Status effects (poison, stun, burn, bleed, freeze)

Temporary conditions applied to combatants that change their state: poison ticks damage, stun skips turns, burn adds damage over time, freeze immobilizes, bleed punishes action. Status effects add a second combat axis beyond raw damage — enabling control builds, damage-over-time builds, and rock-paper-scissors interplay with resistances. Designers use them to differentiate weapons, spells, and enemies cheaply: the same attack framework with a different rider becomes a new tactical object. Key decisions: stacking rules (refresh, stack intensity, or stack duration), cleanse availability, application chance versus build-up meters (build-up, as in Elden Ring, telegraphs risk better than invisible percentage rolls), and whether bosses are immune — blanket immunity invalidates entire builds, a chronic RPG sin. Pitfall: effect soup — past six or so effects, players stop reading them and the axis collapses back into 'damage, but complicated'.

• Dev effort: Medium
• Timing: Real-time or turn-based

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