Needs Help: Standard Status Effects

I originally posted about this in ATT here, but upon further review of the received comments, I think it'd be better to go over the trope here.

So, Standard Status Effects. It's definitely a trope, and the page is so big that another action needs to be taken with it to handle it. That said, after reviewing the page as-is, I think it needs a more general cleanup and not just another hard split.

As things currently stand, the page is split up by placing examples under the names that the games use for these effects. The problem is, though, that some games have much different effects but with the same name. Let's take "Cursed" as an example. In Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, it's a debuff that temporarily halves your max HP and MP. In later Dragon Quest games, it acts like a variety of confusion where you sometimes lose control of the character, but you can only cure it at a church. In Pokémon, it's a very potent Damage Over Time effect.

I think the more rational layout for the page would be to make a hard split into categories, and place each effect under their names in subpages. And yes, some effects (like Cursed) would have folders under multiple subpages, but at least this would give a clearer idea as to what each thing means. My proposed set of subpages (names pending) would be Life Loss, Debuff, Can't Act, Loss of Control, Instant Death (covering both immediate and countdown-style), and Meta Effects.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Opening per the page size problem.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I'd be down for hard-splitting the most notable status effects into their own pages and turning Standard Status Effects into a Super-Trope or index.

We already have tropes that make most of the folders on the page redundant, so we could easily just move the examples to these tropes:

• Damage Over Time for Poison Plague Bleeding and most cases of Burn
• The Paralyzer for Paralysis
• Forced Sleep for Sleeping
• Power Nullifier for Silenced
• Charm Person for Charmed
• Harmless Freezing or Literally Shattered Lives for Frozen
• Taken for Granite for Petrified
• Baleful Polymorph for Weird Transformation
• Interface Screw for A Meta Effect
• One-Hit Kill for Instant Death
• Deader than Dead for Destroyed
• Shrink Ray for Minimized/Shrunk
• Revive Kills Zombie for Zombie
• Anti-Regeneration for Decover

EDIT:

• Temporary Blindness and Blinded by the Light for Blindness
• Unstoppable Rage or Blinded by Rage for Berserk
• You Are Already Dead for Doom

Edited by Zuxtron on Jul 15th 2019 at 8:16:38 AM

Sounds good.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

So we will need tropes for

• Heavy/Encumberance/Gravity: Slowed movement and possibly cant jump
• Pacification: cant use your weapons but still can cast
• Slow: Slow everything, including attack and casting speed.
• Stop/Banish: Can not act and usually can not be acted on or when un-Timestopped everything happens at once.
• Fear/Forced March/Hysteria: Forced to just run around, usually into stuff.
• Vulnerability Up/Exposed/Null-Defense : increased damage taken
• Charm: Switching sides
• Bomb: You are going to explode! Occasionally the bomb is triggered if you take an action.
• Doom: Going to die after a set amount of time.
• Exhaustion/Enervation/Tired/Hungry: General stat downs

That covers all the standard ones I can think of.

Edit: Either those could just be listed under the supertrope (this), or subtropes could be launched separately. If we move the examples that fit existing subtropes better (as Zuxtron suggested), organizing status effects that don't already have subtropes should be easier.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 15th 2019 at 8:24:12 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

That is what I was talking about.

They are already mentioned many times in the 'other' section, which is just a section for drive by tropers to dump things they think are notable and very incomplete even by work.

Just like the OP said the effects are standardized just their naming conventions are not. For example 'Pacification' is called that in Final Fantasy XIV but in the Kiseki Series its known as 'Seal'.

I did mention Charm Person for Charmed. I didn't look through the "other" folder, but Vulnerability Up would be Damage-Increasing Debuff, and Bomb could maybe go under Why Am I Ticking? (I'm not sure about this one).

We'd need a trope for confusion/berserk where the character acts uncontrollably without accepting player commands.

I'm surprised to learn this, but apparently we don't have a trope for general stat debuffs, so we'd also need a trope for that.

Edited by Zuxtron on Jul 15th 2019 at 7:56:24 AM

Oops didn't see the Charmed Person.

Berserk is a funny one, its not quite the same as confusion. In many cases Berserk is a Status Buff as it usually is accompanied by a substantial strength or haste buff built in, games have entire classes built around it.

Confusion is universally bad, exactly how bad it is though can vary as some examples can throw away hard earned money or use powerful skills while others they just run around slaping people with weak melee attacks.

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Yeah some examples of 'Bomb' would go like that, usually those are the ones where you gotta run out of the group explode then come back into the group, often these wont actually damage the person actually exploding.

Others its a triggered effect such as if you take an action you go boom and kill everyone, if you do not take an action it will eventually go away or a healer will dispel it. Some its a constant effect where you are constantly dealing damage to everyone around you and they need to stay away.

Edited by Memers on Jul 15th 2019 at 5:11:51 AM

Berserk could maybe go under Unstoppable Rage (when positive) or Blinded by Rage (when negative).

I missed these, but Blindness goes under Temporary Blindness or Blinded by the Light, and Doom could possibly go under You Are Already Dead.

So that leaves Heavy/Encumbrance/Gravity, Pacification, Slow, Stop/Banish, Fear/Forced March/Hysteria, Bomb and stat downs.

I guess some of the ones with fewer examples could go into a proto-trope stage like with Forgotten Trope and Artistic License – Physics.

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

Maybe, I can think of quite a few examples of each from various RP Gs. The sections arnt laid out / structured at all which I think is the issue, "Other' does not lend itself well to this at all.

Clock expired; closing.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report