He took strength damage and fell. I.got a cleric with breath of life restoration and stuff. How do I save my friend?
Well you have about 1d4 rounds before he turns into a shadow. It depends on the DM but if the shadow pops out of the body then you can at least resurrect him but if everything goes than only a true ress will work.
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If your buddy died of Strength damage then Breath of Life will not help. It only reverses death by HP loss, and only for one round. Your buddy is about to rise as a new shadow. Once you kill it the only way to get your buddy back is 7th level Resurrection, followed by two 4th level Restorations. Strength drained by a shadow is very dead.
Why can't I use restoration on his body?
Why can't I use restoration on his body?
"Target: creature touched"
Or more simply...for the same reason you can't cast Cure Light Wounds to resurrect someone. He's dead. You need a specific spell to fix dead.
If you had Sanctify Corpse, that would certainly stave it off for day or so until you can come up with a solution. (Consecrate might also work, but that's up to your GM.
If you have two casters available, you might be able to convince your GM to let you do Breath of Life followed immediately by Bull's Strength (with a readied action to cast as soon as Breath of Life goes off). If you're lucky, that might be enough to boost your buddy's strength above 0 long enough to cast an actual Restoration.
But all of that requires GM approval.
Honestly... Your best bet is to spend these 1d4 rounds buffing and prepare to face the Shadow.
You'll have to kill it. When you do, drag the drained body back to town and get him rezzed there. It'll be way more expensive, and the town needs an appropriately leveled cleric.
BTW, OP... making a second thread out of this isn't going to change the rules.
did I make two threads, or did my buddy post himself? If the latter why did you assume I double posted, and why did you bother to post what you did in the quote?
Why isn't "creature touched" a valid target? It is for breath of life, so why not restoration even if someone wants to explain another reason why the restoration wouldn't work, I don't really understand it not being a valid target with what was said so far.. Gm and someone else said their an object now, and it was looking like animate object time or mend to solve the problem. I asked if we did restoration and breath of life in either order literally back to back (not waiting a whole round) but it turned into a madhouse with how passionately people wanted to say no while I was just simply asking for possible table variation under creative solution. Could this actually work?
He took strength damage and fell. I.got a cleric with breath of life restoration and stuff. How do I save my friend?
If your friend collapses at the gaming table, you should call 911, and start CPR if he isn't breathing and/or he doesn't have a pulse.
School conjuration (healing); Level cleric/oracle 5; Domain healing 5
CASTING
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
EFFECT
Range touch
Target creature touched
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw Will negates (harmless) or Will half, see text; Spell Resistance yes (harmless) or yes, see text
DESCRIPTION
This spell cures 5d8 points of damage + 1 point per caster level (maximum +25).
Unlike other spells that heal damage, breath of life can bring recently slain creatures back to life. If cast upon a creature that has died within 1 round, apply the healing from this spell to the creature. If the healed creature's hit point total is at a negative amount less than its Constitution score, it comes back to life and stabilizes at its new hit point total. If the creature's hit point total is at a negative amount equal to or greater than its Constitution score, the creature remains dead. Creatures brought back to life through breath of life gain a temporary negative level that lasts for 1 day.
Creatures slain by death effects cannot be saved by breath of life.
Like cure spells, breath of life deals damage to undead creatures rather than curing them, and cannot bring them back to life.
Here is the thing, I would say that by strict raw breath of life would work. RAI is dubious though - breath of life seems to assume that the creature touched was killed by hitpoint damage.
I am assuming that being in the positive hit points returns the creature to life - for some silly reason the spell only explicitly states that the creature comes to life if it has -CON<creature HP<0, but I seriously doubt that RAI is that healing a creature too much prevents it from returning to life.
Using this assumption, if the creature's HP after healing is greater than -CON, then the creature comes back to life.
The only exception to this is if the creature was killed by a death effect. Relevant link.
So, if healed within 1 round your friend would presumably be above -Con, and thus would be returned back to life (HP loss didn't actually kill him, but Breath of life doesn't care).
For completeness sake, lets look at the greater shadow's strength damage ability
A greater shadow's touch deals 1d8 points of Strength damage to a living creature. This is a negative energy effect. A creature dies if this Strength damage equals or exceeds its actual Strength score.
also, since create spawn isn't given in the greater shadow's stat block
A humanoid creature
killed by a shadow’s Strength damage
becomes a shadow under the control
of its killer in 1d4 rounds.
