I'm sure I'm not the first to come to this realization, but in light of the generally poor view that the most widely promulgated spell / class guides for 5e Wizard (e.g. RPGBot, Ozwick's, Treantmonk) take in relation to the third level Wizard spells Life Transference and Vampiric Touch, I'm guessing this strategy is not generally known / appreciated. It occurred to me yesterday while DMing a campaign which includes a 7th level Wizard with the Vampiric Touch spell permanently prepared that while the most direct use of this spell -- i.e. through a melee attack against an active combatant -- is dangerous and yields supbar damage, nevertheless, there is one way to abuse the RAW of 5e combat to make this spell top flight.
Ask the DM if They Are Dead
It's commonplace in D&D combat to assume that once an opponent is knocked unconscious, unless a PC has specifically dealt non-lethal damage to them, that they will simply die and therefore, they no longer need to be accounted for or tracked throughout the rest of the combat. But this is not how combat actually works in 5e, where your opponents are granted the same series of death saves as a PC, and by that token, have a 50% chance of stabilizing if they incur no further damage, as is usually the case outside of AOE damage. Therefore, in many combats, a victorious party of PC's may be surrounded by half a dozen up to a dozen or more enemy combatants who they have only bothered to knock unconscious, half of which may actually be alive and stable.
This is an orchard ripe for picking for the Necromancer of 5th level or higher. Casting Vampiric Touch just once gives you up to 10 melee spell attacks, each dealing 3d6 psychic damage if successful, from which, the caster heals for half of damage dealt. Melee attacks against an unconscious creature within 5 feet of you get advantage, and are auto-crits on a hit, which means, given an unlimited supply of unconscious creatures and assuming all successes on attack roles, a single casting of Vampiric Touch at 3rd level can allow the caster to regain 30d6 HP. Better yet, Vampiric Touch scales at higher levels, conferring an additional 1d6 HP of psychic damage per spell slot per attack, meaning 10 x level of slot used x d6 HP of healing under optimal conditions.
The squishy wizard with their d6 hit dice likely will not be able to even use that much HP regen, but can, if used in combination with Life Transference, redirect the HP influx to injured party members at a rate of 2:1 to their own healing 1:1 to the original psychic damage dealt via Vampiric Touch. Life Transference is non-concentration and so can be used in tandem with Vampiric Touch, but must be recast each time which can make this method of party heal expensive from a spell economy perspective. Nevertheless, the healing is impressive, 8d8 for a 3rd level casting and an additional 2d8 of healing per slot level above 3rd used.
Maybe this still doesn't position the Wizard as the ultimate healer in D&D 5e, but it's definitely a significant chunk of HP regen, and when taken in combination with the Wizard's access to other elements crucial to the healer's repertory (Gentle Repose, Remove Curse, and all resurrection spells save Reincarnate), makes them at the very least a powerful auxiliary healer who is perhaps best disposed to stand-up the party through a single day of multiple combat bouts. I would even say that the humble first level ritual spell Identify, which Clerics generally don't have access to, can be a vital tool in the healer's tool belt. Most party casters simply think of Identify as the thing that let's you figure out what your cool magical loot can do, overlooking the fact that it can be used to discern not only what spells may be affecting a place or object, but also a creature, and thus a simple 10 minute ritual casting of Identify which reveals that a party member is not poisoned, but cursed, avoids a Cleric burning a 2nd level spell slot to cast Lesser Restoration uselessly. Food for thought :)
There’s two things that would really require DM buy in. First, it is not assumed that non-PCs get death saves. In fact, it’s the opposite.
“Most DMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws.
Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters.”
I’d find it hard to imagine a DM who is looking for yet another thing to track, in terms of doing death saves for a half dozen goblins while still trying to run a fight with the living ones. And if enemies do start making death saves, they get to do whack-a-mole healing same as the party, which I’d say most players don’t want.
The second issue is vampiric touch gives you back hp equal to half the damage dealt. There’s a lot of discussion about if you can actually do “damage” to an unconscious creature. Particularly in an edition that doesn’t track negative hp. You can make them fail a death save, but whether or not it’s possible to deal numerical hp damage is a DM question. And if you can’t deal damage, then you can’t heal for half of it. (I’m not trying to start that fight here, just noting it’s going to be a ruling, not a rule.)
