[3.5 theoretical optimization] The Sacrificial Horse

[Hellpyre]

The drowning rules state that on the second turn your hit points drop to -1-- as in are subtracted to. Mathematically speaking, you cannot subtract from a negative number and reach -1, as subtracting from a negative increases the magnitude not decreases it. There are no Rules As Written to support drown-healing as it is popularly interpreted. In order for the rules to work that way, the text would need to read, "Your hit points are reduced to -1" (or something similar).

They do, in fact, say something similar. They say that on the first turn, you fall unconscious, and then helpfully clarify that that puts you at exactly 0 HP.

Similarly, the Jump skill plainly states that if the distance cleared by your jump check exceeds your movement for the round, you are required to use a consecutive move actions on either on this [current] turn or, if necessary, on your next turn to complete the jump. The "if necessary" creates a provision which permits the character to run out of movement again on his subsequent turn before completing the jump, at which point the process repeats, rather than immediately force the character to travel all of the remaining distance on the next turn. In order for your interpretation to be correct that specific text would need to be removed.

You are adding in worda where there aren't any to try and defend your reading here. There are two actions available to you in a turn that can be used as a move action, either or both of which might have been used prior to or during the jump. You may or may not have a second move action available to you in this turn. But either way, you explicitly complete the jump with the second move action, rather than continue it. Which is important for a lot of things, like the jumping down action, which uses the jump rules and so could cause you to fall based on your movement speed, rather than, say, gravity's pull.

I feel like it's worth making clear again that I agree with you about how the rules are intended to operate, but not that they are written in a way that translates into that by strict interpertation. This thread is about RAW and all the glourious stupidity that comes with it. I wouldn't allow half the shenanigans in this thread in a game I was running, but it is still fun to work in a framework devoid of trying to respect the designer's intent.



Anyways, to avoid derailing the thread further, another suggestion. One of the epic uses for Use Rope allows you to animate any rope you hold, as long as you hold it, in an explictly [Ex] manner. It references a spell that limits that maximum length by caster level, but doesn't provide any way to translate a skill check into an effective caster level, so it may only affect 50 ft. of rope (as though you had CL 0) or it may simply apply to the rope you hold. Since the spell's duration also keys off of CL, it can't function if you need to assume CL 0, so presumably you can animate a rope of any length and coil it or loop it around things more or less as you please. Or you could tie someone in an unsolvable Gordion knot (bonus ppints if you are an Exemplar and use your masterful shibari skills to convert enemies to fanatical followers)

[RatElemental]

Mathematically speaking, you cannot subtract from a negative number and reach -1, as subtracting from a negative increases the magnitude not decreases it.

This is just mathematically incorrect, you can subtract a negative number from a negative number and get a result closer to 0.

[Zaq]

So my buddy did some calculations about the "cow jumping over the moon" thing and came up with the following numbers (which, I will admit, I have not been the one to verify):

Approx. 37 rounds to make a high jump over the moon.
Approx. 43 rounds for the sun.
Approx. 49 rounds for Pluto.
Approx. 62 rounds for Alpha Centauri.
Approx. 80 rounds for Andromeda.
Approx. 97 rounds to the edge of Observable Space.

Thanks, stupid uncapped doubling mechanic!

Spoiler: sidebar

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Remember that you've also got the same ginormous bonuses to other skills and also to saving throws. So, you know, if someone gets snippy about "hard vacuum" or "infinite mass" or "absurd multiples of c" or something silly like that, remember that you've got higher bonuses to saving throws than anyone has bothered to ever bring to the field.

If you happen to clip by a black hole en route to any of these destinations, well, I don't know the Escape Artist DC for that, but if you're rocking a bonus to checks that's 28 digits long and it's only DC 100 to get through a wall of force, well, you can probably do it.

All of the relevant spells are low enough level to put into wands, and again, the progression comes from the spur mount action, not from any of the spells. We can just recast the spells periodically to keep this going, meaning that we don't have to do stupid CL shenanigans. Yes, there's a Concentration check to cast while riding, but need I remind you that Concentration is a skill check and your skill check bonuses are best expressed in scientific notation?

If we feel like ignoring the delay death + beastland ferocity combo and we want to just use a mount with regeneration who treats this whole mess as nonlethal, what's the best way to keep them conscious? I'm not sure if Diehard works, and I'm a little unsure if the bloodtalons soulmeld would do a darned thing.

[Doctor Awkward]

They do, in fact, say something similar. They say that on the first turn, you fall unconscious, and then helpfully clarify that that puts you at exactly 0 HP.

