Hit Points and Stats
Hit Points (HP) determines how much damage your character can withstand before falling unconscious. You have a maximum hit point total; your hit points cannot exceed this, and your hit points are reduced whenever you take damage.
When you hit 0 HP, you fall unconscious, falling prone and rendered insensate and incapable. Attacks against an unconscious creature automatically hits if made while adjacent to them. At the SM’s discretion, other attacks and abilities might similarly bypass the need to roll.
Depending on the circumstances, this may be trouble for your character, though almost all creatures in Sburb do not kill as a first reaction. More often, they will capture you, and you will have to break yourself out. Alternately, your SM may have other, more creative fates in store for you…
However, the Incipisphere is a dangerous place, and Homestuck is no stranger to death. He might even offer you tea. Be careful!
Developer’s Note (3/20/20): Death saving throws are removed from the system. Typically, if the player is unconscious, and whatever felled them wants to kill them, the player is going to die when their attacker stomps them a few times for good measure, saving throws or not. With how rare and ponderous death is in RPGStuck, death has been stripped of its dependence on chance; whereas before, the player might still die even with their attacker sparing them due to unlucky death saving throws, now the player is assumed alive unless the circumstances and/or narrative call for the player’s death.
At level 1, you have maximum HP equal to 10 + Hit Die maximum + Constitution modifier.
As you level up, your max HP increases, by Hit Dice average + Constitution modifier.
Occasionally, you might find your maximum hit points are reduced. Any max HP reduction is restored after a long rest. And occasionally, you might find your stat reduced instead of your hit points. You can heal 1 point of stat damage for each hit die you spend during a short rest, and all stat damage is healed after a long rest. If any of your stats or maximum hit points are reduced to 0, you die instantly.
Developer’s Note (2024-02-24): Due to how the character sheet works, when you reduce maximum hit points, it also reduces your current hit points by the same number. Some effects that ask for a max HP reduction will ask for a corresponding hit point reduction, so you can just reduce your max HP and call it a day. If this isn’t the case though, keep this quirk in mind so you don’t lose more HP than you should.
Temporary hit points can be gained from a variety of sources, and they represent a short term burst of health. Temporary hit points have a finite duration, and after that time expires any remaining temp HP vanish. Unless otherwise stated, temporary hit points last one hour.
Even if a character is at full hit points, they can still gain temp HP. Temp HP is tracked separately from normal HP, and if a character has temp HP, any damage they take first removes temp HP before removing normal HP if there is any damage left.
If a character already has temp HP and an effect grants them additional temp HP, they do not stack. If the new effect grants more temp HP than the creature already has, then the new temp HP completely replaces the old. Otherwise the new effect does not grant any temp HP.
Occasionally, a player may be able to spend HP as part of a Step or other effect. In this case, the spent HP is always considered to be true damage and bypass all methods of damage reduction.