Author Topic: New skill: Endurance  (Read 4594 times)

Offline Garryl

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New skill: Endurance
« on: May 30, 2014, 09:39:44 PM »
Endurance skill

When using this skill in your game, replace any bonus feat of Endurance (such as the Ranger) with the Skill Focus (Endurance) feat. Many prerequisites for the Endurance feat instead require Skill Focus (Endurance) and 1 rank in the skill. Higher level effects can require more, but should never require more ranks than the cross-class maximum for the expected level it would be taken. If the prerequisite is really just a needless feat tax (as most such prerequisites sadly are), you could replace it with a requirement of just a few ranks in the Endurance skill instead (without requiring Skill Focus).

Basically, this skill collects all of those Constitution checks built into the rules that everybody's forgotten (except drowning, which Frenzied Berserkers already knew about) plus sleeping in armor, the environmental Fort save things that the Endurance feat boosted, and a few more environmental things that it should have.

The following classes treat Endurance as a class skill:
  • Barbarian
  • Cleric (Travel Domain only)
  • Druid
  • Fighter
  • Monk
  • Paladin
  • Ranger
  • Psychic Warrior
  • Soulborn
  • Totemist
  • Crusader
  • Warblade
  • ... and so on and so forth.



Endurance (Con)

TaskEndurance DC
Cling to life110 + negative hp total
Sleep in medium armor110
Sleep in heavy armor125
Continue forced march10 + 2 per hour
Continue running10 + 1 per round
Resist thirst10 + 1 per hour
Resist starvation10 + 1 per day
Hold breath10 + 1 per round
Resist slow suffocation10 + 2 per hour
Resist severe weather1Weather's save DC
Resist severe environment1Environment's save DC
1. Trained only

Check
The DC of the check depends on what you are trying to do.

Cling to Life
If you are trained in the Endurance skill, you can make an Endurance check when reduced to -10 or lower hit points in order to stay alive. The DC of this check is equal to 10 + your negative hit point total (for example, DC 20 if you are at -10 hp, DC 37 if you are at -27 hp, and so forth). If you succeed, you do not immediately die, although you are still unconscious and dying (losing 1 hp per round until you stabilize). You must make a new Endurance check each time your hit points decrease in order to remain alive. You cannot take 10 on this check. Effects that allow you to automatically succeed on a skill check never apply to this use of the Endurance skill.

Sleep in Armor
Normally, characters who sleep in armor heavier than light are fatigued the next morning. If you are trained in the Endurance skill, a successful DC 10 Endurance check allows you to sleep in medium armor without becoming fatigued. The DC is 25 to sleep in heavy armor without becoming fatigued.

Continue Forced March
In a day of normal walking, a character walks for 8 hours. The rest of the daylight time is spent making and breaking camp, resting, and eating. A character can walk for more than 8 hours in a day by making a forced march.

For each hour of marching beyond 8 hours, you must make an Endurance check (DC 10, +2 per extra hour). If the check fails, you take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. If you take any nonlethal damage from a forced march, you become fatigued. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue. It’s possible for you to march into unconsciousness by pushing yourself too hard.

Continue Running
You can run for a number of rounds equal to your Constitution score, but after that you must make a DC 10 Endurance check to continue running. You must check again each round in which you continue to run, and the DC of this check increases by 1 for each check you have made. When you fail this check, you must stop running. Once you have run to your limit, you must rest for 1 minute (10 rounds) before running again. During a rest period, you can move no faster than a normal move action.

Resist Starvation and Thirst
Characters might find themselves without food or water and with no means to obtain them. In normal climates, Medium characters need at least a gallon of fluids and about a pound of decent food per day to avoid starvation. (Small characters need half as much.) In very hot climates, characters need two or three times as much water to avoid dehydration.

You can go without water for 1 day plus a number of hours equal to your Constitution score. After this time, you must make an Endurance check each hour (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage.

You can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, you must make an Endurance check each day (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage.

Characters who have taken nonlethal damage from lack of food or water are fatigued. Nonlethal damage from thirst or starvation cannot be recovered until the character gets food or water, as needed—not even magic that restores hit points heals this damage.

Hold Breath
You can hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to twice your Constitution score. After this period of time, you must make a DC 10 Endurance check every round in order to continue holding your breath. Each round, the DC increases by 1. When you finally fail your Endurance check, you begin to drown or suffocate.

Resist Slow Suffocation
A Medium character can breathe easily for 6 hours in a sealed chamber measuring 10 feet on a side. After that time, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage every 15 minutes. Each additional Medium character or significant fire source (a torch, for example) proportionally reduces the time the air will last. When a character falls unconscious from this nonlethal damage, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the next round, she suffocates.

