Prone

You’re lying on the ground. You are flat-footed and take a –2 circumstance penalty to attack rolls. The only move actions you can use while you’re prone are Crawl and Stand. Standing up ends the prone condition. You can Take Cover while prone to hunker down and gain cover against ranged attacks, even if you don’t have an object to get behind, gaining a +4 circumstance bonus to AC against ranged attacks (but you remain flat-footed).

If you would be knocked prone while you’re Climbing or Flying, you fall (see pages 463–464 for the rules on falling). You can’t be knocked prone when Swimming.

PERSISTENT DAMAGE RULES

The additional rules presented below apply to persistent damage in certain cases.

Assisted Recovery

You can take steps to help yourself recover from persistent damage, or an ally can help you, allowing you to attempt an additional flat check before the end of your turn. This is usually an activity requiring 2 actions, and it must be something that would reasonably improve your chances (as determined by the GM). For example, you might try to smother a flame, wash off acid, or use Medicine to Administer First Aid to stanch bleeding. This allows you to attempt an extra flat check immediately. The GM decides how your help works, using the following examples as guidelines.

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Reduce the DC of the flat check to 10 for a particularly appropriate type of help, such as dousing you in water to put out flames.

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Automatically end the condition due to the type of help, such as healing that restores you to your maximum HP to end persistent bleed damage, or submerging yourself in a lake to end persistent fire damage.

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Alter the number of actions required to help you if the means the helper uses are especially efficient or remarkably inefficient.

Persistent damage runs its course and automatically ends after a certain amount of time as fire burns out, blood clots, and the like. The GM determines when this occurs, but it usually takes 1 minute.

Immunities, Resistances, and Weaknesses

Immunities, resistances, and weaknesses all apply to persistent damage. If an effect deals initial damage in addition to persistent damage, apply immunities, resistances, and weaknesses separately to the initial damage and to the persistent damage. Usually, if an effect negates the initial damage, it also negates the persistent damage, such as with a slashing weapon that also deals persistent bleed damage because it cut you. The GM might rule otherwise in some situations.

Multiple Persistent Damage Conditions

You can be simultaneously affected by multiple persistent damage conditions so long as they have different damage types. If you would gain more than one persistent damage condition with the same damage type, the higher amount of damage overrides the lower amount. The damage you take from persistent damage occurs all at once, so if something triggers when you take damage, it triggers only once; for example, if you’re dying with several types of persistent damage, the persistent damage increases your dying condition only once.

GAINING AND LOSING ACTIONS

Quickened, slowed, and stunned are the primary ways you can gain or lose actions on a turn. The rules for how this works appear on page 462. In brief, these conditions alter how many actions you regain at the start of your turn; thus, gaining the condition in the middle of your turn doesn’t adjust your number of actions on that turn. If you have conflicting conditions that affect your number of actions, you choose which actions you lose. For instance, the action gained from haste lets you only Stride or Strike, so if you need to lose one action because you’re also slowed, you might decide to lose the action from haste, letting you keep your other actions that can be used more flexibly. Some conditions prevent you from taking a certain subset of actions, typically reactions. Other conditions simply say you can’t act. When you can’t act, you’re unable to take any actions at all. Unlike slowed or stunned, these don’t change the number of actions you regain; they just prevent you from using them. That means if you are somehow cured of paralysis on your turn, you can act immediately.