Do enhancement bonuses to ability count against ability damage?

[Nail]

There are some problems here:

you cannot place an enhancement bonus on something that does not already have a +1 armor (or shield) bonus (ie clothes).

Not true. See Bracers of Armor, Robe of the Archmagi, etc.

This means that a person with Dex 10 wearing gloves of dexterity would be paralyzed when she took 10 points of Dex damage (Score = 0) even though after the gloves she has a +2. The gloves have nothing to enhance, so she is paralyzed.

Where is the rules text that backs this up?

Specifically: An ability score of zero is not the same as the ability score of nothing ("-"). An ability score of zero can be added to, using the normal rules of addition....unless there's a d20 rule that says otherwise. Is there?

Asserting something is true does not make it true.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Does a suit of leather armor with +2 enhancement bonus gain an armor bonus of +4?

Yup.

It's not an enhancement bonus to armor class; it's an enhancement bonus to the armor bonus.

Moreover, you cannot place an enhancement bonus on something that does not already have a +1 armor (or shield) bonus (ie clothes). Without something already there to enhance, the enhancement has no effect.

See Magic Vestment, or Barkskin. Both provide an enhancement bonus; in the case of Magic Vestment, it can enhance an effective armor bonus of +0, and in the case of Barkskin, an effective natural armor bonus of +0.

This means that a person with Dex 10 wearing gloves of dexterity would be paralyzed when she took 10 points of Dex damage (Score = 0) even though after the gloves she has a +2. The gloves have nothing to enhance, so she is paralyzed.

While she is wearing the gloves, her Dex is not 10, it is 12. After 10 points of Dex damage, it is 2.

See Bracers of Armor, Robe of the Archmagi, etc.

Well, both of those have their own armor bonus; you don't apply an enhancement bonus to them.

But they're both examples of how magic can provide an Armor bonus (as is the Mage Armor spell).

Similarly, the leather of the +2 leather armor provides a +2 Armor bonus, and the enhancement bonus enhances that armor bonus to +4.

DreamChaser - if you treat the enhancement bonus as a bonus to AC, then someone with +2 Leather Armor (+2 Armor bonus, +2 Enhancement bonus) and a Mage Armor spell (+4 Armor bonus) has an AC of 16. The +2 Armor bonus and the +4 Armor bonus don't stack, but the +2 Enhancement bonus stacks with either.

However, that's not how armor enhancement bonuses work. The +2 Enhancement bonus increases the leather armor's Armor bonus to +4, which doesn't stack with the Mage Armor's +4 Armor bonus, for a total AC of 14... not 16.

-Hyp.

 

[Magesmiley]

I'm late to this discussion as well, but here goes:

1. Normally, the only time you die from ability damage is when your CON is reduced to 0. Reducing the others to 0 does bad things, but doesn't kill you.

2. I've always played ability damage as just that - damage, and treated modifiers to the scores it the same as if your HP total got changed when you had HP damage. Keep track of how many points you've taken and apply it after you've piled all your bonuses and penalties on. Note that it says that the score can't go below 0 in the rules, not that you can't accrue more damage or drain than that. To that end, I'd treat it as 16 points of damage to Strength. So your character with with bull's strength is 14 + 4 - 16 = 2 STR. When it wears off, you'd be at: 14 - 16 = 0 STR. Adding the belt of giant's strength (+4) gives us 14 + 4 - 16 = 2 STR.

However... you're facing shadows.

Strength Damage (Su): The touch of a shadow deals 1d6 points of Strength damage to a living foe. A creature reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow dies. This is a negative energy effect.

I'd have to vote in favor of the character being toast if his spell wore off before the belt was put on. He's at 0 Strength, due entirely to the damage the dealt by the shadows. Its kind of like the 10th level barbarian who is raging, but at 2 hit points, dying when his rage wears off.

 

[Thia Halmades]

*nods to Magesmiley* That's the only thing that made sense; I tried looking at it wuyanei's way, but kept running into the same wall; the difference between the modified score, and the ability score itself, were clear & distinct to me. Hyp, you didn't (that I can see) answer that question straight up. Your thoughts?

 

[FEADIN]

In one of our adventure the fighter under a bull's strength was reduced to 4 by shadows, the cleric knew the problem but they were not able to do a restoration or to save him but they had a raise dead....so they killed him before the end of the spell and raised him
Even if it's not the shadow that drain you to 0 ST by the text, the DM would have ruled that, they thought.

 

[KarinsDad]

Neg; if the magic was keeping him alive, then the Magical Bonus is what we're talking about, not the revised score, but the attribute itself.

What I'm saying is: Brother has a 16 STR, straight up. You buff him. He now has an 18 STR. What he really has, is a 16 STR + 2 Magical Bonus. I'm not arguing the legitamcy of your ruling, per se - I might have ruled it the same way, although my players are pretty strict on RAW whenever possible.

