Episode 1

Fair question. I counted the extra damage. Interpreting it as an exceptionally good impressive stressful attack. BUT in Gorolach's Fury Berserk Rage, he pressed right through that. No chance of being Frightened.

Going to walk through rules interpret carefully here:
Ivor Attacking with Advantage.
Documa imposing Disadvantage on the Attack.
Modifiers cancel out, net result: A normal Attack Roll.
I look at ONLY THE FIRST ROLL. That is a 19.
19 is a hit, though barely.
Documa expends Reaction, Round 2, but is not able to thwart the successful Attack.

Quite important when I look to the near future. Other Attack attempt Documa likely to have tried to block would have been Thorn's first: a Critical that would have had to be re-rolled. Man, X would have been mad about that! Thanks to Ivor, opponent Reaction burned AND to no avail, thanks to an EXACT on the number hit.
Timing is everything. A game of inches.

Whew! Is it too late to call a Trip Attack on that hit? (The maneuver requires a hit, not just an attack)

Hmm. I can appreciate the desire to stack effects on known success, but that sounds sort of conrived, and a little beyond the spirit of the idea of battle maneuvers.
I think you should have to send in the announcement ahead of time. Makes sense that it requires a hit, but it seems that you have to come on record to announce that you are trying to Trip the guy. If it is a hit, it becomes a threat to Trip. If it is a miss, then it becomes no Trip obviously.
I think I have to just press on. Sorry, main man.

A timely action, and couched well in narrative and explanation. Question for the longer haul: "Temporary HP". Temporary to what time limit? Do those fall away at some point in time? Do they just last just until the next hit? Want to think about it now because, wow, Maeriks is in bad shape.

Temp HP expire after a long rest. And in this case with 5, probably just until the next hit too :P

I've got to step away and write Maerik's and Thorn's update later. Some complexity there, and I need to read careful and make sure to interpret results accurately.
Ahead of time CB, I think poor Maeriks is in the Zero HP State, or at least was for a moment. Some effects on performance and recovery. But haven't completely digested situation yet.

I may not understand the recovery rules correctly. I assume the temp hp are ignored as part of that whole situation. He was at -3, con
bonus is +3, so as I understand it he was at the maximum negative limit he could be and still be in the Zero HP State. Of the 7 HP gained from second wind, I took only 3 to bring Maeriks up to 0 since recovery to 1 HP requires a rest. Not sure how you want to rule Cure Wounds

This circumstance does bring to light a shortcoming in the wording of the House Rules. The spirit of the rule set related to recovery from the "Zero Hit Point State" was to lay on a hard dose of brutal realism about the exhaustion, high stakes, and costliness of extreme injuries and close calls with death. The idea overall wasto suggest that if you get down to 0 HP or - CON Mod negative HP, you can still eke by - suffering, winded, with the world spinning around you, toughing it out in the extreme sense of the words, more or less in a mild level of shock - BUT if you do, then you HAVE to take a 5 minute breather (Short Rest) in order to get it back together and back to 100% performance, no matter what kind of tricks you are using to boost back up into good standing normal HP ranges.

Everything from 1 HP up is instantaneous. The 0 to Neg Whatever was supposed to be a small zone carved out for delayed response of recovery.

In that, I commented on 1) HD recovery and 2) magical/miraculous healing. I definitely did not even think about Fighter Second Wind, much lest Battle Maneuvers that delivery HP.

At some point I will probably reword that, but now is DEFINITELY NOT the time to throw in extra qualifiers and clarifications that directly put PCs at higher threat and risk. We'll move on through with an easy explanation.

In the round we are watching now, here is the way I see it:
Maeriks was blown down to within an inch of blacking out (not necessarily the brink of death, but maybe. And it was definitely the brink of debilitating injury). Negative 3 HP.
IN THE SAME ROUND, he received 2 boosts to help hedge against the severe threat:
5 HP from Battle Maneuver from Kray (move to 2 HP). An opponent distraction, a command/encouragement from an ally.
7 HP from his own Second Wind (move to 9 HP). Digging deep and keeping it together to press on.

I want to go with the simple explanation: Maeriks took a hard hit, probably should have put him out. But he got some motivation and focus from Kray, called on his own fortitude reserves, picked his ass up, and dodged a bullet.

Rules may adjust later, but that is a task for another day. This is a legit bounce back.
Game of inches. Haha.

Jabes, I'm going to turn the tables on myself here.
PCs almost dying in these moments - I don't feel comfortable splitting hairs in the wrong direction. Will err on the side of safety and trying to say "Yes" to player requests.
Send that Trip Maneuver bonus dice from Ivor if you want. We revise the imagery to him trying to topple big boy over while he's wrapped up. I will go ahead and throw Save(s) for Goro Toro, see if the Prone Condition results.

All, I guess this is another one to debate (ugh!) but I would prefer that Battle Maneuvers be announced in advance. Makes it easy, and also, again, seems realistic when you are trying to explain what it is that your character is doing, calling the shot so to speak.

Thanks for rolling with this stuff.

X, in truth all of those hits should have been made at Advantage. No getting any better than what you already have on the first hit, but the others...still 5% chance they turn into Criticals.
I think you should send 3 clicks of d20s. Natural 20 is all that counts, so no need to Mod.

Jabes, you are not going to like this, but that net of yours has got to endure some effects of weakness and wear and tear from that series. We'll probably have to deal with that next Round.

Second time now: my first dice click in the stack disappears when I post. huh.

Jabes, I have one more Round 2 post coming next. After that, only thing I can see that is left is the Trip Attack rework. Send it in on damage. I think we can see above that the Trip does not work, Goro saved against Condition BUT the damage should still count.

If I don't hear from you later, I'll post up a click d8 that we will use for the record, and we'll press on. I'll try to roll high. ;)

Oh god, y'all. Princess Pearl herself, the proverbial "Helen of Troy", is on the fucking boards posting Action.

Nope, I get it. I gotta apologize: I don't know why I'm starting to go gamist. I used to always put narrative first and optimal mechanics second. This excellent game requires nothing less.

But here's that superiority die.