Assuming that heals at the usual rate (5 per hour of rest, N&S pg 15, maybe faster if the fox spirit happens to know Chi Healing from pg 119) I'm still left questioning what this damage represents.
SDC normally protects the HP (you deplete the SDC to be able to damage the HP, except for special attacks that can bypass it).
Pg 55 of MC says Fox Spirits do not have HP though...
Normally the effect of having 0 HP is that you fall into a coma. I would assume Fox Spirits are an exception to that...
However is it possible we should apply standard rules for death, IE you can survive up to negative PE damage once HP is depleted?
"None, Fox Spirits are made of pure Chi." next to HP makes it seem like perhaps you might use usual HP rules but involving chi (ie fall into a coma at 0 chi, can only survive PE in chi damage below zero) but I'm not entirely sure...
If that's the case then I don't know if that would mean that if you depleted SDC you could then inflict damage right to chi in fox (or human) form, or if it might mean that destroying the SDC of the 1st (fox) or 2nd (human) forms just forces the spirit in to their 3rd form (pure chi) basically meaning you could never kill them with normal attacks, only negative chi attacks.
If negative chi attacks are how you kill them they could be more vulnerable than humans... humasn can survive going into negative chi (they just can't heal, but they still survive if their HP is 1+)
but since fox spirits don't have HP, maybe even in their physical (1st/2nd) forms if negative chi attacks reduce their chi to 0 they fall in a coma, unlike humans?
Normally the rule is I think for chi spirits to just die at 0 chi (pg 124 of N&S under Mind Walk specifies that) so making "only a coma at zero, death at PE below zero" would I guess just be a house rule.
If we have fox spirits dying (like mind walkers) at 0 chi, I'm curious to know if this would still apply when they have a physical body (exchanged some chi for SDC) or only if the SDC is depleted and they're forced into their 3rd form.
On one hand the physical forms seem like they make the spirit more vulnerable to death (they're forced to lower their chi to create the SDC) but it seems like they could give some survival advantages:
1) "If in an area where there is a flow of Negative Chi, the character risks being attacked by an amount of Negative Chi equal to the prevailing flow every melee round." is listed for the Pure Positive Chi Form. It's not listed for the other two, so the implication seems to be that it only applies here and that the physical form SDC could protect their chi from being automatically attacked by the environment.
2) except for moving speedily along positive chi routes (not always available in places a fox spirit might want to go) physical forms might allow them to get around faster. If we assume that they move Spd 2 normally (as in Mind Walk) then the Spd 11 minimum in human form would be a huge improvement. I can't see any mention of Speed or other attributes in fox form. I think maybe rolling 3D6 for everything (and IQ minimum 9) despite being listed in the human form under the PB bonus is meant to apply to all forms (the only exception being the PB bonus itself, which is human only) although a fox with PS 3D6 is mighty impressive!
- - -
"Pure Positive Chi entities can move at great speed along the routes of natural Positive Chi in the earth, air and water." falls outside the usual movement parameters of Mind Walk (drifting spd 2 or teleporting to known places using 60 second meditation) and it doesn't seem clear how to represent that. The closest I can think of might be pg 82's "Fly with Stream of Chi" spell which allows you a Spd equal to triple the positive chi. Would it make sense to just treat PPC foxes as having a permanent version of this spell active (except not flying on negative streams) ?
- Another option might be just to use the Spd 2 baseline (drifting) of Mind Walk and allow those foxes who have the "Body Chi" power to add +5 increments to that Spd (7, 12, 17, etc) and so by using Dragon Chi a fox using Body Chi could amplify their drifting speed more in higher-chi areas. My only problem with this is that "along the routes" might imply that the DIRECTION of flow matters (like with the spell FwSoC) whereas this approach would not. I think it might be cooler to stack those approaches. So you have an inherent Spd of 3xflow in the direction of flow, but you can then go at greater speeds if you have Body Chi (as not all foxes necessarily would, it's not automatic like Dragon Chi)
Same considerations for infernals/reformed except inverted: an infernal can take on a physical form to avoid automatic attacks in regions of positive chi, gets Spd 4D6 as human, 3D6+6 in spiky form. From levels 1-5 prior to them gaining some HP at 6th level one would assume they would operate according to whatever policy you apply to spirit foxes: canonically death at 0 chi with perhaps an exception if they have a physical form.
If destroying SDC of physical forms allowed creatures to survive (just forced into chi spirit form) then this would perhaps end at 6th level once the demon got HP, since that would be exposed and allow death. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is when they lose the ability to turn into pure chi.
