I believe the purpose of a negative status effect in RPGs is to throw the player a curveball. To force them to change their strategy and reconsider their options. Blinded makes your attacks harder and many spells impossible to use. Frightened limits where you can move. Will you attack and risk missing and wasting your turn? Or will you use a spell to remove the condition before things get out of hand? Every negative condition creates an interesting complication for you to deal with. Every condition, except the lose-a-turn ones that inflict incapacitated and stop you from moving: paralyzed, petrified, stunned, and unconscious. These conditions do the complete opposite and rob you of any choice, period. Failed a saving throw? You can't take your turn. Failed it again? You don't get to play D&D today. Are these conditions too powerful for monsters to be inflicting? That's not the point. Even if the mechanics for inflicting the conditions were perfectly balanced, even if you make a build with a low chance of being paralyzed, that doesn't change the fact that actually being paralyzed is the worst. Paralyzed would be a lot more interesting if it imposed disadvantage on your attacks and did some other thing that pressured you to do something different. Instead, it just prevents you from doing anything at all.
Some might say that it's only fair that the monsters can inflict these effects if the players can, too. And I agree. Maybe the players shouldn't have these either. A single spellcaster with hypnotic pattern can shut down an entire encounter in just one turn while the martials can only dispatch enemies one at a time. If spellcasters could only hinder enemy actions instead of completely eliminating their turns, it might shrink the divide between martials and spellcasters.
If paralysis is the worst, I hate to be the one to tell you about unconsciousness and death.
Does losing a turn suck? Of course, but risks are what make victory meaningful. Taking away a player's control arbitrarily and unexpectedly is never a good idea, but conditional effects are to be expected, and it's up to the players to anticipate them and plan accordingly. A good DM should provide opportunities to learn about risks before they are encountered.
I was playing in an encounter last night fighting something with a paralysing attack (saving throw also at the end of each of your turns).
I pretty much always failed the initial roll and was paralysed for my next turn, and then saved at the end of that turn, so was free to have reaction attacks until getting paralysed again.
The whole group found it quite hilarious.
Note that the DC was only 11, and I had +4 on the saving throw! (Failed 7 of 9 rolls)
If we were in a group of 7-8 players instead of only 4, it would have been far more boring - but I can't stand large groups anyway because of the time interval between player's turns in a normal combat.
If paralysis is the worst, I hate to be the one to tell you about unconsciousness and death.
Does losing a turn suck? Of course, but risks are what make victory meaningful. Taking away a player's control arbitrarily and unexpectedly is never a good idea, but conditional effects are to be expected, and it's up to the players to anticipate them and plan accordingly. A good DM should provide opportunities to learn about risks before they are encountered.
If you're paralyzed for the entire fight, then victory isn't satisfying because it doesn't really depend on anything you do because you can't do anything. This isn't a video game where only 2 of your 4 party members are paralyzed. That one character is the only one you control.
If paralysis is the worst, I hate to be the one to tell you about unconsciousness and death.
Does losing a turn suck? Of course, but risks are what make victory meaningful. Taking away a player's control arbitrarily and unexpectedly is never a good idea, but conditional effects are to be expected, and it's up to the players to anticipate them and plan accordingly. A good DM should provide opportunities to learn about risks before they are encountered.
If you're paralyzed for the entire fight, then victory isn't satisfying because it doesn't really depend on anything you do because you can't do anything. This isn't a video game where only 2 of your 4 party members are paralyzed. That one character is the only one you control.
I don’t know I had a fight where I was banished the entire fight, which is basically the same thing. It was still satisfying when the party won. It’s a team game, and my team won. It was frustrating when I kept failing my saves, but in the end I was happy.
And I’m pretty sure I was taunting the guy from wherever I was about how I forcing him to use his concentration, so that was a kind of a contribution.
100% agree. Though, the problem would be somewhat mitigated if turns were shorter. And I think shorter turns would have other benefits as well, but I digress.
100% agree. Though, the problem would be somewhat mitigated if turns were shorter. And I think shorter turns would have other benefits as well, but I digress.
Shorter turns are generally managed by having smaller numbers of PCs.
If paralysis is the worst, I hate to be the one to tell you about unconsciousness and death.
Does losing a turn suck? Of course, but risks are what make victory meaningful. Taking away a player's control arbitrarily and unexpectedly is never a good idea, but conditional effects are to be expected, and it's up to the players to anticipate them and plan accordingly. A good DM should provide opportunities to learn about risks before they are encountered.