You can make a DC 10 Endurance check every hour to reduce your oxygen consumption. Each hour, the DC increases by 2. On a success, you use only half the normal amount of oxygen during that hour. The DC increases by 10 if you take any actions more strenuous than free actions and a single standard or move action each round during this hour.

Resist Severe Weather
If you are trained in the Endurance skill, you can make an Endurance check in place of the Fortitude save to resist the effects of severe weather, such as extreme heat or cold and high winds. The bonus on Fortitude saves from a successful Survival check also applies to your Endurance check. You cannot take 10 on this check.

Resist Severe Environment
If you are trained in the Endurance skill, you can make an Endurance check in place of the Fortitude save to resist the effects of severe environments, such as high pressure and high altitude. This use of the Endurance skill does not apply to all aquatic hazards; use the Swim skill for things like resisting fast-moving water. You cannot take 10 on this check.

Action
Varies. Most uses of Endurance are as part of another action, or are in response to an event or condition.

Try Again
No. Failing an Endurance check usually prevents you from continuing an action entirely, although you may make new Endurance checks the next time you perform that action.

Synergy
  • If you have 5 or more ranks in Endurance, you gain a +2 bonus on Swim checks made to resist nonlethal damage from fatigue or to avoid a hazard.
  • If you have at least 5 ranks in Autohypnosis you gain a +2 bonus on Endurance checks made to cling to life and to resist starvation and thirst.
  • If you have at least 5 ranks in Climb you gain a +2 bonus on Endurance checks made to resist slow suffocation and to resist severe high altitude environments.
  • If you have at least 5 ranks in Survival you gain a +2 bonus on Endurance checks.
  • If you have at least 5 ranks in Swim you gain a +2 bonus on Endurance checks made to hold your breath and to resist severe aquatic environments.



Diehard [General]
Prerequisite: Skill Focus (Endurance), Endurance 1 rank.
Benefit: This feat grants you several benefits when seriously injured. First, you become stable when reduced you negative hit points. You don’t have to roll d% to see if you lose 1 hit point each round.

Second, when reduced to negative hit points, you may choose to act as if you were disabled, rather than dying. You must make this decision as soon as you are reduced to negative hit points (even if it isn’t your turn). If you do not choose to act as if you were disabled, you immediately fall unconscious.

Third, when your nonlethal damage exceeds your remaining hit points, you can choose to remain conscious and staggered instead of falling unconscious. You must make this decision as soon as your nonlethal damage exceeds your hit points (even if it isn’t your turn). If you do not choose to act as if you were staggered, you immediately fall unconscious.

When using this feat to remain conscious, you still suffer the full normal limitations of being disabled or staggered; You can take either a single move or standard action each turn, but not both, and you cannot take a full round action; If disabled, you can take a move action without further injuring yourself, but if you perform any standard action (or any other action deemed as strenuous, including some free actions, swift actions, or immediate actions, such as casting a quickened spell) you take 1 point of damage after completing the act.

When using this feat to remain conscious, you must make a special Endurance check whenever your hit points decrease or your nonlethal damage increases. All modifiers that apply to your Endurance checks to cling to life also apply to this special check. If you had to make an Endurance check to cling to life due to your hit points decreasing, use the same check result instead of rolling a new one. The DC of this special check is equal to 10 + your nonlethal damage + your negative hit point total (or minus your remaining hit point total if you have a positive amount of hit points). If you fail, you fall unconscious, as normal for being at negative hit points or having nonlethal damage in excess of your hit point total, although you remain stable. You may still die as normal if your hit points decreased to a negative value and you failed your normal Endurance check to cling to life.
Normal: You fall unconscious and become dying when reduced to negative hit points or if your nonlethal damage exceeds your remaining hit points.



Change Log
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« Last Edit: July 07, 2017, 02:22:03 AM by Garryl »

Offline TheGeometer

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Re: New skill: Endurance
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2014, 02:36:38 PM »
I have to say... I like this concept a lot. Not only does it make way more sense for all of these things to be collected as a single skill, but it also makes Concentration less weird by introducing another Con-based skill.

Offline CaptRory

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Re: New skill: Endurance
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2014, 02:55:53 PM »
I like it. It might need a thorough shaking to get a few bugs out, but its looking really really good.

One idea I had reading this, and I know it isn't the usual way but I think it makes sense,

Every 5 ranks of Endurance you can choose one physical skill (Climbing, Jumping, Swimming, Riding... whatever...) and gain a +2 Synergy Bonus to it.  You need to train Endurance somehow, and you do that with exercise.

