Drown Healing

[Koury]

Simply put, I've seen this mentioned a few times but don't understand what is being referenced.

Would someone kindly explain it to me?

[Temotei]

Simply put, I've seen this mentioned a few times but don't understand what is being referenced.

Would someone kindly explain it to me?

Drowning is a form of healing. It cures stupidity.

[Koury]

Touche good sir.

[Faleldir]

When you drown, you have 0 HP. The rules don't mention what happens if you're already unconscious.

[FirebirdFlying]

Drowning
When the character finally fails her Constitution check, she begins to drown. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hp). In the following round, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she drowns.

The idea is that a character can actually gain hp by drowning, as it automatically resets to 0.

EDIT: Ninja'ed.

[GAThraawn]

I can't recall the exact wording of it, but I believe the rule on drowning in the core rulebook states that if someone who is drowning fails their save, they go to 0 health, and then on down into the negatives on subsequent saves. Some people choose to interpret this literally, claiming that failing their first save against drowning should put them to 0 even if they were lower than that previously, effectively healing them back up to 0.

Yes, it really is that stupid.

[Koury]

Yes, it really is that stupid.

Its also the beauty of RAW. I like things like this. Of course, I'd laugh if one of my players tried to get it to work that way, but thats a separate deal.

Thanks all. :smallsmile:

[Koury]

You know, I'm still slightly confused as to how this is beneficial.

It says you fall unconscious (and then says 0 HP even though the definition of unconscious is -1 through -9) which means you can't do anything anyway. Unless you are right at -9 hp, this still speed up death.

Am I missing something still? Or is the point more along the lines of it happens, not that its beneficial?

[Tanaric]

Hypothetical situation: You have a character under the effects of Beastland Ferocity and Delay Death, at -a kajillion hitpoints, who has a bucket of water nearby. Delay Death will be wearing off soon, and his only means of healing is gone/indisposed/dead/whatever.

He drowns up to 0hp.

Beneficial, no?

Edit: Of course, you want somebody around to make the Heal check to stop you from drowning, or you're back to square one. :smallwink:

[The Dark Fiddler]

Already unconscious, at negatives. Dunk your friend in, he's back up. Pull him out, he's done drowning and sticks at 0, healing normally.

[Koury]

Ok, so in situations where you have someone who will be ok with you being knocked out and helpless, yeah, I guess.

It seems that that is still a fairly specific set of circumstances but if your friend keeps failing their stabilization checks and is at -9 it can buy time I suppose.

Any explanation for 0 HP equaling unconscious? Also, can you choose to fail a check if you are already unconscious?

[Yuki Akuma]

Of course, there's also no rules saying what happens if you manage to get out of the water before you die.

So, basically, once you hit 0 hp from drowning, you're dead in two rounds. No matter what.

[taltamir]

actually the drowning rules make a mistake, they say that you fall unconscious to 0HP.
However, the HP rules say that at 0 HP you are conscious still, you can take one move or standard action, which will knock you down to -1 HP and you start dying, but as long as you lie still you will NOT fall unconscious.

its not so much about -9 as it is about -40... there are spells that allow you to take more then -10 damage and remain alive for the duration of the spell... if you are healed back above -10 before the spell end you will be fine, if the spell ends and you are at -10 or below you drop dead.

So your fighter has delay death and is wrestling the dragon, you finish off the dragon and your fighter is now at -140 HP, he has 3 rounds left on delay death and then he dies. You are out of heals, your cleric can hit him with 3 cure light wounds, but there is no way it will be enough to bring him to -9 before the spell expires and he drops dead... solution?
Round 1:
-everyone delays action to go in the order as described below
-fighter takes out a bucket from the bag of holding, puts it on the ground
-cleric casts create water on it, fills it up.
-wizard and rogue grab the fighter together and dunk his head in the bucket of water, it is a grapple check, he willingly does not resist and fail.
round 2:
- Fighter has to pass a con check, the fighter willingly fails (he takes a deep breath of water), he is now drowning... he passes out and is at 0 HP.
- Cleric delays action
- Wizard pulls out the the fighter, rogue delays action
- Cleric makes a heal check to treat his drowning friend, if he will fail, the rogue will try as well. if he fails too, they will try again next round...

end result, fighter is saved. :)

[Tanaric]

Of course, there's also no rules saying what happens if you manage to get out of the water before you die.

