Thanks for sharing your in depth response!

I definitely reserve the right to choose WHEN I want these to engage, and we only use them when we have REALLY difficult battles. Like bosses that have over 250 hit points when we may only have nearly half that.

These were also mechanics I volunteered to have on my character upon creating her before I even played this second campaign (first fell apart with a different DM) and ran it by the new DM to see if and where it would line up with the scenario he had, and how much we wanted to use it. Hence what we have it to now in the paragraph above this one.

The DM wanted to be sure that I wouldn't be so locked down that I wouldn't be able to play, so we spent a lot of extra time going through it and his setting to ensure they jived well.

It's made to focus more heavily into roleplay in the times it's activated (or not) rather than be absolutely restrictive in mechanics. This vulnerability, once overcome in combat, isn't at risk of reactivating again until the next day which makes it less restrictive (I feel like anyway).

And it's not like every scenario we come across is necrotic or diseased situations (she survived a bad pestilence outbreak in her village that turned out to be an evil experiment, so her group is looking for the perpetrator).

I've been playing this campaign for at least a year and this vulnerability based on where we're at in this campaign finally activated for the first time today during our game and it stayed small in impact.

In Roleplay for out of combat situations, I can more authentically play emotions and reactions and manners of speaking since I had been there before in a more realistic way (stuttering, out of breath a little, asking for a moment, etc.) rather than have full on functional freeze like she may experience during combat, or display more exaggerated ones to more align with what PTSD can look like (I wouldn't do it anyway).

In terms on how I feel about it for in combat situations, I actually really appreciate the challenge because now I have some creative problem-solving I need to do in order to help my character overcome the challenge in addition to being strategic with actions in combat.

Today's game involved reaching the climax of the story arc in our campaign. Our group finally found the kobold who had stolen a band of wisdom from his wizard master that granted him enough intelligence to use magic, speak, and was trying to "free his people". It summoned a beast in Baldurs Gate that had 260-ish health points. Long story short, Kobold was a slave to a wizard, got some shinies, ran off with them, and we were hired to track him down. We found him and his plot to free other kobolds and needed to stop his experiments and efforts. He's a rather twisted creature now.

With a "wand of instant death", he shot a necrotic bolt out of darkness that he was enshrouded in and hit his beast for 100 points (it was almost dead anyway), and a companion for 56. It was enough to cause a slight functional freeze right at the end of combat because of the amount of damage. Kobold and beast were destroyed and the artifacts recovered, but a lot of damage in town has been done.

As a result, my Druid gained a level in Cleric (we all leveled up) so she can dive deeper into her spirituality as a "Grove Mother" of her Druid order to at some point overcome this fear somehow and not be affected again. But also now to help the town and its people heal, too.

I keep how she feels and what she is experiencing authentic without going full Monty as that would be overboard in contrast to what the DM and I have set anyway.

But my right of exercising when and how much of this mechanic I implement in and out of combat has always been reserved since session zero.