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Since my polymorph meme has only garnered three downvotes so far I thought I'd offer a bit more controversial take, and see if I can manage to stir the pot a bit with this one.

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[-] skeletorfw@lemmy.world 66 points 1 year ago

So this sent me down an absolute rabbit hole. As a DM there's a few ways I'd consider to stop this being entirely game-breaking:

  • You could argue that the only thing strength before death shows is that you can activate strength before death between hitting 0 and getting knocked out. A wizard is no samurai. Therefore concentration spells are not allowed.
  • You could argue that life steal requires life to steal, and as such you can't life steal yourself.
  • You could enforce the requirement of the figurine required for vampiric touch, then engineer a scenario to remove it at a critical moment and see if they realise.

Personally I would instead depart from RAW and point out a version of option 2, but a lenient one. Something like "you can do this but you are sapping your very essence to do it. Every time you do it, you permanently lose 10% of your HP" or "every time you do this you increase the number of death saving throws you must succeed before you die". Or my personal favourite: "every time you do this you perturb the very laws of nature. Nature is rather fond of its laws and so decides to perturb you right back. Roll on this table to see what happens." and make the table include the above alongside a few other things and maybe a roll on the wild magic table.

In the end I enjoy ingenuity but the role of DM gives you a lot of latitude to... handle... those who believe they found a loophole.

[-] Royal_Bitch_Pudding@ttrpg.network 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It goes off but doesn't heal you because the text specifically says

The touch of your shadow-wreathed hand can siphon life force from others to heal your wounds.

[-] MouseKeyboard@ttrpg.network 12 points 1 year ago

That's flavour text.

The touch of your shadow-wreathed hand can siphon life force from others to heal your wounds. Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach. On a hit, the target takes 3d6 necrotic damage, and you regain hit points equal to half the amount of necrotic damage dealt. Until the spell ends, you can make the attack again on each of your turns as an action.

You are, in fact, a creature within your reach.

You're a valid target for the spell, but the heal doesn't trigger cause the target isn't someone other than yourself.

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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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