Contingency Healing

[RedShirtNo5]

Similar question.

Suppose I'm a cleric and the party is fighting a giant. Bob is currently at full hitpoints, with 20 hp. On my action, I ready - "I cast cure light wounds on Bob if he gets hit by the giant." Later that round, Bob is hit by the giant for 31 hp damage.

Is Bob dead?

-RedShirt

 

[andargor]

Similar question.

Suppose I'm a cleric and the party is fighting a giant. Bob is currently at full hitpoints, with 20 hp. On my action, I ready - "I cast cure light wounds on Bob if he gets hit by the giant." Later that round, Bob is hit by the giant for 31 hp damage.

Is Bob dead?

First, this is a Readied Action, totally different from Contingency.

The action occurs just before the action that triggers it. If the triggered action is part of another character's activities, you interrupt the other character.

Second, you have to specify an action to trigger your readied action. "If he gets hit by the giant" is not an action, however "if he's attacked in melee by the giant" is. So he would be dead.

Andargor

 

[Artoomis]

Similar question.

Suppose I'm a cleric and the party is fighting a giant. Bob is currently at full hitpoints, with 20 hp. On my action, I ready - "I cast cure light wounds on Bob if he gets hit by the giant." Later that round, Bob is hit by the giant for 31 hp damage.

Is Bob dead?

-RedShirt

By a quirk of the rules, no. Readied actions happen just BEFORE the triggering action, so, presumably, what actually happen is you see the giant just about to hit Bob and you manage to get your cure light in there just before he gets hit.

"To do so, specify the action you will take and the conditions under which you will take it. Then, any time before your next action, you may take the readied action in response to that condition. The action occurs just before the action that triggers it. "

As opposed to:

"...The conditions needed to bring the spell into effect must be clear, although they can be general. In all cases, the contingency immediately brings into effect the companion spell, the latter being “cast” instantaneously when the prescribed circumstances occur."

Contingency has no provisions for acting like a readied action, whic can interrupt an activity.

 

[Sejs]

Similar question.

Suppose I'm a cleric and the party is fighting a giant. Bob is currently at full hitpoints, with 20 hp. On my action, I ready - "I cast cure light wounds on Bob if he gets hit by the giant." Later that round, Bob is hit by the giant for 31 hp damage.

Is Bob dead?

-RedShirt

Yup, he's dead. Your action goes off when Bob is hit, at which time he's already taken the damage and died.

Edit: Feh, had it backwards. Anyway, the wonder that is the Readied Action Time Warp aside, Bob's still dead. Readied actions take place just before the action that triggered them, however, in the case of Bob and the Giant, casting CLW on Bob before he's hit won't save him - he hasn't taken any damage yet; he's still at full hp. Likewise, casting it just after he's hit won't help either as he went from full hp to stone dead all at once.

 

[shilsen]

I'm the DM that AviLazar is referring to (right, Avi?) and it looks like I'm late to the party, but here's my two bits anyway. The way I see it, there really isn't a question as far as the rules are concerned. As a number of posters have already mentioned, there are lots of references in the rules to damage lowering your hit points. Since there isn't any information regarding it lowering your hit points one point at a time, or in sets of three, or any particular combination, what I do is what it seems most people playing the game do - when someone has X hit pts and takes Y damage, their new hit point total becomes X-Y. Simple.

As for the giant question, I'd say that Bob is dead too.

 

[Artoomis]

... the wonder that is the Readied Action Time Warp aside, Bob's still dead. Readied actions take place just before the action that triggered them, however, in the case of Bob and the Giant, casting CLW on Bob before he's hit won't save him - he hasn't taken any damage yet; he's still at full hp. Likewise, casting it just after he's hit won't help either as he went from full hp to stone dead all at once.

Quite right. Silly me.

 

[Sledge]

Iron Mark has it exactly.
And yes your character is dead in the example given.