Massive Damage question?

[Tyrael]

IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND!


According to the Player's Handbook v.3.5:


"If you ever sustain damage so massive that a single attack deals 50 points of damage or more and it doesn't kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. This amount of damage represents a single trauma so major that is has a chance to kill even the toughest creature. If you take 50 points of damage or more from multiple attacks, none of which dealt 50 points or more of damage itself, the massive damage rule does not apply."


By a literal reading of this, this only applies to players. That means that a fighter can whallop out 56 points of damage and not kill a monster with it. Does this apply to spells? Say some spell does 10d6, resulting in 56 damage. Does the monster just brush it off?

[Innis Cabal]

no it works on monsters, just not undead and other things immune to critical hits, i dont even use it at all since at higher levels its not hard to do 50 hit points of damage in a single attack

[Dhavaer]

Anything vulnerable to Fortitude saves. So anything with a Constitution score.

[Krellen]

Virtually no rule applies only to players. Massive damage applies to monsters as well.

[Ramza00]

Thing is DC 15 Fort Save that is kinda low. For Example

Wizard at lvl 20 +6 Fort
Wizard at that level will have at least 18 con (12 base +6 item) thus another +4 Fort
Cloak of Resistance gives him another +5 Fort
That is 15 right there

So it doesn't have a real effect at high levels. At mid levels it may have an effect, so doing the math at lvl 12.

Wizard +4 Fort
Wbl is 88,000 so lets assume +2 Con Item (for a total of 14 con) +2 Fort
and +3 cloak, +3 Fort

So a wizard would have to make a 5 or less (1/4 chance) else instant death. Then again at that lvl a wizard only has 12*(2.5+2)=about 54 Hps He would be more worried about recieving the 50 damage than making the fort save.

You can apply similar logic to the rogue which should have another 20-40 hit points, but he would be near death anyway after from recieving 50+ damage from one attack.

Thus while there is a chance you may die due to fort save due to 50+ damage from one attack it is unlikely. No most likely the damage, or the other save or dies/sucks will doom your character.

[Dhavaer]

*snip*

You're right, Massive Damage isn't really a useful rule in D&D. In Modern it has teeth; the threshold is equal to Constitution instead of 50.

[broderickdruce]

As far as I know it applies to spells (Any single source that deals 50+ damage). Personally I prefer the massive damage by size rules (p27 DMG), makes more sense to me that a pixie can'y take as much in one hit as a dragon.

[Dorni]

I personally don't think Massive Damage was well thought out. I agree with the premise that some hits just shouldn't be surviveable, but the mechanics are plagued by scaling issues - At low levels anyone who sees a 50 dmg hit, monster or PC, isn't going to survive it. At high levels anyone can deal 50 damage with a single hit, but the save is low and so it becomes a contest of who rolls a 1 on their save first. The size modifier helps, but it favors the monster (who tends to get larger as the level advances) than the PC who doesn't.

Monsters are not immune to the rule, but killing the monster a turn early doesn't have nearly the same effect on a campaign as a PC death.

[Ramza00]

I say its almost always useless rolling and it drags out the game. It is one more step that really does nothing but you still have to do it. Game systems should be designed to avoid this.

[Grey Watcher]

Massive Damage applies to monsters, too. Remember, DMs read the Player's Handbook, too.

(I mean, all the spell descriptions say "you," but you is understood to be the caster, whether PC or NPC. Likewise, the "you" in the massive damage rule is anyone who takes 50 or more points of damage from a single blow.)

As for Massive Damage's play issues, I've got nothing to add to the discussion that hasn't already been said.

[Jack Mann]

I normally don't use massive damage. It hurts the melee fighters too much. At high levels, many creatures are dealing 50+ damage with each hit, which means that the frontliner is dying every four or five fights.

[TheOOB]

Meh, all the massive damage rule does in a high level campaign is give the players and important NPCs a 5% chance of dieing any given hit, which frankly is just annoying.

[daggaz]

Not to mention, with a well thought out core build and some good die rolls, you can easily do this kind of damage at level 3, probably before.

[Ramza00]

Not to mention, with a well thought out core build and some good die rolls, you can easily do this kind of damage at level 3, probably before.
Thing is the damage will kill the person, not the fort save.

