Death from massive HP loss

[Lady Platypus]

Hello.
I'm having a hard time understanding the rules about death. This is what happened.
My character was hit when down to 1 HP and 0 SP. The hit was for a total of 19 damage.

I have "Enhanced Resistance Kinetic" feat, meaning I have a DR equal to my BAB which is currently 5. That brings the damage down to 14 points, which leaves me with a negative score of -13.

I know they removed the "equal to negative CON" thing to know if you instantly die. But I can't find how it works now. All I find tells me when I reach 0 HP, not what happens if I have plenty of negative points. My RP score is 7.

So, am I dead? Do I subtract those 7 RP from the damage I took? Can you still die instantly from a hit strong enough?

If I'm not dead, what happens now? If I got it right, I spend half my RP to stabilise, and then 1 more RP to "wake up" (with 1 HP).

Thanks for the help

[Nixitur]

The reason it doesn't tell you what happens when you have negative hit points is that there are no negative hit points. At all. If you reach 0, you're at 0, end of story. There are rules for massive damage, but they're not that brutal.

CRB, page 250 wrote:

If you take damage from a single attack that reduces you to 0 HP and there is damage remaining, you die instantly if the remaining damage is equal to or greater than your maximum Hit Points.

So, you were hit for 19 damage, reduced to 14 by your damage reduction. Deducing the one hit point you had left, that's 13 damage remaining. Unless your maximum hit points is 13 or less, no, you do not die from that attack. Massive Damage in Starfinder simply means "Damage higher or equal to your maximum HP".

Furthermore, even if you are hit again while at 0 hit points, you still don't instantly die unless you're taking massive damage.

CRB, page 250 wrote:

If you take damage from a single attack equal to or greater than your maximum Hit Points while you have 0 current HP, you die.

Taking damage while stable puts you in the dying state, making you lose resolve every round. If you take any hit point damage while dying, you also lose resolve once a round. If you're at 0 resolve and would need to lose resolve points, you die.

[Lady Platypus]

THANK YOU!

[Nixitur]

So, just to put it all together:

• if you are reduced to 0 HP and the remaining damage from that attack is equal to or greater than your maximum HP, you die
  
• if you're at 0 HP and take massive damage, you die
  
• if you're otherwise reduced to 0 HP or stable when getting hit, you're dying
  
• if you're dying, you lose 1 RP every round.
  
• if you're dying, the first time in a round you take hit point damage (so after emptying stamina), you lose 1 RP
  
• at any point after the first time in that round, if you take more than half your max HP from one attack, you lose 1 additional RP

So, that means that when you're dying, your RPs aren't going to get entirely emptied by many minor attacks. If you're dying, have 0 stamina, and you get hit by 5 weak attacks a round, you still only lose 2 RP (1 from dying automatically, 1 from taking damage while dying). If each of those attacks does more than half your max HP, though, you're in trouble.
Do look up Long-Term Stability on page 251, as well, because you could still die without taking any more damage and while stable. Any form of HP healing will fix you up, though, be it magical or from the Medicine skill.

[Lady Platypus]

Perfectly clear, thank you so much!

That means my character is still alive, just dying... but the fight is over, so I can get help from my party ;) Thanks again

[Nixitur]

Lady Platypus wrote:

That means my character is still alive, just dying... but the fight is over, so I can get help from my party ;) Thanks again

Don't forget that you can stabilize yourself by spending a quarter (not half) of your maximum resolve points; the most you gotta spend for that is 3 RP. But if the fight is over, getting you stable is pretty easy for others. It's just a DC 15 Medicine check (even untrained and even with a Medpatch) or someone can cast Stabilize on you. I would only spend RP to stabilize if I was down to, like, 4 or 5 RP. Not to mention that while First Aid can remove bleed damage, your self-stabilization can not. You keep bleeding while dying.

And if you're at 0 HP and stable, you can skip the whole long-term stability thing just by spending 1 RP to regain 1 HP. And since negative HP aren't a thing, that means you're now no longer at risk of sudden death. This is extremely worth it because the checks for long-term stability are actually pretty risky. If you have a healing Mystic or someone with a good (14+) Medicine bonus in your party, you probably don't need to worry, though.