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Is nonlethal damage meant to circumvent the Diehard feat?
You are especially hard to kill. Not only do your wounds automatically stabilize when grievously injured, but you can remain conscious and continue to act even at death's door.
Prerequisite: Endurance.
Benefit: When your hit point total is below 0, but you are not dead, you automatically stabilize. You do not need to make a Constitution check each round to avoid losing additional hit points. You may choose to act as if you were disabled, rather than dying. You must make this decision as soon as you are reduced to negative hit points (even if it isn't your turn). If you do not choose to act as if you were disabled, you immediately fall unconscious.
When using this feat, you are staggered. You can take a move action without further injuring yourself, but if you perform any standard action (or any other action deemed as strenuous, including some swift actions, such as casting a quickened spell) you take 1 point of damage after completing the act. If your negative hit points are equal to or greater than your Constitution score, you immediately die.
Normal: A character without this feat who is reduced to negative hit points is unconscious and dying.
Nonlethal damage represents harm to a character that is not life-threatening. Unlike normal damage, nonlethal damage is healed quickly with rest.
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 (see below), and when it exceeds your current hit points, you fall unconscious.
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 (in addition to free, immediate, and swift actions). 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.
If a creature's nonlethal damage is equal to his total maximum hit points (not his current hit points), all further nonlethal damage is treated as lethal damage. This does not apply to creatures with regeneration. Such creatures simply accrue additional nonlethal damage, increasing the amount of time they remain unconscious.
Healing Nonlethal Damage: You heal nonlethal damage at the rate of 1 hit point per hour per character level. When a spell or ability cures hit point damage, it also removes an equal amount of nonlethal damage.
Due to the wording on how nonlethal damage works when it reaches your current HP then even a single point of NL will negate the feat. Was this intentional?
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I think it's a bit of an oversight. It should be fixed with an even-handed approach.
On the one hand Diehard shouldn't be circumvented.
On the other hand, Diehard shouldn't make it impossible to knock you out with nonlethal damage, but it's impossible to deal someone more nonlethal damage than their total HP (the rest becomes lethal damage), so you can't knock someone down to -Con with nonlethal.
A working house rule compromise could be that if you have Diehard, you go out when you reach [current HP + Con] nonlethal damage.
Example: Joe has Con 14 and 30 HP, and Diehard. He takes 35 nonlethal damage, 5 of which becomes lethal. His current HP is at 25 and he has 30 nonlethal damage; not enough to drop him. He takes 9 more nonlethal damage, dropping him to 16 HP. Now 30 nonlethal >= 16 [current HP + 14 [Con], so he passes out. Altogether it took 44 nonlethal damage to drop him.
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On the other hand, Diehard shouldn't make it impossible to knock you out with nonlethal damage
Why?
Diehard makes it impossible to knock someone out with lethal damage. Why should it be easier (i.e. possible) to do so with non-lethal damage?
I'd just rule that nonlethal damage can't knock someone with Diehard unconscious and leave it at that.
, but it's impossible to deal someone more nonlethal damage than their total HP (the rest becomes lethal damage), so you can't knock someone down to -Con with nonlethal.
You can't? How not? See below.
Example: Joe has Con 14 and 30 HP, and Diehard. He takes 35 nonlethal damage, 5 of which becomes lethal. His current HP is at 25
Joe has Con 14 and 30 HP, and Diehard. He takes 74 nonlethal damage, 44 of which becomes lethal. His current HP is at -14, which is his -Con. He dies.
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Ruling that you can still knock them out with NL damage will render the feat utterly useless.
A high level fighter with a greatsword can't drop you but a gang of 10 yr olds pummeling you with their fists will eventually knock you out.
As written, I agree with the OP that one point of non-lethal bypasses the feat and will make you unconscious rather than able to use the feat (you don't have the right conditions for the feat to trigger). I run it like Ascalaphus's house rule, though.
That house rule also avoids the discussion of when you have "zero points of nonlethal damage" and when you have "value undefined" nonlethal damage.
I've seen this brought up as a problem before but not sure what the solution should be.
I don't think Diehard should effectively make the person immune to non-lethal damage.
But honestly, it's such a corner case for the enemy to ever use non-lethal damage that I'm not sure this really needs to be covered.
It stops being a corner case when the GM immediately has the enemies switch to using NL the moment you activate Diehard.
Well, that's simply bad adversarial GM'ing. Hell, in game NPCs probably shouldn't even have an idea of what it means to have Diehard. All they know is they thought the guy should be knocked unconscious from the damage he's taken, but he's not.
Honestly, I think Diehard is terrible anyways. If I'm so injured that I would be knocked unconscious, staying conscious is almost a guaranteed way to get yourself killed. As a PC if I see a very wounded enemy trying to retreat we are going to do are best to make sure he dies and doesn't get healed or escape. Same thing when the roles are reversed and a PC is injured to near the point of death. There is no holding back against something that is still a threat, and if it's moving it's still a threat.
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Unless you have a character concept built around being almost unkillable.
Diehard is the fantasy staple of you should be dead but you aren't
Unless you have a character concept built around being almost unkillable.
