3 years later, it'd be really nice for an official errata that clarifies this hugely impactful game mechanic that comes up in every significant combat at every table.
It seems like very few people actually play with the "harsh version" described on the GM screen but I think that might be the intended rule. It'd be nice to know for sure.
Other tables must be having considerably more lethal games than I do if this implication of the Wounded condition comes up in every significant fight. I don't think after playing 1-18 my table has had a single occasion where the 'struck while Wounded and Dying' would have affected play.
I've KO'd them a good few times, and they've naturally come back up with Wounds. If I KO them again, the unambiguous part of the Wounded condition kicks in, but I don't think I've ever yet had it that a 2x KO has been left on the ground long enough to roll a death save or take damage... and the one time somebody did need to roll a death save, they weren't already Wounded at the time.
Still, it would be nice to know if the way I prefer to play it is correct, or if the rules really should compound the effects of the Wounded condition.
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I think the last time this really came up was somewhere during Plaguestone. There's a lot of persistent damage in that adventure, as well as overtuned enemies likely to drop PCs to 0HP.
The main causes I see for taking damage while dying are:
- persistent damage (bleeding, burning)
- ongoing poisons
- collateral damage from AoE spells
- damaging auras from nearby monsters
If you were using the "harsh" version of the rules, those are pretty much all death sentences:
First you get knocked to 0HP, but get healed, go to Wounded 1. Then you get knocked down again, go to Dying 2 directly. Then you take some collateral damage, and you'd add 1+1 Dying so you'd be dead immediately.
This seems too much. Even without the "harsh" version, you're already at Dying 3.
In fact, even with the mild version, odds are pretty big that if you were wounded, the next hit is going to be a crit. Because if you wake up at 0HP you're usually prone, need to pick up weapons, and close to enemies. This puts you at a big risk of no-MAP hits from enemies that could crit you right back to Dying 3 (2 from the crit, 1 from wounded).
Actually, I had noticed that in the last time it came up, which is why I included it in my recent post.
I don't think I've ever yet had it that a 2x KO has been left on the ground long enough to roll a death save or take damage... and the one time somebody did need to roll a death save, they weren't already Wounded at the time.
Fair, they're technically called recovery checks, but 'death save' does roll off the tongue ever so nicely.
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I've never encountered a table that used the harsher rules. This is the first I've heard of it in fact. I'll not be implementing it in my games.
Seems ridiculously deadly, to the point of diminishing fun, which is an automatic rules ban.
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So something in a rule book now isn't a rule?Except there's a specific rule from "Taking Damage while Dying" that says to add your wounded value to your dying value. How is that at all ambiguous?So nice of you to answer that my post completely ignoring that part of it where I state that it's not specific not-even-a-rule. Or at least looks like it without an explicit errata
The one trace of it in the CRB says to "remember" to do something, but there's never such an original rule to be reminded of. That's certainly ambiguous: was the rule supposed to be there (and is the reminder correct), or was the rule changed (and they forgot to update the reminder)?
It's fundamentally ambiguous.
"If you have the wounded condition, remember to add the value of your wounded condition to your dying value."
This could mean two things:
1) You determine your dying value normally, increment it as necessary, and add the wounded value once to the total.
or
2) You add the dying value each and every time your dying condition increases, making wounded 1 count as 2 or more points towards death.
I can't believe that (2) is intended, and after reading the discussion in this thread I'm not convinced that is the RAW.
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Yeah I've been trying to dig up my old copy of the playtest rules but I must've thrown them out in frustration. In more than 6 revisions the dying rules changed deeply several times. For a while, if you fell to 0HP you became Dying, but the Dying value stayed if you got HP back, going down only 1 per round. So people might be fully awake and fighting while Dying 2. This was not a popular version of the rules. Cuz it's obviously weird.
I think Wheldrake has the right of it: the sentence in the CRB is somewhat vestigial from a time when you didn't increase Dying by your Wounded value, but looked at the total of them to see if Dying+Wounded >= 4. But then someone decided that was cumbersome and that it made more sense to actually increase Dying by Wounded when you drop to 0HP. But then didn't quite notice this sentence was a bit dated.
The GM screen version then looks like a poor summary. Compared to the CRB:
* CRB Wounded only says to add Wounded to Dying when you gain Dying the first time. It doesn't say to add it again and again.
* CRB taking damage while dying says to increase Dying when you take damage, and to remember to "add" (not "increase by") your Wounded value.
* GM screen says to increase Dying by Wounded when Dying goes up for any reason at all. Which would also happen on a failed recovery check, and that is definitely not in the CRB.
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So something in a rule book now isn't a rule?Except there's a specific rule from "Taking Damage while Dying" that says to add your wounded value to your dying value. How is that at all ambiguous?So nice of you to answer that my post completely ignoring that part of it where I state that it's not specific not-even-a-rule. Or at least looks like it without an explicit errata
None of them are rules. They're all guidelines. Use them as you wish, don't use them as you wish. Mix and match. It's your game, play it how you want.
We can sit here and navel gaze about the nature of RAW vs RAI and all that, but at the end of the day it is YOU who decides how the rules interact at your table, it is YOU who decides how the rules are interpreted. Set the expectations during a session zero, and move on from there. You can change the rules in the middle of a game if something ends up not working the way you want it to, so long as you bring it to the table's attention and the whole group agrees.
This isn't me blowing smoke or anything. This is literally on page 7 of the 2e CRB, called 'The First Rule.'