Since my polymorph meme has only garnered three downvotes so far I thought I’d offer a bit more controversial take, and see if I can manage to stir the pot a bit with this one.
You’re still dealing damage, e.g. it could kill you from the massive damage rule if you dealt enough. Vampiric touch counts how much damage you deal, not how much hp the target loses.
Vampiric touch counts how much damage you deal, not how much hp the target loses.
It’s definitely a flavor fail, but unless you houserule in a cap to damage dealt at 0 hp, (and houserules for how to handle massive damage and the rules for being dealt damage at 0 hp that would be affected,) there’s not a limit to how much hp you gain based on the hp of the target.
The touch of your shadow-wreathed hand can siphon life force from others to heal your wounds.
Doesn’t say “exclusively from others”. Without casting this spell you couldn’t do that normally.
It also says,
On a hit, the target takes 3d6 necrotic damage, and you regain hit points equal to half the amount of necrotic damage dealt.
No qualifiers about the target having to be a creature other than you. It just has to be a creature within your reach.
Also as regards:
As a DM there’s a few ways I’d consider to stop this being entirely game-breaking:
Do you also ban death ward and healing word? What about wizards who dip a level into virtually any other spellcaster or take a feat for a healing spell who can do this kind of thing without even having to make an attack roll or take necrotic damage?
You can’t “hit someone else”* because of the stipulations in contingency. RAI I’m sure they don’t want you sucking the life from your left buttcheek to close up the mortal wound in your gut, but based on what they wrote, I haven’t found a solid contradiction to this plan in the rules-as-written.
Also you can deal damage to something that is fully damaged. There’s even a specific rule for “Damage at 0 Hit Points.” under the Death Saving Throws section.
As I’ve pointed out in other comments there’s a specific rule for damage past 0 HP. It’s called “Damage at 0 Hit Points.” under the Death Saving Throws section, and it doesn’t say anything about it getting cancelled out.
I think that’s kind of a stretch. The range of the spell is explicitly “Self”, and the heal triggers off a hit dealing damage to the target.
If this kind of cherry-picking clauses worked, the Paladin “Breaking your Oath” sidebar would be meaningless. All an impenitent Paladin player needs to do is point to the first sentence of the Sacred Oath feature that says “[…] you swear the oath that binds you as a paladin forever.”
Also the fact that a redundant statement is included is not proof of anything. I’ve fielded similar arguments with someone who thought the “Casting the spell doesn’t remove it from your list of prepared spells.” clause in the Spellcasting feature of prepared casters was proof that all other methods of spellcaster deleted the spell after it was cast. Trying to explain that “A spell is a discrete magical effect, a single shaping of the magical energies” is not the same as one-time use only, the same way a sword being a discrete object doesn’t mean swinging the sword is a one time thing, is exhausting.
Oh yeah, I fully understand that so many was to do something like this are better. You’re using a 6th level spell, a 3rd level spell, a 1,500 gp component, and using up your contingent spell on this just to get back ½ of 3d10 on a hit.
This is about one of the least broken healing tricks you can do in 5e, but so many people are going out of their way picking at minutia or saying “Here’s how I’d houserule this to stop that trick” (essentially admitting it works fine without DM fiat to counteract it) without considering that life transference is infinitely better and also fails to exclude yourself a viable target for healing. Or just polymorphing yourself, or putting yourself in a resilient spherebefore you take the damage is perfectly valid, strictly better and still an utter waste of a contingency.
Just FYI though, this is what being creative with spells actually looks like. Coming up with a weird unforseen non-RAI use-case and implementing it within the bounds of the actual words of the spells. Not reading the name of the spell and saying, “I create water inside his lungs, instantly drowning him. (Pls don’t look up suffocation rulez. thx” or “I heat the metal calcium in his bones, lol.”
All that aside, it looks like my pot stirring was a bit more successful this go ‘round. If I got some people to sign up to argue with me and migrate away from that site I used to use before it became enshittified beyond human tolerance, my purpose was served.
You trigger after you take damage but before you fall unconscious, like numerous other triggers in the game. I just used the Strength Before Death example because it shows even without magic there’s enough time to squeeze a whole ass turn in between those two events.
