I’m a little confused, this spell states ‘Make a melee spell attack against a creature you can reach.’ 

Does this mean that an opposing creature takes weapon damage plus the necrotic damage as it says ‘melee spell attack’? 

No handheld weapons involved. The Inflict Wounds spell IS the weapon.

Make an attack roll (d20 + spell attack bonus) and see if it equals or beats the target's AC. If it hits, roll the 3d10 necrotic damage.

This happened today role two 10s and a 2, the player would have instantly died. But i asked him how much hp he had; he had 10. I told him i did 17 damage. The only time you ever fudge is in the players favor.(this was his second ever session too.) 

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You are a Way of Mercy Tabaxi Monk with a feat that gives you the spell.  Could you cast it and hit with a melee claw attack at the same time?  And also spend a ki point to add Hand of Harm? (all in the same attack)

im a bit new to the game and i plan on being a cleric as my next chericter.i might sound dumb for asking this but spells like guiding bolt or inflict wounds.can all cleric subclasses use these spells or only specific subclasses?

A nat 20 one-shot an ankheg.

My twin almost one-shot a bugbear with this at level 2. Great spell, 10/10 would use it.

It's good 

Booga Wooga

i think MotM Bugbears can do this at a range of 10 feet, it says "when you make a melee attack on your turn, your reach for it is 5 feet greater than normal." Not a melee weapon attack, just a melee attack, so melee spell attacks work too. This spell targets a creature you can reach. Necrotically swat people and walk away.

“Do my hands smell good to you?”

Black Dragon Wyrmling + 3rd Level Inflict Wounds + 7th level Death Cleric’s Touch of Death = One very dead dragon.

Quote from GWP >>

Grave domain clerics can use their Channel Divinity: Path To the Grave to curse one creature you can see within 30 ft. of you until the end of your next turn. The next time you or an ally of yours hits the cursed creature with an attack, the creature has vulnerability to all of that attack’s damage, and then the curse ends. It doubles the damage for one time. And this at 2nd level - 6d10 (!).

And that is extremely strong, but it does take a Channel Divinity and 2 actions.

Death Domain Cleric using Touch of Death may not do as much damage average (26 at 2nd level vs 33), but they can use this the first round and then cast Toll the Dead next turn for another 6.5 damage average, or 32.5 total, and potentially using Reaper to target a second creature with Toll the Dead for another 6.5 damage (39 total), for the same resources expended.

Also if Touch of Death + Inflict Wounds would be enough damage to kill already, then the Death Cleric kills the target one round faster, denying them a turn.

Quote from Caerdwyn >>

Quote from bob1176 >>

I can hope. but whatever, It would be super funny though if you somehow rolled max damage against a hard end of session boss, instantly killing him.

 I suffer the Curse of the DM: I rarely get to play. 42 years of herding cats (no kidding). Buuuut...

One of my players stepped up a while ago and ran a mini campaign, 3rd level characters. I played Dimitre, a bouncy, happy little adrenaline-junkie hedonist of a Death Domain cleric. (sparing the multipage backstory). He was built with this spell in mind as his go-to in combat.

A fight between two juvenile dragons was a featured element of the story, one which we the players were clearly intended to witness as a backdrop to a siege by orcs backed by one of the dragons in their assault upon the dilapidated keep we were tasked with defending; the orcs were obviously our job. Well, I was having none of that! Dimitre managed to sweet-talk the "our side" dragon, a barely-young red dragon who had been raised by the long-dead former master of the keep (thus not all utterly evil, just mostly utterly evil). into allowing him to ride into battle on his back. "I can heal you that way, Oh Magnificent Beast! *polishes dragon scales with candle-wax*" Natural 20 on the Persuade check, proficient, Guidance on the persuasion attempt, 14 Charisma = 26. The "Good" dragon (ha!) basked in the lavish praise and considered the value of having a pet healer who had already shown proper subservience by retrieving the Good Dragon's property from the keep and delivering it upon bended knee (as well as having healed the Good Dragon from numerous orc-arrows the day before).

"It's your funeral," said the DM. Dimitre didn't care. He got to ride into battle on the back of a dragon, what's death compared to that? Besides, funerals were kinda a specialty.

The DM let me pick the first action in the fight for the Good Dragon. Good Dragon dove down and slammed into the back of the Bad Dragon (ahem), knocking him out of the sky and grappling him, sending Dimitre tumbling into the difficult-terrain-but-thankfully-soft mud along with the four orc commandos that the Bad Dragon was intending to drop over the keep wall. Bad Dragon was a black dragon (meaning a linear breath weapon not a cone), and Dimitre made VERY sure to keep Good Dragon on the opposite side (and hope he didn't get his breath weapon recharged!); Bad Dragon was much more concerned about his draconic rival than a little dude covered in mud. The two dragons were beating the hell out of each other as the orcs tried to stay out of the way, while Dimitre maneuvered to keep away from the orcs and away from Bad Dragon's head. Things were not going well for Good Dragon, who took a faceful of acid and was getting stabby-stabbied by the orcs.

Did I mention Dimitre, though unhurt, was down to a single 2nd level spell slot from earlier fighting?

