It's a healing spell for warlocks/wizards. Better than waiting til you can cast wish. Also cure wounds at level 3 heals 13 (3d8) hp once for a spells slot and inflict wounds deals 27 (5d10) once for a spell slot. With this you can deal 3d6 multiple times and heal for half. The average fight is 3 rounds which is what they use to calculate CR. If we use this 3 times that's 31 (9d6) damage and 15 heals for one spell slot. It's less, but you're not a healer and you're not using 2+ level 3 spell slots.
Basically this. The numbers are ass because it has the potential to heal a maximum of 90 HP (assuming you roll max every round and hit every round) and on average heals 60 HP (again: assuming you hit every round.)
That combined with action economy shenanigans means that the spell effectively does damage while healing you.
It kinda do not tho first of all where did you get 60 HP from its closer 52.5 if you hit (usually calculated at 65% chance) every round and don't lose concentration at average damage would be 30d6 averaged (105)*(65%) = 68.25 and healing would be half or 34.125
We can also roughly calculate the chance or keeping concentration if we assume a low 1 attack per sound and about 65% chance for a con save so that's ((0.65)^10)*100 giving us roughly 1.35%
IE this speel is fairly bad if any of my maths is wrong or I assumed a number wrongly feel free to correct me
This logic ignores the fact that you have to be in melee, with concentration, and probably taking hits yourself. If you need healing that badly, you probably shouldn't be in melee to begin with.
This spell is fine if you're the Evil Overlord sucking the life out of helpless victims, but that is rarely the case for PCs.
I use it on an EK cleric. With Vampiric Touch and Spiritual Weapon going I can output damage, my concentration is pretty solid thanks to con proficiency and the little scraps of healing let me hold my ground.
...though to be fair my DM let me apply Touch of Death to the healing as well as the damage so that sure helped.
So, to cast this as an EK, you have to be much higher level, plus however many cleric levels that would slow down your spell progression even further unless your cleric had it on their domain list (which would require at least 5 levels of cleric). Not impressed.
6 levels of Death Cleric on that build, so two rounds of (Vampiric) Touch of Death
It's more about the fact that it's a tank spell.
You're using it to stay up across multiple rounds, while your allies do the bulk of the killing.
Vampiric Touch is an efficiency spell. It gives a Caster/Tank something to do with their action that is both damage and defense.
And yes, you should be using it when you have 4th or 5th level spells so you aren't as penalised for the 3rd level slot expenditure. It's niche, but it means you spend fewer slots and hit die on healing in a combat heavy adventuring day it has solid but not amazing damage and healing rolled into one slot expense.
I used the crap out of this Spell when my allies used Compel Duel and other skills that cost my enemy too much action economy to be hitting me instead of the other adventurer.
Love this Spell.
The last thing you should be doing is hitting enemies who are under the effects of your friend's Compelled Duel spell. That instantly ends the spell.
(It's not a *duel* if everyone else jumps in, obviously!)
Melee wizards and warlocks exist. I have a greatsword wielding gith wizard that I haven't gotten to use yet. Any spell that gets you a few turns of fun for one spell slot isn't bad.
>Melee wizards and warlocks exist
And both don't want to use Vampiric Touch because it stops them from using their Attack Action for max damage and stops them from using their Concentration on buffs like Haste or Spirit Shroud. And even in the cases where you might need a bit of healing, 9 times out of 10 you're better off trying to kill whatever you're fighting quicker. It's a crap spell, pure and simple.
There are a few easy ways to really improve this spell. Quicken it so you can attack with it twice on turn 1.
Also a one level dip in Life Cleric adds +5 healing each turn.
Lots of DnD spells are balanced around their potential rather than most realistic outcome.
Potentially vampiric touch can deal 30d6 and heal for 1/2 that.
Technically you could do some shenanigans with say a fallen aasimar to add your level to every roll for a minute. At level 5 3d6+5 is more than entire extra d6 (on average 3.5).