There’s two things that would really require DM buy in. First, it is not assumed that non-PCs get death saves. In fact, it’s the opposite.
“Most DMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws.
Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters.”
I’d find it hard to imagine a DM who is looking for yet another thing to track, in terms of doing death saves for a half dozen goblins while still trying to run a fight with the living ones. And if enemies do start making death saves, they get to do whack-a-mole healing same as the party, which I’d say most players don’t want.
The second issue is vampiric touch gives you back hp equal to half the damage dealt. There’s a lot of discussion about if you can actually do “damage” to an unconscious creature. Particularly in an edition that doesn’t track negative hp. You can make them fail a death save, but whether or not it’s possible to deal numerical hp damage is a DM question. And if you can’t deal damage, then you can’t heal for half of it. (I’m not trying to start that fight here, just noting it’s going to be a ruling, not a rule.)
All of this, but especially the bolded part. DO NOT WANT. For those few NPCs/monsters for which it matters if they live or die, sure, but that's probably less than one in twenty of them.
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Unconscious creatures have 0 hit points. Further damage to them does not do any hit point damage to them. Negative hit points were removed from the game. As such, Vampiric Touch can't get you anything, and I don't see how Life Transference will be of any use if you don't gain any hit points from Vampiric Touch.
I hadn't considered the issue of 0 hit points, and I'll concede that ultimately the rules are nebulous enough in this case to put the matter firmly into DM call territory. However, the PHB does say that you can take damage while at 0 hit points, i.e. being at 0 hit points is not a factor -- like resistance, immunity or temporary HP are -- that reduces the amount of damage dealt / taken. You still roll full damage when making an attack against an unconscious creature because you have to see whether you killed it outright, or merely inflicted a failed death save. And since the spell text specifically says the amount of healing is dependent on the amount of damage dealt, not the amount of HP subtracted from the creature receiving said damage, I would still argue that RAW, you should be healing from damage dealt to a living creature, whether or not it is unconscious and at 0 HP. Moreover, I don't even see this as a tactic that goes against the spirit of the rules / RAI, since it's easy enough to imagine a particularly ruthless, or simply resourceful, mage draining away the very last essence of life remaining in a fallen enemy in order to stitch their own battle wounds.
In the end, I think the reason this is a difficult rules point to adjudicate, is because the RAW regarding taking damage while at 0 HP is somewhat immersion breaking. Hypothetically, given enough luck and a wide enough interval of time between attacks (or simply enough castings of Spare the Dying), a creature at 0 hit points can take an infinite amount of damage. Moreover, I think the reason many DM's thought process bends towards thinking that leeching life from an unconscious creature is de facto against the rules (as I alluded to in my original post) is that they have implicitly and perhaps unwittingly instituted a homebrew rule around this interaction -- something on the order of, "disposeable bad guys don't get death saves." That simply is not RAW even if it is convenient, and, in many cases, does a better job at creating verisimilitude. (*see comment below).
Moreover, I think the reason many DM's thought process bends towards thinking that leeching life from an unconscious creature is de facto against the rules (as I alluded to in my original post) is that they have implicitly and perhaps unwittingly instituted a homebrew rule around this interaction -- something on the order of, "disposeable bad guys don't get death saves." That simply is not RAW even if it is convenient, and, in many cases, does a better job at creating verisimilitude.
From the PHB: "Monsters and Death Most DMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws. Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters."
Neither PHB nor DMG state that death saving throws (should) apply to anything other than player characters.
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You're right! However, in this instance this is particularly unsatisfying because in leaving the rules of death and dying of NPCs entirely to the discretion of the DM, they have provided no objective basis on which to mediate an apparent conflict of interests: the agency of the player as opposed to the convenience of the DM.
You're right! However, in this instance this is particularly unsatisfying because in leaving the rules of death and dying of NPCs entirely to the discretion of the DM, they have provided no objective basis on which to mediate an apparent conflict of interests: the agency of the player as opposed to the convenience of the DM.
No offense, but I wouldn't categorize not allowing PCs to cheese unintended healing from dying bodies as an infringement on player agency. Your mileage may vary though.
