Combat
INJURY AND DEATH
Your hit points measure how hard you are to
kill. No matter how many hit points you lose, your character
isn’t hindered in any way until your hit points drop to 0
or lower.
LOSS OF HIT POINTS
The most common way that your character gets
hurt is to take lethal damage and lose hit points
What Hit Points Represent: Hit points mean two things
in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and
keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less
serious one.
Effects of Hit Point Damage: Damage doesn’t slow
you down until your current hit points reach 0 or lower. At 0 hit
points, you’re disabled.
At from –1 to –9 hit points, you’re
dying.
At –10 or lower, you’re dead.
Massive Damage: If you ever sustain a single attack
deals 50 points of damage or more and it doesn’t kill you
outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving
throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. If
you take 50 points of damage or more from multiple attacks, no
one of which dealt 50 or more points of damage itself, the
massive damage rule does not apply.
DISABLED (0 HIT POINTS)
When your current hit points drop to exactly
0, you’re disabled. You can only take a single move or
standard action each turn (but not both, nor can you take
full-round actions). You can take move actions without further
injuring yourself, but 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.
Healing that raises your hit points above 0 makes you fully
functional again, just as if you’d never been reduced to 0
or fewer hit points.
You can also become disabled when recovering from dying. In
this case, it’s a step toward recovery, and you can have
fewer than 0 hit points (see Stable Characters and Recovery,
below).
DYING (–1 TO –9 HIT POINTS)
When your character’s current hit points
drop to between –1 and –9 inclusive, he’s
dying.
A dying character immediately falls unconscious and can take
no actions.
A dying character loses 1 hit point every round. This
continues until the character dies or becomes stable (see
below).
DEAD (–10 HIT POINTS OR LOWER)
When your character’s current hit points
drop to –10 or lower, or if he takes massive damage (see
above), he’s dead. A character can also die from taking
ability damage or suffering an ability drain that reduces his
Constitution to 0.
STABLE CHARACTERS AND RECOVERY
On the next turn after a character is reduced
to between –1 and –9 hit points and on all subsequent
turns, roll d% to see whether the dying character becomes stable.
He has a 10% chance of becoming stable. If he doesn’t, he
loses 1 hit point. (A character who’s unconscious or dying
can’t use any special action that changes the initiative
count on which his action occurs.)
If the character’s hit points drop to –10 or
lower, he’s dead.
You can keep a dying character from losing any more hit points
and make him stable with a DC 15 Heal check.
If any sort of healing cures the dying character of even 1
point of damage, he stops losing hit points and becomes
stable.
Healing that raises the dying character’s hit points to
0 makes him conscious and disabled. Healing that raises his hit
points to 1 or more makes him fully functional again, just as if
he’d never been reduced to 0 or lower. A spellcaster
retains the spellcasting capability she had before dropping below
0 hit points.
A stable character who has been tended by a healer or who has
been magically healed eventually regains consciousness and
recovers hit points naturally. If the character has no one to
tend him, however, his life is still in danger, and he may yet
slip away.
Recovering with Help: One hour after a tended, dying
character becomes stable, roll d%. He has a 10% chance of
becoming conscious, at which point he is disabled (as if he had 0
hit points). If he remains unconscious, he has the same chance to
revive and become disabled every hour. Even if unconscious, he
recovers hit points naturally. He is back to normal when his hit
points rise to 1 or higher.
Recovering without Help: A severely wounded character
left alone usually dies. He has a small chance, however, of
recovering on his own.
A character who becomes stable on his own (by making the 10%
roll while dying) and who has no one to tend to him still loses
hit points, just at a slower rate. He has a 10% chance each hour
of becoming conscious. Each time he misses his hourly roll to
become conscious, he loses 1 hit point. He also does not recover
hit points through natural healing.
Even once he becomes conscious and is disabled, an unaided
character still does not recover hit points naturally. Instead,
each day he has a 10% chance to start recovering hit points
naturally (starting with that day); otherwise, he loses 1 hit
point.
Once an unaided character starts recovering hit points
naturally, he is no longer in danger of naturally losing hit
points (even if his current hit point total is negative).
HEALING
After taking damage, you can recover hit
points through natural healing or through magical healing. In any
case, you can’t regain hit points past your full normal hit
point total.
Natural Healing: With a full night’s rest (8
hours of sleep or more), you recover 1 hit point per character
level. Any significant interruption during your rest prevents you
from healing that night.
If you undergo complete bed rest for an entire day and night,
you recover twice your character level in hit points.
Magical Healing: Various abilities and spells can
restore hit points.
Healing Limits: You can never recover more hit points
than you lost. Magical healing won’t raise your current hit
points higher than your full normal hit point total.
Healing Ability Damage: Ability damage is temporary,
just as hit point damage is. Ability damage returns at the rate
of 1 point per night of rest (8 hours) for each affected ability
score. Complete bed rest restores 2 points per day (24 hours) for
each affected ability score.
TEMPORARY HIT POINTS
Certain effects give a character temporary hit
points. When a character gains temporary hit points, note his
current hit point total. When the temporary hit points go away
the character’s hit points drop to his current hit point
total. If the character’s hit points are below his current
hit point total at that time, all the temporary hit points have
already been lost and the character’s hit point total does
not drop further.
When temporary hit points are lost, they cannot be restored as
real hit points can be, even by magic.
Increases in Constitution Score and Current Hit Points:
An increase in a character’s Constitution score, even a
temporary one, can give her more hit points (an effective hit
point increase), but these are not temporary hit points. They can
be restored and they are not lost first as temporary hit points
are.
NONLETHAL DAMAGE
Dealing Nonlethal Damage: Certain
attacks deal nonlethal damage. Other effects, such as heat or
being exhausted, also deal nonlethal damage. When you take
nonlethal damage, keep a running total of how much you’ve
accumulated. Do not deduct the nonlethal damage number from
your current hit points. It is not “real” damage.
Instead, when your nonlethal damage equals your current hit
points, you’re staggered, and when it exceeds your current
hit points, you fall unconscious. It doesn’t matter whether
the nonlethal damage equals or exceeds your current hit points
because the nonlethal damage has gone up or because your current
hit points have gone down.
Nonlethal Damage with a Weapon that Deals Lethal
Damage: You can use a melee weapon that deals lethal damage
to deal nonlethal damage instead, but you take a –4 penalty
on your attack roll.
Lethal Damage with a Weapon that Deals Nonlethal
Damage: You can use a weapon that deals nonlethal damage,
including an unarmed strike, to deal lethal damage instead, but
you take a –4 penalty on your attack roll.
Staggered and Unconscious: When your nonlethal damage
equals your current hit points, you’re staggered. You can
only take a standard action or a move action in each round. You
cease being staggered when your current hit points once again
exceed your nonlethal damage.
When your nonlethal damage exceeds your current hit points,
you fall unconscious. While unconscious, you are helpless.
Spellcasters who fall unconscious retain any spellcasting
ability they had before going unconscious.
Healing Nonlethal Damage: You heal nonlethal damage at
the rate of 1 hit point per hour per character level.
When a spell or a magical power cures hit point damage, it
also removes an equal amount of nonlethal damage.
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