Healing dying creature.

[wingsofclarity]

Ok so I do know the rules well enough to play a PC but now I am a DM and I feel I should be all certain on all the details. I may post more threads asking about small rules that I am not sure of... hope you dont find me annoyingly spamming...

When you use a magical heal (or the skill) on a dying creature the points of damaged healed doesn't matter in the sense that the creature will get 0 hp, and thus stabilized.. (or at least until it fails one d20 roll it has to make every hour.)

Q1: Does the creature become conscious and can do that one action that would damage itself 1?

Q2: If the creature then gets at least one more HP it will be able to fight again right? And keeps the same initiative, is prone, weapon droped?

Q3: If the creature is at -1 and gets healed 100... will it return to 0 hp or 99?

[Bronk]

Ok so I do know the rules well enough to play a PC but now I am a DM and I feel I should be all certain on all the details. I may post more threads asking about small rules that I am not sure of... hope you dont find me annoyingly spamming...

When you use a magical heal (or the skill) on a dying creature the points of damaged healed doesn't matter in the sense that the creature will get 0 hp, and thus stabilized.. (or at least until it fails one d20 roll it has to make every hour.)

Q1: Does the creature become conscious and can do that one action that would damage itself 1?

Q2: If the creature then gets at least one more HP it will be able to fight again right? And keeps the same initiative, is prone, weapon droped?

Q3: If the creature is at -1 and gets healed 100... will it return to 0 hp or 99?

A0: If a creature is in the negatives, and they receive a DC15 heal check or even one point of healing from any source, they become stabilized. However, they don't jump to zero HP. If they were at -8HP, they are now at -7HP.

A1: If they have an ally helping them heal naturally or with the heal skill, they can make checks every hour to become conscious. If not, they can make the checks every day. They are still disabled however, and can only take move actions. Taking a standard action would do one point of damage and knock them back out. Retrieving items and drinking potions are both move actions, so if they have any cure potions, getting them and drinking them won't .

A2: Characters are fully functional at 1HP.

A3: 99

I would say that this rarely comes up. Quite often damage just blows past the negatives directly to dead. If anything, it acts as a tiny safety buffer for your PCs... or as a DM, an occasional excuse for bringing back NPCs that weren't 'finished off'.

[wingsofclarity]

Ok thanks..that makes more sense. Although...


Taking a standard action would do one point of damage and knock them back out..

..would that cause them to start bleeding again? Or can you be unconcious but stabilized, not stabilized and concious (with die hard)?

[Bronk]

Ok thanks..that makes more sense. Although...

..would that cause them to start bleeding again? Or can you be unconcious but stabilized, not stabilized and concious (with die hard)?

You would be unconscious but only lose one hit point.

Normally, when you drop to a negative number of hit points, you fall unconscious and start losing one hit point every round, then go through the rest of the process.

When you're already stabilized, but you lose a hit point, the rules at that point stipulate that you lose only 1 hit point, but don't say anything about changing the bit about falling unconscious.

This situation would only come up if the PC in question was somehow damaged just the right amount, they didn't have any friends around, nothing came by to finish him, her or it off during the multiple days it may take to wake up, and they didn't have any cure potions on them once they did manage to wake up. It's basically a quick dice off to see if they live or die, which a DM could preempt with a random encounter (quick death by critter, or live by being rescued or captured and healed for interrogation).

Here's a link to the 'Injury and Death' SRD entry.

http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/injuryAndDeath.html

[Firest Kathon]

When you're already stabilized, but you lose a hit point, the rules at that point stipulate that you lose only 1 hit point, but don't say anything about changing the bit about falling unconscious.
I read the rules so that taking a standard action while conscious but at negative hit points will make you fall unconscious again. When you regain consciousness at negative hp, you are again disabled:

Even once he becomes conscious and is disabled, an unaided character still does not recover hit points naturally.
And the description of disabled says:

You can only take a single move or standard action each turn . [...] If you perform any standard action (or any other strenuous action) you take 1 point of damage after the completing the act. Unless your activity increased your hit points, you are now at -1 hit points, and you’re dying.
And dying means:

A dying character immediately falls unconscious [...]
It's quite hard to read this, as it is a whole bunch of jumping back and forth. However, I think it becomes clearer once you realize there are only four states involved: "Normal", disabled, stable, and dying. Then it becomes:
Dying -[Stabilization]-> Stable -[Wake up]-> Disabled -[Standard action]-> Dying

[Bronk]

I read the rules so that taking a standard action while conscious but at negative hit points will make you fall unconscious again. When you regain consciousness at negative hp, you are again disabled:

And the description of disabled says:

And dying means:

It's quite hard to read this, as it is a whole bunch of jumping back and forth. However, I think it becomes clearer once you realize there are only four states involved: "Normal", disabled, stable, and dying. Then it becomes:
Dying -[Stabilization]-> Stable -[Wake up]-> Disabled -[Standard action]-> Dying

I'm pretty sure we both came to the same conclusions here.

[Zaq]

A1: If they have an ally helping them heal naturally or with the heal skill, they can make checks every hour to become conscious. If not, they can make the checks every day. They are still disabled however, and can only take move actions. Taking a standard action would do one point of damage and knock them back out. Retrieving items and drinking potions are both move actions, so if they have any cure potions, getting them and drinking them won't .

While you're mostly correct, the part I bolded is not correct. Drinking a potion is a standard action.

[Firest Kathon]

I'm pretty sure we both came to the same conclusions here.
You are right, I misread your post :smallredface:. Sorry about that.

[Bronk]

You are right, I misread your post :smallredface:. Sorry about that.

It's all good!


While you're mostly correct, the part I bolded is not correct. Drinking a potion is a standard action.

Sorry, I guess what I should have said is that retrieving the potion is a move action, and after drinking it hopefully you'd be over zero hit points and in the clear.