Ongoing damage on an unconcious character?

[scottchiefbaker]

I have a character that has ongoing 5 necrotic damage, and gets knocked unconscious during the course of the fight. When that characters turns rolls around does he get two saving throws? One for the necrotic, and one for being unconscious?

 

[Ryujin]

By "unconscious" do you mean zero or fewer hit points? When unconscious but not dead you continue making saves for ongoing conditions, on the off chance that you are revived before dying. You make death saves to see if you die. The damage might kill you before the death saves.

If you mean unconscious as in by a Sleep Spell, or similar, then the saves continue as they do with ongoing damage.

 

[scottchiefbaker]

I mean unconscious as in negative hit points.

 

[fba827]

By "unconscious" do you mean zero or fewer hit points? When unconscious but not dead you continue making saves for ongoing conditions, on the off chance that you are revived before dying. You make death saves to see if you die. The damage might kill you before the death saves.

What Ryujin said.

The necrotic energy continues to eat away at your unconscious form and it is entirely possible that the energy might kill you (take you past your negative bloodied value) while you're unconscious.

So two saves -- one for ongoing damage, one for avoiding death from being below zero.


Technically, I suppose the necrotic energy also continues to also eat away at your dead corpse, but at that point it isn't relevant for the immediate result since dead is dead and it can't make you even more dead ...

 

[Herschel]

...Nor does it make your pockets any easier to search for loos echange.

 

[Ryujin]

...Nor does it make your pockets any easier to search for loos echange.

Wait long enough and the loose change will be all that's left

 

[CapnZapp]

I have a character that has ongoing 5 necrotic damage, and gets knocked unconscious during the course of the fight. When that characters turns rolls around does he get two saving throws? One for the necrotic, and one for being unconscious?

Well, ongoing damage doesn't stop just because you happen to be dying. (And it doesn't stop just because you've been healed back up again either!).

So you'd save against the ongoing damage.

You'd also make a "death save" if you are dying. This is not the same as making a save against the unconscious condition (such as when you're hit by a Sleep spell).

For example, if you're hit by a power saying "target becomes unconscious until the end of your next turn", you would
1) be unconscious - with no save, because no save is specified in the power
2) not be dying - this could happen at full hit points, so no death save either

So the final answer is "it depends - please be more specific!"

 

[scottchiefbaker]

I was thinking more along the lines of being on fire, and being knocked unconscious (0 hit points). You wouldn't be able to put out the fire. I was thinking more along the lines of actively trying to put out the fire (or shake off the acid, or scrape off the ice, etc). I didn't take into account the ongoing damage could run it's course without intervention. Thus you do still make saving throws for ongoing damage even while unconscious.

 

[CapnZapp]

Well, 4E doesn't simulate things happening. Instead, you follow its rules and then describe how that came to be.

Trying to do otherwise will only cause you grief. Much better to "explain" a save by describing how the flames died down by themselves or that a chance spasm meant you rolled over extinguishing the flames.

Or simply let go of trying to explain what happens