Can poison kill?

[Marimmar@Home]

Last session our party cleric got hurt by a trap that used wyvern poison. She failed both saves and was dealt 19 points of Con damage by the poison. With only a Con of 14 she would have died, but she wore an Amulet of Health +2 so my question is, does that give her a minimum Con score of 2 and makes her virtually immune to dying from Con damaging poisons or can ability scores from items be drained as well?

~Marimmar

 

[Mouseferatu]

The +2 is tacked on to the total Con score, but she can still be drained to 0 by a strong enough poison. So yes, under the circumstances, she's dead.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Also, if the poison reduced her to 2 Con, and she then removed the amulet, she would suddenly die.

 

[Li Shenron]

Last session our party cleric got hurt by a trap that used wyvern poison. She failed both saves and was dealt 19 points of Con damage by the poison. With only a Con of 14 she would have died, but she wore an Amulet of Health +2 so my question is, does that give her a minimum Con score of 2 and makes her virtually immune to dying from Con damaging poisons or can ability scores from items be drained as well?

~Marimmar

I think there's not much of a minimum limit for Con... I see your point, that normally the game does never use negative ability scores but that's just because usually there's no point (unless one would want to be more harsh about healing ability damage). However I think it's perfectly correct to treat the total Con score altogether, and not separately the base Con and the +2 from the item.

 

[Christopher Lambert]

Here's another question? What if their Strength was drained to 0? Could they die after that? Or are only Con-draining poisons capable of killing on their own?

 

[Thanee]

Only Con=0 kills, all other stats only disable you.

Con 14 + Amulet of Health +2 just means, that Con is 16, so 16 points of Con damage/drain and you are dead.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Ambrus]

What about intelligence?

I don't want to hijack the thread completely, but I've actually been pondering a similar question for a while now: Could a circlet of intellect increase the non-Intelligence of a skeleton or golem and grant them a limited form of sentience? This actually occured in my own campaign. A flesh golem who had a circlet of intelligence +2 slapped onto his head (for rather convoluted reasons) fell into a pit months ago and has been alone ever since. I've been wondering if, with a modified Int of 2, he'd eventually develop enough curiosity and initiative to climb out of the pit and start exploring the dungeon. Is such a thing possible?

 

[nhl_1997]

A flesh golem who had a circlet of intelligence +2 slapped onto his head (for rather convoluted reasons) fell into a pit months ago and has been alone ever since. I've been wondering if, with a modified Int of 2,

Having an int score (or any ability score) of -- is different than having an int score of 0. A circlet of intelligence +2 has no effect on a flesh golem.

 

[Knight Otu]

By the rules, no, the golem would not have an increased Int score - you cannot increase what isn't there in the first place. You'd have to give the golem an Int score first before you could increase it. There's a difference between an ability score of 0, and a non-ability.

 

[the_mighty_agrippa]

Last session our party cleric got hurt by a trap that used wyvern poison. She failed both saves and was dealt 19 points of Con damage by the poison. With only a Con of 14 she would have died, but she wore an Amulet of Health +2 so my question is, does that give her a minimum Con score of 2 and makes her virtually immune to dying from Con damaging poisons or can ability scores from items be drained as well?

~Marimmar

So here's my question:

What the hell level are these guys that the cleric has a 4000 gp item and couldn't stop the secondary poison damage??? Did they just forget?