So, basically, once you hit 0 hp from drowning, you're dead in two rounds. No matter what.

I believe Stormwrack has the rules for stopping someone from drowning. DC 15(?) Heal check.

Something like that.

[Koury]

What about failing a check on purpose while unconscious? If you are knocked down to negative whatever and don't have Diehard or Shape Soulmeld: Rageclaws or any of the other similar effects can you still somehow force yourself to inhale water?

And what if you DO have one of those effects?! Can you walk underwater in a permanent 0 HP state? Oh, and what if your at -5 or whatever, toss your head into a bucket with one of those effect on, and fail your check on purpose? Can you then shoot out the water in some cool pseudo-water beam attack? Make a ranged touch roll against an enemy torch?

Also of note, I'm merely being curious.

[taltamir]

i honestly have no idea what happens :)

[SurlySeraph]

What about failing a check on purpose while unconscious? If you are knocked down to negative whatever and don't have Diehard or Shape Soulmeld: Rageclaws or any of the other similar effects can you still somehow force yourself to inhale water?

I'm pretty sure you can, yes.


And what if you DO have one of those effects?! Can you walk underwater in a permanent 0 HP state?

If they say that you can still take actions at 0 HP, yes.


Oh, and what if your at -5 or whatever, toss your head into a bucket with one of those effect on, and fail your check on purpose? Can you then shoot out the water in some cool pseudo-water beam attack? Make a ranged touch roll against an enemy torch?

Only if you could do that beforehand. Being an unliving drownbomination does not specifically grant you the ability to shoot water beams. :smallwink:

[Koury]

Being an unliving drownbomination does not specifically grant you the ability to shoot water beams. :smallwink:

I must say, I feel that Rule of Cool (the true rule 0) directly contradicts you, good sir. :smallamused:

[Swordgleam]

I really enjoy trying to come up with in-game explanations for rules absurdities like this. In this particular case, though, the answer is pretty clear: water, as an archetype, is associated with life and healing. Coming in sufficient contact with water (ie, swallowing a bunch of it while submersed) cleanses a character of all damage sustained from other sources.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Being unconscious and being at zero HP aren't necessarily related. If you fail your save against an effect that puts you to sleep you're unconscious but you still have all of your HP. If you get whacked by a beatstick and put at exactly 0HP you're still concious. The two simply happen to coincide in the event that you begin drowning.

[Gralamin]

Thinking about it, is there anything in the rules stating that Warforged, who do not need to breathe air, don't drown?

Drowning
Any character can hold her breath for a number of rounds equal to twice her Constitution score. After this period of time, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check every round in order to continue holding her breath. Each round, the DC increases by 1. See also: Swim skill description.

When the character finally fails her Constitution check, she begins to drown. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hp). In the following round, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she drowns.

It is possible to drown in substances other than water, such as sand, quicksand, fine dust, and silos full of grain.
So their are checks to hold your breathe. If by RAW, you do not breathe, do you automatically succeed on these checks, or do you have no breath to hold, and thus automatically fail?

[Koury]

SRD specifically says being unconscious means being at -1 to -9 HP (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#unconscious).

Mind you, I agree with you. But RAW...

EDIT: I believe, off the top of my head, 0 HP is staggered.

EDIT 2: The problem here is obvious. Spells like sleep use the term unconscious as per defined in a dictionary (as does drowning). The problem comes in when you consider the fact that unconscious is a defined game term.

Anyway, to reiterate, I agree with you anyway. I just like RAW fun things.

