On my phone, but as far as I recall, taking damage causes you to lose hit points, in a bizarre shifting mix of terms that makes it unclear whether “damage dealt” is equal to “damage taken” is equal to “hit points lost,” or precisely where in the chain resistance/immunity injects itself to change one or all of those numbers before the final result. I’m not sure I’d agree that lost hit points from a stirge are not damage taken, though they aren’t taken from an attack.
For example, a creature has resistance to bludgeoning damage and is hit by an attack that deals25 bludgeoning damage. The creature is also within a magical aura that reduces all damage by 5. The 25 damage is first reduced by 5 and then halved, so the creature takes10 damage.
Whenever a creature takesdamage, that damage is subtracted from its hit points. The loss of hit points has no effect on a creature's capabilities until the creature drops to 0 hit points.
You roll the damage die or dice, add any modifiers, and apply the damage to your target. Magic weapons, special abilities, and other factors can grant a bonus to damage.
With a penalty, it is possible to deal 0 damage, but never negative damage.
Seems possible that damage "dealt," damage "applied," damage "taken", and hit points "lost" are all different steps (in roughly that order)... or they could all be synonyms for the same thing. Unclear.
On my phone, but as far as I recall, taking damage causes you to lose hit points, in a bizarre shifting mix of terms that makes it unclear whether “damage dealt” is equal to “damage taken” is equal to “hit points lost,” or precisely where in the chain resistance/immunity injects itself to change one or all of those numbers before the final result. I’m not sure I’d agree that lost hit points from a stirge are not damage taken, though they aren’t taken from an attack.
Yeah, taking damage causes you to lose hit points, but the stirge/bearded devil descriptions specifically do not call their secondary effects damage.
Blood Drain. Melee Weapon Attack:+5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 5 (1d4 + 3) piercing damage, and the stirge attaches to the target. While attached, the stirge doesn't attack. Instead, at the start of each of the stirge's turns, the target loses 5 (1d4 + 3) hit points due to blood loss.
You could interpret that as as way of avoiding having to give the damage a type, I suppose, but that seems very convoluted to me.
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I guess I'm asking, other than Chapter 9 (which seems to use all these terms interchangeably), is there anywhere else in the PHB that describes that hit points can be lost in a way that does not result from taking damage? I very well could have missed it, but I'm not aware of such a section, and I don't think that the Stirge's ability clearly mandates that such a division be created.
There are some spells that set your HP at 0 or 1, but they may also be a whole other thing that doesn't even result in hit points being "lost" at all. Or... I dunno.
I guess I'm asking, other than Chapter 9 (which seems to use all these terms interchangeably), is there anywhere else in the PHB that describes that hit points can be lost in a way that does not result from taking damage? I very well could have missed it, but I'm not aware of such a section, and I don't think that the Stirge's ability clearly mandates that such a division be created.
There are some spells that set your HP at 0 or 1, but they may also be a whole other thing that doesn't even result in hit points being "lost" at all. Or... I dunno.
I don't think there's a specific section that says "You can lose HP without taking damage", no. In fact, since I'm looking, the Hit Points section only describes taking damage as a way to lose them, implying there isn't another way, so there's that:
A creature's current hit points (usually just called hit points) can be any number from the creature's hit point maximum down to 0. This number changes frequently as a creature takes damage or receives healing.
It really comes down to which you're more comfortable with: the idea of "typeless damage", or the idea that there are ways to lose hit points aside from damage. The latter seems less problematic to me, and more consistent with other rules that do get spelled out such as Damage Types (which implies all damage has a type, just as the HP section implies all HP loss is from damage) and Temp HP.
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On my phone, but as far as I recall, taking damage causes you to lose hit points, in a bizarre shifting mix of terms that makes it unclear whether “damage dealt” is equal to “damage taken” is equal to “hit points lost,” or precisely where in the chain resistance/immunity injects itself to change one or all of those numbers before the final result. I’m not sure I’d agree that lost hit points from a stirge are not damage taken, though they aren’t taken from an attack.
