I'm having a hard time imagining why you need to attack them to heal, either they are a friend and you always hit, or they are an enemy, in which case why heal them.
Not sure how to give a weapon -2 damage, but I will point out the potential problem that player characters with this weapon can go right to full health between fights after a little consensual smiting.
Yeah, for game balance’s sake, it might be better to do something along the lines of:
This enchanted weapon comes with 3 charges. As an action, you may make expend one of this weapon's charges to make a melee attack with this weapon. If the attack is against a willing target, they do not add their Dexterity modifier to their AC against this attack. On a hit, the target takes no damage from the attack, and instead regains a number HP equal to the total damage rolled.
This magic weapon regains 1d3 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the weapon's last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the weapon looses its enchantment, and becomes a mundane weapon.
I would make it a 1D8 marshal weapon. What this wording would do is allow the wielder to basically cast a 1st-level Cure Wounds up to 3 times/day. It’s not a guarantee, so that’s a balancing factor. Marshal also restricts who can use it, and melee restricts the range. By requiring the whole action it also limits it the same way casting a spell would.
But the benefits are a potential 3X”1st-level Cure Wounds equivalent” for free, useable during combat, that any class capable of using the weapon could do, and on a Crit, it would basically be equivalent to a free upcast to a “2nd-level Cure Wounds.” Actually, this would make a pretty awesome Uncommon Longsword or Rapier or Morningstar. Maybe even Rare.
Why would you want to make a weapon that heals the target? If your objective when using the weapon is to eliminate the target why would you want to heal it in the meantime? I agree with GregCa. Do you just want to waste your time taking more time to eradicate a hostile target?
I imagine you would be able to do this in D&DBeyond homebrew but once again why would you want this weapon? If anything you would want a weapon that heals YOU by dealing damage to a hostile creature.
E.g. Your friend has just been badly injured by a Troll, you slash at your friend with your weapon to apparently heal him? I guess the Troll can't wait until you hit him with your sword so that it gets healed too.
The only way I see this working is if you make this as a curse and the PC does not know about it. I wouldn't waste my time on it.
I’m trying to come up with something similar. A weapon that first takes damage from someone but will soon heal and give you more health. So it can only be used on a player with a certain amount of health already but will heal them more than the damage that was taken. Or maybe it will cause damage but it heals all their other wounds except the one you just caused.
Maybe a cursed item that is sentient so knows if it is attacking a friend or foe of the wielder. In fact this could be amusing, the weapon does normal damage until the creature is down to X hit points, for instance if X is 10 then if the enemy is at 9 and the wielder of the cursed sword does 3 points of damage then the first point is applied as a healing point (to 10) it then applies the next point as damage, before then healing again. For the player it would simply seem that the creature had a silly amount of hit points.
So as the title says, I want to make a homebrew weapon that heals the target being attacked for a constant value of 2.
My questions are
- What would I do to add the health to the target
- Can I do this in the homebrew on dnd beyond
All modifiers only effect what is displayed on character sheet. Damage and healing are not actually applied by modifiers, so no modifiers needed.
I think this would simply be an item (not a weapon) with the effect in its description.
Yeah, but by making it a weapon it will automatically calculate to hit.
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I'm having a hard time imagining why you need to attack them to heal, either they are a friend and you always hit, or they are an enemy, in which case why heal them.
Heal them so you can hurt some more?
🤷♂️
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Not sure how to give a weapon -2 damage, but I will point out the potential problem that player characters with this weapon can go right to full health between fights after a little consensual smiting.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Yeah, for game balance’s sake, it might be better to do something along the lines of:
I would make it a 1D8 marshal weapon. What this wording would do is allow the wielder to basically cast a 1st-level Cure Wounds up to 3 times/day. It’s not a guarantee, so that’s a balancing factor. Marshal also restricts who can use it, and melee restricts the range. By requiring the whole action it also limits it the same way casting a spell would.
But the benefits are a potential 3X”1st-level Cure Wounds equivalent” for free, useable during combat, that any class capable of using the weapon could do, and on a Crit, it would basically be equivalent to a free upcast to a “2nd-level Cure Wounds.” Actually, this would make a pretty awesome Uncommon Longsword or Rapier or Morningstar. Maybe even Rare.
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Why would you want to make a weapon that heals the target? If your objective when using the weapon is to eliminate the target why would you want to heal it in the meantime? I agree with GregCa. Do you just want to waste your time taking more time to eradicate a hostile target?
I imagine you would be able to do this in D&DBeyond homebrew but once again why would you want this weapon? If anything you would want a weapon that heals YOU by dealing damage to a hostile creature.
E.g. Your friend has just been badly injured by a Troll, you slash at your friend with your weapon to apparently heal him? I guess the Troll can't wait until you hit him with your sword so that it gets healed too.
The only way I see this working is if you make this as a curse and the PC does not know about it. I wouldn't waste my time on it.
(This is in my opinion)
"A Jack Of All Trades is a master of none"
'That's why I hate Bards'
I’m trying to come up with something similar. A weapon that first takes damage from someone but will soon heal and give you more health. So it can only be used on a player with a certain amount of health already but will heal them more than the damage that was taken. Or maybe it will cause damage but it heals all their other wounds except the one you just caused.
Maybe a cursed item that is sentient so knows if it is attacking a friend or foe of the wielder. In fact this could be amusing, the weapon does normal damage until the creature is down to X hit points, for instance if X is 10 then if the enemy is at 9 and the wielder of the cursed sword does 3 points of damage then the first point is applied as a healing point (to 10) it then applies the next point as damage, before then healing again. For the player it would simply seem that the creature had a silly amount of hit points.
I had that happen to me and I highly do not recommend that because you might keep forgetting that it heals. ( bad when you are fighting a demigorrgon)