D&D 5E A healer that drains from surroundings?

We have a player that is looking for a twist on a healer. When he heals someone he wants some of the energy to come from the life around him. Like if there was a spider on the wall it would shrivel up.

At first I thought we could just flavor a normal cleric that way. Every time he heals, some inconsequential life has it's life force sucked out. Insects, plants, microbes, etc. Except then he mentions someone could sacrifice some of their life force for him to take and heal an ally. And maybe at higher levels he could pull some of the life force from enemies.

In the case of pulling from allies and enemies he wasn't saying actual damage, except for very high level stuff possibly. So maybe some sort of debuff.

Has anyone come across any homebrew that does something like this? I searched around DMsGuild.com but couldn't find anything, not that I'm able to look at every single product, especially ones that say "15 new archetypes!".

If I can't find something someone has already come up with I was thinking maybe sticking with the standard Cleric class, but then depending on the strength of the healing there would be a small negative effect to the surroundings or enemy and then a small decrease in the healing total. In the case of effecting enemies I would say they can save to resist/negate the debuff/damage.

For negative effects maybe decreasing the enemies speed that round by 5 or 10 feet? Doing a point of damage? 1d4 damage?

And then for healing I was thinking maybe decreasing the healing die used by one step. Or maybe that's too much.

He just popped this idea on me last night but was super excited about it, so hopefully some people here have some good ideas.

Take a look at the world of Athas in the Dark Sun campaign setting. In that setting, arcane magic drains life from the surrounding area while other magic does not.

Sure, you can do that. In D&D I'm pretty sure that's called a "necromancer." hahaha.

I would use the Sorcerer. Make them a Wisdom caster instead of Cha. Make the healing/draining effect dependent on Spell Points. Grant a d6 (+Wis mod, maybe?) of healing for each point spent. Whatever that roll is, however much is healed, they must account for...let's say Half, rounded down, of those HP from the surrounding "life."

I might be inclined to permit the first d6 just on ambient surroundings. Kills all vegetation and (normal) insect life in a 10' radius...assuming there is some. Makes healing underground or in caverns a little tricky because, not a whole lot of vegetation to draw from...so you have to start siphoning off HP from friends *and or foes that are captures to "fuel" your healing).

Something like that.

Maybe a Divine soul. Mix healing magic from the Cleric list with necromancy spells from the Sorceror.

Isn't there a spell in XGtE that directly transfers HP? As in you lose xd6 HP and your target gains them?
You could also flavour spells like Warding bond as transferring life force as well.

Tormyr said:

Take a look at the world of Athas in the Dark Sun campaign setting. In that setting, arcane magic drains life from the surrounding area while other magic does not.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I was going to suggest. I think you can find some good inspiration here.