If someone is hit by an attack with special effects like poison, disease, paralysis, ability damage and his/her damage reduction is high enough to prevent all damage, do the specials still apply?
- Example 1: A Ghoul has a bite (1d6+1 plus disease and paralysis)
listed. - Example 2: A Soul eater has claws (1d6+1/19–20 plus 1d6
Wisdom damage)
Both hit a creature with DR10/magic, as their attacks are not magic the damage (1d6+1) is reduced by 10 resulting in 0 damage for all non crit attacks.
Is the target still subject to disease, paralysis and/or wisdom damage?
Ghoul fever has the injury vector if that matters.
The question Does a successful hit that does no damage due to DR still count as a hit? is similar and more or less answers the disease part because poison and disease should be similar in that aspect but it doesn't seem to answer the other two points about ability damage and paralysis.
We had the situation with the soul eater recently and as we weren't sure the GM ruled that the Wisdom damage has a miss chance in this case.
Best Answer
If the damage was reduced to 0 by DR (or energy resistance), the additional effects are negated aswell, unless said otherwise on each ability's entry.
The rules for Damage Reduction say:
Ghouls
A Ghoul's disease is applied on injury (bite attack), and thus would be negated if damage reduction completely negates the damage.
However, keep in mind that it does not reduce effects that are energy based or non-physical in nature, so if you have a claw attack that deals an extra 1d6 fire damage, that damage is still applied. On the same line of though, a claw attack that drains energy will also drain energy even if the claw's damage was negated, because the rules for Energy Drain allow them to work even on a touch (no damage), as it says that it simply has to hit the attack.
The Paralizys of a ghoul also does not specify that it's on injury, it simply says:
So, on a rules as written reading, it's safe to assume that even if the damage was negated, a creature would still suffer the paralizing effect, because it's not related to the injury, but a magical effect that afflicts the target. This last part of probably subject to table variation, as many GM's will agree that ghouls are terribly dangerous for their challenge rating.
It's unclear if a ghoul can paralize simply by touching or not, because the paralizys is listed as a Special Attack aswell. You will see the difference when you look at the Green Hag stats, which also has an effect that is applied on her claw attacks, but it clearly states that she must hit with her claws for it to affect the target, or she has to use a special touch attack as standard action to cause the weakness effect.
On this same logic, a disease that simply has a contact as method of transmission would not be negated by Damage Reduction (which is also clear on the rules quoted before).
Stunning Fist
One of the examples of things negated by Damage Reduction is Stunning Fist, which reads:
Since you have to deal damage to apply the stun effect, stunning fist does not work if the damage was negated.
Soul Eater
Now, the Soul Eater's Wisdom Damage does not say that it must deal damage to work on their target.
So it does not matter if the damage was negated, the target will still take Wisdom damage, similarly to how it happens to Energy Drain or contact poisons and diseases.
I would probably agree that all ability damage should qualify as "negate" if it was listed as an example on DR's text. But otherwise i believe that each ability damaging effect should be analized case by case if their effect are on hit or when dealing damage.