If you're paralyzed for the entire fight, then victory isn't satisfying because it doesn't really depend on anything you do because you can't do anything. This isn't a video game where only 2 of your 4 party members are paralyzed. That one character is the only one you control.
I don’t know I had a fight where I was banished the entire fight, which is basically the same thing. It was still satisfying when the party won. It’s a team game, and my team won. It was frustrating when I kept failing my saves, but in the end I was happy.
And I’m pretty sure I was taunting the guy from wherever I was about how I forcing him to use his concentration, so that was a kind of a contribution.
I'm on board with this point of view, its a team effort and I'm rooting for us all to win.
In fact my last game I had top initiative and was able to hypnotic pattern the enemies so only the "boss" was up and the combat wasn't even much of a challenge. Even though we won, it felt worse to me because everyone else barely got to do anything.
If paralysis is the worst, I hate to be the one to tell you about unconsciousness and death.
Does losing a turn suck? Of course, but risks are what make victory meaningful. Taking away a player's control arbitrarily and unexpectedly is never a good idea, but conditional effects are to be expected, and it's up to the players to anticipate them and plan accordingly. A good DM should provide opportunities to learn about risks before they are encountered.
If you're paralyzed for the entire fight, then victory isn't satisfying because it doesn't really depend on anything you do because you can't do anything. This isn't a video game where only 2 of your 4 party members are paralyzed. That one character is the only one you control.
I don’t know I had a fight where I was banished the entire fight, which is basically the same thing. It was still satisfying when the party won. It’s a team game, and my team won. It was frustrating when I kept failing my saves, but in the end I was happy.
And I’m pretty sure I was taunting the guy from wherever I was about how I forcing him to use his concentration, so that was a kind of a contribution.
I'm on board with this point of view, its a team effort and I'm rooting for us all to win.
In fact my last game I had top initiative and was able to hypnotic pattern the enemies so only the "boss" was up and the combat wasn't even much of a challenge. Even though we won, it felt worse to me because everyone else barely got to do anything.
Whenever I lose every turn in a combat, I do sometimes feel that sense of hope that my team will succeed without me. But more often, it just feels like a slap in the face as each turn comes around and disappears immediately. If I wanted to watch other people play without me, I'd watch Critical Role. In other battles, I've seen my teammates foam at the mouth as they find themselves completely unable to act for an entire battle. One particular battle saw us fighting 3 Chuuls. Our rogue was paralyzed for the entire fight, died, and was brought back while still paralyzed. He was furious. That same rogue later triggered a hold person trap and was paralyzed not just for an entire climactic boss fight, but for the full duration as he never made his save. No one was in a position to remove the condition, so we didn't interact with him. The boss didn't even see him as a threat, so even he didn't attack him. It's stuff like this that gets players thinking, "Why did I bother coming today?"
As for your hypnotic pattern story, yeah. That's another reason I gave against players having lose-a-turn effects. Why be a barbarian with an extra 1d12 damage on crits when you can just... end the encounter? It's not the only source of the martial/spellcaster divide, but I think it's a big one.
You don't even really need to be CCd to feel useless. I recently played in a game as a paladin, and had zero ranged attacks. Well. We fought some aerial enemies that rarely touched down at all, and he spent the whole fight comedically shouting and dashing as an action. By turn 6 or 7 of only taking the dash action to criss cross uselessly over the battlefield he finally caught up to an enemy juuuuuuust in range, and dumped his highest level spellslot into smiting out of pure frustration. It was both annoying as a player, but also hilarious and silly, and ultimately a satisfying conclusion.
Things go wrong sometimes in this game. That's an important part of it. Conditions that take you out of commission is a real threat. That's a good thing.
I think, my only advice though is if there are conditions or situations that will take a character out of commission, ideally this gets foreshadowed. Use the threat of such a fate looooong before the condition or situation manifests its ugly head. This tension is a fantastic story element. The suspense of walking through a overgrown field a ultra-realistic human "statues" is the perfect lead in to a fight to an enemy that can petrify. The suspense is only possible because of the looming danger.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
You don't even really need to be CCd to feel useless. I recently played in a game as a paladin, and had zero ranged attacks. Well. We fought some aerial enemies that rarely touched down at all, and he spent the whole fight comedically shouting and dashing as an action. By turn 6 or 7 of only taking the dash action to criss cross uselessly over the battlefield he finally caught up to an enemy juuuuuuust in range, and dumped his highest level spellslot into smiting out of pure frustration. It was both annoying as a player, but also hilarious and silly, and ultimately a satisfying conclusion.
