Hey! No lore in this post. Instead, I wanted to present an expansion to the 5e D&D conditions. As a homebrewer, I often felt like the conditions 5e presents us with are limited and half-finished. Many of the standard conditions are fine and perfectly usable but when designing new creatures, player abilities, or magic items, they either feel overused or way too harsh. Many hostile creatures are forced to fall back on prone or grappled as conditions they utilise, as things such as stunned or incapacitated are un-fun for the player, and paralysed or petrified are hardly ever used due to how deadly they are.
In this post I’ll be presenting some new conditions that are interesting to use but not so brutal they ruin a player’s fun, as well as reworking the poisoned condition to match its thematic nature.
Poisoned – Mechanics vs Thematics
As standard, the poisoned condition gave an affected creature disadvantage on Attack rolls and Ability Checks. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this being the resulting effect of being poisoned, however, this debuff feels broader in its mechanical opportunities than the name suggests. If I was designing a psionic creature that was able to mentally disorientate a creature, disadvantage on Attack rolls and Ability Checks would be a great way to mechanically show this effect. However, saying that the mental attack caused the poisoned condition would be emersion-breaking. I could write out the effect directly, stating that it caused disadvantage to these rolls but the entire point of a conditions system is to be able to quickly and easily express the details of an otherwise long description with a single word. Due to this, I have redesigned the Poisoned condition and added a new condition called Shaken to represent the rules originally belonging to Poisoned.
New Conditions
Poisoned
A poisoned creature no longer adds its PB to attack rolls, ability checks or saving throws.
Shaken
A shaken creature has disadvantage on Attack rolls and Ability Checks.
Panicked
A panicked creature has disadvantage on Attack rolls, Ability checks and Saving throws.
Bleeding
A bleeding creature takes damage equal to its own PB at the start of its turn.
Sluggish
A sluggish creature’s speed is reduced by half its maximum.
The creature cannot take reactions.
Burnt
A burnt creature is vulnerable to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage.
Rattled
A rattled creature has disadvantage on Attack rolls but deals an additional 1d6 damage.
Enraged
An enraged creature has advantage on Attack rolls but deals half damage.
Repulsive
A repulsive creature causes allied creatures within 10ft to become poisoned.
Allied creatures that start their turn within 10ft of a repulsive creature must move 10ft away at the beginning of their turn.
Maimed
A maimed creature causes allied creatures within 15ft to become shaken.
Final Thoughts
Some of these new conditions may feel quite mean at first glance. Burnt especially so. However, it’s important to remember that when it comes to conditions, the difficulty often comes from the duration you attach to it. Being stunned until the end of your next turn can be frightening and problematic but being stunned for 1 whole minute is much worse! You need to make sure you’re using these new conditions in sensible, balanced ways. It might be a challenge to get used to new or revised conditions as they are an instinctual part of gameplay so as I incorporate these new conditions into my creations I’ll link them back to this article as a reminder.
These designs were created with the help of my Twitch chat. You can help with future designs on my Twitch channel or by joining my community discord!
I hope the rest of your day is a great one and as always, may your next session be filling with glory!!
Veneon Reforged 
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