Yeah, taking damage causes you to lose hit points, but the stirge/bearded devil descriptions specifically do not call their secondary effects damage.
Blood Drain. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 5 (1d4 + 3) piercing damage, and the stirge attaches to the target. While attached, the stirge doesn't attack. Instead, at the start of each of the stirge's turns, the target loses 5 (1d4 + 3) hit points due to blood loss.
You could interpret that as as way of avoiding having to give the damage a type, I suppose, but that seems very convoluted to me.
It's explicitly called the same thing when a Bearded Devil or Horned Devil does it - it's Stirges that don't use the word "damage". Italic+bold text below is emphasis added by me.
If the target is a creature other than an undead or a construct, it must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or lose 5 (1d10) hit points at the start of each of its turns due to an infernal wound. Each time the devil hits the wounded target with this attack, the damage dealt by the wound increases by 5 (1d10).
If the target is a creature other than an undead or a construct, it must succeed on a DC 17 Constitution saving throw or lose 10 (3d6) hit points at the start of each of its turns due to an infernal wound. Each time the devil hits the wounded target with this attack, the damage dealt by the wound increases by 10 (3d6).
So if Stirges are being a distraction, ignore them. Horned and Bearded devils explicitly deal typeless damage, meaning the game explicitly has typeless damage in it.
This is the same (or similar) wording to Life Transference. For that reason immunity shouldn’t overcome this damage.
That's a good point. Life Transference types its own damage, unlike Warding Bond - it deals necrotic damage to the caster. Does a caster who's immune to necrotic damage take damage from Life Transference, which uses the same relevant wording of stating the damage can't be reduced? I can only find rules discussions online that quote what I assume is an earlier version of the spell that didn't ignore reduction, since they're all about resistance.
Life Transference is so confusing with its unnecessary "can't be reduced" jazz.... I mean, if you did reduce it, all you'd be doing is reducing the damage you heal, so why even have that restriction? Unless damage "taken" is actually the number before reduction/immunity comes in to effect damage "applied"/hit points "lost"...
You'd expect that when a new spell like that is written in a new sourcebook, they'd look good and hard at the existing system in the PHB and ask "does this spell introduce new previously non-existent confusion into a rule system? If so, can we issue an errata to clear up that confusion, or reword this spell to be more explicit?" But... nah :p
If the target is a creature other than an undead or a construct, it must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or lose 5 (1d10) hit points at the start of each of its turns due to an infernal wound. Each time the devil hits the wounded target with this attack, the damage dealt by the wound increases by 5 (1d10).
If the target is a creature other than an undead or a construct, it must succeed on a DC 17 Constitution saving throw or lose 10 (3d6) hit points at the start of each of its turns due to an infernal wound. Each time the devil hits the wounded target with this attack, the damage dealt by the wound increases by 10 (3d6).
So if Stirges are being a distraction, ignore them. Horned and Bearded devils explicitly deal typeless damage, meaning the game explicitly has typeless damage in it.
Good call on stirge being the exception here. The devils do have a damage type for their attacks though -- slashing or piercing.
If you want to call the subsequent HP loss damage that results from an attack, why would its type suddenly change/disappear? You can apply that to the stirge too, for that matter.
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You could interpret that as as way of avoiding having to give the damage a type, I suppose, but that seems very convoluted to me.
That's basically what it is. In a sense the damage does have a type, because the stat block is giving you a clear mechanism for it (blood loss); it's just not a damage type the game is going to codify into its rules. 99% of the time a Stirge is used it's going to affect a PC, and PC races all have blood, so there's no problem. If the DM throws a Stirge at another monster it's on them to determine if the monster has blood.
Truly typeless damage poses a huge problem because hit points are completely abstract and simply losing HP gives you absolutely no clue as to what killed you. Typed damage that can't be reduced still gives you something to work with. When a paladin magically transfers fire damage to themselves and dies, they've presumably died of the burn injuries their target would've sustained.