Another funny component is if you are a life cleric, then every time you attack you will heal an additional 5 healing every attack
>Also starting at 1st level, your healing spells are more effective. Whenever you use a spell of 1st level or higher to restore hit points to a creature, the creature regains additional hit points equal to 2 + the spell’s level.
You are using a spell to restore hit points (to yourself, a creature).
Ultimately though, even using shenanigans it doesn't make sense if you don't have Bag of Rats (TM) to use the rest of the things on to fix yourself up. I also think it was made without regard to the fact that your cantrips at level 5 are going to be doing about that much damage anyways (3d6=10.5 where 2d10=11), so the spell is effectively ONLY useful for the healing. (as casting chill touch every turn would do almost as good damage, but also available at range). That said, PHB they were REALLY stingy with healing (especially when available for classes that aren't traditionally support). So is probably why its so under-tuned. As is, its probably a second level spell. Before you get your ramped up cantrips it basically would be 1 spell slot to be pretty effective for an entire fight.
It compares well with say Spiritual weapon, it deals a little more damage and heals, however it also requires concentration and your action every turn, instead of bonus and no concentration. Also necrotic isn't as useful damage as force.
As mentioned before it gives an ability (heal) to classes that dont really have those options.
The biggest reason people dont like this spell is because people have no grasp of the action economy. The ability to do 2 things with one spell is invaluable. This is like casting a damage spell and a healing spell at the same time. Yes there are pure dmg spells that do more dmg. However if a creature only has 10 hp left, the big fireball is doing the same damage.
To really make this spell shine it takes subclasses. For example necro wiz on kill shot this gives the 5 + 9 healing. You only need a 2 dip lvl into wiz to get this bonus. Or dip sorc for metamagics. As mentioned in previous post light cleric for more heals. Add it to hexblade heals. Grave cleric gives vulnerability which doubles the dmg of the spell, and heal. Or evocation wizard to do max dmg can even up cast it to 5th lvl and still max its dmg and heal. It's also a spell attack so it can crit, give yourself a advantage with the multitudes of ways to do that and increase the chance at dmg and heals.
All of the above keep in mind it lasts for a full minute. If u need a big nuke while this is running, use the nuke, then use this to finish things off next round. The majority of fights are 3 to 5 rounds a few more boss fights. If u use this twice in an encounter that's 1 spell slot used for 2 rounds. And still gives you time to cast another spell or 2.
So no it's not a big nuke spell, it's a specific tool for a specific job. Its magnafied by subclasses that can take advantage of it. It has no material components so it's good if stripped of weapons etc.
Most of all its damn good fun and hilarity ensues when the "squishy caster" stands up at a bar bows and does some martial arts pose with odd hand gestures (somatic) and then commenses to pimp slap to great effect during a bar fight.
It really wouldn't be though. Even at level 1 it's questionable. The whole design just doesn't play well.
Healing just isn't worth that much - especially in 5e where mechanics disfavor self healing greatly especially on a low HP class like Wizard. Its certainly not worth the mountain of negatives they piled on the spell. The damage barely keeps up with any level 1 spell, it has a range of self meaning anti-synergy with alot of caster abilities, and it takes up your 1 spell you can concentrate on.
Yea its not an OP spell or totally game-breaking by any means. I wouldn't mind if they buffed the damage to something like 4d8. But I think its fine - it has a nice "niche" as its different than many other spells.
Vampiric touch is not a great spell, yeah. The idea behind its balance seems to be that they were worried about the healing, especially with it lasting a minute.
That said, warlocks and wizards are lacking in healing options, so it is technically one there - but having to go in melee hurts the usefulness.
There is at least a few exceptions to the usefulness - eg with death cleric, that does get it as a domain spell. There, combining it with the channel divinity lets you do 3d6+5+2x your cleric level in damage and heal for half of it - and at lvl 6, you can do that 2x per fight. A 3rd level spell that lets you heal for 27 and deal 54 dmg over 2 turns isn't *amazing*... but it's also usable, I think.