Things go wrong sometimes in this game. That's an important part of it. Conditions that take you out of commission is a real threat. That's a good thing.
I think, my only advice though is if there are conditions or situations that will take a character out of commission, ideally this gets foreshadowed. Use the threat of such a fate looooong before the condition or situation manifests its ugly head. This tension is a fantastic story element. The suspense of walking through a overgrown field a ultra-realistic human "statues" is the perfect lead in to a fight to an enemy that can petrify. The suspense is only possible because of the looming danger.
Oh yeah, this game is not kind to melee characters. The only way to have a melee character be somewhat viable against flying ranged enemies is to have the throwing fighting style and throw javelins. The One D&D playtest is making that fighting style just a base game mechanic, so hopefully stuff like that will be a thing of the past.
As for foreshadowing bosses that have these abilities... Well, it's not just bosses. The game is filled with enemies that have these lose-a-turn effects but can only function as mooks due to their ratio of offensive power to defensive power. Is this build-up really needed for every single enemy with these lose-a-turn effects for it to feel fair? That suggests that there is something wrong with the base game mechanic itself. And you said yourself that the idea was to prepare the players before "the condition/situation manifests its ugly head." Wouldn't the best way to handle it be to change the effects themselves so the players can... well... play?
Suppose, for instance, that the paralyzed didn't inflict incapacitated but instead prevented you from attacking or casting spells? This is on top of attacks against you having advantage, your Dex saves automatically failing, being unable to speak, and close-range enemies automatically scoring a critical hit against you. So what can you do? Well, those acid vials that have been sitting in your inventory for a month suddenly look appealing, don't they? But at low health, you might want to consider chugging a potion instead to avoid suffering instant death due to massive damage, a move that wouldn't be optimal if you could just cast fireball.
Even having 0 hit points could be reworked so that instead of inflicting unconscious, it inflicted incapacitated and prone. Now you have to worry about whether you should crawl closer to an ally to receive aid or crawl farther away to avoid a big AOE blast.
In the several years we’ve been playing my group has hardly ever had a situation that you describe. It’s come up, but not often, for both monsters and PC’s.
I did use Hold Person, with my Druid, on a group leader who was trying to shake us down, and it ended up more a social encounter than a combat one.
Maybe my DM tends to prefer different types of enemies than your DM. So my DM might be going easy on us, as far as status effects (most combats are still quite difficult), or your DM might be just throwing way to many of these types of enemies at you, if this is a constant thing happening.
I really think these effects are fine as is. It sucked when it did happen, but it’s part of the game.
I really think these effects are fine as is. It sucked when it did happen, but it’s part of the game.
What it sounds like is, you agree that it's bad for the game, but it would be too difficult to extract it without causing more damage. A necessary evil, perhaps.
I keep returning to this idea: there should be something for players to do when they're out for the count. It should be important, because player action should always be important. But it can't be too important, because you never know when, or if, it's going to happen. So, what can it be?
1 - level up early? In my own experience, leveling up usually has no narrative explanation and it's inconsistently timed. Sometimes we level during a rest, sometimes during downtime. What if, when you were ready to level up, you could do it early when you go unconscious? You'd get one HD worth of HP, and maybe a new spell -- could be quite the comeback! You could argue that players might act recklessly for rewards, but I'm not sure that's even a problem. What is a problem, though, is that this often takes a little while, and they might get revived before they're finished.
2 - interact with some exclusive content? Ghostly NPCs, gods, a necropolis, ancient riddles... Hard to make these things important, though, since by definition they don't otherwise affect the world.
3 - meddle with fate? Maybe they can be allowed to tamper with some future events. Random encounter rolls. Treasure rolls! Monster attack rolls in this very fight. Figure out what pieces can be "safely" moved, and let the player choose. Maybe King Bob is going to wake up in six days with either a knife in his gut, or a bad case of elf pneumonia. This sounds really fun but it doesn't make sense for a general rule for all games.
Maybe the other PCs should be working to break whatever is causing one of their own to be disabled in this way?
Irrelevant.
But also, usually doing so requires an action, so you're giving up one action to get a different action at a later point in the turn order. That's not always the right call.
And often the antidote is more expensive than the poison. Restoration spells cost spell slots. Monsters can often do stuff to you without giving up spell slots. If you were to go back and forth like this, you would lose. Better to kill the monster, and undo the effect afterwards.