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You're right! However, in this instance this is particularly unsatisfying because in leaving the rules of death and dying of NPCs entirely to the discretion of the DM, they have provided no objective basis on which to mediate an apparent conflict of interests: the agency of the player as opposed to the convenience of the DM.
Keep in mind that TTRPGs in general, not just 5e, give GMs lots of discretion to bend, break, modify, and ignore the rules. Feats, multiclassing, stat generation, etc. are also all GM dependent. While major NPCs and villains are common exceptions IF the GM lets NPCs and villains have death saving throws in the first place, that IF is pretty rare, and it is not common to give them death saving throws in the first place.
At least personally for me, while I would not mind giving NPC allies and players' pets death saving throws, I am very hesitant at giving enemies and villains death saving throws, as it unnecessarily drags combat on. Not only is it about convenience for me, it is also an enjoyment issue for the players.
I had to ponder it a bit, but the "death from massive damage" rules don't apply after something has gone down to zero hit points. All you can do to thing that is making death saves is ruin their chances. No hit points, no reason to figure damage, nothing can be gained from them unless you go through their pockets and look for loose change.
Wizards can heal, even necromancers, but not by siphoning hit points from the mostly dead.
Why is everyone jumping down OP's throat for suggesting the wizard target downed enemies? That's being kind to the GM. Vampiric Touch can target any beetle the wizard finds on the ground, or any ant in the ant farm a clever wizard keeps on the party wagon. It's ludicrous to suggest there's anything particularly cheesy about the general tactic of having living creatures on hand between fights to supplement short rest healing. It's so popular to solve problems this way, one of the standard ways you analyze any PC ability is the "bag of rats" test, which measures how much power the PC derives from having a bag of rats on hand.
Vampiric Touch is an intentionally limited resource. OP's proposal is weaker than what a Phantom does with a bag of rats, and that's core to how Phantoms are played. Sure, as a GM, you can deny your PCs access to downed but living enemies, in contradiction of the rules, but as a general rule, this won't limit their power in any meaningful way. At least this way, the GM doesn't have to deal with coming up with game mechanics for buying and maintaining an ant farm.
"Why is everyone jumping down OP's throat for suggesting the wizard target downed enemies? "
I don't see anyone doing that. People are just pointing out that raw seems to contradict OP's intention (and just for the bag of rats part, rat has 1d4-1 hp, so that would still be 1 or 2 hp healed per rat, depending on rounding).
The RAW perspective As others have said, the norm is that enemies die when they have 0 HP left, unless they knocked them unconscious instead. Death saving throws are rules for player characters, but if at the end of the day the DM decides whether or not these rules apply to monsters as well. Assuming your DM rules your foes make death saves when defeated you have 30 seconds (5 rounds) at best before all of them are dead (rolling a death save every round for 2 successes and 3 failures). That would allow you to make a total of 3 attacks with Vampiric Touch before all the unconscious monsters died, as you make them fail 2 death saves per attack and they have to roll for another on their turn (they start failing on their 3rd turn). All of this assuming you're not stabilizing and that they fail their 5th saving throw.
As for whether or not you can deal damage to a creature with 0 HP, the answer seems to be yes you can.
Damage at 0 Hit Points. If you take any damage while you have 0 hit points, you suffer a death saving throw failure. If the damage is from a critical hit, you suffer two failures instead. If the damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum, you suffer instant death.
The rules above clearly state that you cantake damage while having 0 HP and that you also suffer a death saving throw. The death saving throw is therefore not a replacement for the damage according to RAW, it is simply another way of recording the effect.
Rule of Cool I love the idea of a necromancer or anyone really making creative use of the resources at hand. Most often my creatures die when they reach 0, but if a player asks if anyone is still breathing (even after failing to knock them unconscious), they usually find a foe or two alive. With these kinds of spells though I tend to rule that creatures with low HP max like a Frog can't be dealt excessive damage beyond 0 before dying i.e. the Frog would always only grant you only 1 HP.
Just saying... as a player with a wizard in the party, I would be very concerned if said wizard was making melee attacks against already unconscious creatures to heal self for 3d6 / 2.
Vampiric Touch and follow up attacks are full actions. Life Transference is also a full action.
Most fights don't last more than 3-4 rounds. Well, they wouldn't if the wizard was actually fighting living creatures...
