D/D 3.5 rules question.

[Anastasia]

I'm tossing this here since I couldn't find much of an answer in the SRD. It's either covered in a side book or simply a matter for GM interpretation, but I'd like to see if anyone knows or has opinions. Anyway.

While gaming today, one PC cast a spell that gave them some temporary HP, over their normal maximum. This was just before facing a few Bearded Devils, who possess the following ability:

Infernal Wound (Su)

The damage a bearded devil deals with its glaive causes a persistent wound. An injured creature loses 2 additional hit points each round. The wound does not heal naturally and resists healing spells. The continuing hit point loss can be stopped by a DC 16 Heal check, a cure spell, or a heal spell. However, a character attempting to cast a cure spell or a heal spell on a creature damaged by a bearded devil's glaive must succeed on a DC 16 caster level check, or the spell has no effect on the injured character.

A successful Heal check automatically stops the continuing hit point loss as well as restoring hit points. The infernal wound is a supernatural ability of the bearded devil, not of the weapon. The check DC is Constitution-based.

Naturally, the PC who cast this took a minor wound from one of the Bearded Devils. This didn't do enough damage to deplete the temporary HP. So that leaves me with the following question:

Does the bleeding wound only sap temporary HP or permanent HP? Is Temporary HP just magically not taking damage or some source of extra vitality? There wasn't much direction at all in the SRD or the rules about this, so I'd appreciate any comments. I ended up ruling that it applied to normal HP as well, but I can see arguments either way.

[Ranma_007]

I would believe it's how temporary HP works. Say it adds 20 HP to the character, who has a normal HP of, let's say, 60. So they're at 80 HP. Then they get this infernal wound. So they're going from 80... 78... 76... and so forth. Whenever their temporary HP goes down shouldn't matter to the infernal wound (I'm thinking this is how a barbarians's rage works).

With the spell, I would think it hits the temporary HP first, and then the normal HP. But if it gets healed before the temporary HP goes out, I would think it would not affect the normal HP, due to the description of the spell. That's my $0.02.

[Carthrat]

[13:51] <Carthrat> Well
[13:52] <Carthrat> I'd say that applying temproary HP to yourself would face the same problems healing wounds does in this case.
[13:52] <Carthrat> So, if you already have it, no problem, but if you try to apply it later you need to make the CL check or whatever.

Edit: Ah, never mind this. You *would* get the +temp HP for free, but it wouldn't stop the wounding status. @_@