Injury and Death

Your Hit Points (HP) measure how hard you are to kill. No matter how many Hit Points you lose, you aren’t hindered in any way until your Hit Points drop to 0. In addition, you have Stamina Points (SP) that work like Hit Points but replenish more easily, and you have Resolve Points (RP), which you can use to keep yourself from walking through death’s door. See page 22 for more about Resolve Points.

Dying

If your Hit Points reach 0, you are dying. You immediately fall unconscious and can take no actions.

While dying, you lose 1 Resolve Point each round at the end of your turn. (If your Hit Points reached 0 during your turn, such as from an attack of opportunity you provoked, you do not lose a Resolve Point until the end of your next turn.) This continues until either you die or stabilize (see Stabilizing below).

Dead

When your Hit Point total is 0, if you are not stable and you have no Resolve Points remaining but would lose Resolve Points for any reason, you’re dead. If you have 0 RP when you are first reduced to 0 HP, you have 1 round to be healed or stabilized. If you have not been healed or stabilized by the end of your turn on the next round, you’re dead (see page 275 for more details on the dead condition).

You can also die from taking ability damage or ability drain equal to your Constitution score or from having a number of negative levels equal to your character level (see Ability Damage, Ability Drain, and Negative Levels on page 252).

Nonetheless, certain types of powerful magic and technology can restore life to a dead character, such as a 4th-level mystic cure spell or a raise dead spell.

Monster and NPC Death

Most monsters and NPCs don’t have Resolve Points, so injury and death work differently for them. A monster or NPC reduced to 0 HP is dead, unless the last bit of damage it took was nonlethal damage (see page 252), in which case it is knocked unconscious. If it is ever important to know exactly when a monster dies, such as if you want to capture the creature alive, the GM can decide that a monster reduced to 0 or fewer Hit Points with lethal damage dies in 3 rounds unless it takes any additional damage or receives healing. If a monster or NPC has Resolve Points, the GM can choose whether the monster dies at 0 HP or if it uses the normal rules for dying and death.

Taking Damage While Dying or Stable

While you are dying, if you have any Stamina Points, any damage you take still reduces those first. The first time each round you take Hit Point damage (whether from an attack or from continuous damage, such as from a bleed effect), you lose 1 Resolve Point. At any point after that in the round, if a single source (such as one attack) deals Hit Point damage greater than half your maximum Hit Points but less than your maximum Hit Points, you lose 1 additional RP. As mentioned earlier, if you would lose Resolve Points but have no Resolve Points remaining, you die instantly. If you take damage equal to or greater than your maximum Hit Points from a single attack, you also die instantly.

If you take damage while unconscious but stable, you are once again dying and no longer stable.

Healing

After taking damage, you can recover Hit Points through natural healing or through magical or technological healing. You can’t regain more Hit Points than your maximum Hit Point total.

Recovering Stamina Points

You can regain all your Stamina Points by spending 1 RP and taking 10 uninterrupted minutes of rest. After a full night’s rest (8 hours of sleep or more), you regain your Stamina Points automatically. Some special abilities also let you regain Stamina Points.

Recovering Hit Points Naturally

With a full night’s rest (8 hours of sleep or more), you recover 1 HP per character level. Any significant interruption during your rest prevents you from healing that night.

If you undergo complete bed rest for 24 hours, you recover 2 HP per character level.

Magical and Technological Healing

Various abilities, devices, and spells can restore Hit Points or increase the recovery rate of your natural healing. Unless otherwise specified, these types of healing restore only Hit Points, not Stamina Points.

Healing Limits

You can never recover more Hit Points than you lost or raise your current Hit Points higher than your maximum Hit Points, nor can you recover more Stamina Points than you lost or raise your current Stamina Points higher than your maximum Stamina Points.

Recovering from Ability Damage

Temporary ability damage heals at the rate of 1 point per night of rest (8 hours) for each affected ability score. Complete bed rest for 24 hours restores 2 points for each affected ability score. Ability drain does not heal naturally. See Ability Damage, Ability Drain, and Negative Levels on page 252 for more information.

Temporary Hit Points

Certain effects, such as force fields, give you temporary Hit Points. These Hit Points are in addition to your current Hit Points and Stamina Points, and any damage you take is subtracted from your temporary Hit Points first. Any damage in excess of these temporary HP reduces your Stamina Points (and then your actual Hit Points) as normal. If the effect that grants the temporary HP ends or is counteracted, any remaining temporary HP go away.

When temporary Hit Points are lost, they can’t be regained or restored like a character’s normal Hit Points or Stamina Points can be, though some sources of temporary Hit Points have their own rules on how to restore lost temporary Hit Points.

Nonlethal Damage

Nonlethal damage represents harm that can knock you out instead of killing you. Some weapons deal only nonlethal damage, while others can be set to deal nonlethal damage when desired. You can deal lethal damage with a nonlethal weapon and vice versa.

Dealing Nonlethal Damage

Most attacks that deal nonlethal damage work like any other attacks, and they deal damage to your Stamina Points or Hit Points as normal. However, when nonlethal damage would reduce you to 0 or fewer Hit Points, you are reduced to exactly 0 HP and fall unconscious, but you are stable instead of dying.

Lethal Damage with a Weapon That Deals Nonlethal Damage

You can use a weapon that deals nonlethal damage to deal lethal damage instead, but you take a –4 penalty to your attack roll.

Nonlethal Damage with a Weapon That Deals Lethal Damage

You can use a weapon that deals lethal damage to deal nonlethal damage instead, but you take a –4 penalty to your attack roll.