the least state of fear, Shaken, grants only a penalty to certain bonuses (attack bonus and saving throws, IIRC), exactly like Sickened. The intermediate state, Frightened, retains the same but adds the escape clause. The final state, Panicked, adds a secondary condition, Cowering, whenever you're unable to escape from the source of fear, which is the incapacitating effect (much like Nausea). Since most fear effects are ALSO mind-affecting abilities, anything immune to fear or immune to mind-affecting abilities negates Cowering, which is what you want.

With sickening and nausea, things differ. Fewer creatures are immune to sickness and/or nausea, so if you find a way to escalate the two, you get a pretty decent incapacitating effect. Nausea allows move actions (to move, of course), but otherwise stops the opponent in its tracks; since it's so hard to resist, it's more effective than Paralysis, Petrifaction or Panic. If you were to escalate sickness into nausea, then having two different sources of sickness (Brutal Strike is an easily accessible one for Fighters, BTW) would easily incapacitate everyone, even careless Wizards. That'd be a very powerful effect.

However, if immunity to sickness and/or nausea was easier to get, it'd be fair, because you'd ALSO retain the Sickness penalty, which is pretty awesome, but it wouldn't affect everybody that easily. The increased resistance would balance out the penalty + incapacitation effect, particularly one that's somewhat easy to get. It'd make some creatures pretty annoying (Troglodytes with Brutal Strike would kill people in seconds flat, between the Brutal Strike effect and their Stench special attack), so you'd have to consider it.

IMO, though, it's a fair houserule, so as long as you consider tying it to some sort of resistance. Immunity to disease isn't so easy to get, but it makes up for a nice way to resist that; immunity to poison also works. Defining sickness and nausea as either a disease-like effect or a poison-like effect, and then allowing sickness to escalate into nausea is, IMO, fair enough because of the counterbalances.

[Psyren]

Nausea is easily the most brutal of the ones listed so I would say no. Even Panicked lets you cast spells or use items to escape; Nauseated characters just get it in the shorts.

[Miss Disaster]

I always found it funny how the SRD describes Nauseated as "experiencing stomach distress" ... yet various creatures types perceived as being without stomachs are not listed as being immune to Nauseated.

[Fax Celestis]

Nausea is easily the most brutal of the ones listed so I would say no. Even Panicked lets you cast spells or use items to escape; Nauseated characters just get it in the shorts.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w220/Davis_Andrews/what-you-did-there-i-see-it.jpg

[Phelix-Mu]

The real interesting thing in that pic is the Systems Resource Management graphs for the bird and the human.

The bird is doing something that is impressive for a bird, calmly examining a human at close range while inside a building.

The woman, on the other hand...she's losing a staring contest with a bird.

:smalltongue:

[TuggyNE]

I always found it funny how the SRD describes Nauseated as "experiencing stomach distress" ... yet various creatures types perceived as being without stomachs are not listed as being immune to Nauseated.

Well. Now they have stomachs. Is that not most strongly distressing?

[T.G. Oskar]

Nausea is easily the most brutal of the ones listed so I would say no. Even Panicked lets you cast spells or use items to escape; Nauseated characters just get it in the shorts.

You sure? Nauseated characters can still move, and they can move towards advantageous positions if necessary, even if it's only one move action. The only action Panicked characters can do is, pretty much, withdraw; the options to escape are a "last resort" option, when they are the ONLY means to escape. It doesn't say to use these options if they're the best chance to escape. There's a big difference.
Also, someone has to be the serious guy. Rule of Vaudeville.
It's a big reason why they're compared not JUST by their effects, but by their prevalence (fear effects are more common than sickness effects), their resistances (resisting fear is more common than resisting sickness; getting ways to resist fear are more numerous than resisting sickness), and their full effect (Panicked stacks the Shaken and Frightened effects, whereas Nausea would stack only Sickened), not to mention how easy it'd be to reach the other state (you need three steps to reach Panicked, and you'd need only two to reach Nauseated). If you were to compare them just by their effects, you could debate whether Panicked or Nauseated is worse in its incapacitating effect with their "precursors" combined, but they'd end up being pretty much the same; Nauseated allows only a single move action but "move action" allows for a few different effects, whereas Panicked FORCES you to escape but allows several options to hightail it away. It'd be unfair just to compare them by that, particularly since it's easier to stack fear effects than to impose the sickened condition on someone.

[Psyren]

You sure? Nauseated characters can still move, and they can move towards advantageous positions if necessary, even if it's only one move action. The only action Panicked characters can do is, pretty much, withdraw; the options to escape are a "last resort" option, when they are the ONLY means to escape. It doesn't say to use these options if they're the best chance to escape. There's a big difference.

This is false:

" A panicked creature can use special abilities, including spells, to flee; indeed, the creature must use such means if they are the only way to escape."

The "indeed" there means "you can choose to use them in the first clause too, it's just mandatory in this second one."

Furthermore, "moving to an advantageous position" is probably going to be beyond a nauseated character's capability, because picking out which position is advantageous requires them to pay attention, which they can't do.