EDIT 3: Sleep never actually uses that word. It makes targets helpless. Edit 2 remains valid anyway :smallbiggrin:

[Roderick_BR]

The problem here is that the wording says that you go TO zero hit points, not DOWN TO zero hitpoints, meaning that it can increase from negative to zero. More a nitpick on WotC's bad wording of a lot of rules.

[Demented]

Thinking about it, is there anything in the rules stating that Warforged, who do not need to breathe air, don't drown?

So their are checks to hold your breathe. If by RAW, you do not breathe, do you automatically succeed on these checks, or do you have no breath to hold, and thus automatically fail?

Well, if they don't need to breathe air it would logically be assumed that you cannot hold your breath (since you have none) and would therefore not make a check at all.

However, if you don't allow for anything that is not explicitly provided for in the rules, then you could say that a Warforged must hold its breath... And it would then pass out... Better yet, it could do so voluntarily above water and still die from drowning. Unlike the suffocation rules, the drowning rules don't require that you be underwater, immersed in liquid, or anything similar. At most, it says that it is possible to drown in substances other than water; it doesn't explicitly rule out air.

Then again, there's all sorts of stupidness that results from ignoring things that aren't explicitly written out. For example, the rules don't explicitly say at what point a dead character becomes a dead body, or that a dead character cannot take actions. If you don't mind having arbitrarily high amounts of negative hitpoints, or lacking a soul, you can continue your campaign as an immortal dead person without any real penalties!

[Xenogears]

Then again, there's all sorts of stupidness that results from ignoring things that aren't explicitly written out. For example, the rules don't explicitly say at what point a dead character becomes a dead body, or that a dead character cannot take actions. If you don't mind having arbitrarily high amounts of negative hitpoints, or lacking a soul, you can continue your campaign as an immortal dead person without any real penalties!

Technically there are some penalties. Having negative hit points means that your zero subdual damage is higher than your hit points so your unconscious.

[Demented]

I suppose that could put a damper on the adventuring-while-dead idea.

[Xenogears]

I suppose that could put a damper on the adventuring-while-dead idea.

Technically IIRC the exact definitions of all the conditions involved allows one to perform purely mental actions just fine. Thus a dead Psion can still manifest all its powers and is just as dangerous...

[Thurbane]

...and any DM that lets drown healing fly in his game should hand over his DM screen and retire. Seriously. Unless he is running a comedy style campaign.

[Swordguy]

{Scrubbed}

[Xenogears]

...and any DM that lets drown healing fly in his game should hand over his DM screen and retire. Seriously. Unless he is running a comedy style campaign.

Clearly your definition of serious campaign differs greatly from mine. Course my great ideas for a plot involve Asmodeus conquering the Care Bears Kingdom and breeding them with Fiends to make a strike force. Half-Fiend Grumpy Bear flies around shooting lighting at you.

"And the mighty demonic bear flies through the sky, blood dripping off his claws, malice in his eyes, and death in his heart. He stares down at you as a god might look at an insect and with his might battle cry a bolt of lightning arcs out from him and flies towards you. CARE BEAR STARE!!!"

[jmbrown]

The rules say you drop to 0 hp; if you're already below 0 you can't drop to it unless RAW states somewhere that subtraction is actually addition.

Also, unconscious characters can't take actions (like, say, holding their breath) so if you submerge someone who's unconscious they automatically begin to drown. They're already below 0 hit points so they lose an additional 1 hp as per the dying rules. They're already dying and so they don't increase to -1 hp, they lose a hit point. In the third round they lose an additional hit point which may kill them (if it doesn't, they drown).

You're going to die regardless; either by going to -10 before round 3 or hitting round 3 and drowning. If a character had die hard and they were at -1 hit points then they would die in three rounds also.

