Drained Condition — Order of Operations?


Rules Discussion

Liberty's Edge

According to the SRD, when you gain the Drained condition,

Archives of Nethys wrote:
You also lose a number of Hit Points equal to your level (minimum 1) times the drained value, and your maximum Hit Points are reduced by the same amount.

What is the order of operations here? Do you lose current Hit Points and THEN reduce maximum Hit Points, or vice versa?

By way of example, a Bob is Level 1 with 20 maximum HP and no damage. Does he then have 19 out of 19 hit points (lose, then reduce) or 18 out of 19 (reduce then lose)?

Off the top of my head this question only seems to matter when a character becomes Drained while suffering no damage, though I may be missing some other corner case.


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I would do it in the order it says it. Why reverse it except to be cruel?


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19 out of 19. Think of it like damage that can't be healed until you lose the drained condition.


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Most effects that cause the Drained condition usually also inflict damage of some sort, so the odds of this situation coming up are slim. There is maybe one or two effects that do this, but they are usually spells (like Tempest of Shades).

That being said, the order doesn't matter because it's technically simultaneous; you lose that amount of hit points, and the HP lost also affects your maximum HP pool.

So, if Bob is 20/20, and gets Drained 1, he becomes 19/19, because he loses 1 current HP and 1 maximum HP from the condition; it's not a case of one coming in front of the other because they're both intrinsically tied to the condition.

As an added bonus of confirmation, if Bob had, say, 5 Temporary HP from the Endure spell, he would be 24/19, since you lose 1 current HP and 1 maximum HP from the condition. It wouldn't be 23/19, because you are losing 2 current HP in this case, which doesn't add up to what the condition says you lose (which is 1 current HP and 1 maximum HP; 2 isn't the same amount as 1, so we aren't following what the condition says you lose in this case).

That being said, I'm not entirely sure if the Resting Rules would let you gain your HP back from the Drained condition after removing it from Resting, you might need to do some Treat Wounds or some other healing afterward just to heal it back up.

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