Does Anything Bypass Stamina?


Rules Questions


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So, in another thread, the idea was brought up that poison goes straight to hit points. This seems to be based on the idea that "Hit Point Loss" is something different than "Damage".

So, rules question: does *anything* in the current rules bypass Stamina? Is the idea of something bypassing Stamina even supposed to be a part of the game at all? Or is it a universal rule that, whenever a game mechanic effects hit points, no matter the reason, if you have stamina, stamina goes first?


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

You mean aside from poison? Healing spells (and skills - Medicine works this way, too) will bypass Stamina and hit Hit Points directly, even if you have room for Stamina healing (and even if you use up the HP healing, the spillover won't heal your Stamina).

Liberty's Edge

I see no reason for a FAQ request. It is clearly stated in the CRB.

CRB, Page 22 - Hit Points and Stamina Points, in part wrote:
...When you take damage — whether from an attack, a spell, a disease, or some other source — it reduces your pool of Stamina Points first, and any damage beyond your remaining Stamina Points comes out of your Hit Points. ...


Gary Bush wrote:

I see no reason for a FAQ request. It is clearly stated in the CRB.

CRB, Page 22 - Hit Points and Stamina Points, in part wrote:
...When you take damage — whether from an attack, a spell, a disease, or some other source — it reduces your pool of Stamina Points first, and any damage beyond your remaining Stamina Points comes out of your Hit Points. ...

You are inverting Metaphysician's question. He is not asking if SP damage causes HP damage. He is asking if HP damage causes SP damage. I think you're right and it clearly does not, RAW, but the rule you quoted has no bearing on the current question. The reason I marked his question for FAQing is that while it's clearly intentional that NPCs are better at healing than PCs, because they can effectively use HP healing on their SP and vice versa, it seems bizarrely unintentional that poison kills PCs significantly faster than NPCs.


Gary Bush wrote:
I see no reason for a FAQ request. It is clearly stated in the CRB.

Which is in turn something I have argued about already. There's also other ambiguous precedent for things not going through Stamina first in negative levels, which reduce stamina and HP at the same time.

It's a disagreement about natural language that I had not expected at all, and at this point I'm not convinced there's enough evidence in what's been published to change any minds without further input.

As a side note, the example poison for the discussion was radiation, which has its own ambiguities.


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

Personally, I think the poison rules need a rewrite, I feel like they were written without thinking about the stamina/hp divergence and didn't word it carefully.

I don't think poison is actually intended to bypass stamina, but I can't be certain of that without developer input.

In any event, ti seems outside of poison specifically nothing else bypasses stamina to directly target HP, and this adds to my guess that it's poor editing in the poisons rules rather than an intentional difference in mechanics.

Liberty's Edge

Keep in mind that NPCs are different from PCs because they don't have stamina.

I don't have my Alien Archives handy. Maybe the answer is there.

But it is clear to that whenever PC takes damage, it first goes to Stamina Points and then to Hit Points. I think it was an error to say Hit Points instead of Damage when they were talking about the effects of poison, disease, and affection.

So to that end, I agree, a FAQ is necessary.


I'm also unclear if "HP Damage" is the same as "Damage" with regards to SP. FAQed.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Raising this old question, because I don't think it has ever stopped being a point of debate. If anyone has a definitive answer, I would love to know. If not, please click that FAQ button!


I can't think of any external source that causes HP damage while you still have SP left, but it looks like you can willingly sacrifice your own HP under some circumstances.

As for poison, it does somewhat make sense if it does HP damage directly and bypasses stamina. But I also see that it also somewhat defeats the intent of stamina.

For my own weighing in of the idea - stamina is basically just another flavor of HP as far as game mechanics are concerned. There shouldn't be anything that hits HP first. The HP/SP boundary is just an indicator of how many HP you can recover using a resolve point and a 10 minute rest, and the maximum effect of recovery items and spells.

But that is hardly a definitive answer.


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Radiation, poison, and giving someone your HP with a mystic cure will all bypass staminia and hurt your HP.

You can also have a weird situation where you lose HP, get inspiring boosted by an envoy, and then have staminia and HP damage

Sovereign Court

1 person marked this as a favorite.

If poison went straight to HP, that would mean that a 100HP NPC and a 50HP/50SP PC would react totally different to the same dose of poison, that seems unlikely to me.

I think it's more a vestigial reference to hit point as opposed to ability point damage. Ability damage still exists in Starfinder but it's not normal anymore for poison to deal it.

Sczarni

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Radiation, poison, and giving someone your HP with a mystic cure will all bypass staminia and hurt your HP.

You can also have a weird situation where you lose HP, get inspiring boosted by an envoy, and then have staminia and HP damage

This is how I've always understood it.

The language for Mystic Cure and Poisons is the same, so if you argue that poisons damage Stamina first, then you have to also argue that Mystic Cure does as well.

Paizo Employee Starfinder Lead Designer

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FAQ updated!
Thank you for your question, your FAQ flags, and your patience.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Great! One more long running disagreement down!


This ruling simultaneously answers related questions about Reflecting Armor and the Vampiric Charger, so that's at least three birds with one (magic?) stone!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

So it would seem that poison does in fact bypass stamina.

I don't personally care for that ruling, but at least we have it.


Came up at a recent game that this also affects the Laugh at Danger feat, which is a bit of a shame (I love that feat, but its usefulness greatly diminishes as PCs level up, and since Starfinder's retraining system is the most restrictive of all of Paizo's RPGs...).

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