I honestly did not think they would buff power word kill. Impressive.

Considering that you get this prepared for free as the 2024 Bard's capstone, you can easily reflavor this to be the ULTIMATE Vicious Mockery!!! Insult someone so hard they die!

A bard saying simply: You should kill yourself...NOW

"Your mother was a hamster and father smelled of elderberry!"

Whoah. Big buff. No save against the psychic damage either

Hard to tell if some of these spells were buffed or just not written correctly. Half of the spells I've looked at are missing key lines/notes or have terrible wording. Did they make it so there is no save to the 12d12 damage? or did they just forget to put that in? who knows!?

Quote from Gambal >>

Hard to tell if some of these spells were buffed or just not written correctly. Half of the spells I've looked at are missing key lines/notes or have terrible wording. Did they make it so there is no save to the 12d12 damage? or did they just forget to put that in? who knows!?

It didn't have a save for the psychic damage in the playtest, so no, that isn't an error. Also this spell doesn't have bad wording nor is it missing anything; it's pretty clear and straightforward. And it's a 9th level spell, so it should be that powerful.

Great old one warlock taking this for their 9th level mystic arcanum.

Enchantment spells for GOO warlocks requier no components.

you can wlak down the street and just cast this at someone and kill them (or really hurt them) and no one has a clue it was you XD

Pretty nice buff since you can't polymorph characters into low hp forms to power word kill as easily anymore.

the only spell I can thnk of that is more powerful than this is command

command is really overpowered

imagine you say suicide.

Nah, that's not true. 2024 Command is limited to options that are already provided, and even then, with the 2014 rules Command stated "the spell has no effect if the target is undead, if it doesn't understand your language, or if your command is directly harmful to it."

Does this new psychic damage go off if it's instant death effect is negated by Death Ward?

Quote from Nevrodin >>

Does this new psychic damage go off if it's instant death effect is negated by Death Ward?

I wouldn't think so. The instant death effect and the psychic damage are mutually exclusive; one happens if you have more than 100 HP and the other if you have 100 HP or less. They can't both trigger on the same casting of the spell.

I don't know why everyone is saying this is broken. A Warlock can deal 4d10 + 4d6 + 20 damage with Eldritch Bolt + Hex assuming they all hit (and Boon of Combat Prowess makes that decently likely) which comes out to an average of 56. This deals an average of 78. It certainly isn't bad by any means but for a level 12 spell it isn't broken or anything.

To be honest, I think this is one of those spells that needs toning down or simply removing. I mean, yeah it would be fun to insta kill a big bad once they have been knocked down a peg or two. But ask yourself this, if a player can do this, is it not fair game that an NPC can also do so… Because really it should be.

And I think that would bring about an unhappy game experience for the players, “oh yeah, your dead, no save, no death saving throws, just dead”.

Sure, you could never give it to an NPC, but it feels weird to not allow your NPCs to be just as deadly as your PCs.

So this can easily be an early campaign killer, or beloved PC killer, which isn’t very good for storytelling… You could almost rename the spell to Power Word Kill Joy :)

Quote from cainskip >>

To be honest, I think this is one of those spells that needs toning down or simply removing. I mean, yeah it would be fun to insta kill a big bad once they have been knocked down a peg or two. But ask yourself this, if a player can do this, is it not fair game that an NPC can also do so… Because really it should be.

And I think that would bring about an unhappy game experience for the players, “oh yeah, your dead, no save, no death saving throws, just dead”.

Sure, you could never give it to an NPC, but it feels weird to not allow your NPCs to be just as deadly as your PCs.

So this can easily be an early campaign killer, or beloved PC killer, which isn’t very good for storytelling… You could almost rename the spell to Power Word Kill Joy :)

 If you have this spell, you're level 17. If you’re fighting a lich your level 13 minimum, if you don’t have a revivify, that’s completely your fault. This isn’t a physic scream where you can get perma stunned, when you die you just die, so you lose at most a turn before you get brought back.

Quote from Gambal >>

Hard to tell if some of these spells were buffed or just not written correctly. Half of the spells I've looked at are missing key lines/notes or have terrible wording. Did they make it so there is no save to the 12d12 damage? or did they just forget to put that in? who knows!?

 Pretty sure the no save is intentional. There's never been a save against the instant death part of PWK, so why should the lesser effect have a save to resist it?

Quote from cainskip >>

To be honest, I think this is one of those spells that needs toning down or simply removing. I mean, yeah it would be fun to insta kill a big bad once they have been knocked down a peg or two. But ask yourself this, if a player can do this, is it not fair game that an NPC can also do so… Because really it should be.

And I think that would bring about an unhappy game experience for the players, “oh yeah, your dead, no save, no death saving throws, just dead”.

Sure, you could never give it to an NPC, but it feels weird to not allow your NPCs to be just as deadly as your PCs.

So this can easily be an early campaign killer, or beloved PC killer, which isn’t very good for storytelling… You could almost rename the spell to Power Word Kill Joy :)

Once the party reaches a decent level, a PC Death that does nothing to destroy the body like Power Word Kill can be as little as a minor inconvenience, thanks to Revivify. And at worst, if nobody in the party can cast any sort of revival spell that will work (depending on how much time has passed), a good DM can tie into a new quest where the party needs to find someone who CAN cast such a spell, and do something for them so that they are willing to do so.