[taltamir]

you know, the whole HP as related to drowning thing is nonsense...

you should be making fort saves to "hold your breath" (after a reasonable time has elapsed), if you fail to hold your breath for some reason your lungs fill with water and you begin drowning:
round 1: make a fort save or fall unconscious; if you make it, you can continue trying to get to safety.
round 2: If you are still in the water, you now pass out without a save. if you got out, make a fort save to cough out the water, on failure you continue drowning, on success you cough it up and make another fort save or pass out, on success you are instead exhausted and stunned for 3 rounds.
round 3: if still drowning, make a DC15 fort save or die
round 4: if still drowning, make a DC20 fort save or die
round 5: if still drowning, die.

No HP nonsense needed... if you REALLY feel that HP should be deduced, you could say "you take 1HP damage per round while drowning"

[Xenogears]

The rules say you drop to 0 hp; if you're already below 0 you can't drop to it unless RAW states somewhere that subtraction is actually addition.

Also, unconscious characters can't take actions (like, say, holding their breath) so if you submerge someone who's unconscious they automatically begin to drown. They're already below 0 hit points so they lose an additional 1 hp as per the dying rules. They're already dying and so they don't increase to -1 hp, they lose a hit point. In the third round they lose an additional hit point which may kill them (if it doesn't, they drown).

You're going to die regardless; either by going to -10 before round 3 or hitting round 3 and drowning. If a character had die hard and they were at -1 hit points then they would die in three rounds also.

See that little bolded word there. Its not in the drowning description. Thats the point of it all. It says "you fall unconscious (0HP)." Thus you go to zero hp no matter what your hp is if you follow the wording literally.

[Ogremindes]

I believe that, grammatically, bracketed text doesn't contribute to the meaning of the sentence. Instead, bracketed text is used for ancillary points: asides, reminders and so on. As such, where it says "she falls unconscious (0 hp)", it's not saying that hp is set to zero, it's simply saying that the character becomes unconscious. As a reminder, it also (incorrectly) states that unconsciousness occurs at 0hp. After all, in the context it's easy to forget that unconsciousness is related to hit points.

[jmbrown]

See that little bolded word there. Its not in the drowning description. Thats the point of it all. It says "you fall unconscious (0HP)." Thus you go to zero hp no matter what your hp is if you follow the wording literally.

And neither does it say you raise to 0 hp either.

That rule only applies, and I quote, "When the character finally fails her Constitution check". You can't hold your breath while unconscious, therefor there's no constitution check to fail in the first place. The rule is saying that for characters with 0 hp or more that begin to drown instantly go to 0 hp and fall unconscious.

Specific beats general. Drowning is a special condition therefor it overrules the normal rules on unconsciousness. I'll use a scenario:

Assume there are three peasants with 10 constitution. One has 0 hp (disabled), and two have 4 hp. All three peasants are submerged underwater. On the 21st round, a fish bites one of the peasants with 4 hp dealing 5 points of damage. He's now at -1, dying, and begins drowning because he can no longer hold his breath. He's already unconscious so the first step doesn't apply to him.

The other two peasants fail their constitution throws and begin to drown. In that first round, the peasant who was disabled at 0 hp is unconscious and drowning. The peasant with 4 hp becomes unconscious and drowning with 0 hp.

At the end of that round someone grabs one of the unconscious peasants and brings him to the surface. The drowning rules no longer apply to that peasant so he instantly regains consciousness and is disabled at 0 hp. If you were to submerge that peasant again he'd have another 20 rounds to hold his breath before making constitution checks and you could repeat the process constantly.

On round 22, the dying peasant drops to -2 hp as per the dying rules. He was dying before he started drowning so the "she drops to -1 hit points" doesn't apply. The other peasant who was at 0 hp drops to -1 and begins to die. The rescue swimmer grabs that peasant and brings him to the surface. The peasant is still dying at -1 but he's no longer drowning.

On round 23, the rescued peasant drops to -2 because he's still dying. The other peasant left underwater drops to -3 hp, because he's still dying, and instantly dies from drowning as per the drowning rules.

[PhoenixRivers]

The original trick referenced with it was the Omnificer, I believe.

They used Delay death, an ability that set up an arbitrarily high damage loop, an ability that treated knowledge skills as trained at all times, and an ability that gave you bonuses to skill checks = to the damage you've taken that round.