But to return to my point: irrelevant. The player who's sitting out can't do anything. And now you're saying it's not only the DM's job to use these things sparingly, but also the other players' jobs to make sure they fix them. At what point does the designers' job factor in?
Every attack you miss could be considered wasted just as much as every turn you spent paralyzed. Both involve a roll, so you're still doing something.
1: A level 1 character can fail two attacks on their turn with two-weapon fighting, and still be able to move, compared to one save and no movement. 2: They get to characterize their character through play, whereas describing their character's paralysis contributes nothing to that end -- everyone's paralyzed by ghoul goop the same way, after all. 3: They make their attacks with their favored ability score and proficiency, whereas their saving throw is chosen by the DM. Conclusion: Your argument is a straw man fallacy. The acceptance of apples does not suggest that the refusal of oranges is hypocrisy.
Being circumstantially frustrated is a feature, not a bug. Life can be unfair, and a game that wishes to emulate real life in any capacity needs to include at least the barest hint of unpleasantness. It isn't on the designers to add bumpers for those who can't handle being told "no".
Providing options for paralyzed and incapacitated players is perfectly fine. Usually, those players just chat with the other players and enjoy the game as a spectator for a while. Providing "meta commentary" is usually frowned upon, but whatever. If everyone is having fun, then they should be allowed to contribute to the party strategy.
If a player goes down and gets bored, let them control one or two of the mobs. Give them a die to roll for environmental hazards.
I'm sure the modules written for young children have suggestions for how to avoid tantrums when the player isn't happy with predictable outcomes. Those could be a good source to borrow from.
Action deprivation is among the most powerful status effects in the game, whether lasting 1 round or more via saving throw, especially when taking in consideration the length of many 5E combat lasting only a few rounds. It's not nicknamed save or suck for nothing.
Over time the game has improved over this, usually now offering a chance to get out of it. Back in AD&D some effects were endured for a number of rounds or minutes, effectively taking the target out of combat.
Is loose-a-turn bad for the game? Not unless overly used and abused. There's worse things in the game - like death - being the ultimate lost.
I believe the purpose of a negative status effect in RPGs is to throw the player a curveball. To force them to change their strategy and reconsider their options. Blinded makes your attacks harder and many spells impossible to use. Frightened limits where you can move. Will you attack and risk missing and wasting your turn? Or will you use a spell to remove the condition before things get out of hand? Every negative condition creates an interesting complication for you to deal with. Every condition, except the lose-a-turn ones that inflict incapacitated and stop you from moving: paralyzed, petrified, stunned, and unconscious. These conditions do the complete opposite and rob you of any choice, period. Failed a saving throw? You can't take your turn. Failed it again? You don't get to play D&D today. Are these conditions too powerful for monsters to be inflicting? That's not the point. Even if the mechanics for inflicting the conditions were perfectly balanced, even if you make a build with a low chance of being paralyzed, that doesn't change the fact that actually being paralyzed is the worst. Paralyzed would be a lot more interesting if it imposed disadvantage on your attacks and did some other thing that pressured you to do something different. Instead, it just prevents you from doing anything at all.
Some might say that it's only fair that the monsters can inflict these effects if the players can, too. And I agree. Maybe the players shouldn't have these either. A single spellcaster with hypnotic pattern can shut down an entire encounter in just one turn while the martials can only dispatch enemies one at a time. If spellcasters could only hinder enemy actions instead of completely eliminating their turns, it might shrink the divide between martials and spellcasters.
If paralysis is the worst, I hate to be the one to tell you about unconsciousness and death.
Does losing a turn suck? Of course, but risks are what make victory meaningful. Taking away a player's control arbitrarily and unexpectedly is never a good idea, but conditional effects are to be expected, and it's up to the players to anticipate them and plan accordingly. A good DM should provide opportunities to learn about risks before they are encountered.
I think they have their place, but I'd like to see a bit more soft control, like you mentioned - on both sides of the battlefield.
I was playing in an encounter last night fighting something with a paralysing attack (saving throw also at the end of each of your turns).
I pretty much always failed the initial roll and was paralysed for my next turn, and then saved at the end of that turn, so was free to have reaction attacks until getting paralysed again.
The whole group found it quite hilarious.
Note that the DC was only 11, and I had +4 on the saving throw! (Failed 7 of 9 rolls)
If we were in a group of 7-8 players instead of only 4, it would have been far more boring - but I can't stand large groups anyway because of the time interval between player's turns in a normal combat.