I am assuming that someone returned to life doesn't spontaneously turn into a shadow - the create spawn ability only functions if the creature stays dead.
If I wanted to be very pedantic, I would say that as long as your buddy had more than 8 strength the shadow could never kill him barring a crit, since strength damage doesn't actually reduce your strength. A character with 10 str and 6 str damage would survive another hit for 8 str damage because 8<10. This is for the same reason that a 16 str character that takes 4 strength damage doesn't lose power attack (13 str requirement).
Assuming the RAI reading of the strength damage ability that isn't ****ing stupid (str damage >= str - previous str damage = death), then your friend would die but nothing is preventing him from being raised (since the damage ability is not a death effect, and the character isn't an undead yet). The shadow's strength damage ability also doesn't have any duration - something gets hit, it takes strength damage, if the damage exceeds it's strength it dies, the end. It is irrelevant when determining anything that happens after the shadow attacks unless that thing specifically cares about the source of the ability damage (which the create spawn ability does, btw).
As for why a corpse is an object, it isn't explicitly stated as such to my knowledge, but several spells imply that it is (gentle repose - target is a corpse, and saves and SR are for an object therefore a corpse is treated as an object). Ruling that a corpse is a creature would result in stupid things like shield other continuing to provide protection after the caster is killed.
Of course Breath of Life only targets a creature, but breath of life also restores people to life after they die from strength damaging undead by restoring their HP, so I think that can be chalked up to breath of life being a badly written spell, and the target line should be "Target creature or corpse touched".
If the only reason your friend died is due to strength drain then you need to use restoration.
No normal healing will help as you have to raise his strength back to a positive number then use raise dead or the like
First, shadows do strength damage, not drain.
Second, only constitution damage/drain results in death. Strength damage(and drain) just results in unconsciousness.
Third, Raise Dead raises ability scores damaged to 0 up to 1. Resurrection effects get rid of damage completely. Restoration is not necessary in that case.
Second, only constitution damage/drain results in death. Strength damage(and drain) just results in unconsciousness.
Strength Damage (Su) A greater shadow's touch deals 1d8 points of Strength damage to a living creature. This is a negative energy effect. A creature dies if this Strength damage equals or exceeds its actual Strength score.
Second, only constitution damage/drain results in death. Strength damage(and drain) just results in unconsciousness.Strength Damage (Su) A greater shadow's touch deals 1d8 points of Strength damage to a living creature. This is a negative energy effect. A creature dies if this Strength damage equals or exceeds its actual Strength score.
Yes, he got hit by the shadow's ability called Strength Damage (Su), which deals 1d8 strength damage on a touch attack and kills him if the strength damage dealt meets or exceeds his strength. It did, so he died.
The ability has been resolved, and the character can be raised as per normal. The Strength Damage(Su) ability doesn't do anything to him any more - it's instantaneous (no duration). He still has the strength damage, but it is just regular ability damage.
The ability has been resolved, and the character can be raised as per normal. The Strength Damage(Su) ability doesn't do anything to him any more - it's instantaneous (no duration). He still has the strength damage, but it is just regular ability damage.Raise Dead doesn't work on someone turned into an Undead creature which the Shadows Spawn ability does. You need resurrection.
Which is why its important to cast raise dead b4 1d4 rounds.
Just to have a rules quote present:
A creature who has been turned into an undead creature or killed by a death effect can't be raised by this spell. Constructs, elementals, outsiders, and undead creatures can't be raised. The spell cannot bring back a creature that has died of old age.
Now of course you are not an undead creature until those 1d4 rounds have passed per RAW, so I don't why it would not work if done in time, but otherwise they need a rez.
edit:Raise dead takes 1 minute to cast and it can't be quickened so that is also not an option.
Why can't I use restoration on his body?
Dead creatures are objects and they don't have ability scores. If you try it in PFS you will likely(99%) be told it won't work.
The 1 minute casting time makes that difficult.Which is why its important to cast raise dead b4 1d4 rounds.The ability has been resolved, and the character can be raised as per normal. The Strength Damage(Su) ability doesn't do anything to him any more - it's instantaneous (no duration). He still has the strength damage, but it is just regular ability damage.Raise Dead doesn't work on someone turned into an Undead creature which the Shadows Spawn ability does. You need resurrection.
Allow me to rephrase, a quickened raise dead would work.
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Yeah....using the wording of the listed abilities:
Strength damage touch that kills you: Is listed as a negative energy effect, not a Death effect. Considered more similar to channel negative energy, and not Wail of the Banshee. It is also, as someone above posted an instantaneous effect, and not a prolonged condition in and of it's self.