Which again, if you head to the unconscious condition, you find out is incorrect. Mechanically the only effect being unconscious renders on your character is that they are "knocked out" and rendered helpless. Merely being unconscious has no inherent effect on your hit points, but rather is the result of the current total of your hit points and/or nonlethal damage. The rest of the description lists the possible instances of when you can be rendered unconscious and, and the text very heavily implies that list is exhaustive. If it is, then the "(0 hp)" found in the drowning rules is utterly meaningless, as the rules for downing cannot rewrite the condition summary, which is the primary source for conditions that are referenced by the other rules. Neither is drowning attempting to make an exception to the normal unconsciousness rules, because as the errata documents state "exceptions to the rules are always called out as such"-- frequently with text that reads "Unlike other ways of falling unconscious, drowning causes..." or something similar. The most generous interpretation renders this a contradiction. Either way, this offending text is to be summarily ignored when interpreting the rules.

The more thoroughly you read and digest the text as a whole, the more you find that the vast majority of so-called rules dysfunctions within 3.5 tend to work like this. They are the results of selective reading, or starting from a conclusion and working backwards to find only the text that supports it.

You are adding in worda where there aren't any to try and defend your reading here. There are two actions available to you in a turn that can be used as a move action, either or both of which might have been used prior to or during the jump. You may or may not have a second move action available to you in this turn. But either way, you explicitly complete the jump with the second move action, rather than continue it. Which is important for a lot of things, like the jumping down action, which uses the jump rules and so could cause you to fall based on your movement speed, rather than, say, gravity's pull.

There are rules for how the jumping in D&D 3.5 works when a character wants to jump down from a height and "use gravity's pull." If you are making a long jump or high jump you aren't using those. I wholeheartedly agree that many corner cases should be covered by similar rules and also by what makes logical sense. But not only does this line of thinking not help your argument, it also contradicts your later assertion of "using only the glorious studity of RAW" and actively ignoring common sense in favor of using only the exact words of the written text. Which means you aren't actually arguing for the "Rules As Written." You are arguing for "Rules As I Interpret Them And You Can't Prove I'm Wrong." And it is absolutely true that I cannot disprove your subjective interpretation of the rules. I can point out the gaps in your argument and the flaws in your logic as you present them.

This is just mathematically incorrect, you can subtract a negative number from a negative number and get a result closer to 0.

Subtracting a negative number, yes. But subtracting a positive number from a negative results in a larger negative number. The problem is that the drowing rules don't distinguish between positive and negative integers, and therefore the popular interpretation of "drown healing" is not supported by the Rules As Written and relies entirely on personal interpretation. My argument against that has never been that the rules disprove it, rather that that they don't support it one way or the other, and thus it requires a DM to make a judgement call if they want to allow it to occur or not. The moment that happens you have left RAW.

[Hellpyre]

Subtracting a negative number, yes. But subtracting a positive number from a negative results in a larger negative number. The problem is that the drowning rules don't distinguish between positive and negative integers, and therefore the popular interpretation of "drown healing" is not supported by the Rules As Written and relies entirely on personal interpretation. My argument against that has never been that the rules disprove it, rather that that they don't support it one way or the other, and thus it requires a DM to make a judgement call if they want to allow it to occur or not. The moment that happens you have left RAW.

I...I don't see how you can justify that the rules not spelling out how simple math works requires personal interpretation. Circling back to the drown-healing issue for a moment, if you argue that specific doesn't beat general in this instance, you can't be made unconscious by the first round effect at all, since the rules aren't telling you to do either of the things listed as ways to become unconscious (incidentally, I recommend against using the D20SRD website for RAW discussion, as they edit the text of some of the entries from what it was in the downloadable SRD available from WotC.) Since a DM judgement call obviously would need to appear in that case, would any discussion of drowning become non-RAW by necessity, even though rules exist for it specifically?

As a second, clearer example, the Marrush in MM2 has the taklif arrow, which reads

Taklif Arrow: Any creature hit by a taklif arrow must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 14) or contract a disease similar to the marrash variant of filth fever (see Disease, above). The incubation period is 1 day, and the disease deals 1d3 points of Dexterity damage and 1d3 points of Constitution damage (see Disease in Chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master's Guide). However, a creature that fails any Fortitude saving throw after its initial infection dies instantly, and neither raise dead nor resurrection can restore it to life. The corpse rises as a new marrash 1d6 days later.

It is clear that the intent is to apply the death effect only to those fortitude saves relating to infection by disease. It is equally clear that the text doesn't do that, but rather, by RAW, means any creature infected by the arrow will thereafter die if it fails any Fort saves, for the rest of its miserable existence. Would you be arguing that this is a reading unsupported by RAW? I genuinely want to know, so I can get a better grasp on how you approach this topic.

(incidentally, since this is becoming a bit of a back and forth, if you'd prefer this be removed to its own thread Zaq, I would be happy to move it out of here to facilitate the thread getting potentially derailed by a discussion of what exactly RAW entails)

[Doctor Awkward]

It is clear that the intent is to apply the death effect only to those fortitude saves relating to infection by disease. It is equally clear that the text doesn't do that, but rather, by RAW, means any creature infected by the arrow will thereafter die if it fails any Fort saves, for the rest of its miserable existence. Would you be arguing that this is a reading unsupported by RAW?

