Clarification of the Injury and Death mechanics

Question

Greetings once again fellow adventures!!

Using some of the work done by Hey I Can Chan in the post How does a character recover from the dying state on his own? I am trying to clarify my understanding of the Injury and Death mechanics. I have written the following flow chart in order to portray my current mental model of the mechanics. I have found the Injury and death section of the Core Rule Book hard to interoperate without some kind of visual representation.

• If 1 or more, the character is conscious and mobile.
• If 0, the character is disabled.

• If -1 to -(the character's Constitution score -1), the character is dying.

  • [WH]If taking or not taking continues damage(like from acid arrow or bleeding effect) another character can attempt to stabilize the character with(DC 15 Heal check: First Aid)

    • If successful character becomes stable and bleeding affects stop. The character now only has the condition unconscious.
      • Refer to 1:
    • If check failed the character does not stabilize

  • [WH]If healed at least 1hp from healing affects

    • If healing brings the character to 0 hp he becomes conscious and disabled
    • If healing brings character to 1 hp or more the character becomes fully functional
    • If healing does not bring character above minus hp he becomes stable, The character now only has the condition unconscious.
      • Refer to 1:
    • If heal fails nothing changes.

  • [WOH]If not taking continues damage(like from acid arrow or bleeding effect)

    • At the beginning of the character's turn the character makes a Constitution check (DC 10) with a penalty equal to the character's negative hp.

      • Failure means the character hasn't stabilized and loses 1 hp.

      • Success means the character has stabilized. The character now only has the condition unconscious. At the beginning of each hour of unconsciousness the character makes Constitution check(DC 10) with a penalty equal to the characters negative hp

        • Failure means the character hasn't stabilized and loses 1 hp.

        • Success means the character is conscious and mobile. After the character rests for 8 hours, the character makes a Constitution check (DC 10) with a penalty equal to the character’s negative hp.

          • Failure means the character loses 1 hp. This does not make him unconscious
          • Success means the character can recover hp naturally (i.e. 1 hp per level per 8 hours of rest or double that per day of rest).

  • [WOH]If taking continues damage (like from acid arrow or bleeding effect)

    • At the beginning of the character's turn the character Constitution check (DC 10) automatically fails. Character loses 1 hp in addition to the continues damage.

• If -(the character's Constitution score) or less, the character is dead.

1: One hour after becoming stable, must make a DC 10 constitution check to become conscious, takes penalty on roll equal to negative hp.

• If failed, make another check in one hour to regain consciousness only if hit points are zero or below

• If success player becomes conscious and is disabled until hp is at least 1 (through natural healing or spells)

A stable character who has been tended by a healer or who has been magically healed eventually regains consciousness and recovers hit points naturally. If the character has no one to tend him, however, his life is still in danger, and he may yet slip away.

Recovering with Help: One hour after a tended, dying character becomes stable, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check to become conscious. The character takes a penalty on this roll equal to his negative hit point total. Conscious characters with negative hit point totals are treated as disabled characters. If the character remains unconscious, he receives another check every hour to regain consciousness. A natural 20 on this check is an automatic success. Even if unconscious, the character recovers hit points naturally. He automatically regains consciousness when his hit points rise to 1 or higher.

Recovering without Help: A severely wounded character left alone usually dies. He has a small chance of recovering on his own. Treat such characters as those attempting to recover with help, but every failed Constitution check to regain consciousness results in the loss of 1 hit point. An unaided character does not recover hit points naturally. Once conscious, the character can make a DC 10 Constitution check once per day, after resting for 8 hours, to begin recovering hit points naturally. The character takes a penalty on this roll equal to his negative hit point total. Failing this check causes the character to lose 1 hit point, but this does not cause the character to become unconscious. Once a character makes this check, he continues to heal naturally and is no longer in danger of losing hit points naturally.

If Someone applies First-aid or healing magically (like in my flow chart) they are then considered recovering with help and would then take the path through the flow chart I have denoted with WH? likewise taking the other path if recovering without help as denoted by WOH.

The real crux of my question being is my understanding of the mechanics correct as I find them rather perplexing.

Answer 1

You have the basic idea down right.

• At 0 hit points the character is disabled, but the mechanics term is staggered though worse than normal as they can take a move action, but cannot take a standard without taking a point of damage and therefore begin dying.

  • If a character attempts to heal themselves through a standard action, they take the point of damage at the same time as they're healed.

• You're dying until your negative hit points equal to your Constitution score (your chart is confused on this point, but I think you're giving an extra point)

• Your final assumption is correct on how things work with healing or without. .

  • The simple fact is this rarely comes up in games. It requires a near total party kill with no magical healing in sight (since magical healing negates several of rolls automatically).