I guess I'm asking, other than Chapter 9 (which seems to use all these terms interchangeably), is there anywhere else in the PHB that describes that hit points can be lost in a way that does not result from taking damage? I very well could have missed it, but I'm not aware of such a section, and I don't think that the Stirge's ability clearly mandates that such a division be created.
There are some spells that set your HP at 0 or 1, but they may also be a whole other thing that doesn't even result in hit points being "lost" at all. Or... I dunno.
You'd expect that when a new spell like that is written in a new sourcebook, they'd look good and hard at the existing system in the PHB and ask "does this spell introduce new previously non-existent confusion into a rule system? If so, can we issue an errata to clear up that confusion, or reword this spell to be more explicit?" But... nah :p
Yea - I probably would expect it - if I didn't know better already. It's clearly too much effort - so they don't bother.
I guess I'm asking, other than Chapter 9 (which seems to use all these terms interchangeably), is there anywhere else in the PHB that describes that hit points can be lost in a way that does not result from taking damage? I very well could have missed it, but I'm not aware of such a section, and I don't think that the Stirge's ability clearly mandates that such a division be created.
There are some spells that set your HP at 0 or 1, but they may also be a whole other thing that doesn't even result in hit points being "lost" at all. Or... I dunno.
There's suffocation.
That's the sort of "drop to 0" effect that I'm talking about, which essentially sets your HP at a certain value and may not be the same thing as "losing" hit points? I agree that suffocating doesn't cause you to take damage, so maybe that is the pathway to recognizing that a stirge's blood loss doesn't either... but I see a clearer line between the language of suffocation and Chapter 9, than I do between the Stirge and Chapter 9.
When a creature runs out of breath or is choking, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can't regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again.
If the target is a creature other than an undead or a construct, it must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or lose 5 (1d10) hit points at the start of each of its turns due to an infernal wound. Each time the devil hits the wounded target with this attack, the damage dealt by the wound increases by 5 (1d10).
If the target is a creature other than an undead or a construct, it must succeed on a DC 17 Constitution saving throw or lose 10 (3d6) hit points at the start of each of its turns due to an infernal wound. Each time the devil hits the wounded target with this attack, the damage dealt by the wound increases by 10 (3d6).
So if Stirges are being a distraction, ignore them. Horned and Bearded devils explicitly deal typeless damage, meaning the game explicitly has typeless damage in it.
Good call on stirge being the exception here. The devils do have a damage type for their attacks though -- slashing or piercing.
If you want to call the subsequent HP loss damage that results from an attack, why would its type suddenly change/disappear? You can apply that to the stirge too, for that matter.
The wounds don't deal slashing or piercing damage, though, which is highly relevant - a raging barbarian can't resist the damage from the wounds.
I can only find one monster in the general rules with necrotic immunity and the spellcasting chops for Life Transference: if your DM fields a mummy lord with Life Transference. So would the mummy lord take the damage from the spell or not? I have no idea.
I can only find one monster in the general rules with necrotic immunity and the spellcasting chops for Life Transference: if your DM fields a mummy lord with Life Transference. So would the mummy lord take the damage from the spell or not? I have no idea.
I'd say no. The damage recieved would be 0, and the healing granted would be 0.
It is specifically dependent on damage being taken, not the damage delivered. (The magic simply gets lost in the arcane postal service.)
Immunity, while never defined, is considered the greatest form of protection from a specific type(s) of damage that reduces the amount of damage by said type to 0.
When something in the rules has the this damage can’t be reduced in any way , then not even Immunity or even a Wish spell can prevent the damage from being applied. That very wording is the only way to bypass any attempt to reduce or prevent the damage.
As for type-less damage, even gods must have the ability to fear death.
That's the sort of "drop to 0" effect that I'm talking about, which essentially sets your HP at a certain value and may not be the same thing as "losing" hit points? I agree that suffocating doesn't cause you to take damage, so maybe that is the pathway to recognizing that a stirge's blood loss doesn't either... but I see a clearer line between the language of suffocation and Chapter 9, than I do between the Stirge and Chapter 9.
The instance that mainly led to rejecting "typeless damage" and instead consider that some HP loss may not be from damage at all is one of the first ones I mentioned.
