Warforged Juggernaut and Strike of Righteous Vitality (and other questions)

[Silent Wayfarer]

I've recently hit a wall in my building. I wanted to make a Barb 1 / Crusader 14 / WFJ 5 (not in that order) so I could be an unstoppable terminator clone who walked over all enemies. However, Strike of Righteous Vitality (grants the effects of a heal spell) does not work with WFJ 3's Healing Immunity (become immune to the effects of spells from the healing subschool). Granted SoRV is an extraordinary ability, but still. Is there a way for a WFJ Crusader to benefit from SoRV?

EDIT: Lesser Humanoid Essence (Artificer/Sorcerer/Wizard 3) specifically grants full benefit from effects of the healing subschool... looking for a more permanent way, though.

Also, Greater Divine Surge says you may voluntarily take up to your IL of Con damage to power up your attack. If I'm immune to ability damage and drain as a WFJ, can I thus take 17 Con damage (ignored by immunity) to do 6d8 + 34d8 damage at a +17 attack bonus when using GDS?

[Jackinthegreen]

If you're immune to ability damage you can't use effects that require taking ability damage since there is a price to pay.  Alternately, the ability will ignore your immunity because you willingly chose to use the ability.

So no, don't try to use GDS like that.  Any sane DM will say you can't do it due to immunity, or will say you take the Con damage anyway, and/or will throw a book at you for trying that dirty trick in the first place.

As for your healing problem, there are ways of making the spell last 24 hours, but I'm guessing you don't want that?  It can be put on wands or made as a contingency spell, but that means you'll probably be forking over a decent chunk of money.  I wish I could help more in that regard, but I simply don't know.

[Silent Wayfarer]

Yeah, the GDS cheese is just cheese and I was wondering if it could be done. The healing issue is probably best resolved with a continuous item of Lesser Humanoid Essence (make it a warforged component or something for a discount). Would like to avoid that, though.

It's too bad the text of Strike of Righteous Vitality is "you or an ally receive the effect of a heal spell" , since all the other restorative DS maneuvers just say you regain HP without designating them as part of the healing subschool.

[Unbeliever]

If you're immune to ability damage you can't use effects that require taking ability damage since there is a price to pay.  Alternately, the ability will ignore your immunity because you willingly chose to use the ability.
...

Is there any support for this as a general rule?  The contrary seems to be indicated by the fact that in some later books they specifically made the point that if you're immune to the damage you can't use the ability, which seems to imply the default is "go nuts." 

I'm not saying it's a bad house rule.  But, you were announcing it as if it were blackletter.  As an aside, if I used such a houserule, I would allow some sort of stat substitution rather than just forbidding various characters to use the ability (e.g., take damage to Charisma or Wisdom instead). 

[Jackinthegreen]

There are some possible reasons why the immunity clauses came up later:

1. The designers looked at it and felt it was necessary, unlike previous stuff, and thus they left previous stuff alone.

2. The designers actually realized players would do silly stuff like try to sack stats when they're immune to ability damage, so they added the immunities clause but weren't able to add such things to previous publications due to problems updating the material, and because of that they haven't also made a general statement regarding the issue.

You get the idea.

Alright, you caught me on whether the rules support my statement.  At the moment I have nothing to back it up as far as whether it's in the rules.  It's obviously common sense though.

And apologies if I come off as irritable, because I am.  Stuff like this gets to me mostly because the person should know whether it's cheesy and thus bring it to their DM's attention to get the okay or no way.  If it was simply an exercise in making a character that may or may not even be played, then that might be acceptable cheese territory.

As for the bit about replacing it with a different stat, it'd still be ability damage and since the character is immune to ability damage, it might not go through at all regardless of which stat is chosen.

[Unbeliever]

...
Alright, you caught me on whether the rules support my statement.  At the moment I have nothing to back it up as far as whether it's in the rules.  It's obviously common sense though.

And apologies if I come off as irritable, because I am.  Stuff like this gets to me mostly because the person should know whether it's cheesy and thus bring it to their DM's attention to get the okay or no way.  If it was simply an exercise in making a character that may or may not even be played, then that might be acceptable cheese territory.

I don't know if it's obviously prohibitively cheesy or not.  I mean, it's certainly "cheesy" the question is how much compared to things like Vestige Metamagic.  That's a table by table, and in my experience, a campaign by campaign judgment. 

I was just genuinely curious if I had missed something, especially given things like the virulent debates relating to Hellfire Warlock.  I have a rulebook in my head that consists of my tables' "best practices" and isn't always what's in the books. 

And, I might add, from a question and answer perspective it's probably good to flag things as "legal, but cheesy" or "here's how I'd rule it, but ymmv" and so on.