These characters temporarily won't be able to move due to being paralyzed by something. Unlike in Real Life, paralysis is usually one of the shortest-lived effects — it'll wear off after a turn or two. Sometimes, there's a randomized chance of shaking the effect for a turn or, equivalently, the status effect has a longish duration, but only has a chance of disabling the character each turn. If the local Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors includes lightning, chances are it will be associated with this status effect (either that or some form of Chain Lightning, see "other" below).
- Some Zelda games have enemies with electrical attack that will zap Link either through contact or through electrified projectiles. Link will be unable to act until the electrical shock disperses — in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, it is possible for Link to take an electrical attack, spasm uncontrollably, and be smothered by sinksand, in that order. Watch your step, and deal with electrical enemies before committing to a crossing.
- In Dust: An Elysian Tail, a successful parry will briefly stun enemies as well as boosting damage done to them.
- In the Super Smash Bros. games, characters can be stunned. This mostly happens by a character's shield breaking (they held it up for too long or got hit by too many moves), but it can be caused by other things as well (such as items or Mewtwo's Down B). Interestingly, if stun is caused by shield breaking, then before the actual paralysis, a character is launched a bit into the air with a chime that sounds like glass shattering (Jigglypuff goes the highest, and it's very possible to die this way). After crashing on the floor, they get up and then act dizzy. Button Mashing is required to get out of it faster, though, unusually for Status Effects in Smash, its duration is inversely proportionate to how much damage a character has (though only if caused by a shield break; stunning lasts longer on more damaged characters if inflicted in any other way).
- Characters can be stunned in the Street Fighter series if hit with a large number of attacks without blocking. Street Fighter III even has a stun gauge that induces stun if filled.
- And many other titles, for example, YuYu Hakusho on SNES.
- Shocked characters in Persona 4: Arena can't move normally (walk, jump, airdash, etc.), but can still attack and move with their special moves. Hitting an enemy or waiting for a few seconds ends this effect.
- In Team Fortress 2, the Scout can hit a wicked bean ball, provided he's wielding the unlockable wooden bat instead of his standard aluminum one. Hit someone from far enough away and they'll be completely locked in place for a few seconds; otherwise, they'll just be too dazed to attack and stumble around at a reduced speed.
- The Flyff Psykeeper can use Satanology, which increases in duration based on his Int stat, eventually lasting longer than the cooldown period. In PvP, a Psykeeper with enough Int can cause a melee class to be demolished!
- Guild Wars avoids this confusion, replacing it with the simple and logical "knocked down", which is exactly what it sounds like.
- Guild Wars 2, in addition to the Knockdown from Guild Wars, has the Immobilized condition, which prevents movement and dodging.
- City of Heroes feature a pretty clear "stun vs. immobilize" mechanic, only stun also tends to limit the speed at which stunned characters can move at down to pretty much the slowest a character is allowed to move. Still just about fast enough to move out of a fire burning under your feet, but not nearly fast enough for you to get anywhere, or get away. Immobilize, on the other hand, allows the character to fight, either using ranged attacks or meleeing with an enemy close enough, but they cannot move from their position.
- The game also features "Hold" powers, which prevent the target from being able to do anything at all and making them totally helpless.
- Monster Hunter uses Paralysis as you might expect, but it plays by different rules based on the victim. Player characters recover when attacked by anything (a smack from a fellow player or Cha-Cha will remove it), while monsters remain paralyzed until [A] the effect times out or [B] the monster dies. Pounding a paralyzed monster's face in will not remove paralysis unless it goes into Rage mode.
- Spiral Knights has the Shock status, which causes the afflicted to be paralyzed for a second (and take damage, although this is blockable) due to spasms from electricity going through their bodies. This is probably the most notorious status effect later on, due to enemies being able to constantly reapply the status, leading to death via infinite spasm-lock.
- All classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic have their own version of an effect that leaves an opponent reeling for a few seconds, along with an ability to remove one of them. For example, the Imperial Agent flashbangs his opponent, the Trooper cryo-grenades his foe, and the Smuggler disables his opponent's reproductive capabilities.
- Phantasy Star Online 2 has Shock, inflicted by the Lightning element. This causes the afflicted to stagger at random, interrupting anything you're doing.
- Stuns are part of many heroes' skill sets in Heroes of the Storm, as well as several bosses' slam attacks.
- Paralyzed pieces in Elemental Story cannot move and are ignored in attack power calculations when matched.
- Warcraft III: There are several stun spells, though few of them use electricity. The dwarf Mountain King throws a hammer, the goblin Tinker throws a swarm of missiles that stun units in an area...
- In NetHack, paralysis prevents all actions and lasts for an uncomfortably long period of time. "Killed by a newt, while helpless" (i.e., while paralyzed) is a common ending for many a new adventurer. Some milder cases will only prevent the player from moving, while still able to attack or use items.
- In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, paralysis halves your movement speed and keeps you from attacking until it wears off. It can usually be abused to keep an enemy locked down forever (bosses included).