[Tor the Fallen]

Thing is DC 15 Fort Save that is kinda low. For Example

Wizard at lvl 20 +6 Fort
Wizard at that level will have at least 18 con (12 base +6 item) thus another +4 Fort
Cloak of Resistance gives him another +5 Fort
That is 15 right there

So it doesn't have a real effect at high levels. At mid levels it may have an effect, so doing the math at lvl 12.

Wizard +4 Fort
Wbl is 88,000 so lets assume +2 Con Item (for a total of 14 con) +2 Fort
and +3 cloak, +3 Fort

So a wizard would have to make a 5 or less (1/4 chance) else instant death. Then again at that lvl a wizard only has 12*(2.5+2)=about 54 Hps He would be more worried about recieving the 50 damage than making the fort save.

You can apply similar logic to the rogue which should have another 20-40 hit points, but he would be near death anyway after from recieving 50+ damage from one attack.

Thus while there is a chance you may die due to fort save due to 50+ damage from one attack it is unlikely. No most likely the damage, or the other save or dies/sucks will doom your character.

1 time out of 20 you die.

[AmoDman]

Yeah, massive damage pretty much sucks. If you actually played by those rules your characters wouldn't make it much farther than a handful of encounters, tops, after the enemies actually started doing that much damage regularly.

It's senseless, annoying, clunky, and counter-intuitive. If they really wanted that mechanic, they should've at least scaled it by ECL/HD or something...and even then, it's still pretty much everything I said it was.

[Ramza00]

1 time out of 20 you die.
And guess who is the person who really suffers under the roll 1 fail rules. The fighter, this is because he is always getting hit, while the wizard should be the hell away from such damage. It doesn't matter if your batting average is far better than a wizard, due to the fact you are batting 10+ times as a wizard you are going to strike out before the wizard.

It is a stupid rule, for its excess rolling and it further gimps fighters types.

(Note as a house rule our group doesn't do auto fail if you roll a 1)

[Darion]

The massive damage rules in high level play can be avoided with the expenditure of two feats (Endurance, Steadfast Determination). Feat slots are usually quite tight, but the ability to add 5% chance of death to your attacks without suffering the same in return is a solid use of a pair of feat slots.

[bosssmiley]

Massive damage is a relic rule which has been inherited unaltered from previous editions of D&D, where achieving 50 points of damage from a single hit/spell effect was a *much* rarer event than in 3rd Ed/3.5. The rule was written for a 1st Ed AD&D where the largest and oldest red dragons had 88hp (that's eighty-eight, not a typo!) and where after 'name' level (9th IIRC) PC hit points increased by 2-4/lvl without any Con bonus.

As it stands Death by Massive Damage really should scale with level in 3.5 (even the ELH suggested this...).

[Grey Watcher]

There was one variant rule I read somewhere that scaled Massive Damage to the victims hit points. I think it was if the target lost half of it's current hit points or more. Of course, while it's nice for higher level characters who are freshly healed. It makes low-level characters and ones who've taken a few blows more vulnerable, though (if you make it a fraction of maximum instead of current, that fixes the problem for batterd high level characters, but still means low level characters bite the dust with alarming frequency).

[NecroPaladin]

My durned PCs killed the arch through massive damage once. They got their hands on a trebuchet and made a really, really lucky shot. I had to go through a few rewrites after that, although I suppose I coulda fudged it a bit to make him not have a dismally low (caster) fort save.

In other words, massive damage is a good rule, but ever since that I haven't been adamant on completely enforcing it for PCs and NPCs alike.

[AmoDman]

massive damage is a good rule

I wish to know your reasoning behind this, seriously.

[marjan]

There was one variant rule I read somewhere that scaled Massive Damage to the victims hit points. I think it was if the target lost half of it's current hit points or more. Of course, while it's nice for higher level characters who are freshly healed. It makes low-level characters and ones who've taken a few blows more vulnerable, though (if you make it a fraction of maximum instead of current, that fixes the problem for batterd high level characters, but still means low level characters bite the dust with alarming frequency).

I remember something like that from PHB or DMG. It was variant rule and it wasn't for massive damage, it was when you recieve damage equal or greater then your current HP you can only make standard action on your next turn. It was set to encourage healing your allies in the middle of the battle.

And I think massive damage is one of the worst rules in D&D.

[Dhavaer]

I remember something like that from PHB or DMG. It was variant rule and it wasn't for massive damage, it was when you recieve damage equal or greater then your current HP you can only make standard action on your next turn. It was set to encourage healing your allies in the middle of the battle.

