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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Do enhancement bonuses to ability count against ability damage?
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<blockquote data-quote="wuyanei" data-source="post: 2659984" data-attributes="member: 28913"><p>Yeah. Both interpretations came up in our game, but not being a neutral arbiter (the big secret of D&D: the DM actually roots for the PC characters!), I let the character live.</p><p></p><p>This (the 'fun' one) interpretation becomes iffy when you need to deal with poisons and the like. Say you have a +4 Belt of Giant Strength. If a poison damages you to Str 0, you can always remove the belt, then put it right back on, so that you are now at 4 Str! Now 4 Str isnt anything to crow about, but it is also a whole lot better than helpless!</p><p></p><p>Effectively, with this interpretation, no character can ever be reduced to 0 Str, Dex, Int, Wis or Cha for more time than is neccessary to slip them a +2 ability item. Wierd, I say.</p><p></p><p>The other, less fun, interpretation is that 0 Str +4 enhancement to Str still equals 0 Str. This interpretation will make ability damaging spells, effects or abilities especially deadly, since short of <em>wish</em> spells, any character can improve her abilities for a total of 5 points at most over 20 levels! A <em>poison</em> spell (dmg 1d10 Con/1d10 Con) or two, in this interpretion, <em>will</em> kill off quite a good percentage of even high level characters if they fail their saves. It does make sense -- you are just a human(oid), no, matter how much magic you have on you, and you are thus limited to a maximum of 23 Con (25 for Dwarves). But I would say that at higher levels, this interpretation will become rather deadly -- especially those DC 20+ poisonous monsters!</p><p></p><p>Both interpretations have merit, so I'd really like to see if there is an official answer somewhere. Thanks for taking your time to answer me, <strong>glass</strong> and <strong>DreamChaser</strong>. I really appreciate it! Thanks! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="wuyanei, post: 2659984, member: 28913"] Yeah. Both interpretations came up in our game, but not being a neutral arbiter (the big secret of D&D: the DM actually roots for the PC characters!), I let the character live. This (the 'fun' one) interpretation becomes iffy when you need to deal with poisons and the like. Say you have a +4 Belt of Giant Strength. If a poison damages you to Str 0, you can always remove the belt, then put it right back on, so that you are now at 4 Str! Now 4 Str isnt anything to crow about, but it is also a whole lot better than helpless! Effectively, with this interpretation, no character can ever be reduced to 0 Str, Dex, Int, Wis or Cha for more time than is neccessary to slip them a +2 ability item. Wierd, I say. The other, less fun, interpretation is that 0 Str +4 enhancement to Str still equals 0 Str. This interpretation will make ability damaging spells, effects or abilities especially deadly, since short of [i]wish[/i] spells, any character can improve her abilities for a total of 5 points at most over 20 levels! A [i]poison[/i] spell (dmg 1d10 Con/1d10 Con) or two, in this interpretion, [i]will[/i] kill off quite a good percentage of even high level characters if they fail their saves. It does make sense -- you are just a human(oid), no, matter how much magic you have on you, and you are thus limited to a maximum of 23 Con (25 for Dwarves). But I would say that at higher levels, this interpretation will become rather deadly -- especially those DC 20+ poisonous monsters! Both interpretations have merit, so I'd really like to see if there is an official answer somewhere. Thanks for taking your time to answer me, [b]glass[/b] and [b]DreamChaser[/b]. I really appreciate it! Thanks! :) [/QUOTE]
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Do enhancement bonuses to ability count against ability damage?
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