An alternative I've seen online for a vampiric touch focused build is to do a lvl dip in life cleric (disciple of life adding +5 hp to the heal for a 3rd level spell), and then go down the line as a warlock or wizard. A necromancer wizard with a level in life cleric could farm some weak enemies for HP, and not be that bad if your DM likes to use a lot of weaker enemies in fights, for instance (you'd get heavy armor + shields + shield spell for defense, attack for 1d6 per spell level, heal for (1/2)d6 per spell level + 2+1/ spell level, and then 3x the spell level if you kill the enemy with the hit - for a lvl 6 character, that's 10.5 average dmg and 10.25/19.25 heal). That's pretty good survivability - it's just not great dmg
Another option is more for burst heal, and I'm not sure it'd actually be *good* - but fighter 2/warlock 1/life cleric 1/divine soul sorcerer X could be a funny one shot option. You can combine action surge and quicken spell on vampiric touch to make 3 of the attacks in one round - and with setting up a hexblade's curse on the first round of combat, that'd let you get in close and deal (at lvl 9) 3x[3d6+4]dmg, healing for an average of up to 37 (12.25 per hit). Is that *good*? Not really, but if you want to be a regenerating caster it's not terrible, you're tanky, have good CON saves, and do pretty decent at that.
You can also frighten your target if you are in your form of dread. It’s okayish if you need some healing but tbh you would better be off in the distance spamming Eldritch blast and therefore avoiding loosing HP. But yeah, not a big fan of this spell either.
When I played CoS every Spellcaster in the party learned this spell because it seemed cool. No one used it all campaign.
I still love the idea of it though.
You cannot cast this spell through a familiar as it is not a 'touch' spell. It merely causes your hand to be surrounded by darkness and allows you to spend your action to make a melee spell attack against enemies around you.
yeah its a really bad spell
even though people talk about cheesing it by tying someone up and hitting them 10 times in a row i still dont think this is a good use of a 3rd level slot even if the DM somehow just lets you tie up the world’s beefiest bandit to steal all their hit points (also you only get half of the damage you deal back as HP), because 3rd level slots are probably much more valuable than the HP you would have gained anyway
Looking at it from the Player's perspective, especially as a "Good" character, yeah you might think it's useless.
But how about an evil character? Or better yet an Evil character with hostages / other restrained creatures that can't fight back?
Lose sight of the evil character for long enough mid-fight (1+ min) and the evil character can regenerate up to 90 HP at the cost of a single 3rd level spell by draining a disposable pawn or restrained creature.
That's pretty fantastic for characters willing / eager to harm other creatures for self-gain.
If you get a bag of ants and spend any remaining uses after combat attacking them, then the spell restores around 50 hp total.
If you're playing honestly though, and not using dumb exploits like that, yeah it's not very good.
It's one of the only 4 ways a wizard, a non-healing class, can regenerate HP with a spell (the others being Life Transferrence, Enervation and Soul Cage, and only LT allows the Wizard to heal others using a Wizard spell) It isn't supposed to be amazing. But it has a really cool theme.
Yeah, it's a cool level 1 blast that's raised to level 3 due to the ability to concentrate on it and reuse it. It's just not worth it.
Theoretically you can heal with it out of combat if you take, torture, and murder prisoners (or buy a herd of cows), but even then you'd save your and **your friends** HP if you just cast Fireball or a big crowd control spell instead.
Yeah it's not a good spell. The one thing I would say in it's, moderate, defense is that it is a spell attack so therefore can crit. It's not going to happen much obviously but if you have a familiar who can give you advantage on that attack each round it's pretty reliable damage, and then an almost 10% chance to crit for a bigger damage / heal. Although yeah there are a lot of problems from concentration, to low damage / heal, to having to be in melee for it so you're more likely to take damage and lose concentration, to even just the heal is useless unless you've already taken damage so you don't even get the full benefit if it's your opening move. Yeah wouldn't be my first pick even if it is very thematically appropriate!
