Eh, there's less weird cases -- barbarian partied with level 6+ abjuration wizard, tiefling abjuration wizard being hit by an azer, dwarf battlemaster using parry against a poisoned weapon, etc. However, all those cases are PCs being hit by NPCs, not NPCs being hit by PCs, and order of evaluation is more of a problem for PC attacks.
Honestly the math is confusing me too, partially because it doesn't line up with the Vampire stat block anyway?
Bite. (Bat or Vampire Form Only).Melee Weapon Attack:+9 to hit, reach 5 ft., one willing creature, or a creature that is grappled by the vampire, incapacitated, or restrained. Hit: 7 (1d6 + 4) piercing damage plus 10 (3d6) necrotic damage. The target's hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken, and the vampire regains hit points equal to that amount.
So an average bite does 7 piercing and 10 necrotic (17 total damage), and then reduces max HP by 10. A player with 24 HP would normally be left at 7 HP with a 14 HP max, or with Armor of Agathys providing 10 THP, would be left at 14 HP with a 14 HP max and would have deprived the vampire of its healing (since it would take 10 damage from the spell before healing itself 10). With the proposed houserule, this character would be left at 24 HP with a 24 HP max, and also still have 3 THP left over, and also the vamp would have taken 7 damage from biting the THP but not triggered any necrotic to heal itself, so note that it is a signifigant nerf to the Vampire if you're considering it.
Sorry, I was using the Vampire Spawn stat block since that's what caused this interesting question.
The big issue from the second part of my question stemmed from the fact that Armor of Agathys has the word armor in it. It's not actually armor. It's an energy/damage absorber that wraps around your body like armor. Armor in D&D has an armor class, it helps prevents the actual hits. Leather Armor, Mage armor etc. AoA does no such thing. So the actual bite still pierces if the bite hits, only the initial damage is absorbed by the cold energy wrapped around you. So in this case even if the piercing damage is soaked up by the armor, the actual attack still went through and the necrotic damage is still done as the AoA didn't soak up all of the attack.
Some spells and special abilities confer temporary hit points to a creature. Temporary hit points aren't actual hit points; they are a buffer against damage, a pool of hit points that protect you from injury.
When you have temporary hit points and take damage, the temporary hit points are lost first, and any leftover damage carries over to your normal hit points. For example, if you have 5 temporary hit points and take 7 damage, you lose the temporary hit points and then take 2 damage.
..
Chicken_Champ already quoted these rules, and highlighted some words in them that allowed him to make his point (but I think he was right the first time). It is a valid question to ask whether "losing" hit points is meaningfully different from "taking damage," but the wording from the (regular) hit points entry seems to use the phrases as equivalent (as normal English readers probably would too):
Hit Points
...
Whenever a creature takes damage, that damage is subtracted from its hit points. The loss of hit points has no effect on a creature's capabilities until the creature drops to 0 hit points.
Going back to the parts in red, in order to even "lose" THP (whether that is the same as them being damaged or not), the triggering effect listed in the text is "you take damage". Of course there are other ways to lose THP, but the issue at hand is with damage. Either these phrases are being used as equivalent or "the loss of hit points" (temporary or otherwise) is a direct result of subtracting damage from your hit points pool(s) when you take that damage. Either interpretation leads to the same conclusion.
Putting all the text of the rules together, damage that you "take" is damage that is subtracted from one of your pools of THP or HP, or to say it another way: damage to either of your THP or HP pools is damage you take.
Arcane ward has some different wording that says that it takes the damage instead of you, so I guess it would depend on the specific rider whether it came along. You are still hit so "on hit" effects would occur. It takes the damage instead of you, so riders requiring "damage taken" might still come along but one with a condition "damage you take" wouldn't. As far as other effects, again their wording would matter.
Edit: to put my answer in context of your question: you take the piercing damage and the necrotic damage from the bite if both are applied to your THP or HP. Even if all the piercing and necrotic damage are subtracted from your THP, you've taken that damage, and so the rider occurs and your hit point maximum is reduced.
Yeah, THP uses "take" twice, once to refer to the total damage dealt, but once to refer to the damage taken to your true HP and not your THP. So the answer to "what is the RAI difference between "take" and "lose"?' is probably "they didn't actually attempt to use those as terms with different definitions." Or maybe they did, but just didn't edit close enough?
Hard to say, it's fuzzy. I don't think there's anything in the Abjuration Wizard's Arcane Ward that justifies treating it any differently from Armor of Agathys or any other THP pool, so whichever way you come down on "is damage dealt to THP damage that I have taken?", you should just treat it the same for all THP and not be inconsistent.
Eh, there's less weird cases -- barbarian partied with level 6+ abjuration wizard, tiefling abjuration wizard being hit by an azer, dwarf battlemaster using parry against a poisoned weapon, etc. However, all those cases are PCs being hit by NPCs, not NPCs being hit by PCs, and order of evaluation is more of a problem for PC attacks.
Sorry, I was using the Vampire Spawn stat block since that's what caused this interesting question.
The big issue from the second part of my question stemmed from the fact that Armor of Agathys has the word armor in it. It's not actually armor. It's an energy/damage absorber that wraps around your body like armor. Armor in D&D has an armor class, it helps prevents the actual hits. Leather Armor, Mage armor etc. AoA does no such thing. So the actual bite still pierces if the bite hits, only the initial damage is absorbed by the cold energy wrapped around you. So in this case even if the piercing damage is soaked up by the armor, the actual attack still went through and the necrotic damage is still done as the AoA didn't soak up all of the attack.
Does my reasoning make sense?
Chicken_Champ already quoted these rules, and highlighted some words in them that allowed him to make his point (but I think he was right the first time). It is a valid question to ask whether "losing" hit points is meaningfully different from "taking damage," but the wording from the (regular) hit points entry seems to use the phrases as equivalent (as normal English readers probably would too):
Going back to the parts in red, in order to even "lose" THP (whether that is the same as them being damaged or not), the triggering effect listed in the text is "you take damage". Of course there are other ways to lose THP, but the issue at hand is with damage. Either these phrases are being used as equivalent or "the loss of hit points" (temporary or otherwise) is a direct result of subtracting damage from your hit points pool(s) when you take that damage. Either interpretation leads to the same conclusion.
Putting all the text of the rules together, damage that you "take" is damage that is subtracted from one of your pools of THP or HP, or to say it another way: damage to either of your THP or HP pools is damage you take.
Arcane ward has some different wording that says that it takes the damage instead of you, so I guess it would depend on the specific rider whether it came along. You are still hit so "on hit" effects would occur. It takes the damage instead of you, so riders requiring "damage taken" might still come along but one with a condition "damage you take" wouldn't. As far as other effects, again their wording would matter.
Edit: to put my answer in context of your question: you take the piercing damage and the necrotic damage from the bite if both are applied to your THP or HP. Even if all the piercing and necrotic damage are subtracted from your THP, you've taken that damage, and so the rider occurs and your hit point maximum is reduced.
Yeah, THP uses "take" twice, once to refer to the total damage dealt, but once to refer to the damage taken to your true HP and not your THP. So the answer to "what is the RAI difference between "take" and "lose"?' is probably "they didn't actually attempt to use those as terms with different definitions." Or maybe they did, but just didn't edit close enough?
Hard to say, it's fuzzy. I don't think there's anything in the Abjuration Wizard's Arcane Ward that justifies treating it any differently from Armor of Agathys or any other THP pool, so whichever way you come down on "is damage dealt to THP damage that I have taken?", you should just treat it the same for all THP and not be inconsistent.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.