Death and Injuries

Since this came up during the last session and I was basically making things up as I went, here the rules for serious injuries.

The standard healing spells are Cure Light Wounds (1st level), Cure Serious Wounds (3rd level), and Cure Critical Wounds (5th level). Thus, injuries can be divided into these categories as well.

Light Wounds This is hit point damage; while your hit points are above 0, it is assumed that you have only sustained light wounds. Any healing spell can deal with light wounds by restoring hit points.

Serious Wounds In general, these are wounds that would put someone out of commission for a time, but are not life-threatening - broken bones, major dislocations, concussions, that sort of thing. A character who suffers a serious wound is knocked unconscious for at least a turn, and cannot continue to fight if the wound was suffered in combat. These cannot be fixed using Cure Light Wounds; it isn't powerful enough. Cure Serious Wounds will take care of them, although it will not also heal hit points when used in this manner. Cure Critical Wounds will take care of these injuries, and on top of that will heal hit points as a Cure Light Wounds spell.

A character with a serious wound cannot rise above 0 hit points until it is healed.

Critical Wounds These are wounds that are life-threatening - severed limbs, cut arteries, sword through the gut, etc. A character who suffers a critical wound is in mortal danger, and begins "bleeding out", as described below. Cure Light Wounds and Cure Serious Wounds are not powerful enough to fix these injuries (although they can delay death; see below); only a Cure Critical Wounds spell is sufficient. When used in this way, it does not also heal hit point damage. Incidentally, this is what Lorcan sustained, having rolled the second-lowest possible result on the injury table (the lowest being instant death).

A character with a critical wound cannot rise above 0 hit points until it is healed.

For reference, Cure Serious Wounds is first available to casters at 5th level, while Cure Critical Wounds is available at 9th level. There are usually casters available for hire in large cities that can handle Cure Serious Wounds; the starting price is 150 gp. Cure Critical Wounds is a much bigger deal; 9th level or higher casters are generally important, busy people and may require convincing. The price for Cure Critical Wounds starts at 450 gp.

Bleeding Out If a character sustains a critical wound and a Cure Critical Wounds spell is not available, then the character is in mortal danger and is bleeding out. The characters has 1d6 turns (10 - 60 minutes) to live. Healing spells below the level of Cure Critical Wounds can extend this duration; for each hit point that the spell would heal, it extends the character's life by 1 turn. Thus, Cure Light Wounds provides 1d8 turns (10 - 80 minutes) and Cure Serious Wounds provides 3d8 turns (30 - 240 minutes). The 0-level spell First Aid is also of use in this situation, providing 1d3 turns of respite (10 - 30 minutes).

Magical healing is not the only option to prevent bleeding out; a skilled healer can staunch the wound and prevent death. However, this is an extremely difficult task. Depending on the specific wound, the difficulty generally varies from 20 to 30. A given healer can only attempt this once, and each attempt takes an hour. If less than an hour is available, the difficulty increases by 2 for each missing turn (for example, if the healer only has ten minutes, then five turns are missing, so the difficulty is increased by 10). Also, note that this doesn't remove the injury; the character is still critically wounded, and cannot rise above 0 hit points until receiving a Cure Critical Wounds spell or waiting for the wound to heal naturally (which generally takes multiple months).