Hit points - curing permanent drain/damage?

[Legildur]

Our table-top crowd ran into what we thought was light trouble last night. Our party of 7th level characters came up against 4 spectre-like incorporeal undead. We put them away pretty easily and didn't think much of it until we went to heal the damage (hit points only) and found that we couldn't do so with rest or the standard cure wounds spells.

DM said that the damage was permanent and couldn't be healed - which we obviously didn't appreciate healing. Our paladin hits like a 7th level warrior-type, but now only has the hit points of a 5th level warrior - which has some obvious limitations. And 3 others of us took hits as well.

We looked through the spell descriptions for all the Restoration spells and couldn't find anything that dealt with permanent hit point drain. While we didn't get the name of these creatures, the DM said that they weren't standard fare (I don't know what book etc he got them from). And there was nothing in the creature description indicating how you might heal the damage.

So, how do you heal/cure such damage? Or are we stuffed?

 

[Geoff Watson]

You're stuffed; it sounds like the DM is purposely stuffing you by making it impossible to heal.

It could be some sort of plot device to get you to go on a particular quest, you'll have to ask your DM.

Geoff.

 

[Vexed]

hmmmmm

That sounds like vile damage. You need to be on consecrated ground to heal yourself if memory serves.

As far as having a creature deal HP damage with no save and it be permanent, I have never seen or heard of anything like that. I would have to assume that is something he made up if he can't recall where he read it. Sounds to me like a curse or a disease. It has to have some kind of effect where you could possibly cure disease or break enchantment etc. would work.

You should be left some recourse......

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

hmmmmm

That sounds like vile damage. You need to be on consecrated ground to heal yourself if memory serves.

As far as having a creature deal HP damage with no save and it be permanent, I have never seen or heard of anything like that. I would have to assume that is something he made up if he can't recall where he read it. Sounds to me like a curse or a disease. It has to have some kind of effect where you could possibly cure disease or break enchantment etc. would work.

The lavawight and Shape of Fire from ELH do that, and one of the Bahamut-knight classes (Vassal? from BoED) does that to evil dragons.

It's really kind of rude, since it breaks the definition of hit points. Hopefully, it's just vile damage, and y'all can find a Consecrated area.

Brad

 

[Legildur]

To be fair, the DM had the book with the undead creature in it with him, but I didn't ask the name of it.

We quizzed him pretty heavily about it out of character as no one was happy about it. I explained that the creature looks to have been built after the PHB was released and deliberately targets a hole in the current healing spells.

After a short discussion, and some moaning on our apart, he agreed that Greater Restoration or Wish would do the trick. As we are only 7th level, we can't manage that ourselves. But an NPC is available (quite some distance away) who MAY aid us. But the pricing formula would put it at about 3500gp per casting (and we need 4 of them).

I may mention the Consecrate idea and see if that is a reasonable solution. But he did't mention anything about vile damage.

Thanks for your input.

 

[UltimaGabe]

Sounds like a crappy DM to me. I would never send the party up against something that they HAD to spend all of their money to recover from.

 

[the Jester]

Sounds like a crappy DM to me. I would never send the party up against something that they HAD to spend all of their money to recover from.

I would, and I'm not a crappy dm... I'm a rat bastard.

Of course, they don't HAVE to spend all their money on it; they can wait til they have the power to fix it on their own, offer the casting cleric a quest, try to get the fix via blackmail, etc, etc...

 

[UltimaGabe]

But I, as a DM, would never say to my PCs, "Here's some new ability none of you guys even knew existed because it isn't in the core rules, and, for all you know, I'm making it up, because it breaks one of the fundamental rules of the game. Now that you've been hit by it, cough up most of your money to get rid of it, because there's no other way ever because I just made it up right now."

 

[Nifft]

Oh, I've done it using Vile damage when that had just come out. Granted, Hallowed / Consecrated areas were not exactly rare in the ruins they were exploring, but they only discovered the trick to healing their "special" damage by accident.

It was rewarding all around.

Anyone quizzing me about it out-of-character would have made me unhappy, just as I'd be unhappy being quizzed about word puzzles when I'd just left one in front of the party.

-- N

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Seems he wants to screw you. He admitted that the thing was created to exploit a hole in the system. Now, if a player would bring something like that to me and ask to use it, he'd be the target of a hail of dice (epic DM spell - the material component is quite expansive). A DM using something like that just to annoy us, I'd tell him where he can stick it and subject him to a hail of whatever is handy at the moment (epic Player spell - the material component may or may not be quite expansive, but usually it consists of the host's property - who often is DM - so I don't care).

Seriously: you had to persuade him to let greater restoration or wish be effective after all. Wow, so instead of permanently messing up a character (since a high-level character with the HP of a low-level character is unplayable - he won't survive the higher encounters and won't be getting any XP for fighting lower-level foes), he "just" lets you walk on your teeth for a while (that reminds me of the horror stories a friend of mine told me, where they couldn't get any healing - potion or whatever -for months, back, in 2e. He actually had a character who was on 1 hp for several sessions)