If you're paralyzed for the entire fight, then victory isn't satisfying because it doesn't really depend on anything you do because you can't do anything. This isn't a video game where only 2 of your 4 party members are paralyzed. That one character is the only one you control.
I don’t know I had a fight where I was banished the entire fight, which is basically the same thing. It was still satisfying when the party won. It’s a team game, and my team won. It was frustrating when I kept failing my saves, but in the end I was happy.
And I’m pretty sure I was taunting the guy from wherever I was about how I forcing him to use his concentration, so that was a kind of a contribution.
100% agree. Though, the problem would be somewhat mitigated if turns were shorter. And I think shorter turns would have other benefits as well, but I digress.
Shorter turns are generally managed by having smaller numbers of PCs.
I'm on board with this point of view, its a team effort and I'm rooting for us all to win.
In fact my last game I had top initiative and was able to hypnotic pattern the enemies so only the "boss" was up and the combat wasn't even much of a challenge. Even though we won, it felt worse to me because everyone else barely got to do anything.
Whenever I lose every turn in a combat, I do sometimes feel that sense of hope that my team will succeed without me. But more often, it just feels like a slap in the face as each turn comes around and disappears immediately. If I wanted to watch other people play without me, I'd watch Critical Role. In other battles, I've seen my teammates foam at the mouth as they find themselves completely unable to act for an entire battle. One particular battle saw us fighting 3 Chuuls. Our rogue was paralyzed for the entire fight, died, and was brought back while still paralyzed. He was furious. That same rogue later triggered a hold person trap and was paralyzed not just for an entire climactic boss fight, but for the full duration as he never made his save. No one was in a position to remove the condition, so we didn't interact with him. The boss didn't even see him as a threat, so even he didn't attack him. It's stuff like this that gets players thinking, "Why did I bother coming today?"
As for your hypnotic pattern story, yeah. That's another reason I gave against players having lose-a-turn effects. Why be a barbarian with an extra 1d12 damage on crits when you can just... end the encounter? It's not the only source of the martial/spellcaster divide, but I think it's a big one.
You don't even really need to be CCd to feel useless. I recently played in a game as a paladin, and had zero ranged attacks. Well. We fought some aerial enemies that rarely touched down at all, and he spent the whole fight comedically shouting and dashing as an action. By turn 6 or 7 of only taking the dash action to criss cross uselessly over the battlefield he finally caught up to an enemy juuuuuuust in range, and dumped his highest level spellslot into smiting out of pure frustration. It was both annoying as a player, but also hilarious and silly, and ultimately a satisfying conclusion.
Things go wrong sometimes in this game. That's an important part of it. Conditions that take you out of commission is a real threat. That's a good thing.
I think, my only advice though is if there are conditions or situations that will take a character out of commission, ideally this gets foreshadowed. Use the threat of such a fate looooong before the condition or situation manifests its ugly head. This tension is a fantastic story element. The suspense of walking through a overgrown field a ultra-realistic human "statues" is the perfect lead in to a fight to an enemy that can petrify. The suspense is only possible because of the looming danger.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Oh yeah, this game is not kind to melee characters. The only way to have a melee character be somewhat viable against flying ranged enemies is to have the throwing fighting style and throw javelins. The One D&D playtest is making that fighting style just a base game mechanic, so hopefully stuff like that will be a thing of the past.
As for foreshadowing bosses that have these abilities... Well, it's not just bosses. The game is filled with enemies that have these lose-a-turn effects but can only function as mooks due to their ratio of offensive power to defensive power. Is this build-up really needed for every single enemy with these lose-a-turn effects for it to feel fair? That suggests that there is something wrong with the base game mechanic itself. And you said yourself that the idea was to prepare the players before "the condition/situation manifests its ugly head." Wouldn't the best way to handle it be to change the effects themselves so the players can... well... play?
Suppose, for instance, that the paralyzed didn't inflict incapacitated but instead prevented you from attacking or casting spells? This is on top of attacks against you having advantage, your Dex saves automatically failing, being unable to speak, and close-range enemies automatically scoring a critical hit against you. So what can you do? Well, those acid vials that have been sitting in your inventory for a month suddenly look appealing, don't they? But at low health, you might want to consider chugging a potion instead to avoid suffering instant death due to massive damage, a move that wouldn't be optimal if you could just cast fireball.
