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.