Someone who gets nicked by a shadow once in their life won't die if their str drops to 0 from a poison.
Breath of life doesn't work vs death effects. That's not a concern here.
Breath of life mentions bringing their to positive above their con score as a negative. Well....it already IS. So....cast the spell, and you meet all the conditions for breath of life to raise him. Even if you roll minimum.
I'd rule is as: Breath of life works, cast it right away.
Allow me to rephrase, a quickened raise dead would work.The 1 minute casting time makes that difficult.Which is why its important to cast raise dead b4 1d4 rounds.The ability has been resolved, and the character can be raised as per normal. The Strength Damage(Su) ability doesn't do anything to him any more - it's instantaneous (no duration). He still has the strength damage, but it is just regular ability damage.Raise Dead doesn't work on someone turned into an Undead creature which the Shadows Spawn ability does. You need resurrection.
I never noticed that 1 minute casting time before.
That also means that raise dead can not be quickened
A spell whose casting time is more than 1 round or 1 full-round action cannot be quickened.
Oopse. Sanctify corpse it is then
WHile not a go in Pathfinder Society, in my Carrion Crown game I killed one of the front liners with a pack of greater shadows (3 hits and 1 crit for like 26 Str damage).
The party's cleric dropped a consecrate on the area where the frontliner died, so that no undead could be created there. I ruled that would prevent the shadow transformation.
The party's sorceress then delayed until the cleric's turn, then cast a limited wish to duplicate a raise dead, thus casting raise dead as a standard action. (She had components on her just for this purpose - the party's planning was pretty thorough. And she actually had to do a limited wish battle res again later that day)
The cleric then promptly cast a heal spell on the newly revived frontliner.
All of this involves higher level characters than you're allowed to play in PFS, though.
Many nested quotes
I meant raised as in returned to life with a spell (like breath of life, say), not return to life with raise dead specifically (my mistake, should have been clearer).
Barring Limited Wish and friends (not likely in PFS) raise dead would be a no-go because of the 1d4 rounds.
Many nested quotesI meant raised as in returned to life with a spell (like breath of life, say), not return to life with raise dead specifically (my mistake, should have been clearer).
Barring Limited Wish and friends (not likely in PFS) raise dead would be a no-go because of the 1d4 rounds.
Breath of Life brings you back if you die due to hit point damage.
It can revive a creature that died of hp damage within the past 2 rounds.
It does not bring you back if you died due to other methods, so if you die to con damage, or the failed save on a coup de grace, assuming you still had hit points left, etc etc then you are still dead.
Outside of breath of life and raise dead, I don't know of any lower level spells that can bring someone back.
Sanctify corpse could hold off the change to an undead creature, and then they could be brought back with raise dead.
Breath of Life brings you back if you die due to hit point damage.
It can revive a creature that died of hp damage within the past 2 rounds.
Ahahaha.
This is hilarious.
Breath of life, and mythic breath of life
...breath of life can bring recently slain creatures back to life. If cast upon a creature that has died within 1 round, apply the healing from this spell to the creature. If the healed creature's hit point total is at a negative amount less than its Constitution score, it comes back to life and stabilizes at its new hit point total.
It can revive a creature that died of hp damage within the past 2 rounds.
Mythic breath of life's extended revive time is only for hp damage.
Beautiful.
Of course, this kind of points towards the RAI for regular breath of life (OTOH, it could be an editing mistake in the mythic rules). There was a reason I said this in my first post.
...by strict raw breath of life would work. RAI is dubious though...
Breath of life wouldn't do squat for someone who'd died of Con damage.
No reason it would do squat for someone who died of shadow-inflicted Str damage.
Breath of life only fixes death-by-HP damage (which includes effects that cut you to negative dead HP, like suffocation.)
But if what's wrong with you isn't HP damage, there's nothing for Breath of Life to fix.
But if what's wrong with you isn't HP damage, there's nothing for Breath of Life to fix.
Read the spell, it never actually says this.
It just says(paraphrased):
Apply healing to character, alive or dead.
If new life total>-con dead characters comes back to life.
Character cannot come back to life if killed by death effect(which a shadow's attack is not) or turned into undead(which he hadn't...yet)
Nothing is conditional upon being killed by HP damage.
Mythic breath of life is saying you get extra rounds for death due to hp damage. It is no hints at helping against anything else.
