Expanded Conditions - Homebrew
Header Art: Player’s Handbook by Wizards of the Coast
Conditions are useful terms throughout Dungeons & Dragons that are simply keywords or traits that provide shortened ways of communicating various mechanical effects, like how Frightened means more than just you are scared, but also you have disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of your fear is within line of sight and that you can’t willingly move closer to that source. Imagine if every monster that imposed the Frightened condition on a player character, if it had to include those two sentences every time. That would make statblocks an unwieldy mess and really make it difficult to parse through all the abilities… except we kind of already have a bit of that.
I think there should be more conditions in Dungeons & Dragons than just the 15 conditions we have, though I’m not saying we need to go back to 3rd edition and have 39 conditions. We probably don’t need to bring back in Blown Away as a condition that explains how far back you are pushed away by heavy winds, but I’m not opposed to that condition appearing again. Conditions are incredibly useful because they are just keywords to clean up wording in statblocks and have a simple word you can tell a player instead of rattling off sentences of effects.
It can be quite useful to tell a player, “Hey, you are blinded.” If they don’t immediately know what that means, they can just look it up quickly and find out that they can’t see and automatically fail any ability check that relies on sight and that attacks against them have advantage, while their attacks have disadvantage.
We are going to go over two conditions that already exist in the game, but need to be codified, and four new conditions to provide greater granularity in your games.
For those who just want to see the conditions:
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Existing Conditions
There are some conditions in the game that have yet to be codified, but I’m just going to hit two of them here. Those conditions are Bleeding and Swallowed. Bleeding is, basically, any persistent effect where you take damage every round until you do something to fix it while being swallowed involves you briefly experiencing what it’s like to be a delicious snack.
Bleeding
Persistent damage pretty much just exists as being set on fire or if a bearded devil decides to see how sharp they made their glaive that morning. Beyond that, persistent damage just doesn’t really rear its ugly head in this game, which is a shame. I’m all for dealing damage outside of a monster’s turn, especially if it is basically free damage for me and makes my player’s freak out cause they won’t stop dying.
The Condition
A target of this effect must be a creature that isn't an undead or a construct.
At the start of each of the creature’s turn, it loses hit points based on the effect. This does not deal a specific type of damage, and thus can not be reduced in any way.
If a wounded creature is the target of this effect multiple times, the damage dealt increases based on the damage of the effect.
Any adjacent creature can take an action to stanch this effect with a successful Wisdom (Medicine) check. The DC for this action is the same as the DC to resist the condition. If the creature is the target of magical healing, all bleeding immediately ends.
Example of Bleeding; Cannibal Corn created by Stephen Bandstra
What This Means
By placing all of the details into a condition, it not only cleans up the statblock (making it easier to parse for important information) but also makes it easier to give to a custom created monster. Now, you just have to come up with the DC to resist bleeding, as well as how much damage you have to deal - making it easier for newer DMs to quickly add to their own monsters.
When to use this Condition
You can use this condition whenever you have a monster that deals slashing or piercing damage and is renowned for being gruesome. If the creature feeds on blood, than it could make sense to have it inflict the Bleeding condition, making it easier to consume its victims blood.
Swallowed
Unlike bleeding, there are a lot of monsters that just want to turn an adventurer into a tasty snack. Each one features one to two paragraphs of text on the statblock, bloating the size of their statblock and making it rather difficult to hit the most pressing information. How many creatures can you devour, what is their size, how much damage does the stomach acid do, how much damage does a creature need to do to force a saving throw, and what is the save DC.
The Condition
A target of this effect is blinded and restrained, has total cover against attacks and other effects outside the creature that swallowed them.
At the start of the creature's term that swallowed them, the swallowed target takes acid damage based on the swallower.
A creature can only swallow a number of others, based on its size. If the swallower takes an amount of damage or more from a single turn from a target inside of it, they must succeed on a Constitution saving throw with a DC equal to 10 + their Constitution saving throw or regurgitated all swallowed targets.
If the swallowing creature dies, a swallowed target is no longer restrained and can escape the corpse using 10 feet of movement, exiting prone.
Example of Swallowed; Wihwin created by Stephen Bandstra
What This Means
Not only do we get rid of a bunch of bloat, making it easier to parse the statblock for key information, we now can just tell a player they are swallowed and they can easily find that information to reference instead of the GM constantly having to tell them what it means. When you can give more information to players, it makes the job of being a GM that much easier.