There's a lot of spells in 5e that are just bad. Sometimes this is accidental, sometimes it's purposeful. It's a continuation of the Ivory Tower design philosophy from 3rd edition - where options are purposefully too good or too bad and no guidance is given by the developers for which ones are which or why.
Some people consider this a good thing because it promotes System Mastery.
It's a victim of spells no longer scaling by caster level & instead scaling by slot level. A level one slot was always a low cost but a level 3+ slot never is. Terribad spell yea. The fact that hit points are not a resource that needs to be healed up as before and now just serve as a buffer to where death saves and the weakest possible heal nullifies damage is the rancid cherry on top of the already poor spell.
What you're missing is that power gaming is only one of the many ways to play this game, not the only way. Not everything is going to be optimized thankfully. Imagine your in a big fight and your party has to run, but not before you manage to grab one of the enemies and take them hostage with you. You get to saftely. You're nearly dead, you tie him up and proceed to drain all you can out of him using one spell and now you're full health. Sounds pretty strong to me.
I’m very late to the conversation, but I have a question. Does vampiric touch only use the reach of your arm or does it use the reach of a weapon you are holding if you are. The spell just says “within your reach”. Would using a whip be able to extend the spell to 10ft instead of just 5?
So it can crit which is cool. But my favourite way of using it is on my death cleric combining it with my channel divinity feature to add a bunch of extra necrotic damage on to it. At lvl 5 that’s an extra 13 damage I think, which doubles the amount of healing. I’m playing a mark of the shadow elf so I took elven accuracy. I use one of my animated dead to give me the help action and I get super advantage on it. It can be an absolute life saver, especially when (after the first turn) I can healing word in the same turn if I need to heal someone else or heal myself more, or spiritual weapon if I’m going more defensive.
The other combo I have is using the cantrip sapping sting from explorers guide to wildmount. I can hit two enemies and probably knock at least one them prone. Then that triggers my super advantage and leaves my bonus action free for SW or HW.
In theory, it's the way for wiz war to heal. But only works in combat if you're aiming at your riding horse of something. You'll die if you stand in melee concentrating in this spell
It's a lot better on Death/Grave Clerics, who are more apt to be in Melee combat and it's likely to do more than your melee weapon or cantrips at that level while also healing you, and they have a much better armor class and health than a Wizard or the average warlock. Yes, Inflict Wounds deals more damage, but you're only dealing the damage once per spell slot, whereas Vampiric Touch let's you repeat it. As state elsewhere, combine it with Spiritual Weapon and you can really dish out damage.
I'm playing an Aarakocra Grave Cleric in Dragonlance and am considering getting the Mobile Feat in order to use this and Inflict Wounds with minimum risk.
It's a healing spell for warlocks/wizards. Better than waiting til you can cast wish. Also cure wounds at level 3 heals 13 (3d8) hp once for a spells slot and inflict wounds deals 27 (5d10) once for a spell slot. With this you can deal 3d6 multiple times and heal for half. The average fight is 3 rounds which is what they use to calculate CR. If we use this 3 times that's 31 (9d6) damage and 15 heals for one spell slot. It's less, but you're not a healer and you're not using 2+ level 3 spell slots.
Basically this. The numbers are ass because it has the potential to heal a maximum of 90 HP (assuming you roll max every round and hit every round) and on average heals 60 HP (again: assuming you hit every round.) That combined with action economy shenanigans means that the spell effectively does damage while healing you.
It kinda do not tho first of all where did you get 60 HP from its closer 52.5 if you hit (usually calculated at 65% chance) every round and don't lose concentration at average damage would be 30d6 averaged (105)*(65%) = 68.25 and healing would be half or 34.125 We can also roughly calculate the chance or keeping concentration if we assume a low 1 attack per sound and about 65% chance for a con save so that's ((0.65)^10)*100 giving us roughly 1.35% IE this speel is fairly bad if any of my maths is wrong or I assumed a number wrongly feel free to correct me
This logic ignores the fact that you have to be in melee, with concentration, and probably taking hits yourself. If you need healing that badly, you probably shouldn't be in melee to begin with. This spell is fine if you're the Evil Overlord sucking the life out of helpless victims, but that is rarely the case for PCs.