Breath of life wouldn't do squat for someone who'd died of Con damage.
No reason it would do squat for someone who died of shadow-inflicted Str damage.
Breath of life only fixes death-by-HP damage (which includes effects that cut you to negative dead HP, like suffocation.)
But if what's wrong with you isn't HP damage, there's nothing for Breath of Life to fix.
I am agreeing with many of the above that RAI Breath of Life likely shouldn't work.
However, choosing to act with the letter of the rule in front of me, I have noted that (Non-mythic) Breath of life allows it; just read all of the information listed carefully.
Con damage keeps you dead, agreed. However, Str damage renders you unconscious. In this case for the Shadow, it kills you if it drops you to 0. Once you are dead, you can be revived, no issue.
This is a case where this situation exists outside of the clearly defined rules, as a niche case. RAW it is upheld by technicality, but is held up nevertheless
Mythic breath of life is saying you get extra rounds for death due to hp damage. It is no hints at helping against anything else.
Read Breath of Life, and Mythic Breath of life separately, and completely. You'll see it.
Ironically enough, after reading the spell again; it says:
"If the healed creature's hit point total is at a negative amount less than its Constitution score, it comes back to life and stabilizes at its new hit point total. If the creature's hit point total is at a negative amount equal to or greater than its Constitution score, the creature remains dead."
It says nothing about if it brings you to a Positive hit point value that you live.
As written, it actually KEEPS YOU DEAD, if your final HP is Positive. Lol...
Mythic breath of life is saying you get extra rounds for death due to hp damage. It is no hints at helping against anything else.
Non-Mythic breath of life never states that the character had to die from HP damage.
Don't use Mythic to determine the RAW of breath of life. It does point towards RAI, but I have been pretty clear that I am coming up with a ruling using a fairly strict interpretation of RAW. Just look at the text for breath of life, and any relevant rules that relate to it's text. Pretend that mythic rules don't exist, because the mythic rules aren't relevant (because this is not mythic).
As far as the rulings I am stating goes, RAI matters only when RAW is really, really stupid, like too much healing prevents breath of life from working, or shadow's can't kill someone unless a single hit is greater than their strength (both of which I mentioned in my first post).
RAI on this is somewhat less clear. I could see this working on something like suffocation (the rules for which state that the character dies i.e. not HP loss). I could also see it working for coup de grace. RAI might be that it should be HP loss only. It might also extend to suffocation and coup de grace. There clearly is some room for arguing that the RAW interpretation is reasonable. Since this is PFS, that is more than enough to run it by RAW.
Cast Breath of Life, and your friend will be alive but unconscious due to zero str.
Be careful, one more hit from the shadow will kill him again, and you must cast BoL within 1 round of his death.
Breath of Life, the non-mythic version, cures 5d8+1/caster level HP's but, unlike, other spells that heal damage, it can bring a character back to life. It specifically talks about curing/healing damage. If the 5d8+1/caster level HP's are not enough to stabilize them at more than their negative Con score, the character remains dead. It does not say it restores life and then, if they need HP's, they get those too and it says nothing at all about restoring ability drain or damage.
A cure for a 35'ish HP's doesn't restore Str damage any more than a Restoration restores lost HP's therefore a character that died of Str damage didn't die of anything that Breath of Life repairs.
Just remember: any arguments about Rules as Written / Intended need to be funneled through a GM, and I know I wouldn't let it fly with Breath of Life since it's pretty clear to me what its intention is. I can think of one GM that would (out of something close to 5?) that I've played with in the last several years, and he was just had extremely poor understanding of game mechanics and let things fly that he shouldn't have (like a 5th level bard casting 5th level bard spells).
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Ironically enough, after reading the spell again; it says:
"If the healed creature's hit point total is at a negative amount less than its Constitution score, it comes back to life and stabilizes at its new hit point total. If the creature's hit point total is at a negative amount equal to or greater than its Constitution score, the creature remains dead."
It says nothing about if it brings you to a Positive hit point value that you live.
As written, it actually KEEPS YOU DEAD, if your final HP is Positive. Lol...
The game designers do occasionally have faith that if something is sufficiently obvious, they don't have to actually spell it out in the rules.
These boards often display that their faith is misplaced. =P
WHile not a go in Pathfinder Society, in my Carrion Crown game I killed one of the front liners with a pack of greater shadows (3 hits and 1 crit for like 26 Str damage).
