Making Vampiric Touch More Fun

Warpiglet · Apr 10, 2018

I am playing a hexblade blade pact warlock who will ultimately have two levels of wizard.

I like the imagery of vampiric touch...a lot and particularly for this character.

How can I make it more potent?

I can use hexblade's curse and crit on 19-20; do prof bonus damage +3 with a base of 3-16 at 3rd level spell.

I would heal 1/2 of 3-16 +4 (prof), 9 for grim harvest, 5 (initial warlock level plus CHR) .

Upcasting would net more as would a crit. Are there other ways to make this more of a bread and butter attack? I would use it as less than optimal of course for imagery and coolness but would be interested in other ways of making warlock x + wizard 2 more effective in using this spell?

mellored · Apr 10, 2018

If you can knock them prone, you get advantage. Hold person allows you to auto-crit.

Though there's no easy way to do those by yourself.

Warpiglet · Apr 10, 2018

mellored said:
If you can knock them prone, you get advantage. Hold person allows you to auto-crit.

Though there's no easy way to do those by yourself.

I was thinking about casting true strike on the first round and then attacking with advantage round two...I play a half elf and am likely to take elven accuracy. I would have three chances to land a 19-20 for a crit the next round...

jaelis · Apr 10, 2018

Check out the Gift of the Ever-Living Ones invocation. But it requires Pact of the Chain.

Warpiglet · Apr 10, 2018

jaelis said:
Check out the Gift of the Ever-Living Ones invocation. But it requires Pact of the Chain.

I will do so!

I also just noticed that both true strike and vampiric touch are concentration. My plan, noted above won't work!

jaelis · Apr 10, 2018

It is hard to make true strike work

But other ways to gain advantage can be good. Grease is often overlooked

Warpiglet · Apr 10, 2018

I think that is first level wizard...may have to select that....

Dausuul · Apr 10, 2018

It's really, really hard to make vampiric touch effective. Compare it to, say, fire bolt: Vampiric touch does less damage*, has touch range instead of 120 feet, and requires concentration in melee combat. Yes, you get a thin trickle of healing, but in every other respect this is a 3rd-level spell being outperformed by a cantrip. And for the healing to be useful, you have to be taking damage, which means you're making saves to retain concentration, which means you're probably going to lose the spell in short order. It's just a really badly designed spell.

Gift of the Ever-Living Ones requires a third level in warlock to qualify (you have to have Pact of the Chain). Whether it's worth it depends on how lenient the DM is about applying GotELO to vampiric touch. The most logical interpretation is that it maximizes the dice for healing purposes but doesn't affect damage, in which case I don't think it's worth it. If you can convince your DM to let you maximize the dice for all purposes - so you're dealing 18 base damage instead of 10.5 - then it's a good investment.

You may also consider playing a sorcerer/warlock instead of a necromancer/warlock. This gives you proficiency in Con saves, which will give you a badly-needed concentration boost; lets you Quicken Spell to cast other spells while still making vampiric touch attacks, and Empower Spell to fix a low damage roll; and allows you to convert unused warlock spell slots to sorcery points**.

That's about all I can think of right now.

[SIZE=-2]*If you're able to cast vampiric touch, you're at least 5th level, so your fire bolt is dealing 2d10, which averages 11. Vampiric touch deals 3d6, averaging 10.5.

**I'm not proposing that you build a "coffeelock," which is a super cheesy warlock/sorcerer build that abuses various loopholes to get infinite spell slots. But even without that, the synergy is worth having.[/SIZE]

Warpiglet · Apr 10, 2018

Dausuul said:
It's really, really hard to make vampiric touch effective. Compare it to, say, fire bolt: Vampiric touch does less damage*, has touch range instead of 120 feet, and requires concentration in melee combat. Yes, you get a thin trickle of healing, but in every other respect this is a 3rd-level spell being outperformed by a cantrip. And for the healing to be useful, you have to be taking damage, which means you're making saves to retain concentration, which means you're probably going to lose the spell in short order. It's just a really badly designed spell.

Gift of the Ever-Living Ones requires a third level in warlock to qualify (you have to have Pact of the Chain). Whether it's worth it depends on how lenient the DM is about applying GotELO to vampiric touch. The most logical interpretation is that it maximizes the dice for healing purposes but doesn't affect damage, in which case I don't think it's worth it. If you can convince your DM to let you maximize the dice for all purposes - so you're dealing 18 base damage instead of 10.5 - then it's a good investment.

You may also consider playing a sorcerer/warlock instead of a necromancer/warlock. This gives you proficiency in Con saves, which will give you a badly-needed concentration boost; lets you Quicken Spell to cast other spells while still making vampiric touch attacks, and Empower Spell to fix a low damage roll; and allows you to convert unused warlock spell slots to sorcery points**.

That's about all I can think of right now.

[SIZE=-2]*If you're able to cast vampiric touch, you're at least 5th level, so your fire bolt is dealing 2d10, which averages 11. Vampiric touch deals 3d6, averaging 10.5.

**I'm not proposing that you build a "coffeelock," which is a super cheesy warlock/sorcerer build that abuses various loopholes to get infinite spell slots. But even without that, the synergy is worth having.[/SIZE]

sadly it might simply not be worth the trouble. I like the idea of several riders on there as I mentioned above. I might do it in a niche situation.

As I noted, I would modify the pitiful base spell a little...

I can use hexblade's curse and crit on 19-20; do prof bonus damage +3 with a base of 3-16 at 3rd level spell.

I would heal 1/2 of 3-16 +4 (prof), 9 for grim harvest, 5 (initial warlock level plus CHR) .

I think this would mean an average heal of 20 per kill minus 4 for the second and succeeding kills since I would have to be a high level hexblade to move it about...

Dausuul · Apr 10, 2018

Warpiglet said:
sadly it might simply not be worth the trouble. I like the idea of several riders on there as I mentioned above. I might do it in a niche situation.

As I noted, I would modify the pitiful base spell a little...

I can use hexblade's curse and crit on 19-20; do prof bonus damage +3 with a base of 3-16 at 3rd level spell.

I would heal 1/2 of 3-16 +4 (prof), 9 for grim harvest, 5 (initial warlock level plus CHR) .

I think this would mean an average heal of 20 per kill minus 4 for the second and succeeding kills since I would have to be a high level hexblade to move it about...

(Just a note, the base damage range of vampiric touch is 3-18, not 3-16.)

The problem with the above is that it's focused on maximizing healing. But because vampiric touch grants healing instead of temp hit points, it's not useful unless you're injured. So to get 20 hit points off the first kill, you first have to take 20 points of damage! And each time you take damage, that's a Con save to maintain concentration. Fail and you lose the spell.

If you want to make vampiric touch your bread-and-butter spell... have you considered proposing some fixes to the spell itself? It's up to your DM, of course, but my suggestion would be:

Increase the base damage by 1d6.
Any healing above your maximum converts to temporary hit points, which stack with each other and last until the spell ends.
Damage which is absorbed by the temporary hit points doesn't count when making saves to maintain concentration. If the temp hit points absorb all of the damage, you don't have to make the save.

That might or might not be enough to bring the spell up to par, but it would at least make it worth trying.

Making Vampiric Touch More Fun

Warpiglet

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mellored

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Warpiglet

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jaelis

Oh this is where the title goes?

Warpiglet

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jaelis

Oh this is where the title goes?

Warpiglet

Adventurer

Dausuul

Legend

Warpiglet

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Dausuul

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