Dealing with Ability Damage at the end of a Scenario

[Human Fighter]

I recall season 5 having some oddly worded rules about resolving conditions, and it could be easily interpreted that just about anything not resolved just made you automatically dead. I want help to better understand how conditions are dealt with for season six.

Specific example for something that actually happened. I took 3 points of strength damage from poison in a session. I was asked at the end how I resolve this, and said that my character would just sleep it off. It was insisted that I fixed it immediately, because the game had ended and I didn't have time to sleep. My character can do a day job check, which I believe assumes a long period of time working is done to earn the money, but he cannot sleep apparently to unhinder himself of this condition? Is this correct? If someone raged, and ended the game a split second when they became exhausted, do they need to resolve it with paying for spells and such? Sickened for the day and everything needs to be resolved this way too once the GM says the session is over, or else you're dead?

I would really like help to best interpret the rules in the season 6 guide for PFS. Thanks.

[SCPRedMage]

Short version: you were right.

Long version:

Hit point and ability damage do not carry over between scenarios, as they will heal naturally, and there is an indeterminate amount of time between adventures. Likewise, any condition that will end naturally does not need to be tracked between scenarios.

Permanent negative levels, ability drain, and "non-mechanical" effects can carry over between scenarios, and should be noted on the chronicle sheet when they do. These conditions do not have to be resolved by the end of the scenario, and can be taken care of later.

Any other condition must be cleared by the end of the scenario, but that doesn't mean the exact in-game second the last obstacle has been dealt with; just because you can't deal with it that very second doesn't mean you automatically have to pay to get them removed. You can certainly use your spells the next day to help deal with it, yourself.

As to where in the Guide it says this, you're looking for the section on page 22 titled "Conditions, Death, and Expendables". It doesn't directly deal with hit point or ability damage, however. In fact, the phrase "ability score damage" appears exactly once, on page 25.

Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play wrote:

Once a Prestige Point is spent, it is spent permanently; it is not recovered automatically like lost hit points or ability score damage.

While the point of the section this is from isn't how damage is handled, it does acknowledge that they are "recovered automatically".

[Blackbot]

GtPFSOP wrote:

All conditions gained during an adventure, except for permanent negative levels, ability drain that does not reduce an ability score to 0, and conditions that provide no mechanical effect, must be resolved before the end of the session; if these are not resolved the character should be reported as ‘dead.’ Permanent negative levels, ability drain, and non-mechanical conditions being carried over to the next session should be recorded under the Notes section of the Chronicle sheet. An unplayable character should be marked as dead when reporting the session. See additional rules under Dealing with Afflictions in Chapter 7.

I agree that it's not really spelled out that well, but in conjunction with James' quoted section it basically means "You have to resolve everything, though you can do so by waiting."

For example, my character contracted a disease. Adventure over --> I had to resolve it. I decided to sit it out, rolled all the days right after one another, took 4 points of ability damage, waited until it was gone, everything was peachy again.

EDIT: Just read something said in this thread: Ability Damage is not a condition.
It's damage.
So...no need to note it! Yay!

[Human Fighter]

Thank you guys a lot for pointing this out. I didn't have the resource at the time, and didn't even think to compare it to hit point damage.