According to Taking Damage while Dying, if you are damaged while dying, the dying value increases (by 1 normally, or by 2 from a crit). But what if you are at 0 hit points and NOT dying? Do you gain the dying condition (value 1 normally, or value 2 from a crit)? That only seems to happen if you are reduced to 0 hit points, which can't happen if you already have 0 hit points, right?
There's a hole in the rules. From strict RAW you are invulnerable in such situation.
As RAW is unclear, there are 2 ways of handling it:
- Considering that you get to Dying 1 + Wounded when it happens.
- Increasing your Dying condition by one to Dying 1 (as if the character was at Dying 0).
The former is certainly the proper way of handling it, but it's quite punishing (as you may even end up in a situation where succeeding at your stabilization check gets your character killed). Personally, I use the second one. It's nicer to players and when there's an uncertainty in the rules, especially the rules for Dying, I tend to err on the player side.
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If you were Dying (1-3) and recovered enough to become stable at 0HP, you'd gain a Wounded condition because you gain a Wounded condition any time you lose the Dying condition.
Now, I think it's clear that if you took damage at 0HP you should gain some amount of Dying. How much though is the question.
The "rule" that you increase your Dying value by 1 + your Wounded Value is pretty disputed. It's in the CRB only as a "reminder" in one place of something that isn't actually written in the other place where the reminder seems to refer to. In later books it's been summarized and quoted but not always too precisely, so that's not really very trustworthy. Finally, the math for that is exceedingly harsh, so bad that I find it hard to believe it's intended. The Dying rules went through many revisions during the original playtest and this could just be some vestigial wording that made more sense in an earlier version.
Fun fact: at some point in the playtest rules, you could be at Dying 3 while at 1+ HP and conscious, because it didn't reset to 0 when you got healed, it went down by 1 every round you were at 1+HP. That was before the Wounded condition existed. People weren't happy with the idea of walking around at Dying X while at high HP though so that rule had to change.
So, by your rationale, anybody stabilised after having been downed is now impervious to damage until being healed.
Or, What limits the, say, monk from downing their companion at single digit HP with a Non-Lethal blow safely to „stow“ them away for later?
Now, how about following definition instead?: Whenever you take more damage than your current HP your reduced to 0 HP.
so we just go with the general case as if the char had more than 1 hp, meaning [1(2) Dying + Wounded]. Don't see what the confusion is about.
But the general case specifies that you need to be dropped to 0 hp. If you are already there... you are not supposed to apply it.
Without nuance, yes.
When you think a bit more about it, it becomes a bit more complicated.
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I think the main issue here is whether taking damage while already at zero hit points counts as being reduced to 0 hit points, which is how Knocked Out and Dying describes the circumstances in which you gain the dying condition. I think having already being at 0 hit points when reduced still count would fix not just this apparent hole in the rules, but also some weird situations with death abilities and disintegrate. "The lich raises his hand and assails your ally with a malevolent green ray of death. Fortunately, your friend is bleeding out through his neck, so it doesn't count." I mean, that's just plain silly, right? I remember in 5e D&D disintegrate was updated with the language "leaves the target with 0 hit points" to get around this, but a lot of similar death effects never got that errata and thus kept the weirdness.
For practical gameplay rulings, my thoughts:
Taking damage while at 0 HP and not dying should be treated as though you were above 0 HP and reduced to 0 HP.
Similarly, Death effects while you are at 0 HP should treat you as though they reduced you to 0 HP.
Taking damage while dying shouldn't increase your dying condition by your Wounded condition value also - that is a bit excessive. The Wounded condition should only apply when you gain the Dying condition again.
That is what makes sense to me and seems reasonable to play with.
Taking damage while dying shouldn't increase your dying condition by your Wounded condition value also - that is a bit excessive. The Wounded condition should only apply when you gain the Dying condition again.
Is it really excessive? If a monster downs a PC with wounded 1, the PC's turn is delayed all the way to before this monster's turn, and the PC gets dying 1, which is increased by wounded 1 to dying 2. Suppose the monster decides to attack the PC again. Going by the Taking Damage while Dying rules, the PC would go to dying 3, and wounded 1 would increase that to dying 4, killing them instantly.
