Ability damage and negative hp threshold

[shroudb]

from the way i understand it, in PF, youhave ability damage and ability drain.

ability damage is kept in a seperate tab from your actual stat, while drain is applied directly on the stat.

so a character with 14 con and 4 con ability damage is still at 14 con but has "Damage to your Constitution score causes you to take penalties on your Fortitude saving throws. In addition, multiply your total Hit Dice by the Ability Damage penalty and subtract that amount from your current and total hit points. Lost hit points are restored when the damage to your Constitution is healed. See Ability Score Damage below."

4 ability drain in con means that the character currently has 10 con.

so, if i understand it correctly, this character, with the 14 con and 4 ability damage would still die at -14 and not at -10 correct?

edit: while a character with 14 con and 4 ability drain would die at -10 ?

[wraithstrike]

They are tracked separately but for the sake of determining when you fall unconscious or die they stack.

When you track the damage and it reaches your current score really bad things happen..

Example:

You constitution is 14.

You take 4 points of con drain so now your con is 10

Later you take con damage.

If you take 10 points of damage, then your damage now equals your current con score. In this case you die. If it was another ability you would go unconscious.

short version. If the combination of damage and drain equals your con score you are done.

edit: If you have 10 con due to con drain you die at -10.

[shroudb]

yeah i understand how ability drain and ability damage stack (i think). my main concern was ability damage to con and regular damage.

what happenned was that a rogue was hit by a phase spider and failed his fort sv throw vs the poison.

later on, he had -10hp and he had suffered 7 con damage out of his 12 con score.

so, basically, if i counted his full constitution score he was alive (and dying) if i counted his constitution score as a 5 he was dead.

i ruled that he was alive and dying because constitution damage says that it doesn't directly reduce con, but you treat it like "normal" damage, (i.e. in this particular instance it would be something similar to CON 12(5)) while constitution drain is a permanent (except when healed magiccally) reduction of the score (i.e. his con if the poison was doing drain would be CON 5).

i just wonder if my ruling was correct, since the players are bound to discover a few more phase spiders in the very, very immediate future^^

[wraithstrike]

If it was just con damage then he has until -12 before he dies so you were correct.