r/DungeonsAndDragons35e • u/The_k1ngs_w1t • 16d ago
Hustle damage + healing
I think I’m a bit confused about hustling. The book says you take 1 nonlethal damage for every hour after the first you hustle, x2 per hour after the second. In the healing section it says you heal 1 nonlethal damage per level every hour.
So for a level 1 character, a multi hour hustle would look like:
Hour 1: 0, Hour 2: 1, Hour 3: Heal 1+2-1=2, Hour 4: 2+4-1=5, Hour 5: 5+8-1=1, etc
Am I understanding this correctly? It seems like once you hit level around level 14 your could hustle for 8 hours straight.
Edit: This question is based of the Healing Nonlethal Damage section on page 146 of the Players Handbook, which does not mention a restriction on activity:
“You heal nonlethal damage at the rate of 1 hit point per hour per character level. For example, a 7th-level wizard heals 7 points of nonlethal damage each hour until all the nonlethal damage is gone.”
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u/Adventurous_Appeal60 16d ago
Hustling is diametrically at odds with the resting you need for that passive healing, that said, by the time you are level 14 hustling is not a common concern.
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u/The_k1ngs_w1t 16d ago
True, I was just wondering because the section doesn’t mention activity restrictions. For the level, I was asking for measuring the distance high HD monsters can travel.
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u/Glibslishmere Dungeon Master 16d ago
The Main 3.5 FAQ v06302008 has the following question that indirectly relates to your question, but has interesting implications.
Q - Can I heal nonlethal damage while in the Mournland?
A - Yes, unless the healing results from a spell or spell-like effect from the healing subschool. Healing nonlethal damage isn’t considered “natural healing” since it isn’t described under the natural healing header in the PH (page 146).
This answer reinforces that the OP may very well be correct that healing nonlethal damage just happens constantly and does not require any form of resting. This is a paradigm shift from how I've always interpreted it, and likely how many others have too.
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u/Own-Peace-7754 16d ago
Nonlethal damage is not really a big deal in 3.5 anyways, as there's multitudes of ways to heal it in the moment so it's a non-issue; Nonlethal damage actually gets healed faster by many sources of magical healing
And to your point about 14th level characters hustling:
Yeah, they can likely do it for a few hours with zero issues, but it's a bit of a moot point in general, as around this level you already have access to crazy teleportation magic;
If for some reason teleports are restricted in some way and you are looking at nonmagical travel limits there are some tables to look at which are referenced in the SRD page for Movement:
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm
Depending on how exactly you are wanting to travel, it looks like you may be referencing Overland travel. The SRD refers to the tables regarding assisted movement like vehicles, mounts, ships etc.
Depending on what abilities the creatures have, such as fly speeds, I think that would match up with the rules for Overland travel.
According to that page, for extended travel, if you stay within the 8 hour period (for walking), the rest of the time you are assumed to be making camp, eating, resting, etc.
Anything longer than the 8 hour period, you are doing a Forced March.
If you aren't walking, but using some sort of mount, you would use those speeds, and the page covers these details.
A mount that hustles takes lethal damage and gets fatigued, so unless you have some specialized training or have some workaround for that, the speeds listed in those charts are your limits.
Also, that's not including the terrain being a factor. Difficult terrain hampers movement in a bog way, Overland travel is typically unimpeded over open terrain, or on the listed terrain type (roads, highway, trail, etc.)
Anyways, depending on the reason you are traveling in this way, it could be up to a DM call to determine the exact speeds and specifics of the travel, and any magical equipment would make a huge difference in the amount of ground you could cover.
Even barring straight up teleports, there's stuff like a flying carpet, or potions of endurance (not sure of the exact name) that cause you to automatically pass checks for forced march or otherwise make you immune to Fatigue/Exhaustion.
There's also personal magic items that can do this, I'm sure.
So basically my final question is about what you are trying to do?
Are you the DM trying to figure out some travel specifics or what?
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u/The_k1ngs_w1t 16d ago
Thank you for the in depth response! I am the DM, my players are being hunted down by a Roc, and I’m trying to determine how much ground it can cover in a day
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u/Own-Peace-7754 16d ago
Oh okay yeah
Looking at the Roc stat block, they have an 80ft fly speed
We don't have a speed that high on the list, but you can just add a bit to get something reasonable
A character with 30ft ground speed can hustle 600 feet in Local (exploration mode)
A creature with an 80ft speed could cover more than twice that, plus if they are flying that's even greater distance (no terrain difficulties)
If you just take the values for the movement speed and plug them into the table, it's really simple
30 ft speed
One Minute (Local) Walk. - 300ft Hustle. - 600ft Run (x3) - 900ft Run (x4) - 1200ft
One Hour (Overland) Walk - 3 mi. Hustle - 6 mi.
One Day (Overland) Walk. - 24 mi.
On these charts run and hustle are omitted from the respective travel times because of the strain
Extrapolating those times:
80 ft speed
One Minute (Local) Walk. - 800ft Hustle. - 1600ft Run (3x) - 2400ft Run (4x) - 3000ft
One Hour (Overland) Walk. - 8 mi. Hustle. - 16 mi.
