Misc: Chilled Pseudo-Condition (and others)

[Tyloris]

In #853, I brought up Frost Armor and the chilled pseudo-condition. I got the idea from Kibble's Elemental Spells public reference document, which had Shocked as a pseudo-condition used by some lightning spells. The following note about them is pulled from their old document, but not present in their 2.0 one (though it still has those conditions):

Shocked

Shocked is a pseudo condition used in many Lightning spells that stuns a target until the start of their next turn. This effectively means they cannot take reactions, are incapacitated (interrupting some effects such as concentration), automatically fail Strength and Dexterity saves, and attacks against them have advantage.

This is a very powerful condition, but far less powerful than stunning them until the end of the turn, which also makes them lose their action. Shocked will always be described inline (as "shocking the target, stunning them until the start of the next turn")

Chilled would be a condition where the target's speed is reduced by half until the end of their next turn. It would be shared across abilities that triggered the chilled condition (or similar effects) in WoW, such as frostbolt, ice armor (issue #856), frost nova, or certain death knight or shaman spells. More advanced cold spells could instead trigger a slowed condition, as the slow spell, or entrap them in ice, which could either be individually dictated by the spells or be yet another condition or pseudo-condition.

We did briefly had a chilled quasi-condition as part of the 3.0 mage preview-1, under the frost mage ability Brain Freeze:

Brain Freeze Beginning at 6th level, whenever you deal cold damage to a creature with a mage spell, it must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or have its movement speed reduced by 10 feet until the end of your next turn as it becomes chilled.

When you deal cold damage to a chilled creature, it must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be grappled until the end of your next turn as it becomes frozen.

You have advantage on any spell attack you make against a frozen creature. If you successful hit a frozen creature the ice around it shatters and returns its speed to normal.

While removing the chilled/frozen conditions as defined in this specific ability isn't a bad idea, as it simplifies the ability, why the idea was dropped entirely isn't something I can easily find. Discord lacks the ability to search for an exact word/phrase.

There was a comment from Jih about moving away from adding conditions of our own, which I'm not so sure about. WoW is a very different game than DnD and has some effects that just don't translate well. For example, diseases are a lot more common and prominent in lore, to the point where a blanket immunity like with the paladin's divine health just doesn't work that well. While the project's design philosophy rules against altering the base mechanics of 5e, I don't think that precludes us from adding additional game mechanics that would better represent the world we're trying to bring to life.

[Tyloris]

I did find a list of variant rule conditions that is worth mentioning, if only to inspire ideas. Some are a little too complex for my taste, but some decent ideas relevant to Warcraft are chilled, confused, inebriated, sick, slowed, and weakened.