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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seebs" data-source="post: 6759735" data-attributes="member: 61529">I am starting to think there's been some serious misconceptions going on here.Here is my understanding:I don't think "reduces" vs. "drops" is a meaningful distinction. I think that all the rules that talk about "reduced to 0 hit points", or "X drops you to 0 hit points", or "the damage reduces the target to 0 hit points" are referring to the same thing.Normally, if the amount of damage you take is equal to or greater than your current hit point total, you are reduced to 0 hit points, and are knocked unconscious or killed, and if the remaining damage exceeds your hit point maximum, you are definitely killed. (If "you" are an NPC, you might just be killed anyway.) Unless it's a melee attack and the attacker wants you to live, in which case you live.There are a few rules in the game that specify something else to happen when you are reduced to 0 hit points. Wild shape and some polymorph effects state that you revert to your natural form, and take any remaining damage against the hit points that form had. There's an ability which lets barbarians make a con check, and if they succeed, they are instead left at 1hp, with the only limitation being that the damage has to not be enough to instantly kill them. But they just end up at 1hp, regardless of whether they were reduced to 0 exactly or were reduced to 0 with 20 more hit points incoming. The great weapon master bonus attack on dropping an opponent is attached to "reduced to 0 hit points" too.The issue here is that there's nothing telling us in which order to apply multiple such abilities. If a barbarian is hit by disintegrate, does their ability trump disintegrate? If they're hit by a great weapon master, and reduced to 0, and make the con save and are actually at 1, does the great weapon master get another attack?And the answer is "we don't know". It is never specified. None of these abilities offer clarification like "if, after all other effects, you are still at 0 hit points". A few say "1hp instead" (emphasis mine). The polymorph (and druid) powers specify that extra damage is applied to the reverted form, which sort of implies that this happens instead of things that proc off hitting 0, but unlike the barbarian power, it doesn't specifically state "instead". Probably because, if there's enough damage coming in, or you were badly injured when your shape was changed, you might well end up at 0hp anyway.But there's nothing that tells us how these apply. I've seen one person argue that, while druids don't get dusted, absolutely the great weapon master should get their bonus attack for knocking a druid's wild shape to 0hp. I don't see any obvious wording differences to explain why these two "if the damage you do reduces a target to 0 hit points" effects would behave differently, but it seems obvious to someone that they should.And the thing is, the druid wild shape power does imply partial application of damage, because it refers to "excess damage". If you're at 4hp in wildshape form, and take 6 points of damage, you don't end up at -2 hit points. You take 4 points of damage, then something interrupts this, and then you take 2 more points of damage. And if you had 1hp left before wildshaping, you don't actually have your hit point total go down by 2, either; you lose 1hp, you end up at 0, and the rest of the damage goes away. (You can't be killed by it because wild shape shows up at 2nd level, so you had at least 2hp maximum. Probably.)So disintegrate and wild shape are both specifying things which happen at 0hp instead of what would normally happen. And there's nothing that says which one wins, or that either of them is prevented because the other happened. You could quite reasonably conclude that the beast form turns to dust, and then reverts. You could conclude that you revert and are then dusted. You could conclude that the wild shape doesn't get to proc, or that the disintegrate doesn't get to proc. Nothing in the rules answers that question, any more than it has in any previous edition.</blockquote>

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