That's a very strange case. As Monster Manual II is a 3.0 book I first checked my 3.0 DMG to see if anything regarding diseases was changed in 3.5. Aside from the damage dice of some of the listed diseases they appear to function the same. Upon reviewing those rules, diseases operate by first allowing a Fortitude save to resist initial infection. If failed, you then make an additional Fortitude save once each day to avoid taking repeated damage. The Disease (Ex) entry referenced by the Arrow ability makes mention that it includes a rider that if you do take damage you must make a second Fortitude save each day otherwise 1 point of the damage from that day becomes permanent drain. This is identical to how demon fever functions, which is listed in the DMG (and on the SRD). Despite the somewhat murky language, neither entry calls out any exception to the normal disease rules at any point, and so therefore would use all the normal disease rules: Fortitude save to ignore damage each day, a secondary save in the event of failure to prevent drain. Two consecutive successful saves ends the effect.

Things get a little silly when Taklif Arrow appears to take a hard swipe at the initial ability and attempt to rewrite the whole thing in its entirety by imposing a penalty of instant death for failure. I got curious so I did a little more digging and found out that Marrash first appeared in the 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendium Annual 1 under the entry "Marrashi." After digging that book out, I found it had this to say regarding that particular ability:

Marrash can increase their numbers by firing taklif arrows. These special projectiles infect their victims with a disease that appears to be identical to the one spread by the diseased arrows described earlier, although the course of the disease is always much swifter-- the victim of a taklif arrow dies in a day if untreated. [Description of treatment inserted here.] A marrashi never has more than one taklif arrow at a time, and these are almost always used on a human or demihuman targets; marrash bred from other races rarely survive.

The spirit of a victim struck by a taklif arrow is devoured by a growing marrashi presence, and when it is entirely eaten, the victim dies and a new marrashi begins to slowly transform the corpse. Victims of a taklif arrow cannot be brought back with a raise dead or resurrection, though a properly worded wish is effective. If simply buried, the body becomes a new marrashi in 1d6 days. If cremated the embryonic marrashi dies.

Much clearer. Sometimes I do miss the old days...
Anyway, this description is carried over pretty much word for word to the monster description in the 3.0 Monster Manual II that precedes the ability descriptions. Based on that, the function of Taklif Arrow in 3.0 is more or less the same as it was in 2E: kill something outright in order to make another marrash. And though it is not at all clear at first, the book does state that though the Taklif Arrow appears to be the same disease inflicted by the other arrows, it is really something much deadlier. Admittedly, this save-or-die rider renders the ability damage portion of the description rather meaningless and for that I have no explanation. I also checked all the errata I could find and the 3.5 accessory update booklet but this creature isn't addressed.

Based on that, no, your suggested interpretation is not supported by RAW. For one thing, the text of that ability, as with all descriptive text, pertains specifically to rules about that ability. It additionally references the disease rules directly several times, and so any mention of Fortitude save is clearly with respect to the general rules regarding how diseases work in D&D. In order to reach your interpretation, you are required to ignore the context in which that particular piece of text is presented, and then apply the equivalent of Biblical literalism to it. You must essentially pretend that it is the only sentence in the entire ability description. If you interpretation requires you to ignore large chunks or the text then you are quite clearly not reading the Rules As Written. You are, in fact, rules-lawyering. Any time you are interpreting text it is important to consider all of the relevant rules. Not just the ones that support a presupposed conclusion.

I...I don't see how you can justify that the rules not spelling out how simple math works requires personal interpretation.

Because on account of the specific language used you have no way of knowing whether or not the drowning rules were written with the assumption that the character will be at positive hit points when drowning is occurring. As I already stated, you cannot drop negative hit points of a greater magnitude than -1 and somehow reach -1. And that's not how math works. Mathematics doesn't do personal interpretation. It is a very precise language and certain words have specific meanings that do not change. That text only ceases to be gibberish if you assume your hit point total is positive when drowning occurs. Because the interaction between negative hit points drowning is not specifically covered by the rules it is subject to DM adjudication, and because of that drown-healing is automatically not RAW.

[Hellpyre]

snip

Thank you. Your answer enlightened me on where exactly our fundamental disconnect is on this issue. I'd be more than happy to debate finer points elsewhere in a thread more focused towards the specific topic of what constitues RAW, but I think this thread is not the proper place to continue this discussion.

Fait enough?

[The Viscount]

"A Deathshead that dominates its mount automatically succeeds on Ride checks to guide with knees

Now that's impressive! (I know that's the text in the chart, it's still funny)

I realize now that deathshead and jovoc are both small, so this combination cannot work without some size changing magic on as well.



For keeping your mount conscious, you might be able to extract use from When Two Become One. It's low enough to be a wand, and it doesn't discuss what happens with nonlethal damage, only becoming disabled or dying from lethal damage. We might be able to weasel out of the bind by saying the horse gets knocked out but the rider can keep controlling it since the minds are merged.
In case this wasn't weird enough.