Involuntary Rage and Pain Mastery Questions

[Roga]

Hello Playgrounders, I have a few questions about Involuntary Rage and Pain Mastery, both from Savage Species. (pg 36,37)

Involuntary Rage goes off when you survive more than 50 points of damage, and succeed on your Fort save against massive damage. While Pain Mastery activates for every 50 damage you take.

Am I right in thinking that the 50 damage for Involuntary Rage has to be all at once, but Pain Mastery can be staggered over many rounds of combat? How does damage reduction interact with these? Do you only count the damage that gets through? Do you count nonlethal damage? If I'm immune to massive damage (Through a feat like Shock Resistant), would that hinder Involuntary Rage from activating? I know it's 3.0 content, so I'm looking for what you guys think is fair and reasonable. I know that both of these are not the most ideal feats for most characters, but they're very in flavor for my character.

[Venger]

Hello Playgrounders, I have a few questions about Involuntary Rage and Pain Mastery, both from Savage Species. (pg 36,37)

Involuntary Rage goes off when you survive more than 50 points of damage, and succeed on your Fort save against massive damage. While Pain Mastery activates for every 50 damage you take.

Am I right in thinking that the 50 damage for Involuntary Rage has to be all at once, but Pain Mastery can be staggered over many rounds of combat? How does damage reduction interact with these? Do you only count the damage that gets through? Do you count nonlethal damage? If I'm immune to massive damage (Through a feat like Shock Resistant), would that hinder Involuntary Rage from activating? I know it's 3.0 content, so I'm looking for what you guys think is fair and reasonable. I know that both of these are not the most ideal feats for most characters, but they're very in flavor for my character.

NB: massive damage is a variant rule, it's not something you're obligated to use since it's so terrible.

the 50 damage must be taken all at once. it even says so:


If you survive 50 points of damage from aIf you survive 50 points of damage from a single attack (emphasis mine)

pain mastery has no addendum about it being a single attack, so if your guy got hit for 25 damage twice, he'd flip it on and get the +2 to strength. remember it only works til the end of the encounter and then exhausts you, so... it really sucks and will put your guy in jeopardy (unless you're using it for a monster or something, in which case never mind)

damage reduction works normally. you don't count the damage that it aborbs toward your running total for simplicity's sake:

e.g. dave the barbarian has dr 5/- and takes an attack for 50 damage. 5 is absorbed, so he is down 45 hp. this is not enough to activate pain mastery. if he's attacked on the next turn for 10 damage (less 5) then he'll be down to total-50, and it'll give him his bonus to str.

you do not count nonlethal damage. no, that would not prevent these from working.

is your entire game centered around massive damage rules? yikes.

incidentally, what is "shock-resistant" ? I've never heard of it. where's it from?

[ZamielVanWeber]

NB: massive damage is a variant rule, it's not something you're obligated to use since it's so terrible.

It is right in the core rules in the PHB, so not sure where the "it is a variant" is coming from.

[Venger]

It is right in the core rules in the PHB, so not sure where the "it is a variant" is coming from.

why so it is. I thought it was phased out in the 3.5 update since monster types and such no longer mention it anywhere. that said, I've never even heard of anyone using it in an actual game.

why would you ever want to use it? even very unoptimized characters should be dealing that much damage with every hit past low levels, it'd just make the game even more rocket taggy than it already is.

[Roga]

Shock Resistant is from the 3rd Party supplement Kingdoms of Kalimar Player's Guide. If you don't count nonlethal, does this mean that creatures with regeneration cannot gain the benefits of these effects unless it was fire or acid (In the case of a Troll)?

My character is something of a damage sponge, having around 106 HP at level 8. He has regeneration 1 (Fire/Acid), and ignores the first 7 points of nonlethal from any source from Iron Jaw (Pugilist Fighter variant). He's already a bit of a charging beast with this toughness, and Dungeon Crasher, so I was looking at these feats as being very flavorful for him since he tends to put himself in harms way and take incredible amounts of damage to protect the party.

Not personally relevant, but curious: Since Involuntary Rage seems to be intended to go off when you survive massive damage, would the damage needed go up or down as the size of the person changed? It's only 40 damage for small, 60 for Large iirc.

[Venger]

Shock Resistant is from the 3rd Party supplement Kingdoms of Kalimar Player's Guide. If you don't count nonlethal, does this mean that creatures with regeneration cannot gain the benefits of these effects unless it was fire or acid (In the case of a Troll)?

My character is something of a damage sponge, having around 106 HP at level 8. He has regeneration 1 (Fire/Acid), and ignores the first 7 points of nonlethal from any source from Iron Jaw (Pugilist Fighter variant). He's already a bit of a charging beast with this toughness, and Dungeon Crasher, so I was looking at these feats as being very flavorful for him since he tends to put himself in harms way and take incredible amounts of damage to protect the party.

Not personally relevant, but curious: Since Involuntary Rage seems to be intended to go off when you survive massive damage, would the damage needed go up or down as the size of the person changed? It's only 40 damage for small, 60 for Large iirc.
oh, okay.

that's correct.

I didn't know you were using third party/pf stuff. sounds like a blast. I assume you have trollblooded or similar to make all this stuff work.

that actually is a variant rule from the DMG. by default, massive damage is 50 for everyone, but you can change it if you and your friends want to.