Limited regeneration

[krossbow]

Hey, how people could forsee this Affecting CR/combat in general. I'm a bit of a fan of Regeneration/Fast healing Having a bit of Limit to how much it can occur before the being Just keels over dead (akin to Chyropterans in Blood + or Homoculi in full metal alchemist). Basically, Though things that Bypass regeneration such as fire or acid would still Work best, you could just beat the thing long enough and it would die from the overexertion of all the regeneration.


In what way would you See such a concept Changing the way the universe works in D&D? (basically, you could kill a troll by Blenderizing it enough, ect.)

[Jack_Simth]

You actually can kill a troll by beating it enough. The Tarrasque, even. Well, you can beat them to the point where they don't recover without help, although they *technically* don't die of it.

You just need to deal enough damage that it won't heal before Starvation and Thirst raise their nonlethal above their full normal hit points. See, nonlethal from Starvation and Thirst are not affected by regeneration....

[holywhippet]

There aren't that many creatures with fast healing/regeneration so it wouldn't be a huge deal. Generally for the players, regeneration only matters if they don't realise a creature has it (and thus will recover from their beat down) or if they are seriously outmatched and can't damage it faster than it can heal.

[krossbow]

There aren't that many creatures with fast healing/regeneration so it wouldn't be a huge deal. Generally for the players, regeneration only matters if they don't realise a creature has it (and thus will recover from their beat down) or if they are seriously outmatched and can't damage it faster than it can heal.

True; there's very little in D&D that has nigh instaneous levels of Regeneration, akin to how Homoculi and Chyropterans act, and most troll encounters i've seen end up with you curb stomping them and then setting the remains on fire.

[Seffbasilisk]

Maybe a special type of Regen? Gives you a temporary bonus to Con, say, +4. When the regen is activated, you lose one point for every,say 10 rounds it works? After the first four or so, it'll start cutting into max HP, current HP, etc etc..

[Irreverent Fool]

True; there's very little in D&D that has nigh instaneous levels of Regeneration, akin to how Homoculi and Chyropterans act, and most troll encounters i've seen end up with you curb stomping them and then setting the remains on fire.

Instantaneous regeneration is reflected by DR.

Damage Reduction
A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly (in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective).

That's what I've seen with trolls as well. The beating them until they will die of starvation is something I hadn't thought of. It occurs to me that simple burial would work as well, as suffocation would set in. The regeneration entry mentions being able to kill the creature via a coup de grace, but specifies that the attack must be one that already bypasses regeneration, making the clause pretty pointless.

As for the OP's question, I don't see it as having much of an effect on the game in general. In older editions, such creatures could regenerate from death unless specific methods were used to destroy the corpse, which ended up functioning a lot differently than converting all but specific types of damage to nonlethal as is done in 3.5. I don't think the proposed change really adds anything and from the player perspective it'll just end up functioning as though the monster has a bunch of extra HP and you may as well just double its HP and describe it as regenerating until they get through the buffer.

If one wished to model such a thing, however, I would do it in one of two ways.

Method A
Each creature with regeneration has a 'regeneration pool' of hit points equal to its total hit points (or double its total hit points, or three times its Constitution score, etc). Each round a creature regenerates hit points, it subtracts an equal number of points from this pool. When the pool reaches zero, it may no longer regenerate until some portion of the pool is restored. If the creature sustains damage while its pool is at zero, the damage is treated as lethal. Points return to the pool at a rate of:

• One per round
• The total or some part thereof is replenished daily/hourly/etc
• Some other rate (probably less than the creature's rate of regeneration, but not necessarily)

Method B
Each time a creature with regeneration has a 'regeneration fatigue' score. At the beginning of each round, the creature must make a Constitution check (DC equal to its fatigue score). If it succeeds, it gains one point of fatigue and may regenerate that round. If it fails, it may not (and all damage it sustains in that round is lethal damage). If an entire round passes in which the creature takes no damage and does not regenerate, reduce its fatigue by 1. If it fails its save in X subsequent rounds, it loses its regeneration ability until it has rested for at least a day.

These are just off the top of my head. There's any number of ways to reflect this sort of ability, though I think Method A is the simplest. Any sort of check-based system should be focus on Constitution or Fortitude for obvious reasons, though I image some creatures might base it on other scores (such as Charisma for fast-healing intelligent undead). Some particularly resilient creatures may get a specific bonus to such checks, at the DM's whim.

obnoxious
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[QuantumSteve]

Just hope it doesn't rain on a Tarasque dying of thirst. It'd be back on it's feet again before thirst could set in a second time.

