What Are the Effects of a Pearly White Spindle Ioun Stone?

Question

This item has the following description:

This stone grants the wearer the ability to regenerate 1 point of damage per 10 minutes. Regeneration works like a ring of regeneration. It only cures damage taken while the character is using the stone.

The description references the ring of regeneration, which has this description:

This white gold ring is generally set with a large green sapphire. When worn, the ring continually allows a living wearer to heal 1 point of damage per round and an equal amount of nonlethal damage. In addition, the wearer is immune to bleed damage while wearing a ring of regeneration. If the wearer loses a limb, an organ, or any other body part while wearing this ring, the ring regenerates it as the spell regenerate. In either case, only damage taken while wearing the ring is regenerated.

Does the Ioun stone therefore grant immunity to bleed damage, and the ability to restore lost body parts as per the Regenerate spell? Would it also recover an equal amount of nonlethal damage?

There is a "cracked" version of this item which has a healing rate of 1hp/hour, but a cost of only 3,400 gp. Would this item also carry the bleed immunity and Regenerate spell effect?

Answer 1

By strict RAW, it would seem that the ioun stone grants all the benefits of the ring, except with a lower healing rate.

This stone grants the wearer the ability to regenerate 1 point of damage per 10 minutes. Regeneration works like a ring of regeneration. It only cures damage taken while the character is using the stone.

Contextually, "works like a ring of regeneration", with no colon- or dash-separated clause to restrict it, does in fact include everything. The following sentence restates the key limitation for clarity and rephrases it to apply to the stone instead of the original ring (which wouldn't make any sense).

While the normal rationale for the immunity to bleeding damage that the ring gives can be thought of as a logical outcome of the constant healing, it's given as its own feature, so it applies without regard for order of operations or any other exceptions: the wearer is not merely cured of any bleeding at the start of each turn, but cannot take any damage from that. As such, it still applies the same way to the ioun stone, even though the stone does not heal nearly as often. (This can be justified in fluff as simply being such a slow constant healing that it only adds up to a single point every ten minutes, but in any case the RAW seems clear enough.)

From a standpoint of balance, which is certainly not a standpoint of RAW but can at least inform houserules, the ioun stone's additional abilities are not nearly so imbalanced as one might think. Bleed damage is not unheard of, but neither is it all that common, and limb removal does not, as far as I know, actually have any rules to enable it. So charging 20,000gp instead of 90,000gp for 1/100 the healing rate isn't too cheap. If anything, it's really not that great a bargain, and the original ring cost a pretty penny anyway.

Answer 2

I believe the answer is no. The key part appears to be the sentence following the comparison. Rewording it as follows makes more sense to me:

Regeneration works like a ring of regeneration - i.e. it only cures damage taken while the character is using the stone.

Because the description itself only makes reference to healing a single point of damage, I would also rule that you can only heal a single point of damage, not 1 lethal / nonlethal, but this could be argued as that is the core of regeneration.

The extra effects - Bleed immunity and limb regrowth - I do not believe would happen. In addition to the rules just mentioning the HP recovery, the biggest difference between Ioun stones and Rings of Regeneration is time.

A device that heals you every 6 seconds would be able to close a bleeding wound before you bleed excessively. A device that heals you every 10 minutes would not, though you could argue that any long term bleed effects would be cured.

A device that heals you every 6 seconds would be able to regrow body parts in minutes. A device that heals you every 10 minutes would not, though you could argue that you heal in 2d10 * 10 minutes instead of rounds. I would still strongly recommend against this though, as regenerate is a 7th level spell, which means it requires character level 13. To be able to create an item that has the same incredible healing effects at level 12 would be unreasonable.

As Ioun stones should, in my opinion, not have any of the bleed immunity / limb regrowth, the cracked ones should be no different.

Answer 3

Scabbard of Stanching is an item designed to stop some bleed damage for a lower price than a ring of regeneration. However the discounted price comes at a cost of being unable to stop bleed with higher than dc16 heal or caster level check. My interpretation is read only what an item says and not what you want it to say. On the round that the ioun stone heals you it would stop bleed damage on every other round you would be vulnerable to bleed damage. I just can't see a 3400 gp item making people completely immune to hitpoint bleed damage.