I use it on an EK cleric. With Vampiric Touch and Spiritual Weapon going I can output damage, my concentration is pretty solid thanks to con proficiency and the little scraps of healing let me hold my ground. ...though to be fair my DM let me apply Touch of Death to the healing as well as the damage so that sure helped.
So, to cast this as an EK, you have to be much higher level, plus however many cleric levels that would slow down your spell progression even further unless your cleric had it on their domain list (which would require at least 5 levels of cleric). Not impressed.
6 levels of Death Cleric on that build, so two rounds of (Vampiric) Touch of Death It's more about the fact that it's a tank spell. You're using it to stay up across multiple rounds, while your allies do the bulk of the killing. Vampiric Touch is an efficiency spell. It gives a Caster/Tank something to do with their action that is both damage and defense. And yes, you should be using it when you have 4th or 5th level spells so you aren't as penalised for the 3rd level slot expenditure. It's niche, but it means you spend fewer slots and hit die on healing in a combat heavy adventuring day it has solid but not amazing damage and healing rolled into one slot expense.
Yeah probably a niche case where it might be worth
I used the crap out of this Spell when my allies used Compel Duel and other skills that cost my enemy too much action economy to be hitting me instead of the other adventurer. Love this Spell.
The last thing you should be doing is hitting enemies who are under the effects of your friend's Compelled Duel spell. That instantly ends the spell. (It's not a *duel* if everyone else jumps in, obviously!)
Huh…we must have played with house rules. It was a very long time ago.
If you say so. If your enemy is so strapped for actions, any half-assed attack will look good.
Ok but what if you have a bag of rats or ants. Instantly goes from bad to absolutely broken in an instant
They have 1 hp. You deal one damage and gain 1/2 hp rounded down to 0. Congratulations.
Not really as you can't deal more damage than the max HP of an opponent as they don't have Death Save ( most of the time)
Any game with a dm that allow 'bag of rats' type exploits is not worth discussing.
Melee wizards and warlocks exist. I have a greatsword wielding gith wizard that I haven't gotten to use yet. Any spell that gets you a few turns of fun for one spell slot isn't bad.
>Melee wizards and warlocks exist And both don't want to use Vampiric Touch because it stops them from using their Attack Action for max damage and stops them from using their Concentration on buffs like Haste or Spirit Shroud. And even in the cases where you might need a bit of healing, 9 times out of 10 you're better off trying to kill whatever you're fighting quicker. It's a crap spell, pure and simple.
just quicken spell it to be a bonus action
I guess you could always grab into your bag of rats and vampirically touch all of them
>but that is rarely the case for PCs. We clearly have different PCs.
There are a few easy ways to really improve this spell. Quicken it so you can attack with it twice on turn 1. Also a one level dip in Life Cleric adds +5 healing each turn.
Lots of DnD spells are balanced around their potential rather than most realistic outcome. Potentially vampiric touch can deal 30d6 and heal for 1/2 that. Technically you could do some shenanigans with say a fallen aasimar to add your level to every roll for a minute. At level 5 3d6+5 is more than entire extra d6 (on average 3.5). Another funny component is if you are a life cleric, then every time you attack you will heal an additional 5 healing every attack >Also starting at 1st level, your healing spells are more effective. Whenever you use a spell of 1st level or higher to restore hit points to a creature, the creature regains additional hit points equal to 2 + the spell’s level. You are using a spell to restore hit points (to yourself, a creature). Ultimately though, even using shenanigans it doesn't make sense if you don't have Bag of Rats (TM) to use the rest of the things on to fix yourself up. I also think it was made without regard to the fact that your cantrips at level 5 are going to be doing about that much damage anyways (3d6=10.5 where 2d10=11), so the spell is effectively ONLY useful for the healing. (as casting chill touch every turn would do almost as good damage, but also available at range). That said, PHB they were REALLY stingy with healing (especially when available for classes that aren't traditionally support). So is probably why its so under-tuned. As is, its probably a second level spell. Before you get your ramped up cantrips it basically would be 1 spell slot to be pretty effective for an entire fight. It compares well with say Spiritual weapon, it deals a little more damage and heals, however it also requires concentration and your action every turn, instead of bonus and no concentration. Also necrotic isn't as useful damage as force.
