This document deals with the various conditions of the body when at hit point currents ranging from 0 to -100. Please note that these rules are designed for use with the "hovering on death' door" optional rule. If you choose not to use it, you can discard the 0 TO -9 range given here and extend the -10 TO -30 range to 0 hp.
When a creature has only 0 to -9 hit points left, his energies have been thus severely damaged that his body isn't stable enough to survive by its own. In case of wounds caused by physical weapons or wounds caused by fire or acid, the body can be stabilized by bandaging, cooling, etc., which can be done by any character spending a round on it. The application of healing salves, healing spells or healing potions will stabilize and heal such a creature. Creatures wounded by magical effects that drain hit points aren't as easily treated. Bandaging won't help on these victims, only magical healing can stabilize them.
When a creature reaches -10 hit points, his body is no longer capable of holding the creature's life-force and the creature dies. His soul than departs to another plane. This spirit can again be bound to a body by spells like raise dead, reincarnation and resurrection. From this moment on, the body will lose 1 hit point each day while decomposition commences, unless special measures are taken to slow this down, like mummification. Until the body reaches -30 hit points, any healing magic applied to it will restore the appropriate number of hit points and if the body is healed to a hit point total of -9 or higher, it can carry a spirit again. Please note that it doesn't retrieve the spirit automatically. Specialized magic must be used to accomplish this (for instance, raise dead or the newly introduced life spell and soul shift spell).
After -30 hit points is reached, the body has lost too much of its integrity to gain benefit from normal healing spells. To restore such a body, a regenerate spell must first be cast. From this moment on, the body loses something like 1 hit point each month (again depending on the conditions) until it reaches -50 hit points.
At -50 hit points, little more than the bones of the creature remain. Regenerate won't work anymore for such a body and only spells like resurrection and wish can do anything for it. From this moment on, the remains lose something like 1 hit point each year until they reach -100 hit points, at which point the body is totally destroyed.
Note that a body lacking life-force is never stable, so any body without a spirit which has more than -10 hit points will lose 1 hit point each round. Such a body can be stabilized by putting it in suspended animation as is done by the astral spell, temporal stasis and some priest spells or by linking it to some life-force at a distance like the magic jar spell does.
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