Designing for Player Agency: Stun, Freeze, Petrify
Player agency is paramount in good game design. And there's no simpler way to take away all player agency than "Lose a turn" mechanics. A lot of Age of Exploration was inspired by Hero Quest, and it’s interesting that this simple ‘lose a turn’ spell appeared for both a player and for Zargon (The game master)
It’s an interesting piece of symmetry, considering HQ doesn’t have a lot...(D&D of course is entirely symmetrical) I decided right away that I didn’t want monsters to have any effects that “stunned” the players, because there’s few things less fun that doing nothing on your turn. (On the other side of the spectrum- I don’t create any spells for players that slow monsters or create zones of control, because it feels really weak when you slow a monster and it gets to you anyway) I DID make 1 player spell that stuns enemies, and it turned out so powerful that we had to give it one of the lowest ranges, and the least damage of any spell.
But then I wanted to design Basalisks, and we decided right away that they’d be ambush predators who use chameleon-like illusionary camoflogue to blend into their surroundings, and we wanted to keep the ‘turns targets to stone’ theme intact, but we already knew we didn’t want it to be ‘lose a turn’ So my fix was to make the petrification effect creep up from a player’s feet, instead of instantaneous. Here’s a breakdown Turn 1- Feet stiffen: half speed, disadvantage to balance Turn 2- Legs locked: Can't move Turn 3- Arms frozen/petrified: Can't make weapon attacks but can still cast a cantrip Turn 4- Fully petrified Turn 5- Effect wears off in reverse (same as turn 3, etc.) This gave players a very long lead up offered them a chance to react, reposition, and provides them 2 turns to drink a potion or cast purify, and 3 turns to cast dispel. (The light element cantrip, which I haven’t made a card for yet) It also gives Basalisks a chance to escape a dangerous party of humans/humanoids