Diehard is the fantasy staple of you should be dead but you aren't
Eh...sort of.
Diehard is actually more, you've been hit so much you should be unconscious and dying but you aren't unconscious (you are still dying you just don't take the normal penalties). And, when you reach your negative con in hp you still die like anyone else.
Well, that's simply bad adversarial GM'ing.The same problem applies to the Ferocity monster ability, so this isn't just a tactic for the GM.
First rule of fighting Orcs: one hit with the flat of the blade.
You know, I can't remember the last time I fought a monster with ferocity.
Beyond that, it seems like the majority of attacks that happen in the parties I play and GM for tend to have the monster either barely conscious and in positive HP or straight to dead and below their con modifier. They rarely end up unconscious instead of straight up dead. That is merely my experience though. Part of that is probably because PCs don't stop swinging until the enemy is down and out. Generally speaking the difference between knocking an enemy unconscious with non-lethal versus outright killing them is going to be 1 hit.
Thanks for posting this. I'm trying to figure out how diehard would work with a kineticist who has taken burn (which is unhealable non-lethal damage). I'd like to be able to stay up and active just like other casters can, but if non-lethal negates the feat entirely then there's no point.
Ruling that you can still knock them out with NL damage will render the feat utterly useless.
A high level fighter with a greatsword can't drop you but a gang of 10 yr olds pummeling you with their fists will eventually knock you out.
The fighter with a greatsword can choose to deal non-lethal damage.
Thanks for posting this. I'm trying to figure out how diehard would work with a kineticist who has taken burn (which is unhealable non-lethal damage). I'd like to be able to stay up and active just like other casters can, but if non-lethal negates the feat entirely then there's no point.
Even if nonlethal doesn't deactivate the feat, it is useless for Kineticists. Anything that allows you to ignore the effects of nonlethal from burn doesn't work, regardless of what it is.
While I wouldn't mind an answer, this may be a case of Specific (feat) trumps General (how damage is handled). Diehard says you may choose to continue to function as disabled when below 0, and doesn't differentiate between how you got to less than 0.
In the absence of an official answer, a possible way to adjucate mixed lethal and non-lethal and keep the spirit of the feat is to have the character/creature fall unconscious when total damage equals negative Con.
Also, without Deathwatch, the opponent doesn't know you're using Diehard, so he has no reason to switch to non-lethal attacks.
Non-lethal doesn't reduce you below 0, so specific/general doesn't work.
You can probably distinguish someone using Die Hard/Ferocity easily, as they'd be beaten and broken but still staggering around (with the disabled condition specifically). There's plenty of reason for someone observant to switch to non-letha;.
Non-lethal can kill you, any non-lethal taken in excess of your MAX hp is instead converted to lethal.
That said, it looks like Flagellant is the way to avoid being knocked out via non-lethal. Sad that it won't combo with kineticist though.
Non-lethal can kill you, any non-lethal taken in excess of your MAX hp is instead converted to lethal.
That's true. In that case, you can't take non-lethal (it converts to lethal) once Diehard has been activated. So the only case is if you took non-lethal before reaching -1 and the damage that did it was not enough to knock you to negative (NL+1) or more (since that amount would simultaneously force the NL damage in excess of max HP).
That's...not how non-lethal damage works.
Non-lethal damage and lethal damage are essentially two separate pools. What Tarantula is referencing is the rule that NL damage in excess of your Max HP is converted to lethal damage.
Non-lethal damage in excess of your current hp renders a creature unconscious. That's the conflict with diehard, as 1 point of non-lethal damage is greater than 0 HP that it takes to trigger diehard, so the user is immediately rendered unconscious anyways.
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That moment when the fight has drug on and your below zero standing only with Diehard and are attacked by a creature with a 1d4-3 attack routine and hope it rolls max.
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Wow, I never noticed that before... but yeah, pretty much as worded if someone has Diehard or even Ferocity... Just smack em with one point of NL and bam... problem solved. That's messed up.
That moment when the fight has drug on and your below zero standing only with Diehard and are attacked by a creature with a 1d4-3 attack routine and hope it rolls max.
Wow, and here is another... I didn't realize that Pathfinder had changed the minimum damage rules!!! An attack that does 0 damage still does 1 point of nonlethal instead... Wow.
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"Don't mess with the fairies in the forest man. I once saw a barbarian champion get taken down by one. It was in the middle of a fierce battle of two warring tribes near the edge of the fey's forest home. This guy was a real giant I tell you. He seemed totally unstoppable. With mine own eyes I saw him weather a variety of deadly curses, volley of arrows, and even a siege engine as he waded effortlessly through the sea of warriors with his spear like a narwhal through the ocean surf! Then, out of nowhere, a tiny fairy flew out of the tree line, tapped the champion on the nose, and said "boop." The battle came to an abrupt halt as the champion collapsed into a crumpled heap like a discarded rag doll! Totally incapacitated I tell you! The other warriors fled in terror. Me as well I'm not sorry to day. If you value your life, stay away from yonder forest. And by golly, don't go annoying any of the fairies who dwell there!"
- Belkazor, deserter of the Battle of Evergreens