Level
3rd
Casting Time
1 Action
Range/Area
Self
Components
V, S
Duration
Concentration
1 Minute
School
Necromancy
Attack/Save
Melee
Damage/Effect
Necrotic
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.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 3rd.
This is a neat spell.
I really believe that the 5e is the best so far in game mechanics... But the game is full of spells that doesn't seems to be consistent or even logical with reality that a fantasy world should (in my opinion, of course) try to emule. How could such a spell to not have limitations regarding constructs or undeads like in previous editions? Hou could you drain something non existent?
I think that if the target is resistant or immune to necrotic damage due to being undead or a construct the spell would deal less or no damage, and you would gain less or no life. So the 'logic' is built into the resistances and damage immunities of the target.
Does the melee spell attack granted by this spell work with the Cleric Death Domain feature Improved Reaper, allowing you to target 2 creatures with the spell attack so long as they are within 5 feet of each other?
No; the range is "self", not "touch" - casting it gives yourself the Vampiric Touch effect, the initial spell attack is just for generous action efficiency.
Also; Reaper/Improved Reaper specify that both targets must be "within range and within 5 feet of each other", so if you were casting a "touch" range spell you'd have to be in contact with both targets simultaneously.
N.B. You cannot of course give the Vampiric Touch effect to an adjacent ally also for the same reason - they wouldn't be within range "self".
Alrighty, got it! Thanks very much for the explanation :)
Me and my DM are having a debate on whether or not this spell is allowed to be used on multiple targets. for example, I know the spell is cast on yourself, but if you attack a creature and it dies, does the spell remain the rest of the 1 minute duration or is it only good against one creature? I read it as being cast on self so the target I choose to attack shouldn't matter as long as concentration isn't broken and the spell is still in the 1 minute duration. My DM believes it is only a link between me and my initial target. Can anyone clarify?
I'm not sure if you know the answer to this but thought you might be a good person to ask:
Me and my DM are having a debate on whether or not this spell is allowed to be used on multiple targets. for example, I know the spell is cast on yourself, but if you attack a creature and it dies, does the spell remain the rest of the 1 minute duration or is it only good against one creature? I read it as being cast on self so the target I choose to attack shouldn't matter as long as concentration isn't broken and the spell is still in the 1 minute duration. My DM believes it is only a link between me and my initial target. Can anyone clarify?
I fully agree with your interpretation i.e. you can target a different creature each turn for the duration.
To my knowledge there isn't a Sage Advice on this exact point, but if you compare Vampiric Touch to Witch Bolt (which does 'link' the caster to their target) they really couldn't be any more different.
awesome, thank you for your input!
I don't understand why this is on the Wizard spell list. While useful for squishy Wizards to heal health, the fact that it's a melee attack and only getting one attack per round nerfs this spell for them considerably. At the level you end up getting this, most melee combatants are able to deal more damage to you than you will heal with this spell, and without any armor, you're much more likely to be hit than the melee combatant you're trying to hit. Warlocks I can understand, because due to higher hit dice and armor proficiencies, Warlocks are easily viable as mid to close range combatants.
Can’t this be delivered by your familiar?
It's range is self rather than touch, so ... no. :(
Yes, it says you make an attack with the spells action and only targets one creature therefore it fulfills the requirements.
It's pretty self-explanatory in the description especially considering that they're VERY careful in how they words things in dnd
"siphon life force from others to heal your wounds. Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach"
No where does the spell state that you create a link between one target. The description even says targets - multiple. and it says a not, the (indicating that you're not using it against a repeated target). as another person said, casting this spells give YOU the ability to siphon life-energy.. not a bond against a specific individual. I can't think of anything now, but there are other spells/effects/abilities that do work like that and the description is explicit
The point of the spell isn't to turn a wizard into a invincible self healing juggernaut, it's to allow him to heal damage and negate a little bit of the squishyness they suffer from. It's also a lvl 3 spell that that gives you a VERY powerful touch attack of 3d6, which is a lot of damage for a basic attack. When you add in that you heal for half of it, it is quite powerful for a single cast that lasts 10 rounds.
That being said i think the real reason it is on the wizards list is because it's a iconic wizard spell.
Why it ever was in the first place...is probably because "magical touches" was a big aspect of wizards in most of the older editions.
So I am currently watching the latest episode of Critical Roll and I am curious if this spell should have advantage if cast from within a creature.
Essentially the cleric got bitten then swallowed and while inside tried to cast this but had disadvantage because he was restrained inside the creature.
What do people think about touch attacks from inside something?
Kinda bummed that the initial casting time isn't a bonus action considering a lot of casters don't have anything else they can do on their turn except a reaction. So you waste one round casting. Then if you get hit and lose concentration before the next round, the spell does 0 damage.
There's just so much wrong with this spell, requires an action so when you really need to use it you can't because of that, gotta wait the next turn, if you get smacked you risk losing concentration, the spell on average deals about 9 to 10 damage, and you only get half of that back. I can't think of why anyone sane would look at this spell and go like "Yeah if i happen to be in melee range of someone and i badly need healing this is what i have to use" rather than using misty step or dimension door to get away.
With a 3rd level spell we can deal 8d6 damage in an AREA, even lighting bolt allows you to hit at the very least two people for that damage, and that isn't really a good spell either, and yet in this very thread there are people that go, yeah that's respectable damage for a third level spell. what a joke.
I am currently making a melee wizard build, i have good AC, i have hp, abjuration school gives temp hp, i look at this spell and go like, wouldn't it be neat to give this a shot since i might just be able to make this spell shine? No...No i can't, it's just such a bad 3rd level spell, instead of adding in new spells maybe they should make the old ones usable.
You can't even cast this beforehand a fight, because if it's agains a boss, good luck starting the fight before the minute passes due to unskippable obligatory DM monologue, and if it's standard fight, good luck predicting it, could be an ambush, could really be anything, and even then, you need to get hurt for this to be useful.
It states in the spell: “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 make the attack as part of casting the spell, and then for the next ten turns you can make the attack again as an action, note specifically where it says “again”. With the way you were reading it, that again wouldn’t make sense because you’d never have made an attack in the first place.