Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

When being revived using bloodstaunch or a similar magic effect, your character is frozen in place for a length of time.

I would like to suggest instead replacing this effect with a temporary debuff that lasts for the same amount of time.

As I understand it, the reasoning behind adding the freeze effect was to force players to roleplay recovery instead of just mowing through dungeons after revival, which is not a bad idea, however these have been my observations on what this effect actually does in practice:

1: It massively disrupts and at times even halts roleplay.
The reason for this is that the character being stuck in one place is purely an ooc mechanic that cannot take into account the many factors that cause staying in one place to no longer make sense in-character.

For example, characters are no longer able to carry their friend away immediately after reviving. This cannot be solved by leaving them a corpse due to the fact that there is a very short time limit and roleplaying this out would have to be massively rushed, and also because it prevents the downed player from joining in the roleplay unless you never encounter anyone who is outside of party chat.

For another example, players are forced to either behave in a manner that is out of character for their pc or pause roleplay entirely to handwave the fact that they are forced to stand around in situations where this is wildly inappropriate or no longer makes in-character sense.
Examples include being in a very dangerous area where the only proper course of action is to drag your friend out so they can rest without being killed (leaving them a corpse is not always an option due to the time limit, and those of us who are willing to play out being wounded like to be able to participate), and situations where the injured character has been fully healed by magic and is physically capable of trying to spend their last bit of strength to fight for their friends who are in need.

This second example we came across during a dm event where the dm themself, from what I was told by the other player, was confused about why the character wasn't joining back in, because it made no sense.

Additionally, the need to move the revived character in a timely fashion is not only in dire situations. This has been done in calmer settings as well for many years, and only after implementing the freeze mechanic has this become disrupted. Healers and priests do not typically leave a person in need of treatment hanging out in the middle of the room where they are in the way of others and not resting properly.

2. The freezing mechanic does not really serve to make people roleplay in any reasonable way.

The one time I got roleplay out of having the freeze disrupt a group loot run, it was a very awkward "oh, you oocly can't move. I guess we'll do awkward small talk and wait it out while we try to shoehorn it into making ic sense" because my character had already been treated by the other characters and we were forced to stay in one place while snake people were respawning and trying to eat my character.

While in this scenario I do admit that I should have played out recovery a bit more since I'm pretty sure they only used healing kits on me, what cannot be justified is the fact that absolutely no one was able to attempt to take my character away instead of standing around getting attacked when he had already been punched into the floor mere moments before, simply due to an ooc mechanic forcing us to stand around waiting to be attacked. This, in my opinion, made the situation significantly more silly than simply carrying on too soon to avoid getting snakes spawned on top of us, because not only did we have to keep moving regardless because of where we were at the time, but we also had to sit around waiting to get beat on by even more snake people in addition.

As for players who refuse to stop at all, there is not really much you can do about that. If the players are disregarding you enough to ignore attempts at roleplay and leave you in the dust surrounded by enemies that are too difficult for you to handle alone, the solution is to just avoid loot running with them unless you're willing to deal with that sort of behavior.


These are my reasons for asking to make a change to the revival penalty.
As it is currently, it merely acts as an ooc slap on the hand for getting yourself revived, and it is a massive hindrance to roleplay.

I hope no one will see this as putting anyone down for the idea.
I do agree with having some sort of negative for being brought back at the brink of death. Freezing the character, however, is just way too far as it becomes an issue for players rather than the characters.

Which is why I feel a better solution, as stated at the begining of the post, would be to debuff the character for the same length of time instead of freezing them. This will mechanically demonstrate that the character still needs to take time to get back on their feet, without causing unnecessary issues that usually interrupt that very thing.


Thank you for reading. I hope this suggestion will be taken into consideration. I also hope there will be no hard feelings about it.
I've loved just about every single new addition that's gone into the server, it's just that this one I personally feel needs some adjustment.

Maybe rather then a freeze, it can be changed to a slow? so that RP of dragging or crawling can happen, while still being able to move about a room? Or weakly rising to their feet to die again next to their friends in need. I agree, many issues with freezing has happened, both in PvE, DM, and PvP events, post raise.

This is not just a blood staunch issue, it happens with Stabilize as well, and I believe Revivify.

Agreed. It is the same issue I have with channelled spells (mostly in RP, in combat they make sense). The lines to RP the spell get typed out fast and then everyone sits around awkwardly to wait for the mechanics to reflect what has happened in RP - which generally ruins pacing.

Though that being said, I don't know if the penalties will screw with spellslots (if they do, that should be a no-go). Maybe a different penalty should happen (a slow, as mentioned - though that is also disruptive to the overall pace as well).

Maybe an AB/AC/Saves penalty of 20, or something, for 2 mins instead of a "freeze in place".

Anrilor wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 12:56 pm Maybe rather then a freeze, it can be changed to a slow? so that RP of dragging or crawling can happen, while still being able to move about a room? Or weakly rising to their feet to die again next to their friends in need. I agree, many issues with freezing has happened, both in PvE, DM, and PvP events, post raise.

This is not just a blood staunch issue, it happens with Stabilize as well, and I believe Revivify.

I would have certainly liked this option a lot better after a recent PVP altercation myself. I was raised after fighting a boss and then had to just stand there while my party was attacked by other players. It would have been a lot better if I was able to emote.. army crawls behind the large tree that was behind her, and then be able to slowly move in that direction. Or be able to guzzle an invis potion to hopefully stay out of eye sight while I recovered from wounds. Instead I was just stuck there standing like an idiot taking bolts to my face unable to move or do anything. It was completely unrealistic and emersion breaking. Slow movement would make complete sense, everything else, not so much.

I do agree something needs to be adjusted as well for this. The suggestion above seem quite fine. My fun time that has happened with this use was in the Frost Giants. Someone was downed, possibly me I cannot remember who or what but soon enough Frost giants spawned again and a lovely ice storm struck to send the unmovable character back to the fugue from whence they came.

This did not happen just once and occurred to another char or two as well. At three times you can only laugh, and it does make me do so but being unable to move our downed comrades is unfortunate and perhaps can be adjusted.

Anrilor wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 12:56 pm Maybe rather then a freeze, it can be changed to a slow? so that RP of dragging or crawling can happen, while still being able to move about a room? Or weakly rising to their feet to die again next to their friends in need. I agree, many issues with freezing has happened, both in PvE, DM, and PvP events, post raise.

I like this suggestion. Being slowed would get the point across while still allowing the characters to take reasonable actions rather than just letting the monsters beat them up again.

It would also allow characters to carefully move their fallen friend to another location.
It bothers me when a player who's invested a lot of roleplay into their character being compassionate, reasonable, a good healer, and so on is forced oocly to leave their buddy on the floor or leave them to get bit by monsters.

Being slowed would work but I'd actually make it longer than the 2 minute freeze period.

And (I'm probably alone in this since most people don't like it when they get negative things but) I'd actually also slap some recovery penalty on them similar to the respawn system IF they are not treated by a healer (there are several classes that have access to curative spells) or perhaps the effects could also be lessened by someone with enough heal skill. Perhaps the time period would be different depending on how they were revived (bloodstaunch/stabilize vs revify vs etc). The fact of the matter is that the char was just severely hurt/downed/dead. Some high level spells could clear the negative effects.

While some characters can be pretty handy field medics without necessarily being "healers", not all chars and definitely not all classes are.

We had an incident just now where a non harmful spell caused NPCs to aggro (low light vision. I knew about this bug a while back, but thought it was fixed). The DM over the event rezzed my toon, but then I was frozen, unable to move or recast wards or anything until the timer was up.