Ability Damage & Penalties together

[Canthin]

I have a few questions on Ability Damage with Ability Penalties. (I asked this in an Ability Damage thread that was dying and never got a response).

Ability Damage:

Quote:

If the amount of ability damage you have taken equals or exceeds your ability score, you immediately fall unconscious until the damage is less than your ability score.

Character with 12 Dex. Takes 12 points of Dex Damage, he becomes unconscious (damage = score). Easy.

Penalties to ability scores:

Quote:

While in effect, these penalties function just like ability damage, but they cannot cause you to fall unconscious or die. In essence, penalties cannot decrease your ability score to less than 1.

Same character is Exhausted (-6 penalty to Dex), takes 2 points of Dex damage, and then is grappled (-4 penalty to Dex). Is he unconscious? His total "damage" equals his score, and 2 points of it isn't affected by the "...cannot cause you to fall unconscious or die" clause?

If he was Exhausted (-6), Entangled (-4) and Grappled (-4), he would effectively have a Dex of 1 since the Penalties cannot make his score 0, but Damage can cause it to be 0. Do you count Damage first, then Penalties?

If this is the case, what happens if you have a 12 Dex, take 11 points of Dex Damage (-5 to Dex things) and then become Exhausted? Are you now at -8 to Dex things but still have an effective Dex of 1 (not unconscious) or does Exhaustion do nothing to you since penalties cannot decrease your ability score to less than 1 and it is already at 1 due to Damage?

[DeltaOneG]

As I understand it, while penalties look and function like damage, they do not participate in the unconscious portion.

So, until the actual damage equals or exceeds the ability score, you are not rendered unconscious.

Basically, always count damage first.

As far as the last question, it looks like the exhaustion would do nothing.

Now, whatever you're up against that is doing all this ability damage, I hope to never meet it.