So, you go to -1,000,000,000 hp, and understand pretty much anything in the world.

Then drown yourself, and you're at 0 again. A quick CLW, and you're back in the land of the living.

The RAW of it's a bit abiguous, as has been stated... But it's a neat trick.

[jmbrown]

The original trick referenced with it was the Omnificer, I believe.

They used Delay death, an ability that set up an arbitrarily high damage loop, an ability that treated knowledge skills as trained at all times, and an ability that gave you bonuses to skill checks = to the damage you've taken that round.

So, you go to -1,000,000,000 hp, and understand pretty much anything in the world.

Then drown yourself, and you're at 0 again. A quick CLW, and you're back in the land of the living.

The RAW of it's a bit abiguous, as has been stated... But it's a neat trick.

Did it protect against drowning because drowning RAW is pretty specific that after the 3rd round you instantly die? Damage isn't a factor while drowning.

[2xMachina]

I believe Stormwrack has the rules for stopping someone from drowning. DC 15(?) Heal check.

Something like that.

There you have it.

[Swordgleam]

And neither does it say you raise to 0 hp either.

I don't think there is anyone in this thread arguing that the correct way to interpret drowning is that it heals you. I'm pretty sure everyone understands how it's intended to work. They're just all using it as an example of interpreting the RAW in silly silly ways. :smallsmile:

[olentu]

By the by does anyone know where that rule about stopping drowning actually is as I have searched stormwrack and while there were many references to the DMG I could not find it.

[PhoenixRivers]

Did it protect against drowning because drowning RAW is pretty specific that after the 3rd round you instantly die? Damage isn't a factor while drowning.

You're right. Someone pulls you out of the water, in that build. I believe it was a commoner hired to do just such a task.

If you want to shore it up, though, you can use Veil of Undeath. That protects you from Death.

Yeah, not death effects. Just death.

As for stopping drowning? Polymorph to a form that is not subject to drowning. That'll end it.

[taltamir]

The original trick referenced with it was the Omnificer, I believe.

They used Delay death, an ability that set up an arbitrarily high damage loop, an ability that treated knowledge skills as trained at all times, and an ability that gave you bonuses to skill checks = to the damage you've taken that round.

So, you go to -1,000,000,000 hp, and understand pretty much anything in the world.

Then drown yourself, and you're at 0 again. A quick CLW, and you're back in the land of the living.

The RAW of it's a bit abiguous, as has been stated... But it's a neat trick.

thats insane... even if you don't have drowning healing, you can just let yourself die and get a true res cast on you. its costly, but for arbitrarily high X it is worth it to take a short detour into the afterlife.

[jmbrown]

If I was the commoner I would let you drown. One less jerk caster in the world :smallcool:

[PhoenixRivers]

If I was the commoner I would let you drown. One less jerk caster in the world :smallcool:

I don't believe the character that did it was a caster. It utilized UMD to know everything by level 4 (presumably, to know everything before the original punpun went godly at level 5).

That said, I believe the commoner was charmed, and paid.

[taltamir]

If I was the commoner I would let you drown. One less jerk caster in the world :smallcool:

when a commoner caught my level 1 wizard as he was falling to lava (it was his job... it is a long story) I gave him a tip... a single platinum coin, which was 80% of my wealth at the time... DM said "you know that is what he makes in 6 months, right?", "yes, he did save my life you know"... guy said thanks and just left, quit his job on the spot :) that was just plain awesome...

so anyways, save the caster... he might tip. or better yet, owe you a favor.

[PhoenixRivers]

so anyways, save the caster... he might tip. or better yet, owe you a favor.

This.

Wonder what it's like to have saved the life of the person that knows literally everything? Cast off tips can make that man immeasurably wealthy.

[Koury]

Man, page two and no one has figured out if I can RAW has my guy make some sort of pokemon style water beam attack.

I'm disappointed :smallbiggrin: