Fast Healing

[Light Knight]

What are the limits of fast healing? I know it can't regenerate lost limbs, but what happens if you go to -11? Do you die or will fast healing heal you?

 

[Dandu]

You die.

 

[Tovec]

Quote from SRD for Fast Healing (emphasis mine):

A creature with fast healing has the extraordinary ability to regain hit points at an exceptional rate. Except for what is noted here, fast healing is like natural healing.
At the beginning of each of the creature’s turns, it heals a certain number of hit points (defined in its description).
Unlike regeneration, fast healing does not allow a creature to regrow or reattach lost body parts. Unless otherwise stated, it does not allow lost body parts to be reattached.
A creature that has taken both nonlethal and lethal damage heals the nonlethal damage first.
Fast healing does not restore hit points lost from starvation, thirst, or suffocation.
Fast healing does not increase the number of hit points regained when a creature polymorphs.

So, unless noted above it's like natural healing - meaning, when you reach -11 you die.

 

[TanisFrey]

What are the limits of fast healing? I know it can't regenerate lost limbs, but what happens if you go to -11? Do you die or will fast healing heal you?

Once you go to -11 you die, end of story.
Regenerate on the other hand lets you survive below -10, if you are not driven there one of your damage types (usually acid and fire) you cannot regenerate.

 

[airwalkrr]

Technically regenerate does not let you go below -10 either. It just converts all damage into nonlethal damage unless it is a specific type, then heals some of that nonlethal damage each turn. And nonlethal damage is a separate damage category that can't kill you, even if you have 1000 more nonlethal damage points than your hp total.

Player: I chop the unconscious troll into a thousand pieces.
DM: The pieces begin putting themselves back together.
Player: I pick up the pieces and shut them inside boxes so they can't put themselves back together.
DM: The pieces hop out of your hands just as you try to put them into the box.
Player: I cast Otiluke's resilient sphere around half the pieces. Now they can only form half a troll.
DM: The half you try to cast the spell on manage to get outside the area before your spell goes off.
Other Player: Just pull out a damn torch and burn the stupid troll pieces already!

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Player: I cast Otiluke's resilient sphere around half the pieces. Now they can only form half a troll.

The bigger half of the troll regenerates into a whole troll. If you want to be a bastard about it, both halves of the troll regenerate into whole trolls.

Had a character once used to use trolls as siege weapons. He'd have Clerics cast multiple overlapping blade barrier spells in mid air and use catapults to fire the trolls through them.

 

[Rhun]

The bigger half of the troll regenerates into a whole troll. If you want to be a bastard about it, both halves of the troll regenerate into whole trolls.

Had a character once used to use trolls as siege weapons. He'd have Clerics cast multiple overlapping blade barrier spells in mid air and use catapults to fire the trolls through them.

I'm not sure I'd allow that to work, but I sure love the imagery!

 

[Greenfield]

Another way to kill Trolls is to drown them. Once they're down, even from subdual damage, drop them face first in water, even shallow water.

They automatically fail the Save to hold their breath, since they're out, and go to zero hit points the first round. They die the second.

Unless, of course, they're those rare Trolls known as Scrags. They breath water!

 

[Dandu]

The bigger half of the troll regenerates into a whole troll. If you want to be a bastard about it, both halves of the troll regenerate into whole trolls.

Then your players open a restaurant.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Then your players open a restaurant.

Assuming trolls are edible. I've always ruled that they're not.