Poison / Con Damage

[LloydGM]

It's probably someplace really obvious and I've missed it but I'm looking for a clarification on how Con damage works.

Say Bob the Fighter has 20 HP and take 9 points of damage leaving him with 11 HP remaining. Then he takes 18 points of Con damage dropping his max HP to 11. Now does he still have 11 HP or does he have 2 because he's taken 9 points of damage?

[Jeraa]

LloydGM wrote:

It's probably someplace really obvious and I've missed it but I'm looking for a clarification on how Con damage works.

Say Bob the Fighter has 20 HP and take 9 points of damage leaving him with 11 HP remaining. Then he takes 18 points of Con damage dropping his max HP to 11. Now does he still have 11 HP or does he have 2 because he's taken 9 points of damage?

He has 2 hp remaining. Damage doesn't just disappear - he has still taken 9 points of damage.

From the Core Rulebook:

Quote:

Constitution: Damage to your Constitution score causes you to take penalties on your Fortitude saving throws. In addition, multiply your total Hit Dice by this 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.

So when you take constitution damage, not only does your maximum amount of hit points get reduced, but so does you current amount of hit points.

[Berinor]

Note that unless he has at least 19 Con, he's dead from Con damage at this point. Also, he loses 9 hit points per hit die (or per level if we're just talking about those kinds of folks) as noted in Jeraa's quote. So unless he's first level, he's losing a lot more hit points than that.

[LloydGM]

I thought I did it wrong. Oh well, the party benefitted this time (their cleric didn't die) but it's something to remember for next time.

And my poor example was just something I came up with. I couldn't remember the cleric's exact stats.

[Kazaan]

Furthermore, when the Con damage is healed, it restores both the lost max and current HP. So a lvl 2 character w/ 20 HP and 19 Con takes 9 points of straight HP damage, leaving him with 11 HP and 20 max HP. He then suffers 18 points of Con damage which causes him to lose 9 * 2 HP and max HP leaving him with -7 HP and 2 max HP. Now, mind you, you haven't actually "lost" 18 points of Con. You still have 19 Con, but the damage has certain "effects" on you so you'd still die at -19 HP. So you'd start making stabilization rolls and, if you get healed from the straight damage loss, you can only go up to 2 HP.

So lets say you survive this ordeal by being healed 9 points to your adjusted max HP of 2. You then get the 18 Con damage healed all in one go. Both your max HP and current HP increase by 18 so you're now at 20 HP and 20 max HP.