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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Chapter 8: Playing the Game

Hit Points, Healing, and Dying

Source Player Core pg. 410 2.0
For adventurers, injury and death lurk around every corner.

Hit Points

Source Player Core pg. 410 2.0
All creatures and objects have Hit Points (HP). Your maximum Hit Point value represents your health, wherewithal, and heroic drive when you're in good health and rested. Your maximum Hit Points include the Hit Points you gain at 1st level from your ancestry and class, those you gain at higher levels from your class, and any you gain from other sources (like the Toughness general feat). When you take damage, you reduce your current Hit Points by a number equal to the damage dealt.

Some spells, items, and other effects, as well as simply resting, can heal creatures. When you're healed, you regain Hit Points equal to the amount healed, up to your maximum Hit Points.

Temporary Hit Points

Source Player Core pg. 410 2.0
Some spells or abilities give you temporary Hit Points. Track these separately from your current and maximum Hit Points; when you take damage, reduce your temporary Hit Points first. Most temporary Hit Points last for a limited duration. You can’t regain lost temporary Hit Points through healing, but you can gain more via other abilities. You can have temporary Hit Points from only one source at a time. If you gain temporary Hit Points when you already have some, choose whether to keep the amount you already have and their corresponding duration or to gain the new temporary Hit Points and their duration.

Fast Healing and Regeneration

Source Player Core pg. 410 2.0
A creature with fast healing or regeneration regains the listed amount of Hit Points each round at the beginning of its turn. A creature with regeneration has additional benefits. Its dying condition can’t increase to a value that would kill it (this stops most creatures from going beyond dying 3) as long as its regeneration is active. If it takes damage of a type listed in the regeneration entry, its regeneration deactivates until the end of its next turn.

Items and Hit Points

Source Player Core pg. 410 2.0
Items have Hit Points like creatures, but the rules for damaging them are different, as explained on page 269. An item has a Hardness statistic that reduces damage the item takes by that amount. The item then takes any damage left over. If an item is reduced to 0 HP, it’s destroyed. An item also has a Broken Threshold. If its HP are reduced to this amount or lower, it’s broken, meaning it can’t be used for its normal function and it doesn’t grant bonuses. You usually can’t attack an attended object (one on a creature’s person).

Getting Knocked Out

Source Player Core pg. 410 2.0
Creatures can't be reduced to fewer than 0 Hit Points. When most creatures reach 0 Hit Points, they die and are removed from play unless the attack was nonlethal, in which case they're instead knocked out for a significant amount of time (usually 10 minutes or more). When undead and constructs reach 0 Hit Points, they're destroyed.

Player characters, their companions, and other significant characters and creatures don't automatically die when they reach 0 Hit Points. Instead, they are knocked out and are at risk of death. The GM might determine that villains, powerful monsters, special NPCs, and enemies with special abilities that are likely to bring them back to the fight (like ferocity, regeneration, or healing magic) can use these rules as well.

As a player character, when you're reduced to 0 Hit Points, you're knocked out with the following effects:
  • Move your initiative position to directly before the turn in which you were reduced to 0 HP.
  • Gain the dying 1 condition. If the effect that knocked you out was a critical success from the attacker or the result of your critical failure, you gain the dying 2 condition instead. If you have the wounded condition, increase your dying value by an amount equal to your wounded value. If the damage was dealt by a nonlethal attack or nonlethal effect, you don't gain the dying condition; you're instead unconscious with 0 Hit Points.

Dying

Source Player Core pg. 411 2.0
While you have the dying condition, you’re bleeding out or otherwise at death’s door. You’re unconscious while you have the dying condition. Dying always includes a value. If this value ever reaches dying 4, you die. While you’re dying, your dying value can increase or decrease in two ways.

Conditions Related to Dying

The effects of the dying condition are described under the Dying header on page 411, but you might also need to reference the unconscious, wounded, and doomed conditions.

Unconscious

You're sleeping, or you've been knocked out. You can't act. You take a –4 status penalty to AC, Perception, and Reflex saves, and you have the blinded and off-guard conditions. When you gain this condition, you fall prone and drop items you're wielding or holding unless the effect states otherwise or the GM determines you're in a position in which you wouldn't.

If you're unconscious because you're dying, you can't wake up as long as you have 0 Hit Points. If you're restored to 1 Hit Point or more via healing, you lose the dying and unconscious conditions and can act normally on your next turn.

If you are unconscious and at 0 Hit Points, but not dying, you naturally return to 1 Hit Point and awaken after sufficient time passes. The GM determines how long you remain unconscious, from a minimum of 10 minutes to several hours. If you receive healing during this time, you lose the unconscious condition and can act normally on your next turn.