Yeah, that’s not exclusionary, nor does it have any bearing on the two sentences necessary for the meme combo. In any other circumstance everyone would rightfully be calling BS on that kind of cherry-picking.
If someone were claiming:
“Well it specifically says favored enemy and you made friends with Bob’s Orc character last session, so you no longer have advantage to track him.”
or:
“Cavaliers also learn how to guard those in their charge from harm, […]“ You’re not the boss of this noble you’re escorting so you’re Protection reaction doesn’t work to save him.
they would be derisively ignored. And rightly so.
A statement explaining you can use the following ability for this typical use case, does not mean “THIS IS THE ONLY USE FOR THE FOLLOWING ABILITY! THIS USE AND NO OTHER!!“
Powder does the same thing, unless you have a ring or artifact that grants you polymorph control.
But, as an aside, a CR 𝓝 creature is intended to be an appropriate challenge for a party of 𝓝 level characters, not the equivalent in power to one of them. If you were to actually calculate the CR of an 𝓝 level character it’s closer to ½𝓝 like in mass polymorph.
Well, true polymorph and mass polymorph at least aren’t overpowered for their levels. Comparatively polymorph as commonly interpreted to be a “caster decides” effect, is routinely considered the best 4th level spell overall. It has better single-target save-or-suck disabling ability than banishment, it rival arcane eye in terms of scouting utility, and as emergency temporary healing or a combat buff it outperforms the 6th level Tenser’s transformation.
The only other 4th level spell that even comes close is the “caster decides” interpretation of conjure woodland beings, mostly because you get eight polymorphs for the price of one.
I mean… if you’re homebrewing a fix anyway, just make it CR up to the CR of the target or up to half their level if they don’t have a CR, to keep its power in line with other spells of that level. If the unbalanced save-or-suck is an issue at your table, give an unwilling target advantage on the save if they’re not incapacitated. Unless you rebalance other things, it’s just going to mean people won’t take/prepare polymorph as much though.
The way you can nerf it, if needed, and still keep it RAW (for those AL DMs out there) is spelled out in the meme. 😁
Either way, let your players know how you’re going to run polymorph before they design their character around certain expectations.
I personally just rules lawyer back twice as hard.
Well, technically revivify requires you to target a creature not the corpse of a creature…
Actually detect magic doesn’t exclude itself, and the passive detection is pass/fail, so unless you’re immune to divination…
Oh, the demi-lich got errata’d to have more hit dice, but they never “corrected” the default hp based on the special Undead Nature trait, so now it actually has %60 more hit points than the stat block would imply.
Sure, freedom of movement lets you escape these non-magical restraints, but you have to spend 5 feet of movement to do it and your speed is currently 0.
A fair chunk That Guy’s tricks depend on a lenient or permissive DM/cherry-picking the most favorable rules & interpretations. If you don’t shadow-patch a bunch of fixes to make things work how people expect them to the game breaks down. If they want me strictly following the rules I’m happy to oblige, but I’ve never seen a powergaming munchkin who could withstand the amount of nerfing actually playing RAW causes.
There’s a whole chapter dedicated to spellcasting rules. There’s a fair number of steps involved beyond just choosing which spell you want to cast. There’s a wide variety of reasons that might not work, especially since there no rule that allows you to change what you’re casting after you start.
If video published games publisher put out titles with gamebreaking bugs and expected the player’s computer or console to figure out what was wrong and fix them, there would be riots.
I’m always kind of amazed how many people defend WotC putting out products with so many weird problems and expecting DMs to just shadow-patch the issues and not complain about it.
It actually does say you can choose if you move, several things about when you can choose to move, and lots of stuff about when you can’t move or how much it cost you to move, or to move in certain ways, but you’re correct that (unless you’re using the Variant: Playing on a Grid) the game rules never specifically say the character moving gets to choose where they move, only how far.
Of note; certain game effects, such as the frightened condition, or the effects of spells like dissonant whispers or confusion can limit, enhance or control certain aspects of a character’s movement that might need to be wordier if a specific blanket general rule explicitly said players can choose where to move.