[Jack_Simth]

Just hope it doesn't rain on a Tarasque dying of thirst. It'd be back on it's feet again before thirst could set in a second time.

Mr. T has Regen 40, 858 HP, a Con score of 35, and a Con mod of +12.

For thirst, it's "A character can go without water for 1 day plus a number of hours equal to his Constitution score. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each hour (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. " - Con checks don't have the Nat-20 clause or the Nat-1 clause. So if we assume the best possible rolls for Mr. T for this (He always rolls a 20 on the Con check, and always rolls a 1 on the damage check), he needs to fail 859 Con checks, but doesn't start failing until hour 58 (35 (Con score)+22 (Con Mod + die roll - base DC) +1 (as the first check is at 10, not 11)). So you need to deal enough damage to keep him down for 917 hours. At 40 points of recovery per round, ten rounds per minute, and sixty minutes per hour, that's 22,008,000 points of damage to be certain to disable Mr. T by Thirst.

For food, it's much, much worse:
"A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. "
With the same assumptions as before, he still needs to fail 859 Con checks, and doesn't start failing until day 26 (3 (base)+22 (Con Mod + die roll - base DC) +1 (as the first check is at 10, not 11)), for a "downed date" of day 885. At 40 points of recovery per round, ten rounds per minute, sixty minutes per hour, and 24 hours per day, that's 509,760,000 points of damage to be certain to disable Mr. T by Hunger.

Oh yes, and both of those are assuming that your method of dealing damage bypasses Mr. T's DR 15/Epic (AKA, heavy use of the Acidic Splatter Reserve Feat, +5 Bane (Magical Beast) weapons, a warlock with Vitrolic Blast, that kind of thing).

It's exceedingly time-consuming, but hunger works just as well as Thirst for this, and is a bit harder to undo. Especially if you move him into a cave or something. But once you get him into the negatives, you can keep him there just by hitting him over & over & over again, and the commoners can come in to build a Monument to your Wishless Vicotry shelter over him so that the rain doesn't matter. Just watch out for floods, as it takes a bit over two years for the hunger nonlethal to kick in.

Edit:
Oh yes, and you do not need to deal this damage all at once. You just need to get Mr. T into the negatives, and then overwhelm his regeneration until he hits both thresholds. But Nonlethal doesn't have that pesky cap at -10 that real damage does, so you *could* do it all at once, potentially.

[Irreverent Fool]

Mr. T has Regen 40, 858 HP, a Con score of 35, and a Con mod of +12. *snip*

This is why I completely disagree with the way nonlethal damage is handled. I hate it when characters just keep knocking out an NPC when they have a prisoner or beat someone so far into the negatives that they won't recover without magical help. Sure, I know you can beat someone into a coma, but realistically the 'nonlethal' damage should probably kill someone eventually. Conversely, this trick just doesn't seem like it should work at all on Big T, but I can't think of a good reason why not. Relentlessly beating a creature when it's down just doesn't seem to fit in the genre, so I suppose I just oppose it on the grounds of its clash with heroic fantasy. Of course, that's another instance of "the developers didn't think people would play this way".

obnoxious
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[Eldariel]

This is why I completely disagree with the way nonlethal damage is handled. I hate it when characters just keep knocking out an NPC when they have a prisoner or beat someone so far into the negatives that they won't recover without magical help. Sure, I know you can beat someone into a coma, but realistically the 'nonlethal' damage should probably kill someone eventually. Conversely, this trick just doesn't seem like it should work at all on Big T, but I can't think of a good reason why not. Relentlessly beating a creature when it's down just doesn't seem to fit in the genre, so I suppose I just oppose it on the grounds of its clash with heroic fantasy. Of course, that's another instance of "the developers didn't think people would play this way".

obnoxious
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Yet another reason to use WP/VP system; beating someone senseless might kill them, but probably won't, and there's no nonlethal damage. Also, Regeneration is just awesome under the system and every fight with regenerating foes is epic.

[Divide by Zero]

Get a necromancer to have his minions coup de grace Big T over and over until it sets in. Saves you a lot of effort, though there is the risk of them being interrupted.

[Irreverent Fool]

Yet another reason to use WP/VP system; beating someone senseless might kill them, but probably won't, and there's no nonlethal damage. Also, Regeneration is just awesome under the system and every fight with regenerating foes is epic.

I'd never really looked at that -- "Excess damage does not reduce its wound points" -- so the best you can do is fatigue them if you don't have the right attack types? That's a little scary.

