Bearded Devil - Persistent Wound

[Aelf]

From the SRD:
The damage a bearded devil deals with its glaive causes a persistent wound. An injured creature loses 2 additional hit points each round.

My Questions:
How do other DMs rule this? Two points come to mind ...
1) It sounds like an injured creature might lose only 2hp per round no matter how many glaive hits it has taken, and that a single successful cure/heal will stop the loss. Comments?
2) Once a wounded creature drops below 0hp, does the extra hp loss still occur? This also matters since to become stable, a creature has to stop losing hp.

Regards,
Aelf

 

[Cicciograna]

I think that Bearded Devil's "Infernal wound" ability is, basically, a different tipe of bleeding, which is cumulative, so two hits with the glaive would result in an additional 4 hp loss and so on; it won't stop at 0hp, since bledding doesn't stop there neither. This is as I would treat it, anyway.

 

[darthkilmor]

From the SRD:
The damage a bearded devil deals with its glaive causes a persistent wound. An injured creature loses 2 additional hit points each round.

My Questions:
How do other DMs rule this? Two points come to mind ...
1) It sounds like an injured creature might lose only 2hp per round no matter how many glaive hits it has taken, and that a single successful cure/heal will stop the loss. Comments?
2) Once a wounded creature drops below 0hp, does the extra hp loss still occur? This also matters since to become stable, a creature has to stop losing hp.

Interestingly enough, it says the ability is of the bearded devil, not the weapon. Which would seem to indicate it should work with its claw attacks too. Anyway, I would treat it as only 2 hp per round regardless of times hit, and that a creature can't stabilize this blood lose. Don't forget the caster level check or the spell has no effect(I believe this means the spell does not heal anything at all, not that the spell stops the bleeding.)

If you want to be really mean, replace Power Attack with Ability Focus and kick the DC to 18.

 

[Cicciograna]

Interestingly enough, it says the ability is of the bearded devil, not the weapon. Which would seem to indicate it should work with its claw attacks too.

I think that pointing out that it's an ability of the devil, not the weapon is just to say that if one of my PC kills a Barbazu and takes his glaive, his attacks don't deal persistent damage: the persistent damage comes from the infernal power of the devil, channeled through the weapon; besides, the monster entry clearly states that persistent damage is dealt with the glaive, so his claw attacks won't deal it: I think that it derives from the symbiosys between the devil and the glaive, as this weapon is the prominent feature of this type of devil (other than the beard, obviously).

Don't forget the caster level check or the spell has no effect(I believe this means the spell does not heal anything at all, not that the spell stops the bleeding.)

For what concerns the spells, I think that the aster level check is needed to overcome the "infernal infection" of the wound: the caster has to beat the evil influnce in order to have his spell work. So if the check is failed, the spells have no effects; if the check is successful, the spells work in full, which is to say that "Cure" spells cura the character, and "Heal" completely cures the recipient of the spell.

 

[eamon]

My take:
Infernal Wound only applies to the mentioned weapon, failing the caster level check causes any healing to fail completely (not just to fail closing the infernal wound).

I'm not sure about whether the wounds stack. My inclination would be to say that they don't, a creature wounded takes 2 dmg per round no matter how often it was hit - otherwise, do you need to roll a caster level check against each instance of infernal wound? Not allowing stacking is simpler, and seems more balanced, and might be implied by the fact that the text talks about "an injured creature" and not about each wound separately. Other votes?

 

[Infiniti2000]

The infernal wound is not cumulative. If it were, it would say so. In no part of the description does it reference each wound individually when talking about the 2hp / round damage. Instead, it references "injured creature."

From a logical perspective, the creature is only CR 5. If the damage were cumulative, I daresay it would add another CR or maybe even two.

 

[frankthedm]

The wound is bleeding 2 hp per round. If you get another wound, to me it stands to reason that wound bleeds 2 hp per round as well. Does the bleeding of one wound suddenly slowing down because another is opened? I think not.

 

[Infiniti2000]

The wound is bleeding 2 hp per round. If you get another wound, to me it stands to reason that wound bleeds 2 hp per round as well. Does the bleeding of one wound suddenly slowing down because another is opened? I think not.

Be careful with your wording. The wound is not, in fact, bleeding. An injured creature is bleeding: "An injured creature loses 2 additional hit points each round."

 

[Aelf]

I just ran two playtests of a group of 3 (then 4) Level 5s against a Bearded Devil using the "accumulated bleeding" ruling.

Three, as expected, was underpowered. But the group I DM has a low-level enchanter who is probably not going to be very combat effective.

Results:
3 person group: Cleric, Crusader, Conjurer
Even with White Raven Tactics, the cleric was unable to keep the Crusader alive. The cleric died next.

4 person group: Cleric, Crusader, Conjurer, Rogue
This went better ... perhaps better rolls helped. The devil was obviously heading for defeat after 3 rounds.

My take: To survive an even-level encounter, the group had to expend way more than 20-25% of its resources. Using the cumulative bleeding, the devil seemed at least as powerful as a CR6 wyvern and a good bit more capable than a CR5 Hieracosphinx.

(I do realize that I'm cherry-picking monsters, but was trying to use melee-heavy ones that I've recently run as a yardstick.)

Follow up question: Has anyone actually used Barbed devils as the primary creature in encounters?

Regards,
Aelf

 

[Darklone]

I always use accumulated bleeding. No PC losses so far.