Prerequistes for healing non lethal damage

[glandis]

So, the rule says "You heal nonlethal damage at the rate of 1 hit point per hour per character level." But - per hour of what? Just elapsed time? Time spent resting? Sleeping?

If you're walking for an hour, do you heal your level in nonlethal? What about if you're hustling? What about if you're riding?

My temptation is to say that any strenuous activity (in combat, hustling/running, riding at a run/hustle, doing anything while fatigued, etc.) prevents nonlethal recovery, but something like normal speed riding/walking ... sure, you recover nonlethal then.

But there may be wiser minds out there! Thoughts?

[mplindustries]

If there's no other context to consider, then it's per hour no matter what you're doing.

That said, I feel like maybe I should check out the area in the rules myself to look for context--it's possible the line you quoted is in a general section about resting or whatever.

[Dekalinder]

1 hour = 1 hour.

If it was a specific hour, like a resting hour, it would have said "1 hour of rest". So any one hour is as good as one other.

[glandis]

OK, I'm gonna go ahead and overthink this:

1 hour = 1 hour seems questionable, given the context of the rules for a prolonged Hustle or Forced March. There, you take non-lethal damage per hour past 1 hustle/past 8 forced march. In the hustle case, if 1 hour = 1 hour, then it will take quite a bit longer before you even notice. Lvl 1 get you an extra hour of free hustle, lvl 2 2 hours, lvl 4 3hrs, lvl 8 4 hrs, lvl 16 6 hrs. Forced march is even worse - even if you start failing the Con checks, 1d6 non-lethal is obviously totally irrelevant by lvl 6.

Overland Hustle rules:

A character can hustle for 1 hour without a problem. Hustling for a second hour in between sleep cycles deals 1 point of nonlethal damage, and each additional hour deals twice the damage taken during the previous hour of hustling. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from hustling becomes fatigued.

Forced March rules:

A character can walk for more than 8 hours in a day by making a forced march. For each hour of marching beyond 8 hours, a Constitution check (DC 10, +2 per extra hour) is required. If the check fails, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage.

There are two sections on nonlethal damage (from here). While the section on "Healing Nonlethal Damage" simply says "You heal nonlethal damage at the rate of 1 hit point per hour per character level", the general "Nonlethal Damage" section says "Nonlethal damage represents harm to a character that is not life-threatening. Unlike normal damage, nonlethal damage is healed quickly with rest." (bold added) So - you must "rest," I guess.

New version of the question: is that rest like the rest to recover from running ("During a rest period, a character can move no faster than a normal move action"), or the uninterrupted 8 hours needed to heal normal damage?

I'm actually really surprised at how unclear the wording of this is ...

[mplindustries]

glandis wrote:

OK, I'm gonna go ahead and overthink this:

1 hour = 1 hour seems questionable, given the context of the rules for a prolonged Hustle or Forced March. There, you take non-lethal damage per hour past 1 hustle/past 8 forced march. In the hustle case, if 1 hour = 1 hour, then it will take quite a bit longer before you even notice. Lvl 1 get you an extra hour of free hustle, lvl 2 2 hours, lvl 4 3hrs, lvl 8 4 hrs, lvl 16 6 hrs. Forced march is even worse - even if you start failing the Con checks, 1d6 non-lethal is obviously totally irrelevant by lvl 6.

I think this falls more under the general "you can't heal the nonlethal damage until you stop taking it" thing like for heat exhaustion or hunger.

[glandis]

mplindustries wrote:

I think this falls more under the general "you can't heal the nonlethal damage until you stop taking it" thing like for heat exhaustion or hunger.

Well, those are specific cases rather than the general rule, but yes, good point: heat/cold/etc. have "cannot be recovered until xxx" statements that make them pretty clear.

So I guess overland Hustle and Forced March need that kind of a statement too. "Nonlethal damage from Hustle/Forced March cannot be recovered while the character continues to Hustle/Forced March?"

Continuing the overthinking, the consequences of this are fairly big for a most-of-the-day Hustle - Hhour (hustle hour) 1 is already free, Hhour 2 does only 1 nonlethal, hour 3 at a normal pace recovers it, Hhour 4 does 2 nonlethal, hour 5 at a normal pace recovers it for a lvl 2 character, Hhour 6 does 4 nonlethal, hour 7 at a normal pace recovers it for a lvl 4 character, Hhour 8 does 8 nonlethal - and the normal travel day is done, with 8 nonlethal to heal (2 hours at lvl 4, 1 at lvl 8).

So that means a lvl 8 character can hustle for 5 out of the 8 travel hours in a day with little consequence. For a 30' speed character, that's 39 miles/day, instead of 24.