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.
@Colorfulcat, nowhere in this spell does it say the creature you target has to be an enemy or even...alive. You could target a zombie or skeleton you made trough animate dead.
Also you make the spell attack as part of the casting, so you don't have to wait a turn to deal damage.
Let's asume you'd target only enemies. You could take the War Caster feat; Advantage on concentration saving throws, casting with hands full, and using spells as a reaction. So basically you could "spell attack" with this spell as a reaction without using a spell slot.
However if you look at raw damage and dont care about the healing, take Shadow Blade instead. For the same 3rd lvl spell slot you get 3d8 psychic damage instead.
Keep in mind though, death and grave clerics get access to this spell too. They don't have access to other 3rd level spells on par with this one damage wise
Yes, you can use animate dead and then self heal with this spell, i have never said that it couldn't be used on "dead" enemies or constructs, however are we really going to use 2 third level spell slots to heal up when you can just take a short rest and be done with it? In order to use this combo, you need to be at least level 5 because you need 2 third level slots.
So you just finished a fight and you want t heal up, great, hopefully you've been fighting humanoids, otherwise immediately you can't really pull this off considering you need humanoid corpses for animate dead to work. You make a zombie, 22 hp on average, and have 10 attacks to recover hp with vampiric touch. You can expect on average 9 damage from it, so on average, you can attack it three times, and recover 12-15 hp, maybe you get to attack it more if the zombie passes the undead fortitude check and doesn't die outright.
OR...You could be taking a short rest, not waste any spell in the process, in fact you'd be recovering them, and heal 5d6, 15 hp, plus the con bonus for each dice, which hopefully should be your second highest stat, or at least a +2, without wasting resources.
It's true that i misread it at first, but even then, is it really worth it to waste your action each turn in order for this spell to be useful? Since it says that "Until the spell ends, you can make the attack again on each of your turns as an action" And in doing so not being able to actually cast good concentration spells like web, slow, haste, fear, invisibility...
Just not worth it, another thing i just noticed while reading this spell, since it's voice and somatic, but not material, unless you have warcaster you need a free hand to cast it, as much as warcaster may be worth it a good half of the time resilient con suffices but this is a minor thing compared to the rest, it's a minor thing exclusively because you're getting one of the two feats regardless, otherwise i'd be pretty upset about the fact that a spell requires a feat in order to be used.
I don't really like shadow blade either honestly, it is a much better spell imo, but even then, especially as you move on, the concentration spells simply become more and more powerful, and i don't really like picking up spells that i just won't use later on, stuff like web or slow will still come in handy later on.
It says "creature", so it wouldn't work on constructs, or animated objects..
What dose this do during grappling?
i think this spell is way more suitable for the artificer alchemist's subclass spell list than gaseous form is
@Gonnagetch11 -- Rules as written, those are both "creatures."
Bladesinger says hello.
If you have "Bladesong" on...this could be a nifty way to heal yourself in a pinch. Nice.
Not just RAW, this is actually in Sage Advice: Are constructs really considered creatures?
You're not linked with your target and concentrating on them, you're concentrating on making your hand's touch drain life energy. The spell by no means states it has to be used on the same target, just that you do the same attack it listed earlier, which is "make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach." You don't even need to keep doing it to the same creature while it's still alive, you can switch off if you really want, and you can choose to do something else instead of drain for your action and it wont fall off.
Assuming you're replying to the question about being used by a familiar, that's not the requirements. The requirement is that the spell has a range of Touch, this has a range of Self because you're altering your own body to make your regular touch sap the life out of things automatically, it's just a "melee spell attack" so you can add your modifier. A similar spell for comparison is Primal Savagery, you alter your teeth and fingernails and it lets you make a melee spell attack. This wouldn't make sense for your familiar to deliver because you're not altering your familiar, nor can your familiar make attacks, it simply acts as the conduit for your touch spells. Shocking Grasp, on the other hand, is a Touch range spell because you're emitting the energy of the spell towards a target.
3D6 is not a lot of damage for a basic attack. 3D6 is an average of 10.5 damage per attack (the average roll of a D6 is 3.5). Attacking with Fire Bolt at levels 5-10 will cause 2D10 damage, which is an average of 11 damage per attack (the average roll of a D10 is 5.5). Since you have to be level 5 to cast Vampiric Touch, it will not deal more damage on average than a cantrip. Even worse, it is concentration and it requires you to be in melee range of your target.
But it provides self healing, and self healing is something very hard to find for Wizards. Still, I don't think this spell is worth it.
This spell gives a huge amount of self healing for a Necromancy Wizard that is able to get a killing blow with this spell - you get 9 HP for every killing blow that you deal with this spell on top of the 5 or so HP that you would heal up from dealing about 10.5 average damage. If you're not a Necromancy Wizard facing a large number of enemies, I don't think this spell is ever worth using.
How would this spell work in the case of a hexblade warlock that uses his glaive as a focus? Would the attack have the glaive's reach? It does say "Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach."
If you can legally channel touch attacks through the glaive, then you can channel the necrotic energy from your hands through the glaive as well.
It's up to your DM to decide if you get to make a full attack with the weapon and then apply the spell effect or if you only get to use the glaive for the extended reach.
May I ask why you shouldn’t be able to drain Hit Points from undead?
No reason you can't; it even thematically makes sense. Undead are kept in their state of "undeath" by necromantic magical energy. Instead of thinking of Vampiric Touch as siphoning the life force of that zombie, think of it as restoring your life force with this energy.
That said, several mid- to high-tier undead creatures have resistance to necrotic damage, meaning less damage dealt via the spell, meaning less healing gained from it.
Also, no one seems to have mentioned (in my brief summary of the comments) the fact that Vampiric Touch, while not a fantastic amount of damage on its own, can crit.
In any case, this spell works so much better for clerics than wizards!
Can you use it with the extra attack skill form Fighters?
Casting word is:
Malificus Absorbium
Necromancy is a “facsimile” of life, as referenced by the False Life spell, and therefore the necrotic energy that powers undead can be siphoned by Vampiric Touch. Constructs I would imagine are power by a fuel source- which is usually a biological or magical fuel source. Given that magic can create life in DnD, and that living things can produce a limited amount of magic that returns after resting with spell slots and cantrips, you could argue that life and magic are both a type of “life-force”
So, if a Death Cleric uses Touch of Death with this, do they get extra hit points because of it?
This just reminds me of the way Jojo Vampires drink blood.
Just stab a ***** with your hand and then drink the life through the holes.
This is cool!
it does say "Life Force" imo constructs dont have Life force/ energy. they are animated through arcane magics/energy and that is the defining factor.
but imo this should be considered as an evil spell due to it stealing the Life energy of another creature.