Is Self-Mutilation worth it?

[Boggartbae]

On page 10 of the Book of Vile Darkness, there are rules for self-mutilation that give you the option to permanently reduce your HP total by 10 to gain +1 natural armour. Does that sound like a good trade off to anyone?

Also, would the missing HP percentage from being a Masochist stack with the missing HP from being a Self-Mutilator?

Finally, would you ever let a player use these options in a campaign?

[Kayblis]

Losing 10 hit points for +1 AC is a very poor trade even at high levels. It's usually not worth it to invest in AC by the time 10 HP is nothing much, and losing HP is never a good thing in the first place.

"Masochist" isn't a 3.5 thing, other than maybe the spell Masochism and that isn't related to HP percentage. If you're talking about the DnDWiki homebrew trait Masochist, I'd say lowering your HP total just lowers your HP total, so instead of having 80 HP(buff activates on 40), you'd have 70 HP(buff activates on 35).

A player can use those options if he wanted in my games, they are very suboptimal and won't break anything. It'll hurt them more than help(and, by the look of things, they might like it).

[Zaq]

Eh, whether it's numerically worth it depends on a lot of factors that it's hard to know in advance (how hard your foes tend to hit, how frequently you'll be exposed to damage sources that ignore AC, whether the loss of 10 max HP puts you down in a threshold where you'll likely risk taking your full HP in damage in one encounter without having a chance to heal, etc.). My gut instinct says that HP protects you from more things than AC does, especially given that in 3.5, it's relatively rare for attacks to which natural AC applies to have effects above and beyond HP damage (so it's not like natural AC is primarily defending against debilitating conditions).

If you're in a low-op group, if you have a weird specific goal in mind (something something Hidecarved Dragon, or I guess if you're doing something bizarre with the Berserker Strength option from PHB2), or if you just feel like going kind of far off the beaten path, I can see it being a semi-reasonable choice to make, but I don't think it's likely to be a truly optimal choice most of the time. At most levels of play, HP loss is the primary cause of PC death, and it takes a long time for the damage prevented by making non-touch attacks 5% less likely to hit worth the loss of something that is significantly more than 5% of your max HP (relatively few PCs have 500+ max HP, anyway). Sure, you're subject to many attacks per encounter or per day, but it's also true that having lower max HP means that every successful attack is taking a larger percentage of your remaining HP, so I'm not sure how to actually crunch that math even if we find regularized starting points.

If your max HP is permanently reduced and can't be healed, I wouldn't think of that as being the kind of damage that would trigger the Masochism spell or anything. If you're referring to the "1d3 - 1 × 10 missing HP" text from pg. 10 of BoVD, that would seem to be more applicable to NPCs than to PCs, but I personally wouldn't let the circumstance bonuses stack (they're sufficiently close in my mind to being the same source), so I wouldn't inflict the HP tax (the part about being encountered at less than maximum, not the part about permanently trading HP for AC) twice.

[flappeercraft]

Losing 10 hit points for +1 AC is a very poor trade even at high levels. It's usually not worth it to invest in AC by the time 10 HP is nothing much, and losing HP is never a good thing in the first place.

"Masochist" isn't a 3.5 thing, other than maybe the spell Masochism and that isn't related to HP percentage. If you're talking about the DnDWiki homebrew trait Masochist, I'd say lowering your HP total just lowers your HP total, so instead of having 80 HP(buff activates on 40), you'd have 70 HP(buff activates on 35).

A player can use those options if he wanted in my games, they are very suboptimal and won't break anything. It'll hurt them more than help(and, by the look of things, they might like it).

Actually he means the Masochism from BoVD, not the spell but the addiction from page 10. It's literally the entry just before Self-Mutilation.

As far as answering the question the percentage decreases both mention the maximum total HP so they would not stack. But you might or might not have to roll twice and take the highest percentage drop depending on the DM.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Are there any oddball effects that multiply your natural AC or turn AC (including natural AC) into miss chance? Scintillating scales at least turns your natural AC into something somewhat useful, so if you use scintillating scales and have tons of HP and are more worried about effects triggered on (incorporeal) touch attacks, I could maybe see it being worthwhile.

[edit] Never mind. SS doesn't do what I thought it did. Any way to turn natural AC into a deflection bonus?

[edit x2] Or maybe it does. At least, in the Spell Compendium.

[PunBlake]

I agree with the consensus so far that this seems suboptimal, with a couple caveats: temporary HP and hiding an item under the skin.

The level of optimization Self-Mutilation has depends on how much and how often you can make up for the permanent 10HP loss with temporary HP. An Amulet of Tears (MIC) costs around the same as an Amulet of Natural Armor +1, but the Amulet of Tears may effect action economy a small amount. Given that more HP is generally better, having the Amulet of Tears and not giving up 10HP for +1 NA seems most optimal, but hiding a magic item under your skin without a feat (as mentioned in Self-Mutilation) may make up the difference.

The +4 circumstance bonus vs pain-based effects would not stack given use of both effects. The "always has (1d3-1)*10% fewer hit points than maximum" from each effect could stack, but that's pre-encounter, and would only trigger the +1 circumstance to attack and damage at DM discretion (probably a low percentage of encounters, only if you're doing that damage to yourself at the time you're encountered, which seems unlikely to always be the case).

It would be unwise as a player to stack 0-20% HP loss twice; you could end up with only 60% HP starting an encounter for only minor benefit. You'd need both a source of consistent healing and a source of temporary HP for this to be close to optimal... but having all of the above makes you close to Mozgus (http://berserk.wikia.com/wiki/Mozgus) from Berserk. If you're a masochistic cleric, you could generate a flavor win.