If you're unconscious and have more than 1 Hit Point (typically because you're asleep or unconscious due to an effect), you wake up in one of the following ways. Each causes you to lose the unconscious condition.
  • You take damage, provided the damage doesn't reduce you to 0 Hit Points. (If the damage reduces you to 0 Hit Points, you remain unconscious and gain the dying condition as normal.)
  • You receive healing other than the natural healing you get from resting.
  • Someone shakes you awake using an Interact action.
  • Loud noise is being made around you—though this isn't automatic. At the start of your turn, you automatically attempt a Perception check against the noise's DC (or the lowest DC if there's more than one noise), waking up if you succeed. This is often DC 5 for a battle, but if creatures are attempting to stay quiet around you, this Perception check uses their Stealth DC. Some magical effects make you sleep so deeply that they don't allow you to attempt this Perception check.
  • If you're simply asleep, the GM decides you wake up either because you've had a restful night's sleep or something disrupted that rest.

Wounded

You've been seriously injured during a fight. Anytime you lose the dying condition, you become wounded 1 if you didn't already have the wounded condition. If you already have the wounded condition, your wounded condition value instead increases by 1. If you gain the dying condition while wounded, increase the dying condition's value by your wounded value. The wounded condition ends if someone successfully restores Hit Points to you with Treat Wounds, or if you're restored to full Hit Points and rest for 10 minutes.

Doomed

Your life is ebbing away, bringing you ever closer to death. Some powerful spells and evil creatures can inflict the doomed condition on you. Doomed always includes a value. The maximum dying value at which you die is reduced by your doomed value. For example, if you were doomed 1, you would die upon reaching dying 3 instead of dying 4. If your maximum dying value is ever reduced to 0, you instantly die. When you die, you're no longer doomed.

Your doomed value decreases by 1 each time you get a full night's rest.

Heroic Recovery

If you have at least 1 Hero Point (page 413), you can spend all of your remaining Hero Points at the start of your turn or when your dying value would increase. You lose the dying condition entirely and stabilize with 0 Hit Points. You don’t gain the wounded condition or increase its value from losing the dying condition in this way, but if you already had that condition, you don’t lose it or decrease its value.

Recovery Checks

Source Player Core pg. 411 2.0
While you're dying, attempt a recovery check at the start of each of your turns. This is a flat check with a DC equal to 10 + your current dying value to see if you get better or worse.

Critical Success Your dying value is reduced by 2.
Success Your dying value is reduced by 1.
Failure Your dying value increases by 1.
Critical Failure Your dying value increases by 2.

Taking Damage

Source Player Core pg. 411 2.0
If you take damage while you already have the dying condition, increase your dying condition value by 1, or by 2 if the damage came from an attacker’s critical hit or your own critical failure.

Losing the Dying Condition

Source Player Core pg. 411 2.0
You lose the dying condition if it ever reaches dying 0. If you're still at 0 Hit Points, you remain unconscious, but you can wake up as described in that condition. You lose the dying condition automatically and wake up if you ever have 1 Hit Point or more.

Anytime you lose the dying condition, you gain the wounded 1 condition, or increase your wounded value by 1 if you already have that condition.

Death

Source Player Core pg. 411 2.0
After you die, you can’t act or regain actions, can’t be affected by spells that target creatures (unless they specifically target dead creatures), and for all other purposes, you’re an object. When you die, you’re reduced to 0 Hit Points if you had a different amount, and you can’t be brought above 0 Hit Points as long as you remain dead. Some magic can bring creatures back to life, such as the resurrect ritual or the raise dead spell, though these abilities aren’t without their risks or effects, and rare artifacts and powers can even interfere with them.

Instant Death

Source Player Core pg. 411 2.0
There are ways in which you can die instantly, without reaching dying 0 first.

Death Effects

Source Player Core pg. 412 2.0
Some spells and abilities can kill you immediately or bring you closer to death without needing to reduce you to 0 Hit Points first. These abilities have the death trait and usually involve energy from the Void, the antithesis of life, or other effects that target the mind or soul. If you're reduced to 0 Hit Points by a death effect, you're slain instantly without needing to reach dying 4. For instance, the vision of death spell automatically kills those it reduces to 0 Hit Points as terrifying hallucinations cause them to drop dead.

A death effect might state that it kills you outright, without dealing damage, in which case you die without having to first reach dying 4 or be reduced to 0 Hit Points. For instance, the Grim Reaper, an extremely powerful entity of death, can automatically slay creatures who fail their save against its death strike ability.

Massive Damage

Source Player Core pg. 412 2.0
You die instantly if you ever take damage equal to or greater than double your maximum Hit Points in one blow.