Edit: Life transference is a level 3 spell, which means the Wizard gets it at level 5. A level 5 wizard maximum possible HP is 30hp + 5* CON MOD. A wizard using FIXED HP will have 20hp + 5*CON MOD.
Life Transference does 4d8 necrotic damage (un-resistable). That's 18 average or 32 maximum HP lost!
an apparent conflict of interests: the agency of the player as opposed to the convenience of the DM.
Player agency is not the freedom to bend the rules of the world. It's the freedom to fully control how your character reacts to the world that the DM sets up. If a necromancer in my game wanted to go around draining the remaining sparks of life from unconscious enemies, they could certainly do so. They just wouldn't get any healing from it (and thus wouldn't need to cast VT in the first place). It can still be a flavor thing that can have character/story/intra-party consequences without any need to change the rules.
I had to ponder it a bit, but the "death from massive damage" rules don't apply after something has gone down to zero hit points. All you can do to thing that is making death saves is ruin their chances. No hit points, no reason to figure damage, nothing can be gained from them unless you go through their pockets and look for loose change.
Wizards can heal, even necromancers, but not by siphoning hit points from the mostly dead.
Nope:
From PHB pp. 197:
Damage at 0 Hit Points. If you take any damage while you have 0 hit points, you suffer a death saving throw failure. If the damage is from a critical hit, you suffer two failures instead. If the damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum, you suffer instant death.
Ironically, it seems WotC have created a rule set that makes this use of Vampiric Touch much more technically sound for an enemy NPC attacking a PC than for the PC themself.
an apparent conflict of interests: the agency of the player as opposed to the convenience of the DM.
Player agency is not the freedom to bend the rules of the world. It's the freedom to fully control how your character reacts to the world that the DM sets up. If a necromancer in my game wanted to go around draining the remaining sparks of life from unconscious enemies, they could certainly do so. They just wouldn't get any healing from it (and thus wouldn't need to cast VT in the first place). It can still be a flavor thing that can have character/story/intra-party consequences without any need to change the rules.
Well the point is that in this case they aren't bending the rules that WotC have established for the game, just the home rules you have decided to establish vis a vis death and dying of NPCs. To put it another way, you could allow this use of Vampiric Touch without overriding the official rule set in any way since the official rule set, apparently, have left almost everything up to the DM to decide about how they want NPCs' death and dying to function. At that point then you are just telling the player that their cool idea for how to make the most of an otherwise pretty underpowered spell is not going to be allowed because you don't want them to be able to do that.
As we all know, as a DM, D&D has given you the right to do that whenever you want, but it might be hard to keep players in your group if you flex your power in that way too often. For my part, I pretty much always rule in favor of the player's interpretation unless I can find a specific rule that opposes it; this way the decision to thwart their ambition / fun is seen as objective and fair.
As a final point on this, since it seems like a lot of commenters are reacting negatively from the perspective of this being an untenable mechanic in game, let me just point out, you can compromise and do both. Don't bother to track death saves of fallen enemies, just leave them on the battlefield. When the end of the battle comes, and your Vampiric Touch Wizard wants to begin reaping excess life, then just come up with an ad hoc mechanic to determine how many of the knocked out bad guys are still alive and unconscious. This can be as simple as just assuming 1/2, or you can autoroll 5d20 for each fallen creature and determine it randomly. It's really not that hard to say "Yes, And" in this case.
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I'm sure I'm not the first to come to this realization, but in light of the generally poor view that the most widely promulgated spell / class guides for 5e Wizard (e.g. RPGBot, Ozwick's, Treantmonk) take in relation to the third level Wizard spells Life Transference and Vampiric Touch, I'm guessing this strategy is not generally known / appreciated. It occurred to me yesterday while DMing a campaign which includes a 7th level Wizard with the Vampiric Touch spell permanently prepared that while the most direct use of this spell -- i.e. through a melee attack against an active combatant -- is dangerous and yields supbar damage, nevertheless, there is one way to abuse the RAW of 5e combat to make this spell top flight.
