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Post by sindraelyn on Dec 15, 2014 17:59:05 GMT -7
This didn't come up during War Supplies on Friday but after looking back at it, this may have come up. How does Non-Lethal Damage interact with Orc's[or any creature with the ability] Ferocity? The players on the Paizo Forums seem to have 3 answers, but they all have faults. Here is a list from most favorable for the ferocious character to least favorable: 1) A Ferocious character is immune to Non Lethal Damage. 2) For a Ferocious character, Non Lethal Damage counts starting from their negative Con score, rather than from 0. 3) Non Lethal Damage works as written and starts count from 0. When a ferocious character receives Non lethal damage, they become knocked out when Non-Lethal > Current HP. 4) True RAW: A ferocious character is knocked out when they reach -1 HP because 0 Non-Lethal > -1 Current HP. Because relevant rules: Non-Lethal DamageFerocity
Personally, I hope the rules will go are 2 so it's somewhat fair for everyone.
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tkul
Death Knight
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Post by tkul on Dec 17, 2014 12:12:34 GMT -7
Disclosure: Not a DG GM -
Nonlethal damage and actual damage are two different things. Ferocity only impacts the HP <= 0 interactions and doesn't say anything about your nonlethal damage so the standard nonlethal would apply. Exceptions to rules are specifically stated, if the intention was for Ferocity to interact with nonlethal damage ranges it would have said so in the rule description.
There is a slight flaw in your True RAW interpretation as nothing in the game refers to 0 damage. Anytime a damage result would come up 0 the character is unaffected. Nonlethal damage has no base threshold, no character starts with Nonlethal damage, and nonlethal damage is never a negative number, so it would be more logical to represent your nonlethal value as null to N rather than 0 to N, meaning a character does not have a nonlethal damage rating until nonlethal damage effect has been applied to the character. This is different from HP in the fact that HP has a maximum, the characters current max HP, and a minimum, negative constitution, value and their HP is always reflected and referred to in relation to where it falls on that scale. Now a ferocious character that takes 1 point of nonlethal damage after being reduced to <=0 HP would be an interaction that you might want to debate, but again the Ferocious trait never countermands the standing nonlethal rule set only the <=0HP rules.
So the True RAW should still be the standard nonlethal rules, meaning the ferocious character can still run around and fight when in the 0 to negative constituion range of HP but the second nonlethal damage is applied to the character, raising the nonlethal damage value to > 1, then they'd fall unconscious. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to modify the rule to impact the nonlethal values the way you asked but the RAW would actually be closer to 3 but nonlethal damage value should start at null not 0.
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darthsawyer
GM
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Post by darthsawyer on Dec 21, 2014 22:24:45 GMT -7
Perhaps this interaction is why Orc are rated at a low CR. A little non-lethal damage can completely remove the benefit of Orc Ferocity. I agree that non-lethal is entirely independent of Orc Ferocity, and 1 point of non-lethal when they are at negative health will render them unconscious.
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Zanos
Leadership Council
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Post by Zanos on Dec 23, 2014 12:09:57 GMT -7
2 probably makes the most sense, but 3 seems closest to RAW while still being reasonable(this also makes orcs more reasonable to handle, as I think they're extremely strong as written for cr 1/2). I agree with tkul that not having nonlethal damage is -- rather than 0, so a character at negative Hp with any nonlethal damage is unconscious.
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xemadus
Leadership Council
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Post by xemadus on Dec 27, 2014 16:47:53 GMT -7
With how ferocity works I'd say 1 is what makes the most sense. As far as the most balanced option 2 works best. Going with 3 makes ferocity pointless since 1/3cr orcs have 6hp and 12 Con. Drop a barb using a sap on them and it's 1 shots into unconsciousness every single time. Drop a fighter with cleave and you might as well not even bother with orcs.