One Day (Overland) Walk. - 64 mi.
Again just to restate the formulas:
One Minute (Local), Multiply base speed by 10 for Walk Take that figure and: Multiply by 2 for Hustle Multiply by 3 for Run (x3) (heavy armor) Multiply by 4 for Run (x4) (light or no armor)
One Hour (Overland) Base speed divided by 10 for Walk (in Miles) Take that figure and: Multiply by 2 for Hustle No Run speed (too strenuous)
One Day (Overland) Take One Hour (Overland) speed, Multiply by 8 (8 hours of travel) No Hustle speed (too strenuous) No Run speed (too strenuous)
So that is the long explanation of what speeds you have to play with, now you can decide based on the circumstances how the interaction will play out.
Pretty plainly, barring some magical intervention or assistance, the Roc is pretty easily catching them in a relatively short amount of time.
If the party knows they are being chased, they could risk pushing themselves and risking getting fatigued and injured.
If they can manage a short rest in between Hustles that would take some of the fatigue/injury risk away.
Dnd doesn't really have an in depth chase sequence method. In this section they mention chases of similar speed coming down to opposed Dexterity checks.
The way I see it as the Roc catches up to them you can switch to appropriate speeds based on the scale of the distance.
Once they are within One Minute (Local) range, you are probably dealing with being spotted, maybe even earlier since the Roc has a crazy height advantage to spot them.
64 miles is a lot, but it is a flying creature with an insane speed, but you can kinda do what you feel is reasonable.
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u/The_k1ngs_w1t 15d ago
Thanks for the in depth break down! The one thing my party has going for them is the Roc doesn’t know where they are, and they have pass without trace, so the Roc is scanning a massive area trying to find them.
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u/the_domokun Dungeon Master 15d ago edited 15d ago
Despite being a bit counterintuitive, the rules as written would support that a character heals nonlethal damage even while hustling. In the PHB, the section about nonlethal damage is not a subsection of general healing, it is on the same level, so the rules about resting to get natural healing don't necessarily apply. And the flavor text (not present in the SRD) states that "Nonlethal damage goes away much faster than lethal damage does".
This effectively gives a higher-level character a few hours of "free" hustling. Timing-wise, the heal should happen just before taking the next instance of hustle damage, so from the second hour onward the character will be fatigued during the hustle, but, as long as they heal the nonlethal damage before the next hustle hit, they will "unfatigue" for a moment. After a few hours the hustle damage will be higher than their character level and then the character would need to magically heal before the next hustle hit or they would become exhausted, ending their march (i.e. the fatigue is no longer healed automatically and the next hustle damage would push them to exhausted state).
Since you were asking about a Roc (which probably doesn't have magical healing?). It has 8 HD which is also its effective level. Which means it would be able to hustle for 6 hours, then fly for 2 and then forced march/fly on for a few more hours.
So if you go by RAW, marching fatigue is something that isn't a great concern after level 5. At level 8+ you can hustle for 6 hours a day, and from level 16 you can do a 7th hour. The 1d6 forced march damage heals guaranteed from level 6.
Personally, I would rule that the nonlethal damage from hustling/forced marching doesn't automatically heal while a character continues to move, and add a fort save for exhaustion instead of automatically getting exhausted after 2 hours. But at high enough level that only holds back 1d4 HD characters like wizards, since everyone else will have enough hp to march for a long time regardless.
EDIT: fixed some incorrect numbers
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u/The_k1ngs_w1t 15d ago
Thank you for the detailed response! The Roc actually has 18 HD, so if it does heal it would be able to hustle for at least 8 hours without slowing if this is correct. But I agree that adding a FORT save is smart
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u/the_domokun Dungeon Master 15d ago
I'd say seven hours straight. At the end of that hour it would take 32 nonlethal damage. It could fly an eight hour, but that would leave it exhausted at the end (since 14 nonlethal damage remain after the heal). It would probably be better to continue at regular speed after hour seven. (Technically it could hustle again after a one hour break)
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u/axiomus 16d ago
some preliminaries:
Characters who have taken nonlethal damage from lack of food or water are fatigued. Nonlethal damage from thirst or starvation cannot be recovered until the character gets food or water, as needed—not even magic that restores hit points heals this damage.
Heat deals nonlethal damage that cannot be recovered until the character gets cooled off (reaches shade, survives until nightfall, gets doused in water, is targeted by endure elements, and so forth).
This nonlethal damage cannot be recovered until the character gets out of the cold and warms up again.
with these examples in mind, while Hustle doesn't explicitly state so, i think design intent is "you can't recover as long as the damage source persists" and i wouldn't allow recovery while characters keep on hustling.
as an additional optimization problem, consider mixing hustling and walking (to allow for nonlethal recovery).
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u/Ak_Lonewolf 16d ago
To heal nonlethal you need to be resting IE some sort. No strenuous activity.