Stunned after taking Wait maneuver

[Lancewholelot]

Recently in a game I was running, a player took the Wait maneuver to attack a cave bear if it came toward him. Before this Wait was triggered the player was stunned by a sorceress' Death Vision spell. The cave bear then gets to move in on its turn without the stunned player getting the attack he was waiting for. The player's next turn starts and I tell him he must take the Do Nothing maneuver due to stun. The player protest that he had already lost a turn and should have already gotten a chance to recover. I stuck to my ruling, but how would you call it?

[evileeyore]

My ruling? His Wait would have finalized with him stunned and making his first recovery roll. Why? Because his turn doesn't end until he either takes his Wait or it passes.

If he succeeded his recovery, then he acts on his next turn. If he failed, he's still stunned.

And partially because he's right, he already lost a turn to the stun.

[Anthony]

Recovery from stun does not occur on any action; it occurs when you take the Do Nothing maneuver.

Originally Posted by b364

On each turn of Do Nothing, he may attempt a HT roll to recover from physical stun or an IQ roll to recover from mental stun.

On the other hand, nothing in the description of stunning actually prevents you from using a delayed action (it specifies that you take Do Nothing on your next turn, gives a penalty to active defenses, and forbids retreat, but does not address readied actions), and a Wait that fails to trigger is equivalent to Do Nothing.

[Lancewholelot]

If the player's nullified Wait counts as his "next turn" and he successfully rolls recovery, then he'll get to act normally before the sorceress gets a turn following her casting. That's why I think this is wrong and the player still has to Do Nothing on his actual next turn. The Wait maneuver was his last turn, Do Nothing is his next turn. Everyone else still gets their turns while the player is stunned.

[finn]

I agree with Lancewholelot's ruling and reasoning.

I see no reason the character should recover from the sorceress' spell faster just because the character was waiting to do something. Yes, the character did kind of lose an extra turn, but that risk is inherent in the Wait maneuver, though it was worsened by a timely stun effect.

[Anthony]

The risk of losing your turn is inherent in a wait maneuver anyway; if the trigger doesn't happen, you lose your action. The actual rules are sort of strange, though.

[Ultraviolet]

I don't think the Wait should allow the Do Nothing needed to break the stunning. That would be converting his action.

The character called a Wait manoeuvre, which specified to attack, if the circumstances occurred, otherwise keep waiting. You don't just wait until the thing you're waiting for accurs, you're waiting until it's your turn again. Only then can you do something else.
Or Nothing, as it is here...


And I don't think one should be allowed - even if it is suspected that the sorcesess casts Stunning spells - to call a Wait in order to do an instantaneous break stunning, and then react as if nothing happed first in the next round. Because this nullified the sorceress' effect and because of the 1 second rounds the Stunning is broked almost instantly. Pre-emptive Stun breaking? Nah.

[Donny Brook]

If the player had moved instead of Waiting, it seems like there would be no question.

If the player had a lower speed than the sorceress, it seems like there would be no question.

The problem is an artifact of the Wait maneouver which is a complicated way of allowing faster characters to move later. As such, it merely takes the PC from state 1, above, into state 2.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

If the player had moved instead of Waiting, it seems like there would be no question.

If the player had a lower speed than the sorceress, it seems like there would be no question.

The problem is an artifact of the Wait maneouver which is a complicated way of allowing faster characters to move later. As such, it merely takes the PC from state 1, above, into state 2.

That's my take too. If Wait were implemented as lowering your place in the Basic Speed order for the rest of the combat instead of just until the next cycle through the order - which would have been an equally reasonable way to implement it from a game design perspective - the player might have a point, but that isn't how it works.

[Gnome]

From B366: "You may transform your Wait into an Attack, Feint, All-Out Attack (you must specify the option before acting), or Ready maneuver."

Since "Do Nothing" is not listed, by RAW you cannot use Wait to prepare for being stunned in order to recover faster. And it doesn't make much narrative sense to me either. Does being prepared for being magically stunned allow you to break the magical stun faster? If so, it's something about the way magic works in your world and nothing to do with Waits or the combat sequence...