Ask the DM if They Are Dead
It's commonplace in D&D combat to assume that once an opponent is knocked unconscious, unless a PC has specifically dealt non-lethal damage to them, that they will simply die and therefore, they no longer need to be accounted for or tracked throughout the rest of the combat. But this is not how combat actually works in 5e, where your opponents are granted the same series of death saves as a PC, and by that token, have a 50% chance of stabilizing if they incur no further damage, as is usually the case outside of AOE damage. Therefore, in many combats, a victorious party of PC's may be surrounded by half a dozen up to a dozen or more enemy combatants who they have only bothered to knock unconscious, half of which may actually be alive and stable.
This is an orchard ripe for picking for the Necromancer of 5th level or higher. Casting Vampiric Touch just once gives you up to 10 melee spell attacks, each dealing 3d6 psychic damage if successful, from which, the caster heals for half of damage dealt. Melee attacks against an unconscious creature within 5 feet of you get advantage, and are auto-crits on a hit, which means, given an unlimited supply of unconscious creatures and assuming all successes on attack roles, a single casting of Vampiric Touch at 3rd level can allow the caster to regain 30d6 HP. Better yet, Vampiric Touch scales at higher levels, conferring an additional 1d6 HP of psychic damage per spell slot per attack, meaning 10 x level of slot used x d6 HP of healing under optimal conditions.
The squishy wizard with their d6 hit dice likely will not be able to even use that much HP regen, but can, if used in combination with Life Transference, redirect the HP influx to injured party members at a rate of 2:1 to their own healing 1:1 to the original psychic damage dealt via Vampiric Touch. Life Transference is non-concentration and so can be used in tandem with Vampiric Touch, but must be recast each time which can make this method of party heal expensive from a spell economy perspective. Nevertheless, the healing is impressive, 8d8 for a 3rd level casting and an additional 2d8 of healing per slot level above 3rd used.
Maybe this still doesn't position the Wizard as the ultimate healer in D&D 5e, but it's definitely a significant chunk of HP regen, and when taken in combination with the Wizard's access to other elements crucial to the healer's repertory (Gentle Repose, Remove Curse, and all resurrection spells save Reincarnate), makes them at the very least a powerful auxiliary healer who is perhaps best disposed to stand-up the party through a single day of multiple combat bouts. I would even say that the humble first level ritual spell Identify, which Clerics generally don't have access to, can be a vital tool in the healer's tool belt. Most party casters simply think of Identify as the thing that let's you figure out what your cool magical loot can do, overlooking the fact that it can be used to discern not only what spells may be affecting a place or object, but also a creature, and thus a simple 10 minute ritual casting of Identify which reveals that a party member is not poisoned, but cursed, avoids a Cleric burning a 2nd level spell slot to cast Lesser Restoration uselessly. Food for thought :)
Or you go the Mark of Healing and pick up Healing Word....then when you get Spell Mastery you can just cast it for free all the time at level 1.
Meaning you can just spam it for free heals for everyone.
Well you do have to playing ebberon for marks.Plus this gives better burst healing.But yeah it makes a good backup.
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There’s two things that would really require DM buy in.
First, it is not assumed that non-PCs get death saves. In fact, it’s the opposite.
“Most DMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws.
Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters.”
I’d find it hard to imagine a DM who is looking for yet another thing to track, in terms of doing death saves for a half dozen goblins while still trying to run a fight with the living ones. And if enemies do start making death saves, they get to do whack-a-mole healing same as the party, which I’d say most players don’t want.
The second issue is vampiric touch gives you back hp equal to half the damage dealt. There’s a lot of discussion about if you can actually do “damage” to an unconscious creature. Particularly in an edition that doesn’t track negative hp. You can make them fail a death save, but whether or not it’s possible to deal numerical hp damage is a DM question. And if you can’t deal damage, then you can’t heal for half of it. (I’m not trying to start that fight here, just noting it’s going to be a ruling, not a rule.)
All of this, but especially the bolded part. DO NOT WANT. For those few NPCs/monsters for which it matters if they live or die, sure, but that's probably less than one in twenty of them.
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Unconscious creatures have 0 hit points. Further damage to them does not do any hit point damage to them. Negative hit points were removed from the game. As such, Vampiric Touch can't get you anything, and I don't see how Life Transference will be of any use if you don't gain any hit points from Vampiric Touch.
