I am making a battle cleric (with dip into Brb)for PFS and am thinking about choosing Endurance and Diehard as beginning feats.
My thought process was that a lot of my frontline characters spend time unconscious because of my charge-in style. With Diehard he has extra hit points to fight on or step back and heal himself. However, upon further thought will these extra HPs just led to his death. Now when a guy goes unconscious, usually, the enimies go after a standing target. With this guy up and front & center is he marked for death?
Your thoughts on this or any advice from people who have chosen Diehard for a Society character. Is the feat worth it or should I just take Power Attack and something else?
Thanks in advance.
From my point of view, I would just take something else.
As a DM, "most" times my npc's ignore an unconcious foe to move on and take out other opponents that are still active. If they are killers, then after removing the other threats they go back to finish off any unconcious. Exceptions do exist, but they are usually really naughty types.
Greg :)
@OP: Yeah, you kind of honed in on the `hidden down-side` to it,
that actually using it in some cases you will be putting yourself in further CRITICAL danger of dying.
But that just means that the best usage of it, ESPECIALLY since you have healing built in as a class feature, is NOT staying in the thick of things (melee) when Die-hard triggers, but using the action to heal yourself and withdraw (you are limited to a Standard Action, but if you Channel to heal yourself and are now back in `normal` HPs, I would say you can then use the Move Action).
As to it`s comparitive use value... Hard to say... Especially if you are actually buying the Feats (it looks somewhat better if you get Endurance for free).
It IS going to look very powerful at low levels. Although you mention the danger aspect, Diehard is probably giving you MORE than double the `conscious` HPs at 1st level. In other words, if they DO switch targets to somebody else (because you`re unconscious) that other person is also likely to drop to negative HPs and go unconscious... i.e. TWO characters ready to be Coup-de-Grace`d.
You can also compare it Half-Orc Ferocity, which is similar, but just one round... Which is all you need if you are using to self-heal. Ferocity is a pretty good deal (considering it`s KIND OF LIKE two Feats), but in the LONG run (high levels) both Ferocity and full Diehard aren`t as big of a deal IMHO - if it was easier to increase your `Die Point` (which equals -CON score) that might change, but it`s NOT actually that easy (my house-rule for Rage HPs DOES change this, and it makes Ferocity/Diehard more useful over the full range of game-play).
I would say go for it. It`s not BAD certainly, and you should get alot of use out of it at low-levels. While you to some extent risk real death more, again, by my example of TWO characters unconscious/in negative HPs, that aspect probably isn`t as bad as you might think at first. Just by staying standing/fighting, you can go Full Defensive or Fight Defensively, and both have offensive effect, possibly prevent enemies from dropping other allies (if they switched target to them), and protect yourself (via fighting defensively, etc). As a Cleric, you have a built in option (self-healing) that should always be a safe option. Maybe you will find some aspects of it that suck, or that require different tactics, but PLAYING IT is the best way to find out :-)
Also note that at higher levels, Breath of Life is available to bring back recently dead characers (dead in last round) without the expense and hassle of resurrection, etc. Since YOU are the Cleric that may not be as relevant for your case, but it applies to other characters who consider Diehard. But since you are the Cleric, you self-healing options are pretty damn good, meaning that should always be one of your options for your actions while using Diehard`s Negative HPs.
Creative Director
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The trick with the Diehard feat is knowing that you don't HAVE to take advantage of it when it triggers. Often, staying up and threatening to the bad guys is just a way to attract further attention, after all. The whole "negative hit points" part of the game is indeed built to give PCs a sort of "cushion" between being defeated in combat and being killed in combat, since as long as other allies are alive, most foes won't stop to hurt a dying creature unless they're really hard-core or using area effect stuff.
So yeah... sometimes, when you get knocked to zero hp, it's a good idea to at least play dead even if you have Diehard.
Diehard's also handy when you're alone, of course, but also for getting to safety once you DO hit the negative hit points. You don't have to stay in the fight; you can run away and get back to the healers or whatever.
Using Diehard to just keep fighting against a foe that's tough enough to have already put you into negatives is indeed a risky move, but risky moves is what heroes are all about!
Diehard is also a prerequisite to Fast Healer. If you're a cleric and have a high Con score, AND you're taking Diehard, you might consider that feat as well.
I've played two successful characters who made use of diehard. One was a cleric who charged into the fight and was smashed pretty frequently. At low levels, I had a lot more confidence in my survival knowing I had twice as many hit points to act with, as well as the ability to heal myself.
The other was a barbarian who dealt so much damage that an extra standard action might well demolish his foes. Otherwise it gave a chance to heal him so he didn't die from losing rage. Both were humans, of course, so they could take diehard at 1st level.
Another player used it in a rather metagamey tactical kind of way and would only use it when the situation called for it. If there seemed like enough party members up and running to take out the bad guys the player would just drop their greatsword fighter, and thus get overlooked by the bad guys. It was only when things were really close would he invoke the Die Hard and the player was able to stop a couple of TPKs, along with shutting down a encounters that were causing a lot of carnage. Pretty much in all of these situations, by the time the character was so low as to go into negatives, the bad guys were also just one shot away from going down, so it worked pretty well. Still, the player handled everything in a rather gamey abstract way, so it wasn't exactly flavorful how it was conducted.Calling on inner reserves of strength and risking yourself when things look their worst so that you can change the tide of battle and save your allies is "metagamey"? I'll take that kind of metagaming at my table any day.
Flavored that way yeah, but his player likely said something more along the lines of "and now I activate the Diehard feat because Bob's character is at -4 health and Jim's at -6, so I'll use it to buy time and try to kill this caster. He's only thrown 3rd level spells at us, he can't have too much more hp." Your way is in character awesomeness, that ways metagamey.
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I am making a battle cleric (with dip into Brb)for PFS and am thinking about choosing Endurance and Diehard as beginning feats.
Start off with a multiclass dip of Fighter[Unbreakable], and you get both of them for free (as well as armor proficiencies, martial weapons, etc).
While is has its drawbacks (usually because it permits dumb players to keep doing dumb things when they'd otherwise be unconscious), Diehard is particularly useful in certain situations (such as when you'd otherwise be drowning or near hungry predators who'd drag your carcass into a lair to feed).
Silly question though ...
For a "Battle Cleric" wouldn't "Combat Casting" (Since you plan to be up towards the front line) and "Toughness" (to keep from needing "Diehard" in the first place) be better buys?
Diehards main weakness along with the Endurance feat tax is that it doesn't protect against non-lethal damage as written currently. If the Gm house rules otherwise, it will be a much better feat.