Talk:Invigorating Lunge (3.5e Maneuver)

How are they getting weaker as they get higher in levels?

If you take my advice and turn the not-cure lines into temporary hp this will become irrelevant. But that's ok, because as the title suggests I think this one is kinda dull anyway. I'm sure you can do something with it, but not right now. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 04:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Wait, I thought temporary hit points were stronger than healing. You know, because you can exceed your max hp. --Luigifan18 (talk) 07:27, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

You can exceed max, yes. But temp hp doesn't usually stack unless specifically called out, so it ends up weaker. You can heal endlessly, but you can't heal temp hp, you can only overlap it. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 07:44, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, yes, but when similar effects overlap (like bonuses of the same type applying to the same thing), all of them still exist. It's just that only the strongest one is actually doing anything. When that strongest effect expires or gets removed (such as by being dispelled), the next-strongest takes its place. (Of course, all the effects are still running simultaneously, so it's just as possible for a weaker effect to expire or be dispelled while a stronger effect is still active (a targeted dispel magic tries to dispel every magical effect on its subject, but goes through them one by one, and can easily end up succeeding on some and failing on others, and which effects get dispelled and which ones don't is strictly a matter of chance).) And I'm pretty sure temporary hp follows the same rules as other effects that overlap instead of stacking. Except a temporary hp effect can be ended prematurely by depleting all the temporary hp... which, since only one temporary hp effect is "active" at a given time, leaves the rest of them unaffected. Still with me on this?

Even when temporary hp overlaps, if you take enough damage to get rid of all of one source of temporary hp, it only gets rid of that temporary hp effect; the others effectively "hide" behind the primary temporary hp effect. Now, unless you somehow take exactly enough damage to eliminate your "current" pool of temporary hp, the remainder is sustained by your actual hit points. But then the next temporary hp effect is there to absorb the next hit. And so on and so forth until all the temporary hp effects have expired. (Though that begs the question; what happens when one's actual hp hits 0 or less while one still has temporary hp remaining? Do you still get incapacitated or killed?) Anyways, that's why I think temporary hp is stronger than healing; it's basically a shield between your hit points and "real" injury, allowing you to be more resilient than what your hit points alone would be capable of. Temporary hp overlapping instead of stacking does little to diminish this. --Luigifan18 (talk) 14:16, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

That's not how temp hp works.

If you have trouble seeing why, think of temp hp as a instantaneous effect. The magic occurs, you get the temp hp (which might not matter) and you're done. It's covered in an FAQ somewhere which I can no longer find, probably wiped in the death of WotC's site. Even so, it would make logical sense from the general no stacking rule. In this case, it is a "temporary hp" bonus, rather than say "enhancement". -- Eiji-kun (talk) 15:24, 14 January 2016 (UTC)