If I have an Iron Body spell going am I immune to death by massive damage? What about Ice body? Is death by massive damage due to physiology?
Iron Body:
School transmutation; Level sorcerer/wizard 8
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M/DF (a piece of iron from an iron golem, a hero's armor, or a war machine)
Range personal
Target you
Duration 1 min./level (D)
This spell transforms your body into living iron, which grants you several powerful resistances and abilities. You gain damage reduction 15/adamantine. You are immune to blindness, critical hits, ability score damage, deafness, disease, drowning, electricity, poison, stunning, and all spells or attacks that affect your physiology or respiration, because you have no physiology or respiration while this spell is in effect. You take only half damage from acid and fire. However, you also become vulnerable to all special attacks that affect iron golems.
You gain a +6 enhancement bonus to your Strength score, but you take a –6 penalty to Dexterity as well (to a minimum Dexterity score of 1), and your speed is reduced to half normal. You have an arcane spell failure chance of 35% and a –6 armor check penalty, just as if you were clad in full plate armor. You cannot drink (and thus can't use potions) or play wind instruments.
Your unarmed attack deals damage equal to a club sized for you (1d4 for Small characters or 1d6 for Medium characters), and you are considered armed when making unarmed attacks.
Your weight increases by a factor of 10, causing you to sink in water like a stone. However, you could survive the lack of air at the bottom of the ocean—at least until the spell duration expires.
Ice Body:
School transmutation [cold]; Level sorcerer/wizard 7, witch 7
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
Range personal
Target you
Duration 1 minute/level (D)
Your form transmutes into living ice, granting you several abilities. You gain the cold subtype and damage reduction 5/magic. You are immune to ability score damage, blindness, critical hits, deafness, disease, drowning, electricity, poison, stunning, and all spells or attacks that affect your physiology or respiration, because you have no physiology or respiration while this spell is in effect. You cannot drink (and thus can't use potions) or play wind instruments.
Your unarmed attack deals damage equal to a club sized for you (1d4 for Small characters or 1d6 for Medium characters) plus 1 point of cold damage, and you are considered armed when making unarmed attacks. You may burrow through nonmagical ice or snow at your base speed as easily as a fish swims through water. You can move through magical ice and snow if you succeed on a caster level check (1d20 + caster level) against a DC of 11 + the caster level of the effect; you automatically succeed on caster level checks against effects that you created. Your passage through snow and ice in this fashion leaves behind no tunnel or hole.
Massive damage is based off of fortitude, which means it's based on physiology.
But seriously, what group plays with Massive Damage at level 15? That's really easy to get :(
I never used that rule optional rule. It is too easy to make happen. Vital Strike chain and certain monsters =fort saves.
Crits well below level 15 can do it also.
RAW that spell won't help.
Wraithstrike, I agree with you. While things like massive death can be fun for players typically it is used against players. There are many more enemies than players. Anytime someone wants to bring 'instant death' rules (such as double or triple 20 = instant death) into the game I remind them of this.
- Gauss
I always assumed that creatures that are immune to extra damage from critical hits are immune to death from massive damage.
I've always assumed it's a function of having a Con score. Since neither of those spells actually remove your Con, you're still subject to Death from Massive Damage, if the rule is in use.
"Massive Damage (Optional Rule): If you ever sustain a single attack that deals an amount of damage equal to half your total hit points (minimum 50 points of damage) or more and it doesn't kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. If you take half your total hit points or more in damage from multiple attacks, no one of which dealt more than half your total hit points (minimum 50), the massive damage rule does not apply."
... Why would anyone ever want to use this rule?!
"Massive Damage (Optional Rule): If you ever sustain a single attack that deals an amount of damage equal to half your total hit points (minimum 50 points of damage) or more and it doesn't kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. If you take half your total hit points or more in damage from multiple attacks, no one of which dealt more than half your total hit points (minimum 50), the massive damage rule does not apply."... Why would anyone ever want to use this rule?!
A lot of GMs enjoy crushing PCs by random bad luck. Makes them feel powerful, probably because they have little to no power in real life and can't cope any better.
They claim it's for realism in a game where even the mundanes do insanely unrealistic things. I mean, hell, if the 50 damage would have killed you anyway - which for any real life human it abso-freaking-lutely would have - this wouldn't even be an issue.
Yes, I'm very afraid of that big-damage monster and my 5% chance to automatically fail any save, over an above any chance I actually had to fail the save for having less than a +13 Fort Save.
I've played with the rule every time, it hardly ever comes up. By the time PCs are having 100+ hp, a DC 15 Fort save is usually not a big deal.
But back on topic, it doesn't say it removes the danger, and you still have a Con score, so I'd say you can be killed by massive damage. You aren't a true golem, or you'd lose a lot of personality.
Somewhat on topic: I'd always assumed that death from massive damage was from shock. Obviously the rules don't specify this, so it is up to each group to determine if and when various effects might make you immune when playing with this rule.
@Talynonyx - you don't have to have 100+ hp for the rule to apply. You only need to have (50 + con score)+ hp for it to apply. It's pretty easy to have that amount of hp and have pretty bad Fortitude saves.
I've played with the rule every time, it hardly ever comes up. By the time PCs are having 100+ hp, a DC 15 Fort save is usually not a big deal.
If saves didn't auto-fail on a 1, you might actually have a point there.
As it stands, death from massive damage at higher levels is basically just death roulette. Someone's gonna land on 1 eventually!
My own group called it into play during our previous campaign - I'd left it out precisely because it is an optional rule. They wanted to cheap shot the BBEG - and it didn't work. I'd say that it whacks bad guys as often as it whacks PCs.