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I hadn't considered the issue of 0 hit points, and I'll concede that ultimately the rules are nebulous enough in this case to put the matter firmly into DM call territory. However, the PHB does say that you can take damage while at 0 hit points, i.e. being at 0 hit points is not a factor -- like resistance, immunity or temporary HP are -- that reduces the amount of damage dealt / taken. You still roll full damage when making an attack against an unconscious creature because you have to see whether you killed it outright, or merely inflicted a failed death save. And since the spell text specifically says the amount of healing is dependent on the amount of damage dealt, not the amount of HP subtracted from the creature receiving said damage, I would still argue that RAW, you should be healing from damage dealt to a living creature, whether or not it is unconscious and at 0 HP. Moreover, I don't even see this as a tactic that goes against the spirit of the rules / RAI, since it's easy enough to imagine a particularly ruthless, or simply resourceful, mage draining away the very last essence of life remaining in a fallen enemy in order to stitch their own battle wounds.
In the end, I think the reason this is a difficult rules point to adjudicate, is because the RAW regarding taking damage while at 0 HP is somewhat immersion breaking. Hypothetically, given enough luck and a wide enough interval of time between attacks (or simply enough castings of Spare the Dying), a creature at 0 hit points can take an infinite amount of damage.
Moreover, I think the reason many DM's thought process bends towards thinking that leeching life from an unconscious creature is de facto against the rules (as I alluded to in my original post) is that they have implicitly and perhaps unwittingly instituted a homebrew rule around this interaction -- something on the order of, "disposeable bad guys don't get death saves." That simply is not RAW even if it is convenient, and, in many cases, does a better job at creating verisimilitude.(*see comment below).From the PHB:
"Monsters and Death
Most DMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws.
Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters."
Neither PHB nor DMG state that death saving throws (should) apply to anything other than player characters.
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You're right! However, in this instance this is particularly unsatisfying because in leaving the rules of death and dying of NPCs entirely to the discretion of the DM, they have provided no objective basis on which to mediate an apparent conflict of interests: the agency of the player as opposed to the convenience of the DM.
No offense, but I wouldn't categorize not allowing PCs to cheese unintended healing from dying bodies as an infringement on player agency. Your mileage may vary though.
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Keep in mind that TTRPGs in general, not just 5e, give GMs lots of discretion to bend, break, modify, and ignore the rules. Feats, multiclassing, stat generation, etc. are also all GM dependent. While major NPCs and villains are common exceptions IF the GM lets NPCs and villains have death saving throws in the first place, that IF is pretty rare, and it is not common to give them death saving throws in the first place.
At least personally for me, while I would not mind giving NPC allies and players' pets death saving throws, I am very hesitant at giving enemies and villains death saving throws, as it unnecessarily drags combat on. Not only is it about convenience for me, it is also an enjoyment issue for the players.
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I had to ponder it a bit, but the "death from massive damage" rules don't apply after something has gone down to zero hit points. All you can do to thing that is making death saves is ruin their chances. No hit points, no reason to figure damage, nothing can be gained from them unless you go through their pockets and look for loose change.
Wizards can heal, even necromancers, but not by siphoning hit points from the mostly dead.
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Excuse my strong words, but player agency is not letting the players do rules lawyering or effing the rules as written as hard as they can.
I, as a DM, would also overrule the attempt to drain life from slain foes.
Why is everyone jumping down OP's throat for suggesting the wizard target downed enemies? That's being kind to the GM. Vampiric Touch can target any beetle the wizard finds on the ground, or any ant in the ant farm a clever wizard keeps on the party wagon. It's ludicrous to suggest there's anything particularly cheesy about the general tactic of having living creatures on hand between fights to supplement short rest healing. It's so popular to solve problems this way, one of the standard ways you analyze any PC ability is the "bag of rats" test, which measures how much power the PC derives from having a bag of rats on hand.
Vampiric Touch is an intentionally limited resource. OP's proposal is weaker than what a Phantom does with a bag of rats, and that's core to how Phantoms are played. Sure, as a GM, you can deny your PCs access to downed but living enemies, in contradiction of the rules, but as a general rule, this won't limit their power in any meaningful way. At least this way, the GM doesn't have to deal with coming up with game mechanics for buying and maintaining an ant farm.
"Why is everyone jumping down OP's throat for suggesting the wizard target downed enemies? "
I don't see anyone doing that. People are just pointing out that raw seems to contradict OP's intention (and just for the bag of rats part, rat has 1d4-1 hp, so that would still be 1 or 2 hp healed per rat, depending on rounding).