Must convince my players to try this.

obnoxious
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[Lord Vukodlak]

I tend to rule the maximum nonlethal damage is your hit points +10. (just as at negative 10 your dead). So no matter how much you say beat on a troll in 2 rounds he's going to be at 0.

Eldariel here's a nice house rule for you.
After a creature has taken nonlethal damage equal to its current hit points +10 any additional nonlethal damage becomes lethal unless the creature possesses regeneration.

Given that it takes days for thirst to become a problem a party of adventures would likely become exhausted and collapse before the creature started taking damage. Your method is interesting but I think the adventurers would die from non-lethal damage due to exhaustion before the creature did of thirst.
Especially if you use my two house rules above.

Get a necromancer to have his minions coup de grace Big T over and over until it sets in. Saves you a lot of effort, though there is the risk of them being interrupted.

Its fair to say you can't coup de grace with nonlethal damage. It may not be raw but I think its simply fair so say.

[The Glyphstone]

Its fair to say you can't coup de grace with nonlethal damage. It may not be raw but I think its simply fair so say.

I think it is RAW, actually. As mentioned, you can only coup-de-grace a creature with regeneration if your weapon bypasses its regen. Nothing bypasses Big T's regen, so nothing can CdG it.

[Divide by Zero]

Its fair to say you can't coup de grace with nonlethal damage. It may not be raw but I think its simply fair so say.

If that's the case, just get more minions and pummel him normally. As long as they can beat his DR and regen, it doesn't matter.

[Lord Vukodlak]

If that's the case, just get more minions and pummel him normally. As long as they can beat his DR and regen, it doesn't matter.

Not if you also impose that the maximum nonlethal damage is his hit points +10. Mr. T having a regeneration above that would rise to 30hp at the start of his turn every round.

[Eldariel]

Not if you also impose that the maximum nonlethal damage is his hit points +10. Mr. T having a regeneration above that would rise to 30hp at the start of his turn every round.

They can ready an action That said, still prefer VP/WP.

[Divide by Zero]

Not if you also impose that the maximum nonlethal damage is his hit points +10. Mr. T having a regeneration above that would rise to 30hp at the start of his turn every round.

Readied actions?

[Irreverent Fool]

Readied actions?

Eventually he'd get another swipe or two in and start diminishing numbers.

obnoxious
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[Devils_Advocate]

krossbow, I gotta ask: What is the deal with all of the random capitalization? It's just weird. Like how some people end almost every sentence in a post with "...". Is such bizarre grammar perhaps intended to serve as a distinctive personal style, thereby helping the reader to identify the posts written in the style as being produced by the same author? (In such a case, it seems that a custom avatar might be more effective.) I implore you to assist me in unraveling this perplexing enigma.

Anyway, what you're describing in the first post is basically just a creature that takes extra damage from some things, e.g. fire and acid. D&D is one of the many games in which you suffer no ill effects from losing hit points until they're all gone, and then you die (more or less). Damage not counting until you've taken enough of it isn't the exception to the rule; it's how things work normally. Every creature in the game already has the sort of regeneration you describe.

(This makes it pretty funny when people complain about hit points being unrealistic and videogame-like in 4E, since they were pretty much one hundred percent that way already; changing the details doesn't make that any more true. D&D has always clearly not been a simulation, but a lot of folks seem to think that no longer halfheartedly pretending to be one means that the game has jumped the shark. )

[krossbow]

Well, not truly. There are some similarities, but also many differences.


For one, Dealing enough damage to send the creature into 0s would Render it unable to operate, Disabling it; This is much less powerful than if it simply had a larger HP amount, in which case there would be danger from damage. In this case, Dealing damage would have a noticeable effect before they reached zero, stunning/staggering/Disabling the creature.

Also, i'm not sure that Bonus damage is equatable to permanent damage due to the above reason; Permanent damage would be of an indeterminable multiplier, since it stops HP regeneration of an infinite amount (I.E., reduces it to 0), and can destroy the creature without it ever regenerating. Additionally, this would make it easier to disable by reducing it to 0 with non-regeneratable damage as listed above.
That was a little verbose, but basically, it differs from certain damage dealing bonuse damage/being multiplied due to the creature being disabled before reaching its breaking point of no regeneration/hp.





I think that this might not work well with HP, and the WP system mentioned earlier with a tweak or too might be the way to go for epic regeneration battles. I'll have to take a look at things, ect. thanks for the feedback guys.