Descriping negative damage


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


I have recently realized that i have no idea what negative energy actually do to a person.

What does it actually do and how would someone find out that it was used on a living creature?


Some effects that use negative damage is describing it as decaying, withering. Pulling moisture from someone's body is also a negative effect.

The Negative Energy Plane says:

https://2e.aonprd.com/Planes.aspx?ID=2 wrote:
Sapping and consuming the life force of any living creature exposed to its energies, it corrodes and disintegrates material objects to rubble, then dust, and then nothing at all.

Sovereign Court

If you want to get graphical, consider first what it is, and then what the aftereffects would be.

Suppose you got grabbed on the arm by someone with a negative energy effect. You'd have a sort of a hand print on your arm with flesh that suddenly died, for no particular biological reason. It's just suddenly not alive anymore.

Are the cells destroyed? Then all the fluids that were kept in place by cell membranes start seeping out. It might look a bit like one of those gross bruises that start in one place but gradually travel down your body because of gravity. And with color changing over time as the body metabolizes the remains of the dead cells and fluids.

Are the cells not destroyed, just dead and still there? You might get discolored flesh, which is likely to get infected by bacteria or yeast because it's kind of a like petri dish of nutrients - no more immune reaction to keep them out. Eventually it might get replaced by scar tissue as your body starts healing and removing this dead flesh and replacing it (but the scar is because it's hard to replace it perfectly).


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It's opposite to positive energy. Which is basically a life force for all living beings... well, mostly. Positive energy actually ARE in rare cases capable of damaging living beings as well.

It's like matter and anti-matter. Except... not so volatile by interacting with each other.

If you looking for symptoms. Large tissue necrosis would be one of most obvious.


Ascalaphus wrote:
Are the cells not destroyed, just dead and still there? You might get discolored flesh, which is likely to get infected by bacteria or yeast because it's kind of a like petri dish of nutrients - no more immune reaction to keep them out. Eventually it might get replaced by scar tissue as your body starts healing and removing this dead flesh and replacing it (but the scar is because it's hard to replace it perfectly).

I usually use this interpretation.

The negative energy destroys the positive energy that keeps life working. Usually the matter isn't destroyed but ceases to live.

When some creature is affected by negative energy I usually describe it as cold and painful sensation of your body failing. Your breath becomes heavy, the air is not sufficient, your heart beats diminishes or becomes weaker or simply speeds up desperately trying to keep the other parts of your body working, your head hurts, your consciousness starts to fail, your muscles becomes weaker and hurts .

For creatures strongly made of positive energy I normally treat these effects more violently. Like a short circuit from the clashes of such energies. Exploding, liberating heat, sound, shockwaves as a result of the collapse of two much different energies.

One of the cool things of PF2 is that the book give to GM and to players the freedom most of the description of how their abilities and effects visually works. Each player, each GM, can describe the effect of the abilities that they have in their own way, the game just do the calculations.


Because positive damage also exists, as does negative healing effects that heal undead, then I try to describe positive damage as being a type of energy damage. So the appearance of the effect of the damage would be something similar to a radiation burn (think sunburn) or a chemical burn.


This is all very useful, thanks everyone.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

You could also argue because "positive damage" is the essence of life and living, that positive damage to living things (that can receive it) could be somewhat like a cancer - it spreads throughout the body, creating masses of tumors as cells refuse to decay and die, becoming faster and more efficient at mitosis, while its genetic material never decays. And eventually ends in the body overheating from all the chemical reactions, or (in the case of that one monster in Bestiary 3 that heals you too much) you literally explode.

Positive damage to undead, though, is probably something more akin to, say, 'restarting' chemical reactions that the necromantic magic halted, causing cell functions to resume - which, since there's no more blood flowing through the body, causes it to decay.

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