Does the monster really gain anything from doing this? Even if one of the PC's allies heals them, not only would the PC's wounded value increase, but they wouldn't be taking a turn anytime soon. And unlike D&D 5e, a natural 20 recovery check doesn't restore 1 hit point, so the dying PC poses absolutely no threat. Surely the monster's actions would be better spent getting rid of the PC's allies, right?
I suppose there's also the possibility of the dying PC getting caught in an area effect rather than a conscious effort by the monster to kill the PC. Or maybe the monster really is so vindictive that it wants to kill the PC immediately. Well, the unconscious condition inflicts a -4 status penalty to both AC and Reflex saves and a -2 circumstance penalty to AC, among other things. This means that the PC increasing their dying value by 2 is quite likely, even without the wounded condition. And if that happens, the PC could still use hero points to avoid dying in this case.
This blurb from the GM Screen on Archives of Nethys was brought to my attention.
Wounded Any time you gain the dying condition or increase it for any reason, add your wounded value to the amount you gain or increase your dying value. The wounded condition ends if you receive HP from Treat Wounds, or if you're restored to full HP and rest for 10 minutes.
However, no sourcebook is cited on this webpage. Not helped by the implication that failing a recovery check adds your wounded value to your dying value.
Taking damage while dying shouldn't increase your dying condition by your Wounded condition value also - that is a bit excessive. The Wounded condition should only apply when you gain the Dying condition again.Is it really excessive?
Yes.
The point of the death and dying rules is that characters don't actually die easily, but it is possible.
The first time you go down, it takes 3 failed flat checks to actually die - each check having roughly 40% - 50% chance of succeeding.
If you are brought back up and gain the wounded condition, you are at more risk if you go back down again. That is the point of the wounded condition.
However...
Running it with the wounded condition only applying when the dying condition is first reapplied means that you are short by one round. You basically only have 2 save attempts this time.
But running it with the wounded condition applying every time you increase your dying value means that wounded 1 puts you at only 1 save attempt. You start at Dying 2 in either case. But if you fail one save or get hit by an AOE, then you immediately drop to Dying 4 and Dead with no recourse. It also means that there would be no practical difference between Wounded 1 and Wounded 2. Both would mean you are only one step away from Dead if you go down.
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Taking damage while dying shouldn't increase your dying condition by your Wounded condition value also - that is a bit excessive. The Wounded condition should only apply when you gain the Dying condition again.Is it really excessive? (...)
There's actually a lot more ways a downed character might take some more damage. Persistent damage for example is pretty common.
With how fast Dying would stack up if you increased it by Wounded as well, it doesn't make sense to actually have a calculation, since almost always the result of the calculation is that you're dead. Then you can just simplify that rule to say "if you take damage while Dying and Wounded, you die".
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This blurb from the GM Screen on Archives of Nethys was brought to my attention.
Wounded Any time you gain the dying condition or increase it for any reason, add your wounded value to the amount you gain or increase your dying value. The wounded condition ends if you receive HP from Treat Wounds, or if you're restored to full HP and rest for 10 minutes.However, no sourcebook is cited on this webpage. Not helped by the implication that failing a recovery check adds your wounded value to your dying value.
This is exactly what I meant with poor summaries from the CRB in secondary sources. You can't really draw any conclusions from this about what the original source is supposed to mean, because this is clearly wrong.
But running it with the wounded condition applying every time you increase your dying value...
Hold up. That's not what the rule is saying.
If you take damage while you already have the dying condition, increase your dying condition value by 1, or by 2 if the damage came from an attacker’s critical hit or your own critical failure. If you have the wounded condition, remember to add the value of your wounded condition to your dying value.
This rule we're arguing about is suggesting that we add the wounded value to the dying value whenever the PC takes damage while dying. Not every time the PC fails a recovery check. It's the GM screen on Archives of Nethys that makes that assumption, but it provides no citation so we should probably ignore that.
Furthermore, is the point of the death and dying rules really that death doesn't come easily? It seems like the purpose of the wounded condition is to make healing dying characters risky.
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The GM screen/Nethys quote should be disregarded. It's a secondary source that doesn't match any of the primary sources and it doesn't make sense.
The CRB has two primary places which don't entirely match:
If you take damage while you already have the dying
condition, increase your dying condition value by 1, or by
2 if the damage came from an attacker’s critical hit or your
own critical failure. If you have the wounded condition,
remember to add the value of your wounded condition to
your dying value.