Equal to or greater than half your current hp. It was called 'clobbering'.

[marjan]

Equal to or greater than half your current hp. It was called 'clobbering'.

Ah, yes. My mistake.

[NecroPaladin]

I wish to know your reasoning behind this, seriously.

So that if the arch has just enough HP to technically survive a catapult, he still dies if he takes a catapult to the freaking head.

And I generally only enforce it on non-named NPCs now, not on PCs or major characters.

[kamikasei]

So that if the arch has just enough HP to technically survive a catapult, he still dies if he takes a catapult to the freaking head.

There's not actually any way in D&D for someone to "take a catapult to the freaking head", unless the DM chooses to describe the attack and damage as such. If you shoot at someone with a trebuchet, and hit their AC, but deal less damage than they have remaining HP, there's no reason to say you hit them in the head and they survived rather than saying that they just barely avoided being skewered on the bolt and were spun round, their arm shattered and their side torn (as an example).

Not that this is an argument against massive damage, I'm just pointing out that not every hit that deals HP damage needs to be thought of as actually impacting the target's body and inflicting a wound.

[AmoDman]

So that if the arch has just enough HP to technically survive a catapult, he still dies if he takes a catapult to the freaking head.

And I generally only enforce it on non-named NPCs now, not on PCs or major characters.

Well when one levels up they aren't just magically supposed to be able to take 47 arrows to the chest, just because they technically have enough hp. Hp is an artificial thing, it's should represent their ability to avoid taking damage as well as outright taking it (try viewing it as a ratio of damage done to overall hp rather than amount of hp taken). If 50 damage is 3/4 of a character hp, they certainly got hurt, but must've rolled with the hit just so that it didn't crush their freaking skull.

[Desaril]

Why am I left with the impression that Grey Watcher is the only one who got the thrust of the question. I could be wrong, but other than the use of the pronoun "you", there is nothing in the rule or the post that indicated that the rule only applied to PCs.

I'm not saying that Tyrael wasn't looking for all the debate his question garnered, but his question didn't ask for it.

I honestly think that massive damage rule does not achieve the intended result. The notion is that some attacks are so devastating that it kills the target immediately. I've employed various rules that make instant kills possible, but it works even at low levels (a dagger through the eye should kill just like a fireball).

I've never perfected it, but every variation involves keeping track of 1st level HP separate from those gained from additional levels. Certain attacks go directly into these "Base HP" and when they're gone, you're unconscious or dying regardless of your total HP.

Finding the proper mechanism to use the rule without abuse has been the challenge. I've tried double natural 20s, special called shot rules, situations similar to , but not exactly a coup de grace.

[Jack Mann]

The original question was answered adequately in the first few posts. The first three people to post all answered the question.

After that, there wasn't much reason to continue (except to clarify why that was the correct answer, which Grey Watcher did), so the topic drifted to opinions on the massive damage rules. Topic drift happens. If you don't like it, you're not going to enjoy much of this ride we call the internet.

[Desaril]

You're right in the sense that the answer to the question "Do you know the time" is either a yes or a no. But what the questioner really wants to know is "what time is it". His actual questions were does it work on creatures and does it work with spells. But intepreting his question, it didn't seem like he really had a question about the mechanics or whether it applied only to PCs, but was expressing his incredulity that the rule seemed to imply that absurd result. It's like when you ask someone "Did you jsut see that, when you know for sure they saw it.

Of course, I've never been good at reading Tyrael's mind (or anyone elses) so I can only guess.

[Zincorium]

You're right in the sense that the answer to the question "Do you know the time" is either a yes or a no. But what the questioner really wants to know is "what time is it". His actual questions were does it work on creatures and does it work with spells. But intepreting his question, it didn't seem like he really had a question about the mechanics or whether it applied only to PCs, but was expressing his incredulity that the rule seemed to imply that absurd result. It's like when you ask someone "Did you jsut see that, when you know for sure they saw it.

Of course, I've never been good at reading Tyrael's mind (or anyone elses) so I can only guess.

Question is asked. Question is answered. Discussion of question occurs. Discussion remains but shifts to things related to the question but not involved with answering it as others have done so fully and well.

