This nearly happened in a Society session a while back, but the player decided to not use it due to rules fuzziness. How would you rule this?
Say a monster of the appropriate size uses Swallow Whole on a Cleric who channels negative energy. Say that Cleric uses the Channel Energy to hurt living beings, how would that work out? This would've happened according to me:
Since it's a burst centered on the Cleric, it wouldn't hit anything else other than the creature, since it can't penetrate obstacles (the innards of the thing). But would the creature take extra damage from it? A regular Channel just hits opposing creatures once, then blows over them. Since the Cleric is swallowed, the creature's stomach takes the full blow of the blast. It's the difference between feeling the force of an explosion from a few feet away versus that explosion happening in your innards.
Cutting your way out of a creature doesn't deduct from its actual HP, but since it catches the full force of the blow, I'd say it's fair it takes a lot of damage, maybe 1.5 or even twice as much from the regular Channel.
How would you rule this? I don't expect to ever use this again, but I think it's a fun thought experiment.
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It should damage the inside of the creature, subtracting from the hit points needed to escape.
If you're swallowed by a 150hp critter, with a 15hp "stomach", and your Channel negative deals 18hp damage, you would effectively blow yourself an escape route.
Since all lines of effect beyond the "stomach" are blocked, your nearby allies should remain unaffected (though it'd also likely mean that the swallower wouldn't take any further damage, either).
"A swallowed creature can try to cut its way free with any light slashing or piercing weapon (the amount of cutting damage required to get free is equal to 1/10 the creature’s total hit points)"
I don't think there's any RAW justification for saying "cutting your way out of a creature doesn't deduct from its actual HP".
Or for saying: "If you're swallowed by a 150hp critter, with a 15hp "stomach", and your Channel negative deals 18hp damage, you would effectively blow yourself an escape route" since that's not a slashing or piercing weapon.
There are no rules for channelled negative energy or any other form of attack doing extra damage from the inside of a creature. It would be a reasonable house rule for non-PFS games.
Yeah, I wouldn't rule that burst AoE damage like Channel Energy would get you out of a stomach. Now, a line-shaped AoE like lightning bolt on the other hand...