You have been seriously injured during a fight. Anytime
you lose the dying condition, you become wounded
1 if you didn’t already have the wounded condition. If
you already have the wounded condition, your wounded
condition value instead increases by 1. If you gain the
dying condition while wounded, increase the dying
condition’s value by your wounded value. The wounded
condition ends if someone successfully restores Hit Points
to you with Treat Wounds, or if you are restored to full
Hit Points and rest for 10 minutes.
The "remember" suggests that we should remember a rule we saw somewhere else. But the most logical place for that, the Wounded rules, don't actually say that thing. The Wounded section tells you to do something specific (apply it when you become Dying), but doesn't tell you to do another thing (apply Wounded again when you take damage/become more Dying than you already were).
If it was going to do that, it should have probably been mentioned here. Because this is also the place you had to look to find out that if you became Dying you had to add Wounded at that moment. The description of the Dying condition doesn't mention that, that's located here.
So the CRB isn't entirely of one mind on this. At that point I have to make my own judgement call on which part of the rules to give the most weight to. And the math just doesn't make sense for me if I add Wounded multiple times.
Ok, so the adding of wounded when taking damage while dying is not a rule, but rather a reminder of a rule that one of the writers mistakenly believed to exist, and because of how dangerous that is, it sounds like people are happy that it's not a real rule. Ok.
But I think we've strayed from the topic of this discussion: What happens when a PC is damaged while at 0 hit points but not dying?
Well, we can't use the Taking Damage while Dying rule, since the PC is not dying. And if we assume that damage at 0 hit points doesn't count as being reduced to 0 hit points, then the PC could only be killed through massive damage, and that can't be the case. So we should probably assume that damage at 0 hit points does count as being reduced to 0 hit points, which means we can use a rule in Knocked Out and Dying.
As a player character, when you are reduced to 0 Hit Points, you’re knocked out with the following effects:
- You immediately move your initiative position to directly before the turn in which you were reduced to 0 HP.
- You gain the dying 1 condition. If the effect that knocked you out was a critical success from the attacker or the result of your critical failure, you gain the dying 2 condition instead. If you have the wounded condition, increase your dying value by an amount equal to your wounded value. If the damage was dealt by a nonlethal attack or nonlethal effect, you don’t gain the dying condition; you are instead unconscious with 0 Hit Points.
So the PC gains the dying condition, and the wounded value is added to that dying value. Of interest to me is that with this interpretation, the PC's initiative is still bumped all the way to before the current turn, which could both be a lifesaver for the PC (recovery checks would be performed later) and an obstacle to getting back into the fight.
Additionally, it's possible the initiative bumping would happen even if the PC was dying (reduced to 0 hit points while already there) if we interpret Taking Damage while Dying to be a specific rule that overrides only the second bullet point, though I could see it overriding both.
So then the word "remember"... Could it be referring to this rule?
As a player character, when you are reduced to 0 Hit Points, you’re knocked out with the following effects:
You immediately move your initiative position to directly before the turn in which you were reduced to 0 HP.
You gain the dying 1 condition. If the effect that knocked you out was a critical success from the attacker or the result of your critical failure, you gain the dying 2 condition instead. If you have the wounded condition, increase your dying value by an amount equal to your wounded value. If the damage was dealt by a nonlethal attack or nonlethal effect, you don’t gain the dying condition; you are instead unconscious with 0 Hit Points.
I suppose then that Taking Damage while Dying would only specifically override the part that would grant you the dying condition since you already have it, which would look something like this...?
As a player character, when you are reduced to 0 Hit Points, you’re knocked out with the following effects:
You immediately move your initiative position to directly before the turn in which you were reduced to 0 HP.
Increase your dying condition value by 1, or by 2 if the damage came from an attacker’s critical hit or your own critical failure. If you have the wounded condition, increase your dying value by an amount equal to your wounded value. If the damage was dealt by a nonlethal attack or nonlethal effect, you don’t gain the dying condition; you are instead unconscious with 0 Hit Points.
I... guess that could work? Feels weird to read, though.
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0 HP with the Dying condition is the PF2 equivalent of PF1's negative HPs. So, yes taking damage while being at 0 HP does "reduce your HP to zero".
And the Wounded condition is here to make players careful about their PC's health when having already come back from the brink of death in the combat.
So, I guess I do not understand what all this is about. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
The devs should definitely clarify the intent in the wounded condition itself. This has been very confusing.
Fo'sho!