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A few question related to the Oracle Life link ability.
Life Link (Su): As a standard action, you may create a bond between yourself and another creature. Each round at the start of your turn, if the bonded creature is wounded for 5 or more hit points below its maximum hit points, it heals 5 hit points and you take 5 hit points of damage. You may have one bond active per oracle level. This bond continues until the bonded creature dies, you die, the distance between you and the other creature exceeds medium range, or you end it as an immediate action (if you have multiple bonds active, you may end as many as you want as part of the same immediate action).
1) at what range you can create a bond? The ability don't specify anything.
2) If the oracle is unconscious, has 10 constitution, is at -9 HP and has life link running, how much will he cure?
Up to his constitution in hp and then he would die (i.e. 1 hp in this situation)?
Or 5 hp for each person linked, so that if he had 4 links running he would heal 5 hp toe each target and get at -29?
3) It count as healing for stopping bleeding effects from wounds or the loss of hit point for the dying condition?
4) It count as magical healing for things like the Infernal Wound ability of Horned devils?
To better explain questions 2-4, my doubt is if the life link is a form of magical healing (an so can fail tanks to the Infernal wound effect, will stop bleeding and so on) or it is a transference of life energy and so it is limited to the life energy available to the oracle but work even against effects that limit healing.
1) Doesn't specify a range, so as long as you're in range for the thing (medium range) you could create it.
2) I'd say he'd heal the first one for 5, then is at -14 and dead, and therefor all the lifelinks automatically end and noone else gets healed. Usually the order is obvious, but sometimes (AoE spells) all take damage at the same time, I guess it's up to the DM in that situation. Either way, oracle dies.
3) It seems to be magic, so I'd say so.
4) dunno
Thats my take on it, the wording of the ability is a bit sparse though, so talk to your GM.
1) at what range you can create a bond? The ability don't specify anything.
The only range listed is Medium, so I assume that's the range to cast it also.
2) If the oracle is unconscious, has 10 constitution, is at -9 HP and has life link running, how much will he cure?
Assuming the Oracle doesn't choose to drop the link and would rather die, I think it would transfer all the damage at once. It happens at the start of your turn.
3) It count as healing for stopping bleeding effects from wounds or the loss of hit point for the dying condition?
The linked creature heals 5 HP. That would cause a dying creature to become stable.
Stable Characters and Recovery: "If any sort of healing cures the dying character of even 1 point of damage, he becomes stable and stops losing hit points."It will not stop bleed because it is not a spell.
Bleed: "Bleeding can be stopped by a DC 15 Heal check or through the application of any spell that cures hit point damage (even if the bleed is ability damage)."
4) It count as magical healing for things like the Infernal Wound ability of Horned devils?
Life Link is a Supernatural ability. Supernatural abilities are magical.
Anything that would be stopped by magical healing would be stopped by Life Link. Anything that specifically requires a spell will not be stopped by Life Link.
Infernal Wound is wonky, as the text says "any attempt to heal a creature suffering from an infernal wound..." but later says "or the spell does not function" while Life Link is an attempt to heal the creature, it's not a spell. I think the most reasonable interpretation is to have the oracle overcome the caster level check, and then the link would function normally and stop the bleeding from the Infernal Wound. Alternately, you could argue that the healing happens no matter what, but the Wound is only closed if the oracle overcomes the CL check.
Assuming the Oracle doesn't choose to drop the link and would rather die, I think it would transfer all the damage at once. It happens at the start of your turn.
Ah yes, I missed that little part of the sentence where it says it happens at the start of your turn. I would agree then, all healing/damage done at once, and you're dead.
I'm not sure you can drop the lifelink while you're unconcious. It may be an immediate action, but that doesn't mean you can use it while unconcious.
Actually it specifically states you can't use an immediate action while flat-footed. I would argue being unconcious falls into that category as well, even if it doesn't explicitely makes you flat-footed, but the effects you get for helpless are worse than flat-footed.
I'm not sure you can drop the lifelink while you're unconcious. It may be an immediate action, but that doesn't mean you can use it while unconcious.
A Dying creature can take no actions.
A stable character who has made the constitution check to become Disabled can take immediate actions.
A dying character who is still Unconscious is knocked out and helpless.
Under Helpless Defenders in the combat chapter, it states "A helpless character is also flat-footed."
It's odd that it's stated there, but not mentioned in the glossary or anywhere else. It's possible since that line was under the "Regular Attack" section, it was intended to mean flat-footed for the purposes of being attacked. (Without that line, rogues could not sneak attack a helpless defender, since Dex 0 is not the same as denied dex.) But unless it's changed to say denied dex instead of flat-footed, you can't take an immediate action to drop Link while helpless.
Ah, I was checking the helpless entry in the condition section. There it says Rogues get sneak attack vs helpless enemies, and as you pointed out, helpless also makes them flatfooted.
And since immediate actions can't be done when flat-footed you can't do them when unconcious, since that makes you helpless.
So once the Lifelink oracle drops unconcious, thats really bad. Of course, it would be the smart thing to release the lifelinks as an immediate action the moment before you drop unconcious.