Offline Garryl

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Re: New skill: Endurance
« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2014, 05:37:11 PM »
I like it. It might need a thorough shaking to get a few bugs out, but its looking really really good.

One idea I had reading this, and I know it isn't the usual way but I think it makes sense,

Every 5 ranks of Endurance you can choose one physical skill (Climbing, Jumping, Swimming, Riding... whatever...) and gain a +2 Synergy Bonus to it.  You need to train Endurance somehow, and you do that with exercise.

I'm glad you like it. Are there any bugs in particular?

In regards to the physical skills, they're kind of dealing with different things. Most of those skills are about short-term actions, whereas Endurance is all about long-term activity (other than clinging to life, it's all at least 1 minute of activity before you start checking). I can see it going the other way around, though, with some of the other skills giving synergy bonuses to Endurance.

Offline CaptRory

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Re: New skill: Endurance
« Reply #4 on: June 06, 2014, 07:39:18 PM »
Could do it both ways~
See, the people most likely to take lots of Endurance and Physical skills are the guys without lot of skill points. So, it'd help out the classes that need boosting most (a small boost is still a boost) and it makes sense. Endurance is inextricably tied into physical performance. I felt that by breaking it up into five point chunks it would balance it out to keep everyone from grabbing 5 ranks of Endurance to get +2 to everything and as a fluffy reason showing how your character is working out to make themselves tougher.


No bugs are obviously showing, which is why it'll take awhile to find them. That's just how things work. XD

Offline linklord231

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Re: New skill: Endurance
« Reply #5 on: June 06, 2014, 08:21:56 PM »
The wording on Cling to Life could be cleaned up. Right now, it reads like you lose the "dying" condition on a successful check ("... You remain alive instead of dying").

Optimizing the crap out of your Endurance check (think Truenamer levels) combined with the Diehard feat could let you pull off something like the Knights capstone. That's probably ok though.
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Offline Garryl

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Re: New skill: Endurance
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2014, 02:07:10 AM »
The wording on Cling to Life could be cleaned up. Right now, it reads like you lose the "dying" condition on a successful check ("... You remain alive instead of dying").

Optimizing the crap out of your Endurance check (think Truenamer levels) combined with the Diehard feat could let you pull off something like the Knights capstone. That's probably ok though.

How do the following sound?
- "If you succeed, you remain alive instead of dying." (The current wording, for easy comparison.)
- "If you succeed, you do not die."
- "If you succeed, you remain alive."
- "If you succeed, you remain alive and do not die."
- "If you succeed, you remain alive, although you are still unconscious and dying (losing 1 hp per round until you stabilize)."
- "If you succeed, you remain alive, although you are still unconscious and dying; you continue to lose 1 hp per round until you stabilize."
- "If you succeed, you do not die, although you are still unconscious and dying (losing 1 hp per round until you stabilize)."
- "If you succeed, you do not die, although you are still unconscious and dying; you continue to lose 1 hp per round until you stabilize."

Technically, Diehard only works down to -9 hp, even if you can survive at -10 or lower. Here's a first draft of a rewritten Diehard feat, since you brought it up.
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Offline linklord231

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Re: New skill: Endurance
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2014, 03:03:10 AM »
I like that 2nd to last one; "If you succeed, you do not immediately die, although you are still unconscious and dying (losing 1 hp per round until you stabilize)."

I like your new Diehard, but the "succeed by less than 10 and you fall unconscious" part seems a bit off.  It's counterintuitive ("But I succeeded, why do I still fall unconscious?"), and contradicts the third usage of the feat, which is to stay conscious when you shouldn't be.  It makes sense, it just seems...  :plotting
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Offline Garryl

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Re: New skill: Endurance
« Reply #8 on: June 07, 2014, 04:05:58 AM »
I like that 2nd to last one; "If you succeed, you do not immediately die, although you are still unconscious and dying (losing 1 hp per round until you stabilize)."

I like your new Diehard, but the "succeed by less than 10 and you fall unconscious" part seems a bit off.  It's counterintuitive ("But I succeeded, why do I still fall unconscious?"), and contradicts the third usage of the feat, which is to stay conscious when you shouldn't be.  It makes sense, it just seems...  :plotting

Maybe something like "Compare the result of your endurance check to cling to life to {some other DC}. If your check succeeded against the normal DC but failed against this special DC, you still remain alive, but you cannot keep yourself fighting when you are struggling so hard just to stay alive. You fall unconscious, although you remain stable." The special DC being BASE + your nonlethal damage (if any) - your hit point total (or plus your negative hit point total, if at negative hp), which has the added advantage of combining the lethal and nonlethal components into one number to check against.