This has got to be one of the most confusing rules in the game, so I'd love to get some clarification here.
Say a character with a 10 Con has 7 Hit Points and takes 6 points of nonlethal damage but no lethal damage... this effectively puts him at 1 hp, right?
Now say that same character now takes 13 lethal damage on top of the initial 6 points of nonlethal damage... does the character immediately die (at -12 hp) or is he at -6 hp and dying but still alive?
In other words, do the two different damages (lethal and nonlethal) directly stack? If so, this would seem to mean that it's far more desirable to take lethal damage that puts you near 0 hp followed by nonlethal damage than to take nonlethal damage that puts you near 0 hp followed by lethal damage.
How does this work? The RAW doesn't seem all that clear and resulted in some serious frustrations at a recent PFS game I was in.
Thanks in advance.
This has got to be one of the most confusing rules in the game, so I'd love to get some clarification here.
Say a character with a 10 Con has 7 Hit Points and takes 6 points of nonlethal damage but no lethal damage... this effectively puts him at 1 hp, right?
Now say that same character now takes 13 lethal damage on top of the initial 6 points of nonlethal damage... does the character immediately die (at -12 hp) or is he at -6 hp and dying but still alive?
In other words, do the two different damages (lethal and nonlethal) directly stack? If so, this would seem to mean that it's far more desirable to take lethal damage that puts you near 0 hp followed by nonlethal damage than to take nonlethal damage that puts you near 0 hp followed by lethal damage.
How does this work? The RAW doesn't seem all that clear and resulted in some serious frustrations at a recent PFS game I was in.
Thanks in advance.
Your guy in the 1st example still has 7 hp. Nonlethal damage is tracked separately. Now, here's what's important: if he takes any lethal damage, you have to check to see if his nonlethal damage exceeds his current hp, he falls unconscious (or is staggered, if current nonlethal damage is equal to his current hp).
Now, hit him for 13 regular damage. We check to see if his nonlethal damage is greater than his current hp. Yup, it is. So he should be unconscious. Now, being dropped to -6 hp (original 7, -13 for your example) drops most people unconscious anyway, so the effect is often redundant.But if someone has Diehard, ferocity, or a related effect, those effects might not compensate for nonlethal damage, letting you put down someone and bypass these effects.
It is desirable to take lethal damage till near 0 and then take nonlethal damage, as you'll probably live through it. I say probably, because after a point nonlethal damage gets converted to regular damage. If you beat someone up with nonlethal damage and then do lethal damage, you still get the same effect, as you'll suddenly drop their current hp to less than the amount needed to remain upright from their existing nonlethal damage.
Thanks for the reply.
I just want to make sure I'm crystal clear... assuming you have taken no lethal damage and are dropped to 1 hp with nonlethal damage and you take enough lethal damage to kill you if you had been dropped to 1 hp via lethal damage, you don't die since you are still technically at full hp.
This seems to be confusion lower level characters will have to deal with more than higher level ones.
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Thanks for the reply.
I just want to make sure I'm crystal clear... assuming you have taken no lethal damage and are dropped to 1 hp with nonlethal damage and you take enough lethal damage to kill you if you had been dropped to 1 hp via lethal damage, you don't die since you are still technically at full hp.
Correct. Non-lethal damage isn't "real" damage and is kept separately from lethal damage amounts.
When your character takes 13 damage in the form of a sword to the gut, (7 - 13 = -6), he's down but not dead since you're subtracting from his hit points, which, for purposes of absorbing lethal damage, are still 7.
The only way non-lethal damage is going to kill you is if the total non-lethal damage begins to exceed your maximum (not current) hit points.
Here are the steps to go through when you take X damage:
PART I: TAKE THE DAMAGE.
If nonlethal damage: increase your amount of nonlethal damage by X. If this would put your nonlethal damage above your max HP, instead put your nonlethal damage at your max HP, and take any nonlethal damage beyond that as lethal damage instead.
If lethal damage: subtract the damage dealt from your current HP.
PART II: EVALUATE THE CONSEQUENCES.
Evaluate these conditions in order. Stop when you find yours.
Current HP < 0: unconscious and bleeding.
Current HP < Nonlethal damage: unconscious, not bleeding.
Current HP = 0: Staggered; will take 1 damage from standard action.
Current HP = Nonlethal damage: Staggered.
Otherwise you're fine.
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The character in your example has 7 max HP and a CON score of 10. Let's see what happens over a few rounds of combat:
Round 1: He takes 4 nonlethal damage. He has 4 nonlethal and 7 HP; he's fine.
Round 2: He takes 3 lethal damage. He now has 4 nonlethal and 4 HP, and he's now staggered. He can take a standard action each round without bleeding, though.
Round 3: He takes another 5 nonlethal damage. He now has 7 nonlethal and 2 HP (two of the nonlethal became lethal); he's unconscious but not bleeding.