Also of note; The example given in the rule for using the Ready action if “you choose to move up to your speed” (emphasis mine) is “If the goblin steps next to me, I move away.” This example implies that you do at least choose which direction, at least in general, you’re moving when you choose how much to move, even if you don’t get to choose exactly where to move to.
Another noteworthy rule; Becoming Lost under the Wilderness Survival section clearly indicates a circumstance where the characters do not decide where to move, but the do determine a desired direction and a successful ability check allows them to move in that direction.
Certain exceptions apply; for instance, some means of movement such as the spell dimension door do allow to choose exactly where to move, (certain restrictions apply,) or if a creature is an independent mount is “it moves and acts as it wishes.” (Being an exception based game certain rules may contradict that creature’s wishes, such as the rule that says you can move up to your speed on your turn.)
Don’t worry. It sounds like WotC is planning to fix the issue with not enough people wanting to DM their jank by implementing AI DMs in their new VTT.
They did say before that no one at Wizards was working on AI DMs, but it’s all but officially confirmed Hasbro had a 3rd party working on it for them. That’s why you gotta keep your eye out for those little loopholes. 😲
This is from a show called Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. This is an edited clip from the 2016 version.
Edit: I put together a brief clip of a scene more representative of the tone of the show, to give people an idea of what they’re actually in for if they go looking for it.
The books are great too. Very different from the America reboot. The older British versions of the show are a lot closer to original Douglas Adams books.
Maybe your DM will have a similar view and agree that “Holistic Assassain” is a totally reasonable character archtype, and not the equivalent of “murder hobo”, at least in a spiritual sense. Good luck. 😁^👍^
The characters in the top panel are from a New Yorker cartoon. I think it’s supposed to be blushing?
I may have posted the original meme in a discord server somewhere, but I put it on imgur now so it’s available publicly. YoumaybeabletoseewhytheideaofaBBEGbardbroughtthistomind.
Edit: Found where I originally put it on imgur. Huzzah, the history is preserved.
Lorewise maruts are damn near incorruptable, but even just a rogue modron could be cool if done right. A marut is also unlikely to misinterpret the contract, but the signatories might have.
“[…] A marut enforces what is written, not what was meant by or supposed to be understood from the writing. The Kolyarut rejects contracts that contain vague, contradictory, or unenforceable terms. Beyond that, it doesn’t care whether both parties understand what they’re agreeing to.” There’s also a reason they’re called “nigh-unstoppable inevitables”.
I guess now that I think about it, a simulacrum is a construct as well, but I’d have a hard time counting one of them. Most powerful constructs tend to be golems or a colossus like the Walking Statues of Waterdeep, not independent thinkers, just powerful brute force minions.
I’ve been considering doing something with a rogue decaton. Maybe drop some rumors or hints that make it sound like a beholder amassing a construct army, only to reveal it’s a decaton with a bunch of pentadrone minons that never question why their boss has started drifting into LE territory with the orders lately.
Just found this site. (I’ve been avoiding reddit lately.) Now I’ve got an incentive to make D&D memes again. Migrating my old stuff gradually while I come up with new ideas.
Loving it so far. I haven’t had a good old fashioned dungeon crawl for quite some time. Megadungeon in 5e does throw me off occasionally, but we’re doing pretty well. Only one PC died so far, but the druid/cleric revivified him before it stuck.
We got the map from the “Headmaster”. Anything in the font for most of the room labels (Dining Hall, Library, Private Chambers, etc…) were already there.
Any rooms or halls on the far side of a secret door and any labels in a smaller font were my annotations.
So which kind of dragon is your favourite, anyways? Sapphires are my favourite Gem (although Amethysts have some epic tail going on), Bronze for Metallic, and Chromatic is a tough call, I actually really like four of them… But I’ll have to pick Green.
The RAW rules actually allow you a myriad of ways to “raise yourself from the dead”.
Clone is tailor made to raise yourself from the dead.
An Arcana Cleric can cast contingency with revivify as the contingent spell. (There’s other ways to do this but they’re either more complicated or setting specific.)