I play where if you have active dismiss-able spells and you fall unconscious or dead then those spells end. Sort of like a charmed person is no longer charmed when the controller goes down. Although, I can't point to any official game rulings to support or dispute my claim. I, as a GM would say the link is broken if the Oracle is unconscious.
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I play where if you have active dismiss-able spells and you fall unconscious or dead then those spells end. Sort of like a charmed person is no longer charmed when the controller goes down. Although, I can't point to any official game rulings to support or dispute my claim. I, as a GM would say the link is broken if the Oracle is unconscious.
Saker casts raise thread!
Actually, I have my own question about life link that wasn't brought up here.
"Each round at the start of your turn, if the bonded creature is wounded for 5 or more hit points below its maximum hit points, it heals 5 hit points and you take 5 hit points of damage."
Would the healing be considered positive energy and the damage negative?
If the Oracle were undead or had a spell that negated negative energy, then would life link heal the target and heal or do no damage to Oracle?What if the target was undead or had alternate effects from healing (ie double or half damage).
I tried to answer my own question by reviewing questions about Shield Other, but it has a different mechanic, IMO. I'm of the thought that all magical healing is positive energy and all magical life draining is negative energy. So, given an injured target and an injured Oracle I think the spell gives 5 positive energy to target and 5 negative energy to Oracle healing them both. But since the Undead's lifeforce is measured in negative energy the Oracle would have to be injured to transfer that life force for life link activation. This is also good to prevent infinite healing for all the targets with life link.
Actually, I have my own question about life link that wasn't brought up here.
"Each round at the start of your turn, if the bonded creature is wounded for 5 or more hit points below its maximum hit points, it heals 5 hit points and you take 5 hit points of damage."Would the healing be considered positive energy and the damage negative?
If the Oracle were undead or had a spell that negated negative energy, then would life link heal the target and heal or do no damage to Oracle?
What if the target was undead or had alternate effects from healing (ie double or half damage).I tried to answer my own question by reviewing questions about Shield Other, but it has a different mechanic, IMO. I'm of the thought that all magical healing is positive energy and all magical life draining is negative energy. So, given an injured target and an injured Oracle I think the spell gives 5 positive energy to target and 5 negative energy to Oracle healing them both. But since the Undead's lifeforce is measured in negative energy the Oracle would have to be injured to transfer that life force for life link activation. This is also good to prevent infinite healing for all the targets with life link.
This represents a very common misunderstanding of positive and negative energy.
Positive energy does not always heal living creatures and harm undead, nor does negative energy always heal undead and harm living creatures. All abilities that heal one and harm another specifically spell out that they do so. There is no generalized rule about positive/negative energy.
If Cure Light Wounds used positive energy to heal living creatures but didn't specify that it hurt undead, it wouldn't hurt undead. If Inflict didn't have a special clause about healing undead, it wouldn't heal undead.
There are, in fact, negative energy effects that don't heal undead (and indeed harm them), like a wraith's touch, for example.
So, long story short, it is irrelevant whether Life Link involves positive or negative energy (and indeed, it involves neither, since it does not say anything about positive or negative energy). Life Link heals any creature, living or undead, regardless, and harms you no matter what type of creature you are.
looking at it, would life link's healing be magical at all... its a supernatural, not spell like so...
looking at it, would life link's healing be magical at all... its a supernatural, not spell like so...
Supernatural abilities are magical.
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As an immediate action you should be able to sever all the links as you initially go unconscious.
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As pointed out earlier, Supernatural Abilities are magical in nature, and Life Link is a Supernatural Ability.
The damage a clay golem deals doesn't heal naturally and resists magical healing. A character attempting to use magical healing on a creature damaged by a clay golem must succeed on a DC 26 caster level check, or the healing has no effect on the injured creature.
The Oracle would have to succeed at a Caster Level check each round in order to have her Life Link heal any damage. Whether that's one check for each individual affected or one check each round total, I'm not sure.
Only damage is healed, and the Oracle only takes damage. No other effects are transferred to the Oracle.
To piggy-back on part 4 of the original question.....
Does the "nature" of the damage "transfer" to the Oracle? I'll use something that happened in our session tonight as an example. Our Shadowdancer was hit by a clay golem. Our oracle used life link in an attempt to heal our SD (with a DC 26 caster level check). Now, the question is when our oracle tries to heal himself, will he have to make another caster level check? Is life link only supposed heal damage with no further negative effects to taken on by the oracle, or do the negative effects apply to the oracle as well? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Not really interested in DM fiat, just RAW. Thanks! :)
The target of Life Link is healed. The source of this healing is Life Link. The Oracle takes damage. The source of this damage is Life Link.
I thought of another question that hasn't been asked here. If the oracle has DR does it reduce the Life Link damage? If so does the damage from each bonded creature get added together before figuring in DR or does each count as a different instance of damage?
Force ward should take damage first as is generally the case with abilities that provide temporary hit points.
DR would not work as the damage is not a physical type (which is what DR protects against), nor is it a specific energy type (like fire, acid, etc for resistance to effect). It is an untyped damage from a supernatural source.