If someone has both on a Single stat, let's say Con, would the ability damage cause them to die? Or would they be tracked separately and only cause the target to fall unconcious until the Ability Penalty went away?
No Page 555 of the Core rules
Some spells and abilities cause you to take an ability
penalty for a limited amount of time. While in effect,
these penalties function just like ability damage, but they
cannot cause you to fall unconscious or die. In essence,
penalties cannot decrease your ability score to less than 1.
Ability Damage doesn't actually lower your stats, it just gives you a penalty. Also (as pointed out by Greylurker) it can't lower your stats below 1.
Ability Drain on the other hand DOES lower your stats and CAN kill you. In this case I think both penalties would have to be able to kill you for your stats to go below 1, eg. If you have 10 CON and take 1 point of Ability Damage and then take 9 points of Ability Drain you wouldn't die, you'd simply be on 1 CON (effectively nullifying the ability damage).
Doesn't ability drain only kill you if it is Con? Like at 0 Wisdom you are out of the fight and mentally a vegetable, but isn't your character still alive?
There's three things. Ability penalties can't reduce a stat below 1 and I think in combination with others that still applies - it's not a matter of the order of operations.
Ability damage and ability drain both can reduce a stat to zero tho' Mr Charisma, and so kill you if the stat was Con.
Doesn't ability drain only kill you if it is Con? Like at 0 Wisdom you are out of the fight and mentally a vegetable, but isn't your character still alive?
There are certain other exceptions.
For example, shadows (the dreaded incorporeal undead) kill you with Strength damage/drain if, after their attack, you're damaged down to 0 Str. Worse yet, if you aren't revived within 1d4 rounds, such kills are the shadow's create spawn method, meaning you're undeadified and become much harder to bring back at all.
But generally, yes. For stats that are ability damaged / drained to 0...
According to the combat section on ability damage, any abilities damaged down to 0 result in unconscious, except Con which is dead. However, in the stat descriptions, Dex 0 means immobile but explicitly not unconscious.
@MrCharisma - There are three types of ability reduction. While they all do the same thing mechanically (recalculate your stat-based modifiers and functions), their difference is a matter of persistence.
DRAIN is the worst of them, in that it can't be healed naturally and requires high-level restorations to undo. This sort can drop you to 0, KOing / immobilizing / killing you as appropriate.
DAMAGE is commonly seen on afflictions and nasty special attacks. It can usually heal naturally (1 point per day) and be lesser-restorated. It can also drop you to 0, putting you in bad situations just like drain.
PENALTY is seen on spells, like ray of enfeeblement and its cousins. It doesn't persist beyond its inflictor's duration, is applied after your stat is adjusted for drain and damage, and cannot drop you to 0.
Cool, good to know.
Just checking though, I was under the impression that Ability Damage doesn't actuLly lower your stats (even if damage equal to the base stat renders you unconscious/dead).
If you take 1 point of Ability Damage you don't take any penalties, even if you had 12 in the relevant stat - while Ability Drain actually lowers the stat, so if you had 12 and took 1 point of Ability Drain you'd be at 11 (which would be a penalty compared to normal).
Cool, good to know.
Just checking though, I was under the impression that Ability Damage doesn't actuLly lower your stats (even if damage equal to the base stat renders you unconscious/dead).
If you take 1 point of Ability Damage you don't take any penalties, even if you had 12 in the relevant stat - while Ability Drain actually lowers the stat, so if you had 12 and took 1 point of Ability Drain you'd be at 11 (which would be a penalty compared to normal).
Admittedly, I could be applying a sanity check to the rules, instead of simply interpreting them as they are... >.<
By RAW, you should technically handle it that way. However, now you have one effect (reduced stat modifiers etc) with three game mechanics - one of which is vaguely defined, one is actually useful, and one slows the game to a crawl.
Penalty is the vaguely defined one. You'd think it'd work like a debuff (the reverse of an enhancement bonus), but no, it's the same thing as a short duration damage (which, like the Harm spell, is throttled.)
Damage is a fine mechanic as written - especially given that negative levels (both temporary and permanent) work in a similar manner, apart from TNLs needing a saving throw to heal naturally and PNLs persisting through death.
Drain, as written, would force you to stop and rebuild the character and note the cumulative effect of all such rebuilds every time you take even one point of drain, then rebuild the character again when you got a restoration. Which raises a different set of questions, actually.
Drain, as written, would force you to stop and rebuild the character and note the cumulative effect of all such rebuilds every time you take even one point of drain, then rebuild the character again when you got a restoration.
Maybe that's a build-in safety feature to discourage GMs from using too many such enemies! Balancing via "no one has time for that s~~$", seems to be the same logic behind Sacred Geometry!