[Boggartbae]

The second question was about whether the 1d3X10% would stack with the 1d3-1X10%. I could see it going either way, but I'm leaning towards "no" because that's too much missing HP. Thought I would ask though.

Thinking about it some more, If I could bump my AC to the point where my opponents had to roll a 20 to hit, I would use the option. Or, since MaxiDuRaritry reminded me of Scintillating Scales, I would love to make a mutilated, sadomasochist dragon as an encounter for a party, just for the flavour of it. Also thanks for showing me Hidecarved dragons.

Also, when is the 1d3X10% taken off if you are a player? I was thinking that it would be rolled at the start of each day when you put your piercings in or whatever, and then it just can't be healed, but now I really don't know.

[SangoProduction]

I would love to make a mutilated, sadomasochist dragon as an encounter for a party, just for the flavour of it. Also thanks for showing me Hidecarved dragons.

I just imagine the fighter hitting the dragon... [...] ... and then, in disgust, drops his weapon and says "I'm done," before walking off in to the sunset.

[ericgrau]

On page 10 of the Book of Vile Darkness, there are rules for self-mutilation that give you the option to permanently reduce your HP total by 10 to gain +1 natural armour. Does that sound like a good trade off to anyone?

Also, would the missing HP percentage from being a Masochist stack with the missing HP from being a Self-Mutilator?

Finally, would you ever let a player use these options in a campaign?

Ballpark you get 10% per +1, give or take based on many factors. Then there's your touch AC which isn't boosted. Tanks actually benefit more (often around 20% reduction in damage taken) but at the same time they have to worry more about other forms of HP attack that don't target their regular AC

So minimum 100 HP for this to be worth it, and probably more like 150 HP or 200. You can keep AC useful and more cost effective than miss chance until about level 15. And even past 15 it's still useful, just maybe not as useful to increase further. A 14 con barbarian that boosts it to 18 has 12+10.5 per level past 2nd = 2.5 + 10.5/level HP = level 10 to 20 to get enough HP, and closer to the high end. I disagree with some and say at least a certain amount of cheap AC is almost always worth it because you get good value for the cost. But this ability's cost is high. So it seems close to useless to me. I might actually take it at high level but it's such a small afterthought that it's not worth the space on my character sheet.



Thinking about it some more, If I could bump my AC to the point where my opponents had to roll a 20 to hit, I would use the option. Or, since MaxiDuRaritry reminded me of Scintillating Scales, I would love to make a mutilated, sadomasochist dragon as an encounter for a party, just for the flavour of it. Also thanks for showing me Hidecarved dragons.

Also, when is the 1d3X10% taken off if you are a player? I was thinking that it would be rolled at the start of each day when you put your piercings in or whatever, and then it just can't be healed, but now I really don't know.
Yeah like I said if you build around it those last few points of AC as it becomes nigh unbeatable are worth more. Scintillating scales is a horrible trap, but quickened scintillating scales boosts its value a little more. Except then you get fireballed, or hit with another energy type, etc. SR helps in the case of the dragon, but it's also harder for him to get quicken. On the flipside the touch AC might be very useful against non-HP touch attacks, and dragons have more HP. So this is kinda viable.

[Falontani]

The second question was about whether the 1d3X10% would stack with the 1d3-1X10%. I could see it going either way, but I'm leaning towards "no" because that's too much missing HP. Thought I would ask though.

Thinking about it some more, If I could bump my AC to the point where my opponents had to roll a 20 to hit, I would use the option. Or, since MaxiDuRaritry reminded me of Scintillating Scales, I would love to make a mutilated, sadomasochist dragon as an encounter for a party, just for the flavour of it. Also thanks for showing me Hidecarved dragons.

Also, when is the 1d3X10% taken off if you are a player? I was thinking that it would be rolled at the start of each day when you put your piercings in or whatever, and then it just can't be healed, but now I really don't know.

If I were the DM of this masochist I would roll the die at the beginning of the day. At any point if the player asked about his health I would check how far into the day it was, and apply the penalty then. Example:
Player has 100 maximum hit points.

I rolled a 2 on the 1d3x10%. This means by the end of the day he had lost 20% of his maximum hit points due to self harm tendencies. It is currently 3 hours into their average 18 hour day. So ~17% of the damage has been inflicted by this point. That means he has dealt himself 3.4 (rounded down to 3) damage thus far. If he receives no fast healing, regeneration, or magical healing then it would progress to the full 20 points of damage by the time the player decided to go to sleep.

Now natural healing only heals your character level. So unless this character has a fair bit lower amount of maximum hit points than your average level 20 character he is not level 20. Meaning he does not heal the full amount of damage dealt. This is the crux of the ability, if no one ever heals him. So lets say our 100 HP character is level 12. He heals 12 points of damage leaving 8 points of damage of self harm for the next day. The next day I roll a 3, so over the course of the day he deals another 30 points of damage to himself. Congratulations to the character, he now has 38 points of damage on him, and he heals by 12. Leaving 26 points of damage for the next day. And so on.
A good player would counter this in many different ways, but the most obvious and easy being, get a source of healing.

Also, as you can see, this character isn't just stabbing himself with a dagger over and over, that would deal far more damage than he takes throughout the day, so when the player decides to take his masochism addiction too far in character (like full on stabbing himself) add that damage to the total amount he'd be inflicting upon himself.