The party's cleric dropped a consecrate on the area where the frontliner died, so that no undead could be created there. I ruled that would prevent the shadow transformation.
The party's sorceress then delayed until the cleric's turn, then cast a limited wish to duplicate a raise dead, thus casting raise dead as a standard action. (She had components on her just for this purpose - the party's planning was pretty thorough. And she actually had to do a limited wish battle res again later that day)
The cleric then promptly cast a heal spell on the newly revived frontliner.
All of this involves higher level characters than you're allowed to play in PFS, though.
This is pretty much the answer OP is looking for.
Consecrate prevents the character from becoming a Shadow.
Then you just go to the nearest town and buy a casting of Raise Dead.
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Strength Damage is not a Death Effect. It is a kind of attribute damage caused by negative energy.
Death Effect is a specific descriptor.
Here's the Shadow.. It's attacks deal strength damage. The reference link takes you to ability damage. There is no mention of death effects anywhere.
Here's the entry on Bodaks. Notice that the Bodak's Death Gaze is specifically listed as a Death Effect? Abilities that don't have that descriptor are not Death Effects.
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It prevents him from becoming a Shadow, but the way the Shadow kills screams "Death effect" to me, as Strength drain to zero normally just leaves you helpless. Raise Dead would not work, nor would Breath of Life for this reason. You'd need a ressurrection.
I covered this in my first post.
Death effects are effects that effects that are explicitly death effects - either they will have the [death] decriptor, or the phrase "This is a death effect" or similar will be in the ability/spell text.
Strength Damage (Su)
A shadow's touch deals 1d6 points of Strength damage to a living creature. This is a negative energy effect. A creature dies if this Strength damage equals or exceeds its actual Strength score.
This is not a death effect, since it is not explicitly called out as such.
Rather, it's a special condition that kills a person.
Note that a shadow cutting you to 0 Str isn't what kills you - it's a shadow dealing Str damage equal or greater to your entire Str.
So if you're say, down 5 Str from poison, and then a shadow pimp slaps you down to a 0, you don't die - you just lie there helpless while the shadow continue poking you until it's inflicted enough "overkill" Str damage to finally reach your actual Str score. Which is a pretty awful way to die.
(Or I guess you could declare that once someone is at 0 Str a shadow can no longer harm them, but that's definitely not RAI.)
Breath of life won't save you because it doesn't fix "you took enough Str damage from a shadow to satisfy its special kill condition." It's actually important that a shadow is the source of that damage.
{. . .}
Here's the entry on Bodaks. Notice that the Bodak's Death Gaze is specifically listed as a Death Effect? Abilities that don't have that descriptor are not Death Effects.
Off-topic, but I just noticed that the Bodak's entry has a weird typo in it (bolding mine): "So great is their desire to fascinate ability their fate upon others that many attempt to drag off the bodies of their slain victims and guard them until they rise as undead."
Breath of life won't save you because it doesn't fix "you took enough Str damage from a shadow to satisfy its special kill condition." It's actually important that a shadow is the source of that damage.
The problem is that you are dead.
Breath of life brings you back from the dead. Unless your death was a direct result of a "death affect".
Was it a "death affect" that killed you? No? Then you are alive again.
I really don't see why there is any confusion about this.
There are many ways to die in the game that are neither HP damage, death effect, or Con damage. Breath of Life restores the "living condition" in those cases.
Mythic breath of life is saying you get extra rounds for death due to hp damage. It is no hints at helping against anything else.Non-Mythic breath of life never states that the character had to die from HP damage.
Don't use Mythic to determine the RAW of breath of life. It does point towards RAI, but I have been pretty clear that I am coming up with a ruling using a fairly strict interpretation of RAW. Just look at the text for breath of life, and any relevant rules that relate to it's text. Pretend that mythic rules don't exist, because the mythic rules aren't relevant (because this is not mythic).
As far as the rulings I am stating goes, RAI matters only when RAW is really, really stupid, like too much healing prevents breath of life from working, or shadow's can't kill someone unless a single hit is greater than their strength (both of which I mentioned in my first post).
RAI on this is somewhat less clear. I could see this working on something like suffocation (the rules for which state that the character dies i.e. not HP loss). I could also see it working for coup de grace. RAI might be that it should be HP loss only. It might also extend to suffocation and coup de grace. There clearly is some room for arguing that the RAW interpretation is reasonable. Since this is PFS, that is more than enough to run it by RAW.
I accidentally quoted the wrong spell, so it would work, but they would be at 0 str and in a bad situation.