[RPG] Hideous Laughter: What actions are available

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Ah Tasha's Hideous Laughter, or simply Hideous Laughter in Pathfinder.

My monster's fell fast and hard to this spell last night, and though it was a wonderful victory for the PCs, I'm now filled with trepidation at the apparent power of this 2nd level spell.

My first question revolves around the possibilities for the afflicted character/monster, the spell reads [emphasis my own]:

This spell afflicts the subject with uncontrollable laughter. It
collapses into gales of manic laughter, falling prone. The subject can
take no actions while laughing, but is not considered helpless.

Now, a helpless character means:

A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent’s mercy. A helpless target is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (–5 modifier).

So, since they aren't helpless and they can't take any actions…what exactly can they do once they succumb to Hideous Laughter?
— Can they move/stand up? Shift? Take attacks of opportunity? Defend themselves?

Best Answer

Hideous Laughter can mostly be summarized as "fall prone & skip your turn"

As you noted, the target can take no actions while laughing.

Moving is an action (PFSRD):

The simplest move action is moving your speed.

So is standing up (PFSRD):

Standing up from a prone position requires a move action and...

Taking a 5-foot step ("shifting" in 4e parlance) is an action as well, albeit a weird one (PFSRD):

Miscellaneous Actions
The following actions take a variable amount of time to accomplish or otherwise work differently than other actions.

Take 5-Foot Step
You can move 5 feet in any round when you don’t perform any other kind of movement. Taking this 5-foot step never provokes an attack of opportunity. You can’t take more than one 5-foot step in a round, and you can’t take a 5-foot step in the same round that you move any distance.

You can take a 5-foot step before, during, or after your other [emphasis added] actions in the round.

Attacks of opportunity are not actually actions of any sort (not even immediate actions) as far as I can tell, so the target can take attacks of opportunity by RAW (PFSRD), though this GM would deem that an oversight and disallow AoOs as well.

An attack of opportunity is a single melee attack, and most characters can only make one per round. You don’t have to make an attack of opportunity if you don’t want to. You make your attack of opportunity at your normal attack bonus, even if you’ve already attacked in the round.

An attack of opportunity “interrupts” the normal flow of actions in the round. If an attack of opportunity is provoked, immediately resolve the attack of opportunity, then continue with the next character’s turn (or complete the current turn, if the attack of opportunity was provoked in the midst of a character’s turn).

The part about not being helpless appears to be there to clarify that the target takes no defensive penalties beyond those imposed by being prone (PFSRD):

The character is lying on the ground. A prone attacker has a –4 penalty on melee attack rolls and cannot use a ranged weapon (except for a crossbow). A prone defender gains a +4 bonus to Armor Class against ranged attacks, but takes a –4 penalty to AC against melee attacks.

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