Incapacitated, death, Diehard, and Divine agent

Rules Discussion
1

Diehard : Once per day, an attack that would reduce you to less than 1 HP, reduces you to 1 HP instead.
Divine agent : Once per game session, when you are subject to a Finishing Blow while your hit points are below 1, you automatically heal to a hit point total of 1.

The only 2 ways I know of to lessen the impact of dice explosions almost instantly killing player characters.
Both of these are countered at the same time, by a single PL5 bane :

Incapacitated.
The target is immobile (can’t move from their current space) and unconscious. They have disadvantage 5 on all perception rolls and are incapable of moving. As a result of being completely incapable of movement, an incapacitated character can be the victim of a finishing blow.

No dropping below 0, so no Diehard.
No finishing blow while the character is below 1 HP, so no divine agent.
It feels a bit cheap that 2 mechanics that seem to be specifically designed to give a character a second chance, can be completely circumvented by a single PL5 bane.

I’ll mention the Death bane here aswell. Not so much because it feels cheap (you need an attribute score of 9 for this one after all, so you kinda expect something from it), but because it kinda feels redundant. There are but two differences between the Death bane and a PL9 incapacitated. And that is the Death bane can’t be invoked using Influence, and the Death bane will kill a creature after 3 failed saves (which is about a 9% chance), while incapacitated will just last for a minute.

2

In other news, paper beats rock. What’s up with that? I thought rock would make me invincible! :wink:

3

If I’m understanding the bane correctly, a PL5 Incapacitated can be broken with a mere kick from an ally, or even a loud bang.

1 Like
4

Yep, PL5 Incapacitated can be broken by an ally shouting or even the sounds of combat. I’ve seen it get a lot of great use in stealth scenarios though.

5

If PL5 incapacitated is supposed to be broken that easily, we’ve been using it in a completely OP way. I’d still say that the Divine Agent perk at least could do without the “less than 1 hp” requirement. Unless it’s specifically designed that way so that it wouldn’t work with Incapacitated or Death. Which I would find rather strange.

Ah the old rock, paper, scissors rethoric. The whole issue here is that Divine agent in particular is meant to defend against a single finishing blow. The fact that its main weakness is a finishing blow under certain circumstances is like saying paper beats rock, unless it’s raining.

7

Also death causes a more powerful state of incapacitated.

And once you resist incapacitated, can’t be subject to it again.

8

At PL9 they have the same power.

And the resist making you immune goes for death aswell. In fact, resisting Death makes you immune for 24 hours, while resisting Incapacitated only makes you immune for 1 hour.