Afflictions and when to use them

Asleep: Enemies cannot act and suffer a -50 dodge/parry bonus. They wake up when hit. Using this with sleeping poison allows for repeated disabling, as the subsequent hit will have higher accuracy, potentially causing a critical hit and reapplying the poison. While asleep, enemies do not recover. Combined with the emotion spell "Slumber," a large portion of the battlefield can be disabled for an extended period; even if enemies wake upon being hit, you can focus fire on them individually.

Blinded: Imposes a -30 accuracy penalty. This is a generally useful affliction to apply to any foe.

Bleeding, Burning, Degenerating, Drowning, Magefire, Poisoned: These inflict damage over time (DOT) every few seconds. Bleeding deals raw damage, Burning deals fire damage, Degenerating deals corrode damage, Drowning deals raw damage, Magefire deals fire damage, and Poisoned deals corrode damage. The damage level is not explicitly determined, but the different damage types make some effects more useful against specific enemy types (e.g., Bleeding against heavily armored enemies). Drowning also silences enemies.

Confused: Affected targets wander and act randomly.

Dazed: Imposes a +50% recovery penalty. This is particularly effective on slow characters, as their recovery times are already long. When combined with other afflictions or interrupts on short recovery timers, dazed enemies may rarely get to act.

Disarmed: Prevents enemies from using weapons for the duration. This is not very useful against unarmed foes.

Enraged: Provides a -25% recovery bonus, +25% max health, and a -25% will defense. This acts more like a buff, with its duration extended by resolve. The increased speed and toughness generally outweigh the reduced will defense. Avoid using this when facing Emotion or Illusion magic or similar effects.

Fatigued: Imposes a +25% recovery penalty and a -5 quickness (which translates to a +10% ability/spell cooldown time). This is most effective against caster types.

Frightened: Reduces Will by -30%. This is useful for making foes more vulnerable to mental debuffs (such as Illusion and Emotion spells) and taunts, which universally target Will.

Frozen: Reduces movement speed by -3, reduces crush armor by -5, and slows animation speed to 70% of normal. The slower animation speed means attacks and abilities activate very slowly. Because Tyranny checks the range of weapon-based abilities at both activation and completion, a slow-animating ability can be avoided by moving out of range before it finishes, forcing a miss.

Hobbled: Reduces movement speed by -3. This penalty alone makes it useful for allowing squishier characters to outrun enemy melee attackers.

Marked: Grants a +20 bonus to all accuracy rolls against the target. This should be applied to tough foes, preferably those being focused on by multiple characters.

Silenced: Prevents the casting of spells.

Paralyzed, Petrified, Prone, Stunned: These afflictions impose penalties to Parry and Dodge (-30, -50, -10, and -30, respectively) while also disabling recovery and freezing actions. They overwrite each other, similar to mechanics in Pillars of Eternity.

Rooted: Completely disables movement. This is excellent for use against melee types that tend to disengage from the front lines to target squishy characters.

Spell Breached: Lowers all elemental resistances by 5.

Suspended: Prevents attacking or moving, and the target can only be attacked by ranged weapons. When applied to yourself, it is a great defensive buff (unless surrounded by archers; however, Eb's combo also provides healing, so it may still be acceptable). When applied to enemies, it is a great way to remove a dangerous target from the fight, especially if you have ranged attackers who can focus them down.

Taunt: Forces an enemy to attack the character who performed the taunt.

Terrified: Similar to Frightened, but also causes affected targets to flee. This can be annoying when it hits your party, and also annoying when it hits enemies because fleeing enemies are difficult to target.

Weakened: Reduces Might by -5, resulting in a -15% auto-attack and ability damage, and a -15% endurance penalty. This is useful for making foes more susceptible to certain Atrophy spells and various physical-type effects (like poison and prone/petrify), in addition to slightly safer damage levels.

Wounded: Reduces max health by -10%. This occurs upon knockout or on Path of the Damned if health drops too low. It previously reduced skills by -5, which was severe; now it is merely annoying after a few instances.