Vampire fast healing trick

[Elves]

Fast Healing (Ex): A vampire heals 5 points of damage each round so long as it has at least 1 hit point. If reduced to 0 hit points in combat, it automatically assumes gaseous form and attempts to escape. It must reach its coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed. (It can travel up to nine miles in 2 hours.) Any additional damage dealt to a vampire forced into gaseous form has no effect. Once at rest in its coffin, a vampire is helpless. It regains 1 hit point after 1 hour, then is no longer helpless and resumes healing at the rate of 5 hit points per round.


Fast Healing: A creature with the fast healing special quality regains hit points at an exceptionally fast rate, usually 1 or more hit points per round, as given in the creature’s entry. Except where noted here, fast healing is just like natural healing. At the beginning of each of the creature’s turns, it heals a certain number of hit points (defined in its description).

Take a vampire and give them fast healing from another source than the vampire template. The vampire fast healing Ex ability has the restriction that it doesn't work while vamp is at 0 hp, but the other fast healing ability doesn't have this restriction. So the vampire gets reduced to 0 hp and enters gaseous form. It can't be reduced lower than 0 hp because further damage "has no effect". At the start of its next turn, it heals from its other fast healing ability and can act again. Rinse and repeat.

The only disadvantage is that it's stuck in gaseous form, which is (D). However, it should be able to use spell-like abilities in this form, since they don't have components.

It can’t attack or cast spells with verbal, somatic, material, or focus components while in gaseous form. (This does not rule out the use of certain spells that the subject may have prepared using the feats Silent Spell, Still Spell, and Eschew Materials.) The subject also loses supernatural abilities while in gaseous form.

The other disadvantage is that a gust of wind can blow it away...

[Beni-Kujaku]

Since the "you automatically assume gaseous form and are forced to go back to your coffin and be helpless for one hour" is in the same ability, I'd say that doesn't work. Once you take gaseous form and are unaffected by everything, you "must reach [your] coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed."

[Gruftzwerg]

Since the "you automatically assume gaseous form and are forced to go back to your coffin and be helpless for one hour" is in the same ability, I'd say that doesn't work. Once you take gaseous form and are unaffected by everything, you "must reach [your] coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed."

Gaseous form doesn't make the vampire unaffected by everything. Sole damage (HP dmg / attribute dmg).
The vampire doesn't become immune to the fast healing ability. The actions you may take are restricted as long as you are at 0 HP. But fast healing requires no actions.



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My question is how fast healing from 2 sources interact.

I guess we can agree that they don't stack (unless you have a fast healing source that increases/add bonus to your fast healing).

So they are overlapping. Which means, the fast healing from the other source doesn't get rid of the rules implied by the vampire's own fast healing.

It may not be intuitive. But the stacking rules would allow each ability to have their own specific niche thing, while the overlapping is what you don't want here. Normally you profit from overlapping (e.g. multiple Power Attack related things overlapping each other to create a single attack), but in this specific chase you wanna avoid it.

Thus, where do you get something that specifically can increase or add a bonus to fast healing? Do we have something like that?

edit: i don't know if I could my thoughts into the right words here. I hope you get my intention..^^

[loky1109]

Yes, fh works, but vampire still "must reach [your] coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed."

[Elves]

"Automatically assumes gaseous form and attempts to escape. It must reach its coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed" are all consequences of being reduced to 0 hp. If it isn't at 0 hp, they don't apply.

Since it's brought above 0 at the start of each of its turns, there's never a point where it's compelled to escape -- if that's taken as a compulsion in any case: to me it reads more like a behavior description for the DM. But I think it's fair to assume it is a compulsion or else it could just wail away at the players from its invulnerable gaseous form state to begin with.

But maybe not. After all, the base vampire template doesn't give SLAs, so there isn't much one could normally do.

If you do read it as a compulsion, you just want to make sure the vampire doesn't have any immediate action movement options or it would be compelled to use those to escape.

Speaking of immediate actions, this combo is fairly easy to counter by using immediate actions to reduce it back to 0 after it fast heals but before it can act.

[Aracor]

Except where noted here, fast healing is just like natural healing.

Keep in mind that this actually demonstrates to us that Fast Healing in general does NOT work once a creature has dropped below 0 hit points. It also doesn't automatically stabilize a living creature, it basically turns off as soon as someone is damaged that bad, and turns back on once their hit points go up to 0 or higher.

[Elves]

I agree, FH turns off in negatives. In this case though we're frozen at 0.

[Beni-Kujaku]

"Automatically assumes gaseous form and attempts to escape. It must reach its coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed" are all consequences of being reduced to 0 hp. If it isn't at 0 hp, they don't apply.


Consequences of being reduced to 0 HP. Not consequences of being at 0 HP. The ability checks once and applies the whole text. There is no "you can resume acting normally when you're healed" clause. The only clause is "after one hour in your coffin, you are healed 1 HP and can resume acting normally".

[Elves]

The only clause is "after one hour in your coffin, you are healed 1 HP and can resume acting normally".
Reread it, there's no clause that you can resume acting normally.

Also under that reading (one-time imperative as a result of being reduced to 0, rather than continuous effect of being at 0) there's nothing to stop it from ending its gaseous form once at 0 as long as doing so is in line with escaping.

Also, consider what happens if someone smacks it with a harm or inflict spell while it's at 0. The ability is clear that the reason it remains at 0 is that its fast healing only works at 1 hp or higher. If it's magically healed above 1, it must be able to act normally or else the ability doesn't make sense -- its fast healing can't "resume" if it's already been on ever since the vampire was healed.

The gaseous/escape part is best read as the result of being at 0.

[Quertus]

Afaik, there is no version of fast healing that will help here, as they all stop functioning at 0 HP.

If the vampire had some other source of healing? I think it matches the intended fiction for this to get the vampire back in the game, but, unfortunately, the RAW wording seems to force the newly healed vampire to flee anyway or be destroyed. Sadness.

[Crake]

One level in dread necromancer giving you the charnel touch ability, which, as a supernatural ability can be used in gaseous form, is probably infinitely more accessible than another source of fast healing.

[Elves]

Afaik, there is no version of fast healing that will help here, as they all stop functioning at 0 HP.
It stops functioning at negatives (dying), but most versions don't stop at 0, with some exceptions such as vampire and evolved undead.


but, unfortunately, the RAW wording seems to force the newly healed vampire to flee anyway or be destroyed. Sadness.
Don't think that reading works, see post above yours.

[icefractal]

On the one hand, there's a strong case that the RAI is that being healed back above zero means you don't have to go to the coffin and rest there.

On the other hand, there's a strong case that the RAI is not "a second source of fast healing makes Vampires unstoppable".

Live by the RAW, die by the RAW, IMO.

[Elves]

Live by the RAW, die by the RAW, IMO.
RAW means reading the rules, not plucking out one clause with disregard for context.

Anyway, the discussion isn't RAW vs. RAI, it's whether, in this quote:

If reduced to 0 hit points in combat,
"reduced" refers to a one-time event of being reduced to 0, or to the state of being reduced to 0. To preserve the rules as written, it must refer to a state, because otherwise other parts of the text return false.

Specifically, if you heal the vamp back to positives, its fast healing by RAW resumes immediately, so it would be false to say that after resting in its coffin it "resumes healing at the rate of 5 hit points per round".

On top of that, if you're using a one-time event reading, "assuming gaseous form" must also be a one-time event -- otherwise you're mixing tenses -- so there's nothing stopping it from becoming corporeal again if that would abet its escape.

The text clearly indicates that the point of the whole rigamarole is to restore that 1 hit point. But more to the point, both readings are RAW yet only one results in problems.