Even having 0 hit points could be reworked so that instead of inflicting unconscious, it inflicted incapacitated and prone. Now you have to worry about whether you should crawl closer to an ally to receive aid or crawl farther away to avoid a big AOE blast.
In the several years we’ve been playing my group has hardly ever had a situation that you describe. It’s come up, but not often, for both monsters and PC’s.
I did use Hold Person, with my Druid, on a group leader who was trying to shake us down, and it ended up more a social encounter than a combat one.
Maybe my DM tends to prefer different types of enemies than your DM. So my DM might be going easy on us, as far as status effects (most combats are still quite difficult), or your DM might be just throwing way to many of these types of enemies at you, if this is a constant thing happening.
I really think these effects are fine as is. It sucked when it did happen, but it’s part of the game.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
What it sounds like is, you agree that it's bad for the game, but it would be too difficult to extract it without causing more damage. A necessary evil, perhaps.
I keep returning to this idea: there should be something for players to do when they're out for the count. It should be important, because player action should always be important. But it can't be too important, because you never know when, or if, it's going to happen. So, what can it be?
1 - level up early? In my own experience, leveling up usually has no narrative explanation and it's inconsistently timed. Sometimes we level during a rest, sometimes during downtime. What if, when you were ready to level up, you could do it early when you go unconscious? You'd get one HD worth of HP, and maybe a new spell -- could be quite the comeback! You could argue that players might act recklessly for rewards, but I'm not sure that's even a problem. What is a problem, though, is that this often takes a little while, and they might get revived before they're finished.
2 - interact with some exclusive content? Ghostly NPCs, gods, a necropolis, ancient riddles... Hard to make these things important, though, since by definition they don't otherwise affect the world.
3 - meddle with fate? Maybe they can be allowed to tamper with some future events. Random encounter rolls. Treasure rolls! Monster attack rolls in this very fight. Figure out what pieces can be "safely" moved, and let the player choose. Maybe King Bob is going to wake up in six days with either a knife in his gut, or a bad case of elf pneumonia. This sounds really fun but it doesn't make sense for a general rule for all games.
Idk. I think there's potential though.
Maybe the other PCs should be working to break whatever is causing one of their own to be disabled in this way?
Irrelevant.
But also, usually doing so requires an action, so you're giving up one action to get a different action at a later point in the turn order. That's not always the right call.
And often the antidote is more expensive than the poison. Restoration spells cost spell slots. Monsters can often do stuff to you without giving up spell slots. If you were to go back and forth like this, you would lose. Better to kill the monster, and undo the effect afterwards.
But to return to my point: irrelevant. The player who's sitting out can't do anything. And now you're saying it's not only the DM's job to use these things sparingly, but also the other players' jobs to make sure they fix them. At what point does the designers' job factor in?
1: A level 1 character can fail two attacks on their turn with two-weapon fighting, and still be able to move, compared to one save and no movement. 2: They get to characterize their character through play, whereas describing their character's paralysis contributes nothing to that end -- everyone's paralyzed by ghoul goop the same way, after all. 3: They make their attacks with their favored ability score and proficiency, whereas their saving throw is chosen by the DM. Conclusion: Your argument is a straw man fallacy. The acceptance of apples does not suggest that the refusal of oranges is hypocrisy.
Being circumstantially frustrated is a feature, not a bug. Life can be unfair, and a game that wishes to emulate real life in any capacity needs to include at least the barest hint of unpleasantness. It isn't on the designers to add bumpers for those who can't handle being told "no".
Providing options for paralyzed and incapacitated players is perfectly fine. Usually, those players just chat with the other players and enjoy the game as a spectator for a while. Providing "meta commentary" is usually frowned upon, but whatever. If everyone is having fun, then they should be allowed to contribute to the party strategy.
If a player goes down and gets bored, let them control one or two of the mobs. Give them a die to roll for environmental hazards.
I'm sure the modules written for young children have suggestions for how to avoid tantrums when the player isn't happy with predictable outcomes. Those could be a good source to borrow from.
Action deprivation is among the most powerful status effects in the game, whether lasting 1 round or more via saving throw, especially when taking in consideration the length of many 5E combat lasting only a few rounds. It's not nicknamed save or suck for nothing.
Over time the game has improved over this, usually now offering a chance to get out of it. Back in AD&D some effects were endured for a number of rounds or minutes, effectively taking the target out of combat.
Is loose-a-turn bad for the game? Not unless overly used and abused. There's worse things in the game - like death - being the ultimate lost.