- In the Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja series, paralysis both immobilises you and prevents you from attacking for several turns. Anchored is a lesser version, which prevents you from moving, but allows you to attack. Unlike Sleep, neither wears off when you're hit.
- In Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, paralysis leaves you completely helpless for several turns, which, given Dungeon Crawl's Nintendo Hard difficulty, might be plenty of time for something to kill you. Grinder, one of the early-game uniques, is notable because he can inflict paralysis long before anything else you'll run into.
- A stun in Darkest Dungeon forces the afflicted to skip a turnnote . It typically comes from blunt force (a pommel-first sword strike, a Shield Bash, etc.) or some kind of attack that causes visual impairment (blinding gases, strong bursts of light, a close-range Smoke Out). The Arbalest heroine can remove it from heroes with one of her abilities; enemies are SOL if the stun procs.
- In Pokémon, Paralysis is permanent until cured, cuts Speed by 50% (75% prior to Generation VII), and has a 25% chance of preventing an attack from working. Pokémon with the ability Limber are immune to this. As of Gen VI, all Electric-type Pokémon are immune to paralysis. A Pokémon with the Quick Feet Ability (which boosts Speed when suffering from a Standard Status Effect) will not have its Speed reduced while paralyzed, but still risks being unable to act on any given turn while paralyzed.
- In the card game, a Paralyzed Pokémon can't attack or retreat during its owner's turn. It's cured at the end of that turn.
- Some Tactical and Massively Multiplayer RPGs will split Paralysis into two types: one that keeps the victim from moving around the map (often referred to as Immobilize), and one that allows them to move, but keeps them from actually doing anything (often referred to as Stun, but it is often also combined with Immobilization).
- Case in point, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, and Final Fantasy XII have "Don't Move/Immobilize" And "Don't Act/Paralyze/Disable", which are exactly what they sound like.
- Shin Megami Tensei has Stun, a mix of Paralysis and Blindness, which drops the afflicted's Agility and Defense to pitiful amounts, meaning that attacks made will most probably miss and attacks directed against the afflicted will not only have a high chance to hit but will hurt harder than they normally do.
- Another version is Shock, which may be the result of an Electric attack that is not repelled, absorbed, or nulled: the victim remains convulsing for the rest of the turn, leaving it defenseless and open to physical revenge (all attacks it receives while shocked count as Criticals, netting the enemy, either the player or the computer, more Press Turns). It does not however remove resistances to Physical damage in most games, so shocking a Rangda or any other physical-reflecting demon is essentially Shmuck Bait.
- Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has a more traditional variant called Bind and is nerve-elemental.
- Depending on the game, paralysis in the Tales Series either prevents action until cured (and will result in a game over if everyone is affected), prevents action for a short time, or perhaps most annoyingly, causes the afflicted character to flinch at random intervals.
- EarthBound's version doesn't let you make basic attacks, defend, or access your items, but you can still use PSI. Also an exception, it will last out of battle until you talk to a Healer at a hospital or use PSI Healing Gamma/Omega. It actually works on numerous enemies and bosses, and is probably the most useful status effect in the game as a result.
- Mother 3 weakens the effect by making it cause their actions to randomly fail. It also wears off over time.
- A Paralyzed character or enemy in Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled will be totally unable to move or act, as their time bar is frozen for the duration of the effect.
- Paralysis is relatively rare in the Dragon Quest series, but it can be particularly annoying, especially if the paralyzed person is the only one who can cure it with magic, or if you don't have moonwort bulbs. More common are "shock" attacks that cause a character to lose their turn.
- Baten Kaitos:
- In Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, paralysis immobilizes a character, preventing them from attacking or defending. It's every bit as dangerous as it sounds.
- Origins replaced it with Stun, which worked a bit differently from most paralysis; the character could move and attack, but any damage resulted in an instant knockdown.
- Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas have Fatigue damage, which knocks the character down for several seconds.
- In the first Paper Mario game, most status effects were variations on paralysis. Both the Sleep and Dizzy effects would completely immobilize Mario for a set number of turns, during which he could neither attack nor defend. Also, any attack which could damage Mario's partner would instead paralyze them for a number turns equal to the damage they would have otherwise taken.
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the status effects were more varied, but paralysis was always the most deadly effect. The Immobilized status effect prevents all movements of any kind. It can be caused by Stopwatch items, the Time Stop special move, and the X-Yux beam attack.
- Parasite Eve has two versions of paralysis. The weak version slows down your AT guage so your turns come up later and your movement speed is reduced. The stronger version completely immobilizes you. Parasite Eve 2 has paralysis kick in at random by immobilizing you and preventing actions.
- Likewise, Panzer Dragoon Saga has two forms. "Stun" prevents the dragon from using his lasers and berserk attacks, but you can still reposition him. "Stop" reverses this scenario. Neither status affects his rider, Edge.