You're at full health. You get cursed and your maximum HP gets reduced, so your current HP also drops.
Have you taken any damage?
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I can only find one monster in the general rules with necrotic immunity and the spellcasting chops for Life Transference: if your DM fields a mummy lord with Life Transference. So would the mummy lord take the damage from the spell or not? I have no idea.
I'd say no. The damage recieved would be 0, and the healing granted would be 0.
It is specifically dependent on damage being taken, not the damage delivered. (The magic simply gets lost in the arcane postal service.)
So you think immunity trumps "can't be reduced"? That would resolve the Oath of Redemption question in this thread, if everyone agrees that makes the most sense for a mummy lord with life transference.
Truly typeless damage poses a huge problem because hit points are completely abstract and simply losing HP gives you absolutely no clue as to what killed you. Typed damage that can't be reduced still gives you something to work with. When a paladin magically transfers fire damage to themselves and dies, they've presumably died of the burn injuries their target would've sustained.
So then you'd consider the extra damage from devil wounds "infernal" damage as a type? Interesting.
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I can only find one monster in the general rules with necrotic immunity and the spellcasting chops for Life Transference: if your DM fields a mummy lord with Life Transference. So would the mummy lord take the damage from the spell or not? I have no idea.
I'd say no. The damage recieved would be 0, and the healing granted would be 0.
It is specifically dependent on damage being taken, not the damage delivered. (The magic simply gets lost in the arcane postal service.)
So you think immunity trumps "can't be reduced"? That would resolve the Oath of Redemption question in this thread, if everyone agrees that makes the most sense for a mummy lord with life transference.
Well, the first version of the spell I looked at didn't have that clause. I should have stuck with dndbeyond.
However, yes. I think immunity trumps that clause and renders the spell useless for a Mummy Lord. It doesn't matter if the damage is increased or reduced, the result is still 0.
On my phone, but as far as I recall, taking damage causes you to lose hit points, in a bizarre shifting mix of terms that makes it unclear whether “damage dealt” is equal to “damage taken” is equal to “hit points lost,” or precisely where in the chain resistance/immunity injects itself to change one or all of those numbers before the final result. I’m not sure I’d agree that lost hit points from a stirge are not damage taken, though they aren’t taken from an attack.
Edit: See this section of PHB Chapter 9
And this section:
And this section:
Seems possible that damage "dealt," damage "applied," damage "taken", and hit points "lost" are all different steps (in roughly that order)... or they could all be synonyms for the same thing. Unclear.
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Yeah, taking damage causes you to lose hit points, but the stirge/bearded devil descriptions specifically do not call their secondary effects damage.
You could interpret that as as way of avoiding having to give the damage a type, I suppose, but that seems very convoluted to me.
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Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I guess I'm asking, other than Chapter 9 (which seems to use all these terms interchangeably), is there anywhere else in the PHB that describes that hit points can be lost in a way that does not result from taking damage? I very well could have missed it, but I'm not aware of such a section, and I don't think that the Stirge's ability clearly mandates that such a division be created.
There are some spells that set your HP at 0 or 1, but they may also be a whole other thing that doesn't even result in hit points being "lost" at all. Or... I dunno.
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I don't think there's a specific section that says "You can lose HP without taking damage", no. In fact, since I'm looking, the Hit Points section only describes taking damage as a way to lose them, implying there isn't another way, so there's that:
It really comes down to which you're more comfortable with: the idea of "typeless damage", or the idea that there are ways to lose hit points aside from damage. The latter seems less problematic to me, and more consistent with other rules that do get spelled out such as Damage Types (which implies all damage has a type, just as the HP section implies all HP loss is from damage) and Temp HP.
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Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It's explicitly called the same thing when a Bearded Devil or Horned Devil does it - it's Stirges that don't use the word "damage". Italic+bold text below is emphasis added by me.
Stirge:
Bearded Devil:
Horned Devil:
So if Stirges are being a distraction, ignore them. Horned and Bearded devils explicitly deal typeless damage, meaning the game explicitly has typeless damage in it.
