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Interesting bug involving con damage and level drain

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:10 pm
by glennfrogknight
I was fighting a CR19 Fire Giant Wizard, and I did about 20-some points of Constitution damage, and his HP plummeted because of this. I then started shooting Empowered/Maximized Enervation Rays at him, because it's fun to toy with enemies that you have beaten, and his HP started SKYROCKETING back up! There's some bug where constitution damage and then negative level loss don't work right.

Re: Interesting bug involving con damage and level drain

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:18 pm
by glennfrogknight
Also, I wish I could test this further. What happens if you con drain your own ally to 1 con, drain them to level 1, then restore their Con? I'm not sure there's any way for me to, because I don't think the game will let me drain my own allies' CON, and I can't fix enemies' negative levels, etc. Would you be able to inflate HP values to numbers not normally possible? I've already seen a level 2 enemy with 3 con have 60+ HP... What happens when you fix that?

Re: Interesting bug involving con damage and level drain

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:22 pm
by glennfrogknight
Oh, I see why it's happening, duh. The negative levels are lowering the constitution penalty/bonus per level.

Re: Interesting bug involving con damage and level drain

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:28 pm
by BlueSalamander
If the Fire Giant had say 20 constitution initially and then you dropped the constitution to 1, that means you reduced its constitution modifier from +5 to -5 so its HP adjustment was -10 x level (-190 if the giant was level 19). Afterwards you reduced the giant's level by say, five, so the HP adjustment went from -190 to -140. So yeah after losing all its HP due to the constitution loss, it should now recover 50 HP, because the HP loss from constitution depends on the creature's level. (Or maybe it would recover 25 HP because the negative levels would separately reduce HP by five per negative level)...

Re: Interesting bug involving con damage and level drain

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:30 pm
by glennfrogknight
Right, but I don't think negative levels are meant to work that way in the actual D20 system. It's not a huge bug or anything, just an interesting interaction. By D20 rules, negative levels don't actually give a negative level immediately. I was expecting the thing to die, not get more hp! Hahah.

Re: Interesting bug involving con damage and level drain

PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:42 pm
by BlueSalamander
Well, I don't see it as a bug. I mean it's not very simple to resolve the interaction of constitution and levels. But yeah it's weird :)

Re: Interesting bug involving con damage and level drain

PostPosted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 12:20 am
by glennfrogknight
Yeah, I would definitely re-classify it after I figured out what was going on. It sure LOOKED like a bug at first, though!

I love this game, by the way, and I'm really looking forward to the next one.