- In Child of Light, this completely stops an afflicted character on the Combatant Cooldown System, as well as preventing any Counter Attacks and Interrupt Counters for occurring. It wears off after a while.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, Paralysis is one of the most devastating spell effects available. Paralysis prevents a character from acting in any way until the effect wears off. However, additional paralysis effects that hit someone who is already paralyzed will reset the timer. This means that any character who can't resist the effect can be paralysis-locked indefinitely. (Naturally, many, many high-level enemies resist Paralysis, turning it into a Useless Useful Spell in the hands of the Player Character.)
- Transistor has the Crash() function (as well as other functions with Crash() in an upgrade slot), which inflicts the Crashed status, briefly preventing targets from moving and making them vulnerable to taking double damage from other attacks.
- The dog-like enemy Fetch gains a "paralysis wave" attack when it upgrades to 3.0
- Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery has some duelling spells able to inflict Stun, Sleep, or other similar ailments for a given number of turns and with various degrees of success. If the target wins the next round, they will not get to act; if the duellists tie, the target still benefits from Resting Recovery if their health is lower.
- The Harry Potter Game Boy Color games have three of these with different durations. Philosopher's Stone has Locomotor Wibbly, Locomotor Mortis, and Petrificus Totalus. Chamber of Secrets just has three levels of Petrificus Totalus.
- Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth has Paralysis, which has a chance of causing the affected Digimon to skip each of their turns for a set amount of time. Stun is actually a Slow effect despite the name.
- Enigmata has the Stun status, which prevents your ship from moving. You can still fire, however.
- Dungeons & Dragons used Hold Person and its variants for this, and some variants of the game treat you as being helpless for the duration, leaving you vulnerable to being killed by a Coup De Grace. Fourth Edition D&D has the Stunned condition, which flat-out means you cannot move or take any actions at all and that you grant combat advantage to any enemies near you.
- Third Edition characters could also be stunned (with basically the same effects as 4e), as well as Dazed, which prevents the character from taking actions but doesn't hinder his defenses.
- ''Pathfinder borrowed Paralysis from D&D 3.X, except they realized going in how powerful the Coup de Grace potential was, so there were very few ways to reliably inflict it, and most of those allowed the victim an additional save each round to recover. Stun is also the same, making you easier to hit, preventing action, and most importantly, allowing Rogues the benefit of their Sneak Attack against you. In Second Edition, both are less severe— Paralyzed is like First Edition stun, preventing action and lowering defenses, but no longer gives the opportunity for an instant kill, while Stun doesn't affect defense at all and merely causes the victim to lose a certain number of actions.
- Several in GURPS: Stunning is a common side-effect of major wounds, being knocked down, and the Affliction advantage. You have to make a health roll to break out of it, and until then, you can't take any action. The Binding advantage doesn't knock its victim out, but holds them in place, meaning they have to win an opposed contest of strength with whatever supernatural gobbledygook is keeping them down, or else they can't move. And the Terror advantage forces your victim to make a Fright Check, which will probably inflict Stunning, but maybe also drive the victim crazy.
- In Kid Icarus: Uprising, being paralyzed slows you down considerably, and often halts movement altogether, though it wears off quickly.
- Warframe comes with Electricity, which does stun enemies. Doesn't seem to do the same for the Tenno. There is also "Impact", which can cause a half-second 'stagger', which is about the same as paralysis — and it affects everyone equally. The Burn status effect also causes enemies to stop attacking as they flail around in a panic.
- Plants vs. Zombies has butter thrown by Kernel-Pult, which stuns most zombies and prevents them from moving, including the mighty Gargantuar.
- Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: Besides butter, there's also two more:
- Stun gas used by Stunion and Chilli Bean temporarily stuns zombies affected. The former's also gains a poison property once it reaches level 5. It doesn't affect most mechanical enemies, however.
- Solar Tomato causes a 3x3 area of zombies to get Blinded by the Light, stunning the lot and also causing them to drop 50 Sun each.
- Arknights: Some operators are capable of stunning enemies with their skills, briefly stopping their movement and attacks. A few specific enemies are also capable of stunning operators, preventing them from attacking for the duration. If this happens to one of your melee operators, they'll be unable to block enemies from advancing, potentially causing mission failure if they were your last line of defense.
- Nippon Ichi games' paralysis stops movement (but not actions) and reduces the affected character's speed to 1 (meaning that every attack against it automatically hits). An exception is made for Phantom Brave, where paralysis halves speed (which affects how many turns the character gets) and movement range.
- Note that, since fist weapons (from game 2) and guns (game 3) also run off speed for their damage formula, this effectively cuts their attack power in half.
- In Heroes of Might and Magic, paralysis effects (from a Scorpicore in 3, for example) stop the target from doing anything until it is attacked or the effect wears off.
- In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, the “Root” status prevents the target from moving, though they can still take actions.
- Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle has the "Honey" status, which has an inflicted character stuck in a large glob of... well, honey for a single turn. The character is unable to move across the battlefield, but they can still attack any opponents in range and activate passive skills.
- Terraria has Webbed, which prevents the player from moving (but not from using items).