When to use this Condition
This condition is great for large creatures that like to swallow their prey, like snakes, froghemoths, danger lizards, and even toads. For custom monsters, think about how they eat and if it makes sense for them to be able to swallow a creature whole. Large and bigger dragons never get a chance to swallow a creature whole, and while you may disagree with that, it does provide some guidance. These creatures should be huge and with a vicious appetite, they should have a large stomach where they can store creatures, and typically have lower intelligence - I guess, because creatures who don’t first chew their food are dumber than those who thoroughly chew their food… less acid reflux.
New Conditions
The following four conditions all work in a similar way. Two of them are specifically for your physical abilities; Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. The other two are for your mental abilities; Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. In each group, there is one that only imposes a -1 penalty to your ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that use your physical or mental abilities, and then the other one imposes disadvantage on all of those abilities.
The reason why each category has two, one that imposes -1 penalty and the other that imposes disadvantage is simply because of granularity. While many people love the advatnage/disadvantage of 5e, and it is a good system, it does mean that things go from 0 to 100 immediately. If you are poisoned, you are 100% poisoned. If you are frightened, you are 100% frightened. There is nothing that really conveys slightly scared or terrified, its either you are 100% fine or 100% frightened.
By imposing a smaller penalty, that being a -1 penalty, you can show to the PLAYER that their character is dealing with some stuff that can turn bad for them. By introducing some granularity, it provides forewarning to the players and gives you more to work with than just disadvantage… because where do you go after you impose disadvantage? It doesn’t stack, and so there isn’t a way to convey that their terror has increased mechanically within the system.
Weakened
A weakened creature suffers a -1 penalty on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws.
Creatures that weaken adventurers do so by physically making them tired, this often comes from decreasing a creature’s hit point maximum (not that scary at levels greater than 5th level). When you impose the -1 penalty to them, you are effectively decreasing their ability scores by 2 points, showing that they are physically getting weaker, slower, and unwell.
Example
Creatures that could impose this -1 penalty on their attacks could be something like the wight. When it successfully drains a creature of their hit points, it also imposes the weakened condition until the target finishes a long rest. Because this condition specifically states it is a -1 penalty, the condition can’t be stacked over and over. The character just takes the -1 to show them (mechanically) that the wight is draining them of their physical prowess.
Drained
A drained creature has disadvantage on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws.
The stronger version of weakened, Drained imposes disadvantage on physical abilities. This allows you to show that while a character might be physically weaker, they are still mentally as sharp as ever.
Example
Certain creatures that impose this condition could include those that inflict powerful debuffs or give afflictions. The mummy imposes a magical curse upon those who it hits, making them a prime candidate to show that this magical curse is mechanically sapping their strength by imposing that disadvantage on all physical checks, attacks, and saves.
Shaken
A shakened creature suffers a -1 penalty on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws.
Much like how weakened only imposes a -1 penalty, this condition does the same but on all mental abilities. The same reason applies to this one as before, to provide you mechanical evidence to the players that there character is going through a tough time. It’s not slightly harder for them to focus, to think straight, and to charm other people because something has caused their minds to be shook.
Example
There are a lot of creatures that charm and affect minds, making them great candidates to cause minds to be shook. Not only does this make it easier for them to keep control on their victims minds, it also shows that the character is mentally exhausted from having their mind challenged by another. A creature like an incubus can use their Charm, and during that time, a mind would be in a dazed and confused cloud, making it hard for them to fight their way through the ability and clear their mind of alien influences.
Discombobulated
A discombobulated creature has disadvantage on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws.
Maybe it’s because its fun to say (go on, say it out loud), but I sure do like this word. It is a great representation of something being disjointed and hard to muster through. When a creature becomes discombobulated, things have gone wrong for their mind as they find it even harder to think straight or to put on their charm. This is a more powerful version of Shaken and tells the player that their character is finding it hard to mentally prepare themselves for adventure.
Example
Anyone who is powerful enough to fully take control of an adventurers mind is likely to impose this condition, leaving them staggered and unable to fully know if their thoughts are their own. An example would be a powerful entity like the Elder Brain who sends their mind blasting and tearing into another creatures, leaving them shocked and discombobulated for a minute before they can get their bearing (of course, you might allow them to repeat the saving throw at the end of their turn, allowing them to mentally snap back sooner than those with lower mental scores).
Ending the Conditions
That’s our look at new conditions, but there are more that could be created. Being set on fire could be its own condition, just like confusion could be a condition. There are many monsters I would have loved to have them impose something like the confusion spell but I don’t feel like writing out a d10 chart in a statblock. Conditions are incredibly useful keywords to provide a lot of information in a very concise way, and I love to see us have just a few more to offer a wider range of options to employ against our players… and I guess the players could use them on the monsters too… I guess.
Have you created new conditions for your games? What are they and how do they work? I’d love to see what others have done in this area.
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