Off-Guard and Helpless Conditions (5e Variant Rule)

Off-Guard and Helpless Conditions

These conditions add a little drama and spice to dangerous situations, but won't always take place in initiative order.

Off-Guard

A creature is caught off-guard when it is subjected to an attack, ability, or feature it has never encountered before or has no prior knowledge of.

• The creature has disadvantage on saving throws against the triggering effect.
• If the triggering effect has an attack roll, it is made with advantage.
• Ranged attacks don't have disadvantage if they're made within 5 feet of the creature.

A creature can only be caught off-guard once and becomes immune to this condition for any future effects of the same type that trigger it, unless its memory is somehow altered (as by modify memory) or damage to erase knowledge of the effect.

Helpless

A helpless creature is placed in a compromising position where lethality is logically guaranteed. Perhaps a knife is placed at their throat or a gun to their head, and they are currently being held hostage to negotiate a villain's escape.

• Helplessness is usually created by an antagonistic character having a readied action to do some harm on an unconscious, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated creature within 5 feet.
• If the helpless creature takes damage equal to or more than the maximum value of one of their hit die + their Constitution modifier from the logically lethal effect, they are instantly reduced to 0 hit points.

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