"You're up, Dimitre. The Bad Dragon has escaped the grapple of the Good Dragon, is now facing you and is about to get back in the air. What do you do?"
"I maneuver to put the Bad Dragon between me and my good dragon buddy, staying in contact to avoid Opportunity Attacks." This put Dimitre right in front of the Bad Dragon's head, and also in the line of literal fire if the Good Dragon chose to use his own breath weapon. Blaze of glory. "heeheehee Inflict Wounds, upcast to 2nd level."
"Okay, it's still your funeral. You have Advantage because your dragon friend gives you Flanking."
NATURAL 20 loves me some Advantage
4d10 = 10 10 8 5 = 33 x 2 = 66
"I also add Touch of Death. Sleepytime!" +11 = 77. Not bad for a 3rd level character...
"Uh. Damn. Damn. Um. How do you want to do this?"

BWAHAHAHA INSANE DEATH CLERIC CACKLING

As the black dragon opened his jaws to disgorge a surely-fatal gout of acid at Dimitre, Dimitre reached up and grasped one of the black dragon's fangs. The dragon screamed in mortal agony as he jerked his head back, pain exploding from his fang as the necrotic energy flowed up the nerve, but it was too late. Half of the dragon's upper jaw slumped into sludge and rotten bone as the gangrene spread in seconds to engulf an eye then traveled into the dragon's brain. He fell, dead, leaving Dimitre holding the foot-long fang in his hand. Shifting it to grip it like a dagger he turned to face the orcs. "Now it's your turn, boys and girls, let's see if you've been brushing your tusks heeheehee!"

The four orc commandos surrendered on the spot.

Good thing too, because Dimitre was spell-dry aside from cantrips (though that nice Reaper feature might have kept the commando-orcs at bay long enough for Dimitre to get a little help) and his dragon ally was down to a mere handful of hit points himself.

Ah, sweet revenge for every time my players had turned away from the carefully-prepared adventure at the last moment because they saw something shiny on the other side of the kingdom. Sweet revenge for every time they had melted a boss that I'd hoped would be a longer-term BBEG. Sweet revenge for every bad pun.

Yep. I likes me some Inflict Wounds.

addendum: the dragon fang that Dimitre dentist'ed from the Bad Dragon was presented to the "good" dragon as a trophy. As a boon, the "good" dragon didn't eat us.

 

 Hehe I just had an extremely similar experience playing as a solo level 7 Death Domain Cleric in a mostly standalone encounter.

Get kidnapped by parent black dragon and dropped in nest. Wake up. See big eggs (and my skeleton too).

Eggs hatch into black dragon Wyrmlings. DM rolled for HP, got 1 more than average (34 HP)

Roll Initiative, go first.

Run up and use 3rd level Inflict Wounds. Hit. Touch of Death. 29 + 19 (48) Necrotic damage. Wyrmling A immediately melts into goo.

Use Telepathic Feat to pull Wyrmling B into my reach.

Wyrmling B blasts me with Acid for 10 damage (halved from successful save), then flies up 60 feet.

Opportunity Attack with Warhammer. Hit, use second Touch of Death. 5 Bludgeoning + 19 Necrotic = 25 damage.

Skeleton shoots Dragon for max damage, 8.

Wyrmling is now at 1 HP.

Cast Toll the Dead. Wyrmling Succeeds on the save. Cast Spiritual Weapon. Attack, hit. Kill the second wyrmling. 

Then I find out that I’m stuck on a very sheer mountaintop, like one of the ones you would see in a cartoon with a huge nest on top, and I need to find a way down while surviving. I decide to yeet my skeleton off the edge since I can reanimate him after he lands, and then cast Death Ward on myself using my 4th level slot and yeet myself off the edge since I’ll automatically survive with 1 HP.

So anyway, fun spell, even when you don’t crit!

Edit: Oh she’s also a MOTM Scourge Aasimar and she got to roast several guards to death. That was fun too.

But if you are grapple, do you really need to roll a dice to attack with that spell? I mean, we are already in contact with the other person, can't we just roll the damages?

Like, you need to roll to reach the target and touch it for it to work. But we are in a grapple situation, we have already reach and touching the target.

Why rolling the dice to attack when the condition for it it already meet? To see if you crit?

If you cast this at 9'th level you could do SO much damage.

This spell is so broken.

I one-shot-ed this spell and kill a PC immediately. OP and fun 

Inflict Wounds seems to be quite divisive in the community.  Some claim it is unbalanced, but given that Clerics don't have many serious damage spells, and the fact they have the responsibility of balancing their healing abilities with their effectiveness in combat, I think Inflict Wounds should be synonymous with Cleric like Fire Ball is with Wizard. 
I mean, seriously, no one complains when a wizard hurls 8d6 (8-48) damage to multiple enemies in a single round, but if a Cleric does 5d10 (5-50) damage (cast at 3rd level same as Fireball) to just one character then the spell is over powered and Clerics should be nerfed and put back in their box!

That being said, I think that there is a significant description that is missing from this spell.

Personally, I believe touch spells should only be spent when they actually touch. 
If the physical touch is part of the somatic component of the spell, then the spell can not be successfully completed or cast without the successful touch.

It's like striking a match. 
If you fail to strike a match on your first attempt, it does not consume the match preventing further attempt, instead the strike failed and you lost a round, but you can attempt to strike the match again next round.

If I'm a leonin using my claw attack can I combine the two? 

Also paladin oathbreaker