Can poison kill?

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

For a simpler example, a Wizard 2 with a natural Con score of 10. He's unlucky, and has 5 hit points (4 + 1).

Under the Thanee system:

He takes 2 points of Con Damage, and therefore loses 2 maximum and 2 current HP, bringing him down to 3 current and max.

The only way this is possible is if his 2nd roll for HP is changed into a 0, since he's presumably gained 3 HP (1d4, maxxed, -1 for Con) from his 1st Wizard level.

 

[Thanee]

Nah, no roll needs to be changed. The rolls happen during level up and after that you only have number of hit dice and hit point total (one single score).

The 2nd level wizard would have 3 hp after having his Con drained down to 8, and 2 hp (the minimum), if it is further lowered. Damage being deducted from that number normally, of course.

But the rolls are still the same, altho they are irrelvant at this point. 4 plus 1 is 5; 5 minus 2 is 3.

And there is another flaw in your logic... if you say he has gained 4-1=3 hp on 1st level, then the equivalent for 2nd level would not be a roll of 0, but a roll of 1 (which is, of course, what he actually rolled ), since 1-1=0.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Excepting, of course, that any given roll for HP can never result in a number less than 1, regardless of penalties.

In other words, is it allowable that Con damage breaks other rules?

 

[BSF]

Merak, I count it as HP damage adds up. Con damage reduces your max total of HP.

HP are an abstract system for physical damage, endurance, luck, blah, blah, blah. But the damage inflicted is not abstracted the same way. When a dragon does 40 points of damage to a 6 hp commoner, that commoner is dead. When the same dragon does 40 points of damage to the 10th level 100 HP fighter, the fighter is "60% dead". If you reduce the fighter's max HP, the severity of the "wounds" does not scale downward because the dragon didn't do "40% damage", the dragon accumulated 40 HP worth of damage on the fighter.

Keeping track of HP by level is an annoyance to many groups. For simplicity, 3.x has provided level penalties for level loss.

In the name of simplicity, you can also abstract HP to where you just apply con drain as a uniform subtraction x HD, up to a minimum of 1 hp/level.

Granular tracking of everything by level is great if your group is willing to keep track of all that. But the rules appear to take a lowest common denominator approach and advise to simply apply penalties.

 

[Scutisorex]

Can poison kill?

According to Bell Biv Devoe, yes.

 

[Thanee]

Excepting, of course, that any given roll for HP can never result in a number less than 1, regardless of penalties.

That rule only applies during level up, really.

Each roll of a Hit Die (though a penalty can never drop a result below 1—that is, a character always gains at least 1 hit point each time he or she advances in level).

After level up, the other rule applies, which does not take the individual rolls into account.

If a character’s Constitution score drops, then he loses 1 hit point per Hit Die for every point by which his Constitution modifier drops. A hit point score can’t be reduced by Constitution damage or drain to less than 1 hit point per Hit Die.

So no, no rules are broken there.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Li Shenron]

One should always keep track of how many hp are rolled at each level, this is important for more than one aspect of the game.

Also, one should keep track of the order of classes gained, what skill points were used, when and where boosting stats occured, etc.

Basically, everything that changes on the character should be known.

This is a possibility. Nevertheless I think going with the opposite approach of not keeping track of anything at all can work just as well, at least it had for us.

Sometimes a minor ad-hoc ruling may be required, but it's pretty rarely and always minor. As such, I think the burden of tracking everything is too much for the smallest advantage.

 

[Scion]

If one likes to see where the character came from and how it grew it is important.

If it is ever necissary to backtrack it is important.

If one ever loses a level (strangely there is still level loss in the game, no matter what a poster above said) it is very important.

If there are things that need to be modified, such as this con problem, it is important.

::shrugs:: Even without the game mechanics themselves making it necissary (without doing this loseing a level is pretty much impossible to do properly) it is still nice to be able to see what the character has been througout its developement.

 

[Li Shenron]

If one likes to see where the character came from and how it grew it is important.

If it is ever necissary to backtrack it is important.

If one ever loses a level (strangely there is still level loss in the game, no matter what a poster above said) it is very important.

If there are things that need to be modified, such as this con problem, it is important.

::shrugs:: Even without the game mechanics themselves making it necissary (without doing this loseing a level is pretty much impossible to do properly) it is still nice to be able to see what the character has been througout its developement.

I know you were thinking about level loss mostly. If you keep track of every past level, you can backtrack and handle level loss "perfectly", in the sense that you can send the character "back in time". It would be hard to remember without writing it down.

The reason why I don't do that is because I don't need level loss to be exactly what you mean. I don't mind the character going back to exactly where it was one level ago, I just mind that the character remains within the rules, i.e. it is still a correct character of that level according to the rules. Official rules are not 100% accurate on this (IIRC they don't mention what you should do with HP for example, and one could even read that they adon't change).

As I said, it's a different possibility, but nontheless it works fine. It doesn't matter to me if a PC with 1 level less loses exactly all the features he had gained in the previous level.

 

[Thanee]

Level loss is indeed the most important situation, when it would be beneficial to know the exact changes (tho, I have little trouble to name all changes from the last few levels at least).

We have decided to just roll a hit die to deduct it from the total (including a chance to re-roll as we do when leveling up; and yes, this way chances are quite good, that your hit points improve once you level back up, call it a little compensation for the loss ).

Feats, well everyone knows what feat has been selected last. Same with ability points. Skills, it's good enough if they fit in the lowered level maximum rank restraints and you deduct skill points according to the class level lost (i.e. if you have a skill with only cross-class ranks, which is a class skill for the class you lost a level in, you cannot deduct ranks from that skill). Wizard spells are not lost, obviously, and none are gained, if the level is restored via Restoration, but additional spells are gained, if the level is regained via experience. Everything else is pretty straightforward.

But sure, it's not that much trouble to write the changes down at each level, if you want to do it.

Bye
Thanee