What I'm saying is, his base stat was knocked to 0. Once the base stat is 0, thump, over he goes. That does seem to be supported by RAW. I do see what you're saying, and in your shoes (and with a less reality driven, hard core campaign) I might've done the same thing. But the rules aim me towards drawing an exact distinction, a thick line if you will, between the actual stat, and any modifiers to the stat.

If the base stat is 0, then regardless of bonuses, he's done.

RAW does not literally support this interpretation.

RAW states that going to 0 Str makes a character helpless.

RAW states that a Shadow draining a character to 0 Str kills the character and turns him into a Shadow.

Since the Shadow only drained the character to 2 Str, according to RAW, the character is not killed. He is merely helpless when the spell expires. That is the literal interpretation of RAW.


It is not the fact that he goes to 0 Str because all of the Str was drained by the Shadow, it is the fact that the Shadow did not drain him to 0 Str, it only drained him to 2 Str.


And no, it is not a "16 STR + 2 Magical Bonus". It is an 18 STR. At that point in time, his Strength is 18.

The fact that some of his Strength comes from a spell, some comes natural, some comes from race (he might be a Halfling), some comes from Rage, etc., is totally irrelevant to the discusion. You do not walk around saying that a Halfling has a Strength of 12 with a -2 penalty to Strength. You say that he has a Strength of 10.


Let's take another example.

You are poisoned while you have a Bears Endurance spell up. You make the save because of the spell. The poison is still in you and you need to make a secondary save a minute later, but the spell expires.

You do not say that since the poison is still in his system and since his spell expired, that he in reality missed his first save because he would not have made it without the spell.

At the point in time in the game where it mattered (i.e. the poison was saved against), the save was made. Period.

At the point in time in the game where it mattered (i.e. the attacks on which the Shadow was draining his strength), the Strength was never lowered to zero. Period.


If the Shadow itself does not drain the Strength to zero with an attack, the special quality of that attack killing the PC and turning him into a Shadow does not occur.

 

[KarinsDad]

In one of our adventure the fighter under a bull's strength was reduced to 4 by shadows, the cleric knew the problem but they were not able to do a restoration or to save him but they had a raise dead....so they killed him before the end of the spell and raised him
Even if it's not the shadow that drain you to 0 ST by the text, the DM would have ruled that, they thought.

This is total metagaming.

The PCs should not have been aware that "his Strength was 4".

They could have been aware that when the spell wore off, he might or might not turn into a Shadow, but even this should have required a high DC Knowledge Religion. Knowing that a Shadow drains Strength and kills is probably fairly common knowledge, knowing whether a Bulls Strength wearing out turning someone into a Shadow is something much more difficult to know unless you have experienced it.

They should not have known at all that he would definitely go to 0 Strength. That's playing the numbers. From the PC perspective, there should have been a fair chance that he would survive on his own, either because he might have enough Strength to survive, or because the spell protected him at the point in time when the Shadow actually struck.

 

[FEADIN]

This is total metagaming.

The PCs should not have been aware that "his Strength was 4".

They could have been aware that when the spell wore off, he might or might not turn into a Shadow, but even this should have required a high DC Knowledge Religion. Knowing that a Shadow drains Strength and kills is probably fairly common knowledge, knowing whether a Bulls Strength wearing out turning someone into a Shadow is something much more difficult to know unless you have experienced it.

They should not have known at all that he would definitely go to 0 Strength. That's playing the numbers. From the PC perspective, there should have been a fair chance that he would survive on his own, either because he might have enough Strength to survive, or because the spell protected him at the point in time when the Shadow actually struck.

I agree, it's metagaming, I was not in this adventure but the fighter was not able to carry his armor and had a difficut time with the rest of his equipment so....but this question is very interesting, under this light I would rule that when the Bull's strength or other enhancement finish the pc is not dead because the shadow did not drain him to 0 ST point.
That's the text, after all if some poison had damaged his strength for 5 points before the encounter with the shadows if we don't rule by the text the pc cannot becomes a shadow...because his strength points will be back somedays and the shadow cannot take them

 

[Nail]

The more I think about it, the more I wish there could be negative values for ability scores (for all but Con). The negative values would be for book-keeping and healing; a negative score would be treated as zero for purposes of the PC's state.

 

[frankthedm]

From memory, there was a Sage Advice at one point in 3E that attempted to address the "belt off, belt on" trick. (It may have been a suggestion from Monte Cook, though.) It stated that an enhancement bonus has no effect on an ability score of zero.

So if the 14 Str character puts on his Gauntlets, his Str is 16; if he gets poisoned for 15 points of Str damage, his Str is 1; if he takes off his Gauntlets, his Str is 0 (and he's helpless); if someone puts his Gauntlets back on him, nothing happens, since the +2 enhancement bonus can't enhance a Str of 0.

Needless to say, this isn't actually supported by any written rules.
-Hyp.

But is needed to prevent abuse since the 3e designers were not smart enought to understand negative math.