A wizard can can cast contingency with danse macabre as the contingent spell. (This’ll have a very limited duration.)
Magic jar can let you possess another creature to animate your own body if something happens to it while you’re “away”.
If you’re a humanoid, hitting yourself with a finger of death just before you’re about die can let you rise as a zombie permanently under your own control at the start of your next turn.
Make a simulacrum of yourself to raise the original you at your leisure.
Summon a planar ally to raise you if you die within an agreed upon time frame. (Probably requires bribery.)
The whole concept of liches is basically raising yourself from the dead.
Also of note; Most reanimation spells (animate dead, create undead, raise dead, etc…) are instantaneous and can’t be ended by an antimagic field or dispel magic. (The same can’t always be said for a creator’s control. The creature(s) these spells create usually don’t die/cease to be animated when the creator’s control ends either though.)
I imagine the contingency + danse macabre version, or a variant of this, is what /u/[email protected] what thinking of, since it would break with loss of concentration.
I mean, if we’re getting very strict about RAW revivify does target a creature^†^, not the corpse of a creature. (Most DMs I know don’t make you hunt them down in the afterlife, or cast animate objects on their body first, but if we’re picking at technicalities I think I’m on solid footing.)
On the philosophical note, if your corpse doesn’t have the identity “you”, there’d be no way to raise “you” “yourself”. Though your objections to clone and planar ally counting as “raising yourself” are valid, but potentially debatable. I think it mostly comes down to how you define it.
The magic jar trick doesn’t rely on getting back into your body on the same turn, but even if it did, you could just push the jar off a shelf as a free interaction and break it to end the spell and return to your body. No Action Surge required.
I’m also well aware of how antimagic fields work, and (as with all aspects of the game) that it’s DM dependent. But online discussions that attempt to account for varying DM interpretations aren’t usually constructive, since some DMs can disagree about anything. I’m basing this position on the literal rules as written, and the interpretation of this very question by the official Sage Advice Compendium.
However, many of the control effects depend on telepathy, which according to the Monster Manual, is explicitly magical. So I agree, antimagic fields could potentially suppress control with some methods of reanimation. Dispel magic is pretty nerfed in 5e though, and only spells or things that specify they’re affected by dispel magic are dispelled or suppressed.
^†^Albeit with some qualifiers, but still a creature rather than an object. Which now that I’m considering it means I think the spell qualifies on a technicality for glyph of warding as well, but the “[…] it targets the creature that triggered the glyph.” clause might cause it to fail if you’re an object at the time it’s triggered.
Cooking Up Contingency Plans (i.imgur.com)
Since my polymorph meme has only garnered three downvotes so far I thought I’d offer a bit more controversial take, and see if I can manage to stir the pot a bit with this one.
Polymorph doesn’t say what? (imgur.com)
As opposed to mass polymorph or true polymorph which both explicitly say that you choose.
Chaotic Rogue PCs be like… (Broken thumbnail 😔) (i.imgur.com)
Seeing if this works. Trying to keep bandwidth down. Migrating from old reddit stuff....
I don’t think I’ve seen a BBEG construct in a campaign. (ttrpg.network)
I saw this post and it got me thinking. (Minor edit of an old meme I don’t think I ever posted anywhere.)
We’re gonna be here a while… (ttrpg.network)
Just found this site. (I’ve been avoiding reddit lately.) Now I’ve got an incentive to make D&D memes again. Migrating my old stuff gradually while I come up with new ideas.
Who manufactures quality uniform replicas?
I am looking for a jacket I could wear to work on a casual Friday.
*Loads Thunder damage with Lawful Neutral intent*
So which kind of dragon is your favourite, anyways? Sapphires are my favourite Gem (although Amethysts have some epic tail going on), Bronze for Metallic, and Chromatic is a tough call, I actually really like four of them… But I’ll have to pick Green.
I need some other RPG systems (not really, its just for the meme) (cdn.imgchest.com)
Characters I've been banned from playing [OC] (ttrpg.network)
I guess I should post my comics here, rather than DnDMemes :)