The RAW perspective
As others have said, the norm is that enemies die when they have 0 HP left, unless they knocked them unconscious instead. Death saving throws are rules for player characters, but if at the end of the day the DM decides whether or not these rules apply to monsters as well.
Assuming your DM rules your foes make death saves when defeated you have 30 seconds (5 rounds) at best before all of them are dead (rolling a death save every round for 2 successes and 3 failures). That would allow you to make a total of 3 attacks with Vampiric Touch before all the unconscious monsters died, as you make them fail 2 death saves per attack and they have to roll for another on their turn (they start failing on their 3rd turn). All of this assuming you're not stabilizing and that they fail their 5th saving throw.
As for whether or not you can deal damage to a creature with 0 HP, the answer seems to be yes you can.
The rules above clearly state that you can take damage while having 0 HP and that you also suffer a death saving throw. The death saving throw is therefore not a replacement for the damage according to RAW, it is simply another way of recording the effect.
Rule of Cool
I love the idea of a necromancer or anyone really making creative use of the resources at hand. Most often my creatures die when they reach 0, but if a player asks if anyone is still breathing (even after failing to knock them unconscious), they usually find a foe or two alive. With these kinds of spells though I tend to rule that creatures with low HP max like a Frog can't be dealt excessive damage beyond 0 before dying i.e. the Frog would always only grant you only 1 HP.
Just saying... as a player with a wizard in the party, I would be very concerned if said wizard was making melee attacks against already unconscious creatures to heal self for 3d6 / 2.
Vampiric Touch and follow up attacks are full actions. Life Transference is also a full action.
Most fights don't last more than 3-4 rounds. Well, they wouldn't if the wizard was actually fighting living creatures...
Edit: Life transference is a level 3 spell, which means the Wizard gets it at level 5. A level 5 wizard maximum possible HP is 30hp + 5* CON MOD. A wizard using FIXED HP will have 20hp + 5*CON MOD.
Life Transference does 4d8 necrotic damage (un-resistable). That's 18 average or 32 maximum HP lost!
Player agency is not the freedom to bend the rules of the world. It's the freedom to fully control how your character reacts to the world that the DM sets up. If a necromancer in my game wanted to go around draining the remaining sparks of life from unconscious enemies, they could certainly do so. They just wouldn't get any healing from it (and thus wouldn't need to cast VT in the first place). It can still be a flavor thing that can have character/story/intra-party consequences without any need to change the rules.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Nope:
From PHB pp. 197:
Damage at 0 Hit Points. If you take any damage while you have 0 hit points, you suffer a death saving throw failure. If the damage is from a critical hit, you suffer two failures instead. If the damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum, you suffer instant death.
Ironically, it seems WotC have created a rule set that makes this use of Vampiric Touch much more technically sound for an enemy NPC attacking a PC than for the PC themself.
Well the point is that in this case they aren't bending the rules that WotC have established for the game, just the home rules you have decided to establish vis a vis death and dying of NPCs. To put it another way, you could allow this use of Vampiric Touch without overriding the official rule set in any way since the official rule set, apparently, have left almost everything up to the DM to decide about how they want NPCs' death and dying to function. At that point then you are just telling the player that their cool idea for how to make the most of an otherwise pretty underpowered spell is not going to be allowed because you don't want them to be able to do that.
As we all know, as a DM, D&D has given you the right to do that whenever you want, but it might be hard to keep players in your group if you flex your power in that way too often. For my part, I pretty much always rule in favor of the player's interpretation unless I can find a specific rule that opposes it; this way the decision to thwart their ambition / fun is seen as objective and fair.
As a final point on this, since it seems like a lot of commenters are reacting negatively from the perspective of this being an untenable mechanic in game, let me just point out, you can compromise and do both. Don't bother to track death saves of fallen enemies, just leave them on the battlefield. When the end of the battle comes, and your Vampiric Touch Wizard wants to begin reaping excess life, then just come up with an ad hoc mechanic to determine how many of the knocked out bad guys are still alive and unconscious. This can be as simple as just assuming 1/2, or you can autoroll 5d20 for each fallen creature and determine it randomly. It's really not that hard to say "Yes, And" in this case.