Round 4: A cleric channels healing and he heals 4 points. He now has 3 nonlethal and 6 HP, and he's fine again.
Round 5: He takes 6 lethal damage. He now has 3 nonlethal and 0 HP, so he's unconscious again. Still not bleeding.
Round 6: The cleric uses his Calming Touch domain power, healing his nonlethal damage. With no nonlethal damage but 0 HP, he's staggered.
Round 7: He takes a standard action, which deals him a point of lethal damage. He's now at -1 HP with no nonlethal damage, and is bleeding to death.
Round 8: His unconscious body takes 7 points of nonlethal damage. Still bleeding to death, but any more nonlethal damage will bleed him out even faster since it will convert to lethal.
... I hope that's clear.
so they ruined nonlethal damage? in 3.5 you could have one person beating on the boss with nonlethal and capture him, now everyone has to do nonlethal to capture someone?
Where are you getting that idea?
Positive HP + nonlethal damage = unconscious and not bleeding, just like in 3.5.
so they ruined nonlethal damage? in 3.5 you could have one person beating on the boss with nonlethal and capture him, now everyone has to do nonlethal to capture someone?
Nonlethal damage hasn't changed from 3.5. The wording for nonlethal damage in the 3.5 players handbook, the d20 srd, the pathfinder core rule book, and the prd are the same.
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Thanks for the reply.
I just want to make sure I'm crystal clear... assuming you have taken no lethal damage and are dropped to 1 hp with nonlethal damage and you take enough lethal damage to kill you if you had been dropped to 1 hp via lethal damage, you don't die since you are still technically at full hp.
This seems to be confusion lower level characters will have to deal with more than higher level ones.
Your premise is wrong. You are not dropped to 1 HP by non-lethal damage.
So let's back up a bit. You track non-lethal damage separately from your HP. Lethal damage "drops" your HP, but non-lethal damage is "added up" from zero and tracked separately.
To illustrate, let's us a guy with more HP. Say, 50 HP.
In a bar fight, this guy gets punched for 5 non-lethal damage. He now has 50 HP and 5 non-lethal damage. He gets kicked for 8 non-lethal damage so he now has 50 HP and 13 non-letal damage. Then somebody shivs him with a dagger, sneak attacking for 30 real damage. This drops him to 20 HP with 13 non-lethal damage.
At this point, he is still conscious because he has 20 HP and his non-lethal damage is less than his current HP. Now a couple things can happen:
1. He could get kicked for 8 non-lethal damage. This would bring him to 20 HP with 21 non-lethal damage, whereupon he would fall unconsious because his non-lethal damage would exceed his current HP.
2. He could get knifed for 8 real damage, bringing him to 12 HP with 13 non-lethal damage, rendering him unconscious because his non-lethal damage is greater than his current HP.
It's as easy as that.
Now, in your OP, your guy didn't get dropped to 1 HP. Instead, he now has 7 HP with 6 non-lethal damage so he is conscious. Then he takes 13 lethal damage, putting him at -6 HP with 6 non-lethal damage. He's unconscious because he has negative HP. At this point we don't even care about his non-lethal damage.
Clearer now?
Don't forget that when your non-lethal damage is equal to your total HP (not your current HP), all further non-lethal damage becomes lethal. So, in your OP, if those 13 HP had been non-lethal damage instead of lethal damage, he would have taken 1 more point of non-lethal damage (bringing his total to 7) and then the remaining 12 points of non-lethal damage would have converted to lethal damage which would have left him at -5 HP with 7 points of non-lethal damage.
Agree, DM_Blake's example is pretty clear. I'd like to add two things to it though to nutshell-it and expand.
First
a} Lethal damage you count down from your normal hit point total.
b} Non-lethal you count up from zero.
c} If non-lethal is greater than your current hp total, you're unconscious.
Second
It's commonly overlooked, but magical healing cures an equal amount of lethal and non-lethal damage. So if we take DM_Blake's example of a bar-fight that has someone down to 20 hit points with 13 non-lethal, if that guy's cleric buddy casts a cure light wounds on him for say... 9, he's then at 29 hit points with 4 non-lethal. (The hit points count back upwards towards max and the non-lethal damage counts down towards zero.)
Interestingly my group is unsure if channel energy follows the same rule.
Interestingly my group is unsure if channel energy follows the same rule.
It does. Here are the nonlethal damage rules. They just say spell or ability, so channel (an ability) is definitely in... as is fast healing (wow!) since there's no indication that only magical healing triggers this behavior. The one place I'd be uncertain is effects from magic items that aren't reproducing a spell, such as a ring of regeneration -- though that one actually specifies that it heals nonlethal damage. Probably safe to just call it a universal rule.
Blake, your explanations rock!
Agreed. Thank you everyone who chimed in, but Blake's explanation really took the confusion out. So thank you.