A Pitiful Cry for Help!

[Kemrain]

I'm a little confused.

When Forced Marching, you have to make Con checks against a DC that goes up by 2 points every hour after the first. If you fail, you take 1d6 points of Nonlethal Damage and become Fatigued.

You heal your Character Level in Nonlethal Damage every hour. It does not, however, specify every hour of rest. It seems likley that this healing is identical to regular healing, only sped up from days to hours (bedrest and medical attention multiplying the effect), however, this brings up a slight problem.

I'm unable to find rules that say you don't heal Nonlethal Damage while Forced Marching. Where are these rules, for they must be there! Otherwise, once you hit 6th level, you could march forever!

- Kemrain the Fatigued.

 

[Kemrain]

Replying to my own thread. As the second post. I sure do suck. Suckage aside, though, I have more questions related to the topic.

If you heal the nonlethal damage sustained by Forced Marching, the Fatigue you suffer is removed as well. Does this means that resting until you heal the damage negates the fatigue, but resting 8 hours (but not healing all the nonlethal damage) doesn't?

Is there a way to reset the 'hours traveled in a day' counter without resting? If we can bring people back from the dead, surely we can get them to walk farther in a day.

- Kemrain the Staggered.

 

[Pyrex]

Lesser Restoration now (in 3.5) removes the Fatigued condition. Cure spells remove the damage. Longstrider gets you further before you have to start Forced Marching. Who cares if you ride your Mount (spell) to death?

 

[Kemrain]

You can get rid of the Fatigue, and the Damage, but after another hour of traveling you're making another check and taking more damage. Why can't you reset the clock without resting for 8 hours? Is Limited Wish the best you can ask for in this instance? Seems a bit expensive.

- Kemrian the Exhausted.

 

[Kemrain]

The thread no one will ever reply to but Kemrain

Putting aside how much I suck for being 4/5ths of the posts to this thread, I'm posting again, because this is really bugging me.

I'm hustling down the highway. I hustle for an hour, no penalty, making good time. I hustle for a second hour, and I take 1 point of Nonlethal Damage and become Fatigued. I continue on and hustle for another hour, and take 2 points of Nonlethal damage, bringing my total to 3. Another hour, upto 4 now, and I'm taking 4 points of Nonlethal Damage, bringing my total to 7. I have a cure spell cast on me, which heals me of the Nonlethal damage and the Fatigue, and keep walking! Hour five, still hustling, still taking damage (8 Nonlethal, to be exact.) I'm fatigued again, but another cure spell will get rid of the damage and fatigue. Another hour, upto 6, and I'm taking 16 Nonlethal and becoming fatigued. Hour 7 deals me 32 Nonlethal damage, and hour 8 deals me 64 Nonlethal damage. Not a problem, as I have more than 64 HP and more healing, I'm good to go. However, now I've reached an impass. My 9th hour of hustling is also my first hour of Forced Marching, so I make a Con Check (DC 10 I think) to avoid taking 1d6 Nonlethal damage, and Hustling deals me 128 points of Nonlethal damage. I'm unconscious by this point, because even though I can heal the damage easily, I need to be conscious to do it, and I can't take that much damage and be awake.

I have two problems with this scenario. We can bring someone back from the dead, but I can't find a way to Hustle for 9 straight hours? What gives?! Also, I can't seem to find rules that forbid natural healing of non-lethal damage while you're taking non-lethal damage. If you're 6th level, you heal 6 Nonlethal an hour, and thus could walk, at the normal rate, forever, as you heal the Forced March damage every hour!

Ok, I've posted, explained, re-explained, and exampled. Would somebody who knows what they're talking about, or can at least sound vaguely convincing, explain to me how this works and make my head stop hurting?

 

[DanMcS]

I have two problems with this scenario. We can bring someone back from the dead, but I can't find a way to Hustle for 9 straight hours? What gives?! Also, I can't seem to find rules that forbid natural healing of non-lethal damage while you're taking non-lethal damage. If you're 6th level, you heal 6 Nonlethal an hour, and thus could walk, at the normal rate, forever, as you heal the Forced March damage every hour!

This isn't really that important. Do you have epic adventures planned involving how fast a character can walk for 15 hours?

You don't have to find rules that say you don't heal naturally while you're taking the damage. It makes more sense that way, so do it. Obviously, if you heal nonlethal damage constantly during the hour, but the rules say you take 1d6 nonlethal damage, that's the net damage beyond what you would have healed.

If you want to hustle for 9 hours, the damage doesn't all occur at the end of the hour. If you hustled for 8 hours, and then another hour, you take 128 damage; if you hustle for a half hour instead, would you take none because it wasn't a full hour? Sounds wrong. If you need to heal halfway through the 9th hour, do so. You'll heal the 64 points of damage and be non-fatigued, and have to do it again at the end of the hour. If you can only take 64 damage without passing out, then in the 10th hour you're going to have to heal every 15 minutes.

At some point, you'll run out of healing spells, and pass out, exhausted.

You could work up elaborate spells or magical effects that make one able to hustle longer, but really, by the time that becomes viable, the character is going to be using some other method of transportation, like flight, teleportation, or whatever.

 

[Darklone]

Kemrain, you don't suck, it's just that D&D cancels out such small unimportant things like starving or fatigue during travels after a few levels...

 

[Kemrain]

Hooray for Replies!

DanMcS,

I don't need to have the rules, I can always houserule, you're right. However, presently, I'm more interested in the way the gamesystem deals with it than the way that makes the most sense. Of course you shouldn't heal Nonlethal damage while you're Fatigued, or Starving, or dying of Exposure, that makes sense, but it doesn't seem to be in the rules.

You could work up elaborate spells or magical effects that make one able to hustle longer, but really, by the time that becomes viable, the character is going to be using some other method of transportation, like flight, teleportation, or whatever.

The spell doesn't need to be elaborate at all. "This spell resets the recipient's daily clock, treating them as having rested for 8 hours for the purposes of Fatigue, Hustling, and Forced Marching. The character is not consitered rested for the purposes of preparing spells." You could just fly by the time you get 3rd level spells, or Teleport after that, you're right. So, why not make this second level, so it's viable for a little while? It could be exceptionally useful in Scroll or Wand form, or in a Mass version with an Area of Effect wide enough for, say, a small army. I think there is viability here.

And Darklone, thanks. I'm getting fed up with DnD's disregard of the necessities of life. No rules for sleep deprivation, ignorable fatigue... It's just silly. Not the kind of game I'm playing in at the moment, and not the kind of game I think I'd want to play. Guess I do need to houserule these things.

 

[Squire James]

I'm reasonably sure that the Hustle and Forced March rules are as they are because you're not intended to do both for a full day! Hustle to travel faster, or Forced March to travel for more hours that day. You can also Hustle every other hour and take very little damage, then Forced March at the end of it.

Also, if I remember correctly, applying the Fatigue condtion to an already-Fatigued person results in Exhaustion. I might be wrong there, but it appears to be a reasonable house rule if nothing else.

 

[Zelgar]

From the SRD...
Fatigued: A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a –2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued.

In your example, after you failed your 2nd save you would be exhausted. From the SRD...
Exhausted: An exhausted character moves at half speed and takes a –6 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. After 1 hour of complete rest, an exhausted character becomes fatigued. A fatigued character becomes exhausted by doing something else that would normally cause fatigue.

Unless you're using magic to get out of being Fatigued or Exhausted, you can't be running around all day.

Zelgar