I'm prepping for an upcoming game, and I plan to play an Oracle of Life.
Since perception isn't a strong point for the Oracle, I was thinking about how to deal with random encounters at night.
Looking at the Life Link revelation, it looks like the bond lasts until either party dies, the distance goes beyond medium, or the Oracle breaks the link. So, it would continue even if the Oracle is sleeping.
The concept of a "sleeping" character isn't crisply defined in the rules, but creatures under the effect of a Sleep spell are automatically awakened if they take damage.
So, my question is, if an Oracle of Life has a Life Link with all of the guards standing watch, and one of them takes 5 or more points of damage, would the Oracle automatically awaken at the start of his turn when the Life Link inflicted damage on the Oracle?
I think the answer is yes.
Another question is related to damage type. Generally you don't track the type of damage after it was applied (energy, weapons, etc). Once you are damaged, you are damaged. I'm not suggesting some cheese related to energy resistance or DR. But, lethal and non-lethal damage is tracked separately. Would the Life Link preserve the lethal vs. non-lethal type of damage in the link?
I doubt this would come up much, but I could imagine a case where a linked target chooses to self-inflict >= 5 points of non-lethal damage to himself via unarmed strikes to send a signal to the Oracle. Since you heal the same amount of both lethal and non-lethal damage with a single spell, the Oracle may choose to wait to heal that until he also takes lethal damage.
Final question. If you had both lethal and non-lethal damage, which type is healed first by Life Link? I think the reasonable choices are, oldest damage first, most recent damage first, lethal first, or non-lethal first.
Picking one of the types first requires the least amount of bookkeeping, and going with lethal first is most beneficial to the linked target, which is probably what I'd rule for simplicity.
Thoughts?
1) I would think so, yes. If a mundane method is sufficient to "cure you" of the spell, I'd think it should also work on the mundane sleep as well.
2)
PRD quote:
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.
So both are healed at the same time. :)
-S
2)
PRD quote:
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.So both are healed at the same time. :)
-S
Excellent! Thanks!