Confused about first aid after reading Torn Asunder

After reading Torn Asunder: Critical Hits, I am wondering if I have been interpreting the first aid rules correctly. Referring to the core rules, the book (on page 31) states, "Under the standard rules, a character can be given first aid to stabilize a life-threatening injury bringing her from negative hit points to zero hit points." Later on that same page it says, "his patient gains a number of hit points above those necessary to bring him to zero (referring to normal 'stabilization')."

This implies that stablizing a character under the core rules means that he is brought back to zero hit points. This is not how I interpret a reading of the "Recovering with Help" rules on page 129 of the 3.0 PHB. It says that, after a dying character becomes stable, he has a 10% chance of becoming conscious "at which point he is disabled (as IF he had 0 hit points)." I don't see anything that says a character is actually raised to 0 hit points.

My question is: Does this actually raise the character back to 0 hit points (as Critical Hits implies) or can he remain conscious but disabled with negative hit points (as the PHB seems to imply)?

You won't gain HP to raise you to 0 AFAIK

techno said:

My question is: Does this actually raise the character back to 0 hit points (as Critical Hits implies) or can he remain conscious but disabled with negative hit points (as the PHB seems to imply)?

Click to expand...

Critical Hits is wrong, and whoever wrote it apparently doesn't know their rules

-Hyp.

Hypersmurf said:

Critical Hits is wrong, and whoever wrote it apparently doesn't know their rules

-Hyp.

Click to expand...

If this is true, it is very disappointing. Torn Asunder is the first d20 book I have purchased and to conclude that the authors don't even understand the basic core rules that they are modifying is...well...disappointing and does not fill me with confidence that the smaller d20 publishers know what they are doing.

You are correct that under the core rules, those who are currently at negative hit points do not gain those back with a successful heal check. They simply do not lose more. This was an error on my part as I was working on re-writing the skill and subconsciously stuck in our house rule of automatically going to zero points after a successful Heal check without realizing it or catching it as I re-read it time and time again.

Under the existing rules, a stabilized character will still be at negative and cannot gain additional hit points without the aid of magical healing or long-term care and rest. This clearly makes the revised version of the skill presented in Torn Asunder all the more valuable, since it is possible to gain hit points back with successful heal checks under the new rules presented there.

For the purposes of the book, treat "stabilization (DC 15)" under First Aid to be the same as in the standard rules; the player no longer loses hit points but does not automatically go to zero.

To be honest, you're the first to catch it or mention the error, even after extensive playtest. It is something to add to the errata list we are working on. So I do appreciate that.

Bastion Press is one of the publishers that consistently releases top notch material and a single wrong sentence in a book is hardly grounds for condemning the product or company. We do know our core rules, but we do make mistakes just like anyone else. That is why there is errata releases, so we can fix things we missed during development and playtest. Just look at 3.5-- it took 3 yrs of "playtesting" to fix those mistakes and they still missed some.

Uh-Oh

Does this mean we are going to have this in our campaign now?