That's a good point. Life Transference types its own damage, unlike Warding Bond - it deals necrotic damage to the caster. Does a caster who's immune to necrotic damage take damage from Life Transference, which uses the same relevant wording of stating the damage can't be reduced? I can only find rules discussions online that quote what I assume is an earlier version of the spell that didn't ignore reduction, since they're all about resistance.
Life Transference is so confusing with its unnecessary "can't be reduced" jazz.... I mean, if you did reduce it, all you'd be doing is reducing the damage you heal, so why even have that restriction? Unless damage "taken" is actually the number before reduction/immunity comes in to effect damage "applied"/hit points "lost"...
You'd expect that when a new spell like that is written in a new sourcebook, they'd look good and hard at the existing system in the PHB and ask "does this spell introduce new previously non-existent confusion into a rule system? If so, can we issue an errata to clear up that confusion, or reword this spell to be more explicit?" But... nah :p
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Good call on stirge being the exception here. The devils do have a damage type for their attacks though -- slashing or piercing.
If you want to call the subsequent HP loss damage that results from an attack, why would its type suddenly change/disappear? You can apply that to the stirge too, for that matter.
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That's basically what it is. In a sense the damage does have a type, because the stat block is giving you a clear mechanism for it (blood loss); it's just not a damage type the game is going to codify into its rules. 99% of the time a Stirge is used it's going to affect a PC, and PC races all have blood, so there's no problem. If the DM throws a Stirge at another monster it's on them to determine if the monster has blood.
Truly typeless damage poses a huge problem because hit points are completely abstract and simply losing HP gives you absolutely no clue as to what killed you. Typed damage that can't be reduced still gives you something to work with. When a paladin magically transfers fire damage to themselves and dies, they've presumably died of the burn injuries their target would've sustained.
There's suffocation.
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Yea - I probably would expect it - if I didn't know better already. It's clearly too much effort - so they don't bother.
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That's the sort of "drop to 0" effect that I'm talking about, which essentially sets your HP at a certain value and may not be the same thing as "losing" hit points? I agree that suffocating doesn't cause you to take damage, so maybe that is the pathway to recognizing that a stirge's blood loss doesn't either... but I see a clearer line between the language of suffocation and Chapter 9, than I do between the Stirge and Chapter 9.
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The wounds don't deal slashing or piercing damage, though, which is highly relevant - a raging barbarian can't resist the damage from the wounds.
I can only find one monster in the general rules with necrotic immunity and the spellcasting chops for Life Transference: if your DM fields a mummy lord with Life Transference. So would the mummy lord take the damage from the spell or not? I have no idea.
I'd say no. The damage recieved would be 0, and the healing granted would be 0.
It is specifically dependent on damage being taken, not the damage delivered. (The magic simply gets lost in the arcane postal service.)
Immunity, while never defined, is considered the greatest form of protection from a specific type(s) of damage that reduces the amount of damage by said type to 0.
When something in the rules has the this damage can’t be reduced in any way , then not even Immunity or even a Wish spell can prevent the damage from being applied. That very wording is the only way to bypass any attempt to reduce or prevent the damage.
As for type-less damage, even gods must have the ability to fear death.
The instance that mainly led to rejecting "typeless damage" and instead consider that some HP loss may not be from damage at all is one of the first ones I mentioned.
You're at full health. You get cursed and your maximum HP gets reduced, so your current HP also drops.
Have you taken any damage?
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Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
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Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
So you think immunity trumps "can't be reduced"? That would resolve the Oath of Redemption question in this thread, if everyone agrees that makes the most sense for a mummy lord with life transference.
So then you'd consider the extra damage from devil wounds "infernal" damage as a type? Interesting.
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Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Well, the first version of the spell I looked at didn't have that clause. I should have stuck with dndbeyond.
However, yes. I think immunity trumps that clause and renders the spell useless for a Mummy Lord. It doesn't matter if the damage is increased or reduced, the result is still 0.
I mean, that is the question of this whole thread :)
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