Paralysis Analysis

We all know how paralysis works in early Dungeons & Dragons, right?  You get hit with an attack that causes paralysis, you make a saving throw, and if you fail that save you're frozen, immobile, and helpless.  But let's take a look at the five saving throw categories as they appear in original D&D:

• Death Ray or Poison
• All Wands -- including Polymorph or Paralization (sic)
• Stone
• Dragon Breath
• Staves & Spells

I've always considered that the second category was intended to cover attacks from wands, as well as being a saving throw against being polymorphed or paralysed.  On a closer reading, I'm not so sure; the more natural reading would be that it's a saving throw vs. wands, which includes the Wand of Polymorph and the Wand of Paralization.  I'm not entirely sure why those two would be called out specifically, but it's hard to argue with what's on the page.  And what I'm seeing is this: original D&D does not have a saving throw vs. paralysis.

Looking at some later editions backs up this assertion.  The D&D Basic Set by Eric Holmes has the same categories as above, except that "All Wands -- including Polymorph or Paralization" has been shortened to "Magic Wands".  As far as I can tell, the Basic Set doesn't have a saving throw vs. paralysis in any form, even though there are multiple places in the rules that call for one.  The later Basic Set by Tom Moldvay fixes this by combining it with the save against being turned to stone.

Advanced D&D does things a little differently, changing the saving throw categories slightly as shown below:

• Paralyzation, Poison or Death Magic
• Petrification or Polymorph
• Rod, Staff or Wand
• Breath Weapon
• Spell

There are a few things rearranged there, but what's relevant is that paralysis has been combined with the save vs. poison and death magic.  It's a different solution than the Moldvay Basic Set went with, but neither of them combine it with the saving throw against wands.  I feel like this backs up my belief that the two were never meant to be the same save, even in original D&D.

Except... it gets more muddled when you look back at D&D's pre-publication draft. Because that did have a saving throw vs. paralysis, in place of the save vs. wands.  There are quite a few cases where rules are clearer in the draft then they were in the published version, and this is one of them.

But let's assume that we go with original D&D as written.  There are a number of ways a character could find themselves paralysed: being targeted with a hold person spell; being the victim of a wand of paralization (or the same power from a staff of wizardry); being hit by a special purpose magic sword; touching an artifact of the opposite alignment; and (of course) being hit by a ghoul.

Most of these can be covered by a saving throw vs. wands, a save vs. staves, or a save vs. spells.  The outlier here is ghoul paralysis, that killer of low-level characters extraordinaire. The thing is, in original D&D ghouls will "paralize any normal figure they touch, excluding Elves".  A "normal figure" in original D&D terms is a creature of 1 Hit Die or less, which means that - by the rules - any player character of 2nd level or above should be immune to ghoul paralysis.  Hell, you could argue that any 1st level fighting-man should also be immune, as they have 1+1 HD.  With characters becoming immune to this attack so quickly, maybe the creators felt that there was no need to give it a separate saving throw category.

There is, however, a rules mechanism for resisting paraysis in the game, one that's not connected to saving throws: the "chance to withstand adversity".  This is a percentage chance to survive certain attacks based on the character's Constitution score, and it's analogous to what will eventually be the "system shock" rule in AD&D.  It's specifically linked to paralysis in the rules, so it could definitely be used to determine if a character can resist the touch of a ghoul.  Just note that by this rule, any character with a Constitution score of 13 or more will be 100% resistant to ghoul paralysis.  It kinda takes the sting out of that monster, especially when combined with the paralysis only affecting "normal men".

The alternative, however, gives it a little too much sting, because usually the "system shock" rule is used to see if a character dies immediately from some kind of trauma.  With this rule being explicitly connected to paralysis in original D&D, you could see ghoul paralysis resulting in some instant deaths... as if ghouls weren't deadly enough to begin with!

To summarise, there are three things that are absolutely by-the-book rules in original D&D:

1. Ghoul paralysis only applies to "normal figures".
2. There is no explicit, unambiguous saving throw vs. paralysis.
3. The "chance to withstand adversity" applies to being paralysed.

There are multiple ways to interpret these rules, because that's just how it is when you're interpreting the language of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.  I'm going with ghouls only affecting 1 HD creatures, and the save vs. paralysis being based on the percent chance to "withstand adversity".  It's very different to AD&D, and much less deadly, but as with all of these rules I'm testing out I expect things to change through playtesting.