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Zanos
Leadership Council
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Post by Zanos on Dec 27, 2014 17:45:54 GMT -7
With how ferocity works I'd say 1 is what makes the most sense. As far as the most balanced option 2 works best. Going with 3 makes ferocity pointless since 1/3cr orcs have 6hp and 12 Con. Drop a barb using a sap on them and it's 1 shots into unconsciousness every single time. Drop a fighter with cleave and you might as well not even bother with orcs. A cr 1/3 Orc also has +5 to hit 2d4+4 crit 18-20 primary attacks. They're a lot more dangerous than any other cr 1/3 threat even without ferocity. |
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tkul
Death Knight
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Post by tkul on Dec 28, 2014 8:22:44 GMT -7
Don't forget whichever way this gets ruled will also have an impact on players that take the Diehard feat since it's interaction is similar to ferocity except it also auto-stabilizes and gives the player the choice to go unconscious and stable or conscious and staggered.
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Post by Tyrant on Dec 29, 2014 8:10:23 GMT -7
A creature with ferocity that has positive hit points (0 and above) can be knocked out if non-lethal damage becomes greater than current hit points.
A creature with ferocity that has negative hit points (-1 and below) cannot be knocked out once the ferocity ability has triggered as it clearly states the creature remains conscious until it reaches it's death point. At this point any non-lethal damage has no additional effects on the creature as it is already staggered and losing 1 hit point per action taken.
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tkul
Death Knight
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Post by tkul on Dec 30, 2014 7:24:02 GMT -7
A creature with ferocity that has positive hit points (0 and above) can be knocked out if non-lethal damage becomes greater than current hit points. A creature with ferocity that has negative hit points (-1 and below) cannot be knocked out once the ferocity ability has triggered as it clearly states the creature remains conscious until it reaches it's death point. At this point any non-lethal damage has no additional effects on the creature as it is already staggered and losing 1 hit point per action taken. This seems like an oddly extreme interpretation of the ferocity rule. By this logic you'd say that that a dying orc would be immune to the sleep spell as well then? The ability specifically says they don't fall unconscious at -1 and below HP which is the the exception to the standard rule for negative hit point values, and that appears to be the intention of the ability, to counter the standard dying rules. It doesn't say anything else about status immunities or nonlethal damage values. |
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Post by Tyrant on Dec 30, 2014 13:21:17 GMT -7
A creature with ferocity that has positive hit points (0 and above) can be knocked out if non-lethal damage becomes greater than current hit points. A creature with ferocity that has negative hit points (-1 and below) cannot be knocked out once the ferocity ability has triggered as it clearly states the creature remains conscious until it reaches it's death point. At this point any non-lethal damage has no additional effects on the creature as it is already staggered and losing 1 hit point per action taken. This seems like an oddly extreme interpretation of the ferocity rule. By this logic you'd say that that a dying orc would be immune to the sleep spell as well then? The ability specifically says they don't fall unconscious at -1 and below HP which is the the exception to the standard rule for negative hit point values, and that appears to be the intention of the ability, to counter the standard dying rules. It doesn't say anything else about status immunities or nonlethal damage values. Sleep would apply as it does not make the creature unconscious, rather it simply grants the creature the helpless condition. To expand and correct on my previous post, non-lethal damage would eventually become lethal damage once the non-lethal damage amount equaled the creatures maximum HP. An Orc with a max hp of 12 and a current hp of -2 (12 non-lethal) is staggered, suffering 1 damage per action taken, and would not be knocked out but would take lethal damage from both lethal and non-lethal damage going forward. Ferocity is no joke and that is why Half-Orcs get a nerfed version of it. |
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Ash
Approvals
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Post by Ash on Dec 31, 2014 17:08:57 GMT -7
I think 2 would be the best interpretation, at least for feats and features similar to diehard. It's silly to think that an axe to the face won't take you down, but being hit with the handle instantly will. This way the ability can't be bypassed completely, nor will nonlethal become useless.
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