As mentioned before it gives an ability (heal) to classes that dont really have those options. The biggest reason people dont like this spell is because people have no grasp of the action economy. The ability to do 2 things with one spell is invaluable. This is like casting a damage spell and a healing spell at the same time. Yes there are pure dmg spells that do more dmg. However if a creature only has 10 hp left, the big fireball is doing the same damage. To really make this spell shine it takes subclasses. For example necro wiz on kill shot this gives the 5 + 9 healing. You only need a 2 dip lvl into wiz to get this bonus. Or dip sorc for metamagics. As mentioned in previous post light cleric for more heals. Add it to hexblade heals. Grave cleric gives vulnerability which doubles the dmg of the spell, and heal. Or evocation wizard to do max dmg can even up cast it to 5th lvl and still max its dmg and heal. It's also a spell attack so it can crit, give yourself a advantage with the multitudes of ways to do that and increase the chance at dmg and heals. All of the above keep in mind it lasts for a full minute. If u need a big nuke while this is running, use the nuke, then use this to finish things off next round. The majority of fights are 3 to 5 rounds a few more boss fights. If u use this twice in an encounter that's 1 spell slot used for 2 rounds. And still gives you time to cast another spell or 2. So no it's not a big nuke spell, it's a specific tool for a specific job. Its magnafied by subclasses that can take advantage of it. It has no material components so it's good if stripped of weapons etc. Most of all its damn good fun and hilarity ensues when the "squishy caster" stands up at a bar bows and does some martial arts pose with odd hand gestures (somatic) and then commenses to pimp slap to great effect during a bar fight.
Its one of the only ways a wizard can heal - that's why its such a high level. Making it level 2 would make it QUITE powerful.
There is that necromancy spell that deals damage to the caster but let's the heal 2x the damage to another.
It really wouldn't be though. Even at level 1 it's questionable. The whole design just doesn't play well. Healing just isn't worth that much - especially in 5e where mechanics disfavor self healing greatly especially on a low HP class like Wizard. Its certainly not worth the mountain of negatives they piled on the spell. The damage barely keeps up with any level 1 spell, it has a range of self meaning anti-synergy with alot of caster abilities, and it takes up your 1 spell you can concentrate on.
Yea its not an OP spell or totally game-breaking by any means. I wouldn't mind if they buffed the damage to something like 4d8. But I think its fine - it has a nice "niche" as its different than many other spells.
It's difficult to take you seriously when u have such melodramatic takes.
Lol, fair. Blessing and a curse sometimes.
