Trollish Vigor While Poisoned Killed Me

[Hrosskell]

Hi! I was recently doing a bit of "grinding" on my wizard and was afflicted by a poison spell. It reduced my CON by a good bit even though I had trollish vigor on, so I recasted trollish vigor to make sure it would stay up until I got to a healer. This act totally aced my char! I went from ~95% health to -1%, stabilised at 0%, and then died shortly after. Not sure if this is intentional or fixable, but it doesn't seem like the logical reaction to a CON-sapping poison should be deadly.

[Selveem]

I don't know about it taking 96% of his health, but when you re-cast spells on yourself it wipes the old one right when you add the new one, doesn't it?

[Raona]

I could not get a PC to survive poison but then succumb on re-casting Trollish Vigor, but I could get them to die outright from the poison. I suspect it was just that your HUD didn't update to reflect the poison until after you re-cast the spell, or that the secondary damage kicked in just when you did so. (That is, most poisons have an immediate and a delayed effect; the delayed effect kicking in can amplify the effect of the poison, including increasing ability score damage.)

The retroactive nature of CON bonuses, instilled at player request, has a dark side, namely that your tiny-hit-die PC can die outright from a CON poison. Is this really out of the range of reason?

[Timaeus]

Yes its really out of the range of reason. My level 50 wizard died from a poison from a very low level ghoul. One tick and from 100% to zero. No matter your con modifier you can never have less than 1 hit point per hit die regardless of modifiers.

[Keltorn]

No matter your con modifier you can never have less than 1 hit point per hit die regardless of modifiers.

There's one pseudo-exception. If your constitution score is ever equal to zero, you're dead. Plain and simple. It's a D&D rule, but I'm not sure if FK's code actually reflects this rule.

That said, is it possible that, during the recasting of Trollish Vigor, the wizard's constitution score dropped back down for a very brief amount of time before the new spell took effect? Also, is the wizard's constitution score sufficiently low that a poison, in conjuction with a very temporary drop in constitution, could have taken him low enough for the Zero Con Rule to take effect?

If that sounds confusing (I think it does), I might need to make up an example when I have time.

[Hrosskell]

I'm assuming the situation Keltorn outlined is what happened. Instead of a "refresh" of the +CON, it would go something like this:
Trollish Vigor already affecting target-->New Trollish Vigor cast-->Old Trollish Vigor Removed-->Con Drops, Causing Super Health Drop-->New Trollish Vigor Applied.

I think I may have made this post a little too hastily--after giving my brain time to work it out, I understand why and how it can happen--but I was rather shocked at the time. It still seems a bit odd to me that poison can be so powerful at such a mid-range spell level (3rd/4th for dru/cler respectively), but lesson learned.

[Keltorn]

I'm assuming the situation Keltorn outlined is what happened.

If I'm right about this (which is a pretty big "if"), then I think it should still be considered a bug. Having your Trollish Vigor cut out just because a new one is being applied really shouldn't happen.

Still, my theory is kind of shaky. Does anyone know if the Zero Con Rule is implemented in FK? Also, the poison would have to be able to take the wizard's constitution score all the way down to zero in the absence of the Trollish Vigor. Unless the guy has a poor constitution score to begin with, that seems like a very big jump. I don't know about this...

Raona might have a point regarding the poison's secondary damage, assuming FK's poisons have that.

[Raona]

No matter your con modifier you can never have less than 1 hit point per hit die regardless of modifiers.

D20 concurs on this

A hit point score can't be reduced by Constitution damage or drain to less than 1 hit point per Hit Die.

and that's where I think we do have a bug.

Also, we don't currently employ D20's

Constitution 0 means that the character is dead.

I re-tested and re-casting trollish vigor will not kill you even if the lapsing of that spell would result in your demise. Re-casting it simply resets its clock, it does not temporarily strip you of it. (Though there are some spells that do that, to prevent double instances...trollish vigor isn't one of them.) We do employ the delayed secondary ability score damage called for by canon, and I am pretty sure that is what killed your PC, Hrosskell.

In short: right now you can be alive with a negative CON score, or die from negative HP with a positive CON score with a negative modifier (if you have a small-hit-die PC). Put in a bug fix request for those issues, number 1018.

Thanks for the report, Hrosskell, and the rules help, Keltorn and Timeaus.