Blog / Fifth edition rules
The 15 conditions in 5e, and what each one stops you doing
A condition is a state your character can be in that changes what you are allowed to do, or changes how your dice work. D&D 5e has fifteen of them, and they are deliberately dull: almost every one is a short list of "your rolls have disadvantage", "rolls against you have advantage", or "you cannot take actions". There is no general rule to learn. There are fifteen small lists.
That is worth knowing because most of what a dangerous monster does to you is not damage. It is a condition. The ghoul's claws are not frightening because of the 2d4; they are frightening because of the paralysis, and the paralysis is frightening because of a clause most tables forget.
All fifteen, in one table
| Condition | What it does | How it typically ends |
|---|---|---|
| Blinded | You cannot see. You fail any check that needs sight. Your attacks have disadvantage, and attacks against you have advantage. | The effect's duration, a saving throw it offers, or removing the cause |
| Charmed | You cannot attack the charmer or target them with anything harmful, and they have advantage on social checks made on you. | The spell ends, or the charmer harms you, or a repeated save |
| Deafened | You cannot hear, and you fail any check that needs hearing. | Duration, or a restoration effect |
| Exhaustion | Six cumulative levels, each worse than the last. See below. | One level per long rest with food and water, or Lesser Restoration |
| Frightened | Disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of the fear is in your line of sight, and you cannot willingly move closer to it. | A save, usually repeated at the end of each of your turns |
| Grappled | Your speed is zero and you gain no benefit from bonuses to speed. | You escape, the grappler becomes incapacitated, or something moves you out of reach |
| Incapacitated | No actions and no reactions. | Whatever caused it ends |
| Invisible | You cannot be seen without magic or a special sense. Attacks against you have disadvantage; your attacks have advantage. Noise and footprints still give you away. | Duration, or a spell clause that ends it when you attack or cast |
| Paralyzed | Incapacitated, cannot move or speak, automatically fail Strength and Dexterity saves. Attacks against you have advantage, and any hit from within 5 feet is a critical hit. | A save, often repeated, or the duration |
| Petrified | Turned to stone. Incapacitated, unaware of your surroundings, auto-fail Strength and Dexterity saves, attacks against you have advantage. You do get resistance to all damage and immunity to poison and disease. | Greater Restoration, or the specific reversal the effect names |
| Poisoned | Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. | Duration, a save, or Lesser Restoration |
| Prone | You can only crawl, at double the movement cost, and standing up costs half your speed. Your attacks have disadvantage. Attacks against you from within 5 feet have advantage; from further away they have disadvantage. | You stand up |
| Restrained | Speed zero with no speed bonuses, your attacks have disadvantage, attacks against you have advantage, and you have disadvantage on Dexterity saves. | An escape check against the effect's DC, or the effect ending |
| Stunned | Incapacitated, cannot move, can barely speak, auto-fail Strength and Dexterity saves, attacks against you have advantage. | A save at the end of each of your turns, usually |
| Unconscious | Incapacitated, cannot move or speak, unaware of everything. You drop prone and drop whatever you were holding, auto-fail Strength and Dexterity saves, attacks against you have advantage, and any hit from within 5 feet is a critical hit. | You regain any hit points at all, or you wake |
Where they actually come from
Nothing in the rules hands out a condition on its own. Something else does it, and the thing that applied it is also the thing that says when it stops. If you want to know how a condition ends, read the spell or the monster ability, not the condition.
That is also where the repeat saving throw lives, and the timing is not decoration. A condition you can shake off at the end of each of your turns costs you far less than one you can only shake off at the start of your turn, and one that offers no repeat save at all lasts until the duration runs out or somebody else fixes you. Three effects can all say "paralyzed" and be three completely different problems.
Senses. Blinded and deafened arrive from spells, from magical darkness, from a face full of sand, and from a lot of monster breath. Invisible is the same family from the other side, and it is usually a spell with its own end clause.
The mind. Charmed and frightened come from enchantment spells, fey and fiends, and dragons in the room. Both usually allow a save when applied and often another one later. Charmed is the more interesting of the two: it does not make you an ally, it just makes it impossible for you to attack the charmer.
Position and grip. Grappled comes from another creature spending an attack on you. Restrained comes from webs, vines, and nets. Prone comes from a shove, a spell, falling over, or dropping to zero hit points.
Losing your turn. Incapacitated is the base ingredient. Stunned, paralyzed, petrified and unconscious are all incapacitated plus extra. This group is where fights are decided, because a creature that cannot take actions is a creature that has stopped playing.
Attrition. Poisoned is the mild one and turns up constantly. Exhaustion comes from forced marches, starvation, extreme cold, some spells, and a handful of monsters.
The ones that hide inside other ones
Three interactions cause most of the arguments.
Unconscious contains two other conditions. Falling unconscious means you are also incapacitated, and you also fall prone. That is not a house ruling; it is written into the condition. It matters because prone gives attackers within 5 feet advantage, which then feeds the next point.
Paralyzed and unconscious turn nearby hits into critical hits. Any attack that hits you from within 5 feet while you are paralyzed or unconscious is automatically a critical hit. Combine that with automatic advantage and automatically failed Dexterity saves and you have the reason a single failed save against Hold Person can end a character in one round. This clause is the single most commonly missed rule in the set.
Exhaustion is a different kind of thing. The other fourteen are on or off. You cannot be double-blinded. Exhaustion is a track: levels stack from one to six, each level keeps everything below it, and level six is death. It is also the only condition that heals on a schedule rather than on an event, coming down one level per long rest, assuming you actually ate and drank.
Two smaller notes worth having. Advantage does not stack, so being blinded and prone against the same attacker does not give the attacker double advantage; it gives advantage. And advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out entirely, which is why a blinded attacker shooting at a prone target twenty feet away rolls one flat die and moves on.
When something else is keeping track
Conditions are the rules that get quietly dropped mid-session. Not because anybody is cheating, but because the frightened effect was applied four rounds ago and everyone has had a turn since, and nobody remembers that the disadvantage only applies while the source is in line of sight.
On Rolegend that bookkeeping is not narrated. Keystone Engine stores each condition against the creature it is on, and the dice code applies it at the moment of the roll: the automatic failures, the attacker advantage, the disadvantage on your own rolls, and the block on acting at all while incapacitated. ROWAN is told what the result was and writes the scene; it does not decide the number and cannot quietly forget the effect. The one honest gap is movement: with no grid, the speed-zero half of grappled and restrained is narrated rather than enforced, which is published rule by rule at /rules-coverage.