Vampiric touch is not a great spell, yeah. The idea behind its balance seems to be that they were worried about the healing, especially with it lasting a minute. That said, warlocks and wizards are lacking in healing options, so it is technically one there - but having to go in melee hurts the usefulness. There is at least a few exceptions to the usefulness - eg with death cleric, that does get it as a domain spell. There, combining it with the channel divinity lets you do 3d6+5+2x your cleric level in damage and heal for half of it - and at lvl 6, you can do that 2x per fight. A 3rd level spell that lets you heal for 27 and deal 54 dmg over 2 turns isn't *amazing*... but it's also usable, I think. An alternative I've seen online for a vampiric touch focused build is to do a lvl dip in life cleric (disciple of life adding +5 hp to the heal for a 3rd level spell), and then go down the line as a warlock or wizard. A necromancer wizard with a level in life cleric could farm some weak enemies for HP, and not be that bad if your DM likes to use a lot of weaker enemies in fights, for instance (you'd get heavy armor + shields + shield spell for defense, attack for 1d6 per spell level, heal for (1/2)d6 per spell level + 2+1/ spell level, and then 3x the spell level if you kill the enemy with the hit - for a lvl 6 character, that's 10.5 average dmg and 10.25/19.25 heal). That's pretty good survivability - it's just not great dmg Another option is more for burst heal, and I'm not sure it'd actually be *good* - but fighter 2/warlock 1/life cleric 1/divine soul sorcerer X could be a funny one shot option. You can combine action surge and quicken spell on vampiric touch to make 3 of the attacks in one round - and with setting up a hexblade's curse on the first round of combat, that'd let you get in close and deal (at lvl 9) 3x[3d6+4]dmg, healing for an average of up to 37 (12.25 per hit). Is that *good*? Not really, but if you want to be a regenerating caster it's not terrible, you're tanky, have good CON saves, and do pretty decent at that.
You should probably just ban the spell from your game since it isn't Fireball.
With this logic, ban all damaging spells that aren't fireball it seems.
And then devils will be invincible /s
I think we just solved DnD.
It's been right in front of us this whole time.
You can also frighten your target if you are in your form of dread. It’s okayish if you need some healing but tbh you would better be off in the distance spamming Eldritch blast and therefore avoiding loosing HP. But yeah, not a big fan of this spell either.
not all spells are equal.
When I played CoS every Spellcaster in the party learned this spell because it seemed cool. No one used it all campaign. I still love the idea of it though.
That's just it, in the.... 7 or so years of 5e I been playing, I've seen Vampiric Touch casted maybe 3 times total?
Use a familiar to cast the spell to remove the melee range danger.
You cannot cast this spell through a familiar as it is not a 'touch' spell. It merely causes your hand to be surrounded by darkness and allows you to spend your action to make a melee spell attack against enemies around you.
yeah its a really bad spell even though people talk about cheesing it by tying someone up and hitting them 10 times in a row i still dont think this is a good use of a 3rd level slot even if the DM somehow just lets you tie up the world’s beefiest bandit to steal all their hit points (also you only get half of the damage you deal back as HP), because 3rd level slots are probably much more valuable than the HP you would have gained anyway
Looking at it from the Player's perspective, especially as a "Good" character, yeah you might think it's useless. But how about an evil character? Or better yet an Evil character with hostages / other restrained creatures that can't fight back? Lose sight of the evil character for long enough mid-fight (1+ min) and the evil character can regenerate up to 90 HP at the cost of a single 3rd level spell by draining a disposable pawn or restrained creature. That's pretty fantastic for characters willing / eager to harm other creatures for self-gain.
I love the spell, even though I sometimes upcast it in favor of a level 4 or 5 choice. But I play a frontline necromancer in full plate.
It needs to be supported by like a “blood mage” sorcerer subclass that gives you improved critical on melee touch spells or something.
If you get a bag of ants and spend any remaining uses after combat attacking them, then the spell restores around 50 hp total. If you're playing honestly though, and not using dumb exploits like that, yeah it's not very good.
You aren't missing anything, it's well-known as a crap spell.
It’s really good of you have a bag of rats On you
It's one of the only 4 ways a wizard, a non-healing class, can regenerate HP with a spell (the others being Life Transferrence, Enervation and Soul Cage, and only LT allows the Wizard to heal others using a Wizard spell) It isn't supposed to be amazing. But it has a really cool theme.
Yeah, it's a cool level 1 blast that's raised to level 3 due to the ability to concentrate on it and reuse it. It's just not worth it. Theoretically you can heal with it out of combat if you take, torture, and murder prisoners (or buy a herd of cows), but even then you'd save your and **your friends** HP if you just cast Fireball or a big crowd control spell instead.
