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Death and 0 Max HP
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<blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 7634845" data-attributes="member: 6677017"><p>Okay, so here is what I see. (I had to stop and rewrite multiple times as I ran across more subtleties, but hopefully this is now all accurate.) I’m going to try to stick with RAW as I’m interpreting it.</p><p></p><p>1) Greater restoration on a dead body straight up can’t work because they aren’t a valid target.</p><p></p><p>2) When you are dead you cannot normally have 0 hp. Your body is no longer a creature, so it has a null value of hp. It can have hp as an object, but that doesn’t matter here.</p><p></p><p>3) If you came back to life with 0 hp the worse that should happen (assuming trying stick as close to RAW as possible) would be that the DM could rule that you aren’t stable and someone needs to stabilize you with a healer’s kit or a Wisdom (Medicine) check.</p><p></p><p>4) The rules don’t allow you to take a long rest with 0 hp, so if you came back to life with 0 hp you would need a greater restoration to be cast afterwards to restore your hp maximum.</p><p></p><p>5) Raise dead says if the effects aren’t removed prior to the spell, they “take effect” *when* the creature returns to life. It doesn’t say they “remain in effect”.</p><p></p><p>6) The hp reducing effect cannot and does not apply to a a dead creature. It can only take effect again when the character returns to life. </p><p></p><p>7) The phrasing of the attack in question is slightly ambiguous as to whether the state of having a max hp reduction itself is the “effect” that kills you when your hp is reduced to 0, or it is the actual reducing of max hp caused during the attack. I’m going to assume it means the effect caused during the attack, because otherwise these attacks aren’t directly killing you, and also because otherwise you would be treating someone who just benefitted from a raise dead spell as if they were being hit from an attack, rather than under the ongoing results of a state initially delivered by that attack. This is the only real point of ambiguity I’m seeing in the RAW.</p><p></p><p>8) Therefore what should happen when you cast raise dead on the dead body is that the creature returns to life with 1 hp, then the state of having a max hp reduction until completing a long rest (but not the attack that reduced the the max hp) “takes effect”, dropping their hp to zero. They are now dying due to the normal game effect of having your hp reduced to 0, and cannot gain hit points (including by rolling a 20 on a death save) due to the state of having a max hp reduction that took effect when they came back to life, but can be stabilized normally, either through death save successes, healer’s kits, Wisdom (Medicine) checks, or the spare the dying cantrip. You can now cast greater restoration to remove the max hp reduction effect and they can then recover hp normally.</p><p></p><p>I seriously doubt that design intent is to make it any more difficult than that, but if someone wants to go with a ruling that really puts (IMO unwarranted and out of harmony with general 5e philosophy) an extra difficulty in recovering from this not terribly uncommon way for an adventurer to die, you could rule that true resurrection is required and works because the spell’s wording implies that it is intended to remove all of the things that raise dead and resurrection cannot. If you want to both stick with a RAW interpretation like I did above in 8, and be harsher than I was (killer DM that thou art), you could require the only other RAW option I can immediately think of, which would be a wish spell’s non-basic usage, with all of the listed risks and penalties.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sword of Spirit, post: 7634845, member: 6677017"] Okay, so here is what I see. (I had to stop and rewrite multiple times as I ran across more subtleties, but hopefully this is now all accurate.) I’m going to try to stick with RAW as I’m interpreting it. 1) Greater restoration on a dead body straight up can’t work because they aren’t a valid target. 2) When you are dead you cannot normally have 0 hp. Your body is no longer a creature, so it has a null value of hp. It can have hp as an object, but that doesn’t matter here. 3) If you came back to life with 0 hp the worse that should happen (assuming trying stick as close to RAW as possible) would be that the DM could rule that you aren’t stable and someone needs to stabilize you with a healer’s kit or a Wisdom (Medicine) check. 4) The rules don’t allow you to take a long rest with 0 hp, so if you came back to life with 0 hp you would need a greater restoration to be cast afterwards to restore your hp maximum. 5) Raise dead says if the effects aren’t removed prior to the spell, they “take effect” *when* the creature returns to life. It doesn’t say they “remain in effect”. 6) The hp reducing effect cannot and does not apply to a a dead creature. It can only take effect again when the character returns to life. 7) The phrasing of the attack in question is slightly ambiguous as to whether the state of having a max hp reduction itself is the “effect” that kills you when your hp is reduced to 0, or it is the actual reducing of max hp caused during the attack. I’m going to assume it means the effect caused during the attack, because otherwise these attacks aren’t directly killing you, and also because otherwise you would be treating someone who just benefitted from a raise dead spell as if they were being hit from an attack, rather than under the ongoing results of a state initially delivered by that attack. This is the only real point of ambiguity I’m seeing in the RAW. 8) Therefore what should happen when you cast raise dead on the dead body is that the creature returns to life with 1 hp, then the state of having a max hp reduction until completing a long rest (but not the attack that reduced the the max hp) “takes effect”, dropping their hp to zero. They are now dying due to the normal game effect of having your hp reduced to 0, and cannot gain hit points (including by rolling a 20 on a death save) due to the state of having a max hp reduction that took effect when they came back to life, but can be stabilized normally, either through death save successes, healer’s kits, Wisdom (Medicine) checks, or the spare the dying cantrip. You can now cast greater restoration to remove the max hp reduction effect and they can then recover hp normally. I seriously doubt that design intent is to make it any more difficult than that, but if someone wants to go with a ruling that really puts (IMO unwarranted and out of harmony with general 5e philosophy) an extra difficulty in recovering from this not terribly uncommon way for an adventurer to die, you could rule that true resurrection is required and works because the spell’s wording implies that it is intended to remove all of the things that raise dead and resurrection cannot. If you want to both stick with a RAW interpretation like I did above in 8, and be harsher than I was (killer DM that thou art), you could require the only other RAW option I can immediately think of, which would be a wish spell’s non-basic usage, with all of the listed risks and penalties. [/QUOTE]
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