Not to be rude, but why is this a new and/or disagreeable idea? Even with your analogy, the question of what time it is has been answered, but people wish to comment on how they only have five minutes to get to work, or someone is late, etc. It would be incredibly strange and probably rude to insist people stop talking about time here and go somewhere else rather than in a discussion about time which was created by a question.

[NecroPaladin]

There's not actually any way in D&D for someone to "take a catapult to the freaking head", unless the DM chooses to describe the attack and damage as such.

Sneak attack, headshot feat.

[kamikasei]

Sneak attack, headshot feat.

One way, then, though I don't see that feat on the WotC site. Was it being used in this case?

Anyway, my point remains that HP damage doesn't mean you've survived a grievous wound.

[OzymandiasVolt]

It's a stupid feat WotC made, where using a sneak attack on their head causes them to be confused for one round. As opposed to, y'know, DEAD. (Oh, and it's negated by a WILL SAVE instead of a FORT SAVE. Go figure. So the fragile bookworm has a better chance of resisting a blow to the head than the CON 20 barbarian.)

[Bears With Lasers]

You're just smacking them upside the head, you're not stabbing them through the brain.

[OzymandiasVolt]

Why not? You've got sneak attack, you've got a lethal weapon, you manage to strike their head specifically, why is it not causing severe damage when you slam their head with a steel hammer?

[Bears With Lasers]

-It's a glancing blow.
-They've got a helmet, or bony plates (Natural Armor).
-You hit them in the head. That doesn't always kill people.
-HP is abstract.

[OzymandiasVolt]

Bears, why are you defending something that is obviously ludicrous?

1. Nowhere in the feat does it say it's a glancing blow. It says it's a successful sneak attack.
2. No. Maybe the fighter has a helmet. Maybe the crab man has chitinous plates. The party human wizard does not.
3. It doesn't always kill people but the effects are more severe than a few seconds of disorientation.
4. Yes, it is. This isn't an HP effect. In fact, it doesn't inflict any extra damage at all. In fact, it causes your sneak attack to deal 5d6 LESS damage.

[Bears With Lasers]

Because it's really not, any more than most things in D&D are?

[Grey Watcher]

Red Watcher: In either case, the discussion of the Sneak Attack Headshot feat is, off topic. Also, I'd advise people to keep their cool when discussing what is, after all, just a game.

[kamikasei]

Bears, why are you defending something that is obviously ludicrous?

1. Nowhere in the feat does it say it's a glancing blow. It says it's a successful sneak attack.
2. No. Maybe the fighter has a helmet. Maybe the crab man has chitinous plates. The party human wizard does not.
3. It doesn't always kill people but the effects are more severe than a few seconds of disorientation.
4. Yes, it is. This isn't an HP effect. In fact, it doesn't inflict any extra damage at all. In fact, it causes your sneak attack to deal 5d6 LESS damage.

If you're using this feat to specifically target your attack on a person's head, and you succeed in your attack, you will deal damage. You will create the effect in the feat (disorientation, whatever). But if the HP damage dealt is not enough to kill them, there is no reason to consider it as actually doing significant "damage" in real terms (piercing or cracking the skull, putting their eye out, etc.). This is especially so if it's trading sneak attack damage for a special effect - in that case you're using your sneak attack's ability to target vulnerable areas to target the head, specifically. But it still doesn't mean you're necessarily doing serious damage that you'd expect to kill the person.

edit: whoops, sorry, that mod post went up while I was typing this. I trust the above was sufficiently moderate not to require redaction...

Anyway, more relevantly to the thread, Massive Damage has its place but it's not really necessary. The question of "how did I do 50 damage without killing him? That should have taken his arm off!" is a misinterpretation of HP, where it's entirely possible to absorb 50 damage without actually taking a life-threatening injury in the process. I wouldn't say you lose anything re: verisimilitude by ignoring the Massive Damage rule, if you find its in-game mechanical effect to be annoying.

[Grey Watcher]

Red Watcher: OK, let's get back to massive damage. And some calm. This red text ain't just for show, you know.

[Baalzebub]

I house ruled that if an attack deals at least half your hp in damage, you need a Fort Save or die.

[OzymandiasVolt]

Are allowances made for extremely low level characters, who lose about half their hp every time they're hit? XD

[Baalzebub]

Are allowances made for extremely low level characters, who lose about half their hp every time they're hit? XD

That's why we always start 4th lvl at least :smalltongue: