Consequences of Resistance to Damage


Rules Discussion


Hi, folks,

is there a rule for the instance that a creature resists (physical) damage to an amount of Zero and than having to determine what happens to i.e. bleed damage.

Caltrops deal 1d4 piercing damage + 1 persistent bleed damage. Last session, a creature reduced the piercing damage to Zero and the GM decided to not apply the 1 persistent bleed damage. Right, wrong, or else?

By the way... Is there a way to determine if fiends rely on blood to ignore bleed damage entirely? The Fiend description does not point into either way...

Thanx and best,
Scharlata


Immunities, Resistances, And Weaknesses
“Immunities, resistances, and weaknesses all apply to persistent damage. If an effect deals initial damage in addition to persistent damage, apply immunities, resistances, and weaknesses separately to the initial damage and to the persistent damage. Usually, if an effect negates the initial damage, it also negates the persistent damage, such as with a slashing weapon that also deals persistent bleed damage because it cut you. The GM might rule otherwise in some situations.”
-CRB pg. 621

So your GMs ruling preventing the bleed damage is correct. If a resistance or immunity prevents the damage of the attack that caused persistent damage, then the persistent damage is nullified as well.

Regarding fiends: Unless a specific one is immune to bleed damage, they all do bleed as normal at least in regards to doing damage. Nothing in the Fiend trait states that they have any blanket resistance or immunity to bleed damage.


The sidebar on "Bleed Damage" on Page 451 of the CRB that says "As such, [bleed damage] has no effect on nonliving creatures or living creatures that don't need blood to live." is mostly to cover situations where the people at the table agree that a thing bleeding doesn't make any sense. Generally most things have some sort of blood, sap, ichor, hydraulic fluid, etc. that they need to function that you can let out with the right kinds of attacks. So the GM should err on the side of "bleed damage works" unless its specifically outlined that it does not or the people in the game all agree it should not.

This is both because a player should not be able to choose a specific ancestry in order to gain immunity to bleed damage (e.g. "but skeletons and poppets don't bleed"), and also because if a player has abilities or items that cause bleed damage it's more satisfying when those things function.


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

There's grey area where you make a judgement call with loving things that seem like they shouldn't bleed. The majority of fiends don't seem like there's any reason that you'd expect them not to, but you could find specific cases where it seems like a reasonable ruling.

With things that aren't alive, like the skeletons PossibleCabbage mentioned, there is no grey area. Nothing that isn't alive ever bleeds without some specific rule stating an exception.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
PossibleCabbage wrote:
"As such, [bleed damage] has no effect on nonliving creatures or living creatures that don't need blood to live."

Arguably one of the worst rules choices in the entire CRB in terms of overall design intent and implication.

Horizon Hunters

Since you're mentioning fiends, it sounds like you might have been fighting a devil. Devils usually have resistance to physical damage of some amount, usually starting at 5.

Bleed damage is physical damage. Even if the caltrops did enough to actually damage the thing (or they were made of silver or something), the 1 bleed damage would still be resisted due to their resistance.


Squiggit wrote:
PossibleCabbage wrote:
"As such, [bleed damage] has no effect on nonliving creatures or living creatures that don't need blood to live."
Arguably one of the worst rules choices in the entire CRB in terms of overall design intent and implication.

This feels like a legacy thing, and probably doesn't need to be in the rulebook at all. A thing not bleeding (because it is a ghost, or a stone golem) can just go in the "Immunities" section in the bestiary entry, since we already have stuff like " Immunities acid, bleed, death effects, disease, doomed, drained, fatigued, healing, magic (see below), mental, necromancy, nonlethal attacks, paralyzed, poison, sickened, unconscious."

Issues where it really needs to work one way or the other could just be rule 0'd.

Cordell Kintner wrote:
Bleed damage is physical damage. Even if the caltrops did enough to actually damage the thing (or they were made of silver or something), the 1 bleed damage would still be resisted due to their resistance.

Yeah, resistance physical 5 would resist up to 5 points of bleed damage, which would mean you can tapdance on caltrops but a 17th level Swashbuckler's bleeding finisher does 6d6 bleeding damage which is still going to leave you leaking vital fluids.

That some things do a *lot* of bleed damage is why GMs should be careful about giving blanked immunity to bleeding. Pathfinder 2e is generally pretty good about giving things resistances (that can be overcome by a sufficiency of whatever it is) rather than immunities. Immunity should be mostly for "this thing is literally made of fire, so you can't burn it" kinds of things.

Horizon Hunters

To further elaborate on the topic just brought up, a creature would only only resist persistent damage in two ways.

1. Was already mentioned, when they fully resist the initial damage they don't gain the persistent damage.

2. The second way is if their resistance will result in a 100% chance for the persistent damage to be fully resisted. For example, a Devil wouldn't bleed if they walked through Caltrops, but if a fighter crit with a dagger and inflicted 1d6 persistent bleed, they would start bleeding. They still resist 5 of it so it would only do damage on a 6, but they are still bleeding, which is relevant for abilities and spells that require the target to be bleeding.


Thank y'all for your comprehensive and RAW/RAI explanations. Helps 100%.

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