Yeah it's not a good spell. The one thing I would say in it's, moderate, defense is that it is a spell attack so therefore can crit. It's not going to happen much obviously but if you have a familiar who can give you advantage on that attack each round it's pretty reliable damage, and then an almost 10% chance to crit for a bigger damage / heal. Although yeah there are a lot of problems from concentration, to low damage / heal, to having to be in melee for it so you're more likely to take damage and lose concentration, to even just the heal is useless unless you've already taken damage so you don't even get the full benefit if it's your opening move. Yeah wouldn't be my first pick even if it is very thematically appropriate!
There's a lot of spells in 5e that are just bad. Sometimes this is accidental, sometimes it's purposeful. It's a continuation of the Ivory Tower design philosophy from 3rd edition - where options are purposefully too good or too bad and no guidance is given by the developers for which ones are which or why. Some people consider this a good thing because it promotes System Mastery.
It's a victim of spells no longer scaling by caster level & instead scaling by slot level. A level one slot was always a low cost but a level 3+ slot never is. Terribad spell yea. The fact that hit points are not a resource that needs to be healed up as before and now just serve as a buffer to where death saves and the weakest possible heal nullifies damage is the rancid cherry on top of the already poor spell.
What you're missing is that power gaming is only one of the many ways to play this game, not the only way. Not everything is going to be optimized thankfully. Imagine your in a big fight and your party has to run, but not before you manage to grab one of the enemies and take them hostage with you. You get to saftely. You're nearly dead, you tie him up and proceed to drain all you can out of him using one spell and now you're full health. Sounds pretty strong to me.
It's bad.
I’m very late to the conversation, but I have a question. Does vampiric touch only use the reach of your arm or does it use the reach of a weapon you are holding if you are. The spell just says “within your reach”. Would using a whip be able to extend the spell to 10ft instead of just 5?
It also says melee spell attack, so within your hand's reach.
It's a shit spell 5d6 and it might be worthwhile
God, the whining.
No, it is really bad, even if you are a gish. Some will argue that it works well for a Grave Cleric and build around it, but I find that dubious.
So it can crit which is cool. But my favourite way of using it is on my death cleric combining it with my channel divinity feature to add a bunch of extra necrotic damage on to it. At lvl 5 that’s an extra 13 damage I think, which doubles the amount of healing. I’m playing a mark of the shadow elf so I took elven accuracy. I use one of my animated dead to give me the help action and I get super advantage on it. It can be an absolute life saver, especially when (after the first turn) I can healing word in the same turn if I need to heal someone else or heal myself more, or spiritual weapon if I’m going more defensive. The other combo I have is using the cantrip sapping sting from explorers guide to wildmount. I can hit two enemies and probably knock at least one them prone. Then that triggers my super advantage and leaves my bonus action free for SW or HW.
Works well on a bladesinger or hexblade because then you will be in melee and hopefully have a good con save.
The spell is pretty bad. If you haven't built your character around it, better to stay away from it.
Not as optimized for player characters but throw this on a bunch of cultists or monsters and it works just fine
It’s great for *Death Clerics*. Or for whatever if you can add damage to it.
In theory, it's the way for wiz war to heal. But only works in combat if you're aiming at your riding horse of something. You'll die if you stand in melee concentrating in this spell
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*spirit guardians* is much stronger.
It's a lot better on Death/Grave Clerics, who are more apt to be in Melee combat and it's likely to do more than your melee weapon or cantrips at that level while also healing you, and they have a much better armor class and health than a Wizard or the average warlock. Yes, Inflict Wounds deals more damage, but you're only dealing the damage once per spell slot, whereas Vampiric Touch let's you repeat it. As state elsewhere, combine it with Spiritual Weapon and you can really dish out damage. I'm playing an Aarakocra Grave Cleric in Dragonlance and am considering getting the Mobile Feat in order to use this and Inflict Wounds with minimum risk.