D&D General Does Beacon of Hope maximize the damage from Vampiric Touch?

[VashVet]

Where do you see this? The description I’m seeing on DDB seems to be the same as in the PHB.

This is taken from my phone so don’t know if that’s a difference or not, but I notice they have category for damage/effect on a spell like Cure Wounds which says Healing. Vampiric Touch is Necrotic. Beacon of Hope is a Buff, etc.

 

[Silam]

I think this is in-line with the 2014 RAI (assumed from the 2017 SA):

I would rule that it does not because you are not rolling dice for the healing from Vampiric Touch,

But Bacon does not specify anything about maximizing a healing roll… its spell description is broader than that. It says that each target regains the maximum number of Hit Points possible from any healing. The "maximum possible", not that "healing rolls are maximized". There is a nuance between the two. In the case of Vamp Touch, the "maximum possible" happens to be when the damage roll is maximized, but even though it’s a damage roll and not a healing roll, it does remain nonetheless the way in which the maximum possible is achieved.

By choosing to leave the RAW untouched in a major new edition of the game, IMO, the designers have affirmed that whatever the 2014 intents were, these are no longer relevant as of 2024.

Vampiric Touch in my mind is not technically a healing spell.

Well… besides the first sentence of the spell description saying literally that it serves to heal your wounds, we can avoid looking at the English and look at the numbers…

Cure Wounds (which has been boosted in 2024) upcasted to level 3 cures 6d8 + Stat mod. Assuming a +5 stat mod that comes up to 32 HPs healed on average.

Vamp Touch heals 3d6/2, which comes up to 5.25 on average. That number certainly looks weak, but Vamp Touch can do that 10 times. If all 10 attacks hit (for example, if you’re doing it as part of looting unconscious enemies and automatically touch them, during mop up), then the average yields 52.5 HP. In a combat scenario, if you assume the ~standard 65% hit chance, you’re still getting 34 average, roughly on par with CW. If you lose concentration or run out of enemies before the end, then you would get less, of course. This is normalized for a 3rd level slot. For each extra slot level, CW adds 2d8 (9), while VT adds 10d6/2 (17.5) or 10d6*0.65/2 (11) respectively for the previous two scenarios.

Sure, it takes more time than the single action Cure Wounds and so it’s less efficient in that way. But it is nonetheless quite an effective healing spell on a per slot basis.

But Vamp Touch does damage too right? Yeeeeaaaah… but is it competitve in terms of damage for a 3rd level spell? 30d6 (105) over 10 rounds. I’m not sure what the best comparison is, ideally some concentration spell that gives you a single-target damaging effect once per round for 10 rounds. Witch Bolt upcasted to 3rd level would do 4d12 (22, 220 total for 10 rounds) but is slightly better since it consumes the BA not the Action. Dragon’s Breath upcasted to 3rd level would do 4d6 (14, 140 total for 10 rounds) and requires the Action, not the BA, but it’s a 15 ft cone each time (not single target) and does half damage on a successful save.

So… Vamp Touch heals more total HP per slot than Cure Wounds, and deals less total damage per slot than comparable concentration Wizard spells.

Is it a healing spell or a damaging spell? Obviously the answer is "yes".

This is taken from my phone so don’t know if that’s a difference or not, but I notice they have category for damage/effect on a spell like Cure Wounds which says Healing. Vampiric Touch is Necrotic. Beacon of Hope is a Buff, etc.

View attachment 439695

Ah ok, gotcha. I thought you meant the spell description was different. But you were talking about the metadata…

 

[AlViking]

I think this is in-line with the 2014 RAI (assumed from the 2017 SA):


But Bacon does not specify anything about maximizing a healing roll… its spell description is broader than that. It says that each target regains the maximum number of Hit Points possible from any healing. The "maximum possible", not that "healing rolls are maximized". There is a nuance between the two. In the case of Vamp Touch, the "maximum possible" happens to be when the damage roll is maximized, but even though it’s a damage roll and not a healing roll, it does remain nonetheless the way in which the maximum possible is achieved.

By choosing to leave the RAW untouched in a major new edition of the game, IMO, the designers have affirmed that whatever the 2014 intents were, these are no longer relevant as of 2024.



Well… besides the first sentence of the spell description saying literally that it serves to heal your wounds, we can avoid looking at the English and look at the numbers…

Cure Wounds (which has been boosted in 2024) upcasted to level 3 cures 6d8 + Stat mod. Assuming a +5 stat mod that comes up to 32 HPs healed on average.

Vamp Touch heals 3d6/2, which comes up to 5.25 on average. That number certainly looks weak, but Vamp Touch can do that 10 times. If all 10 attacks hit (for example, if you’re doing it as part of looting unconscious enemies and automatically touch them, during mop up), then the average yields 52.5 HP. In a combat scenario, if you assume the ~standard 65% hit chance, you’re still getting 34 average, roughly on par with CW. If you lose concentration or run out of enemies before the end, then you would get less, of course. This is normalized for a 3rd level slot. For each extra slot level, CW adds 2d8 (9), while VT adds 10d6/2 (17.5) or 10d6*0.65/2 (11) respectively for the previous two scenarios.

Sure, it takes more time than the single action Cure Wounds and so it’s less efficient in that way. But it is nonetheless quite an effective healing spell on a per slot basis.

But Vamp Touch does damage too right? Yeeeeaaaah… but is it competitve in terms of damage for a 3rd level spell? 30d6 (105) over 10 rounds. I’m not sure what the best comparison is, ideally some concentration spell that gives you a single-target damaging effect once per round for 10 rounds. Witch Bolt upcasted to 3rd level would do 4d12 (22, 220 total for 10 rounds) but is slightly better since it consumes the BA not the Action. Dragon’s Breath upcasted to 3rd level would do 4d6 (14, 140 total for 10 rounds) and requires the Action, not the BA, but it’s a 15 ft cone each time (not single target) and does half damage on a successful save.

So… Vamp Touch heals more total HP per slot than Cure Wounds, and deals less total damage per slot than comparable concentration Wizard spells.

Is it a healing spell or a damaging spell? Obviously the answer is "yes".



Ah ok, gotcha. I thought you meant the spell description was different. But you were talking about the metadata…

The number of hit points regained from vampiric touch is not random. It is a set amount based on some other value. If you roll the 3d6 and do 10 damage, you're regaining 5 HP. The max of 5 is 5.

 

[Silam]

The number of hit points regained from vampiric touch is not random. It is a set amount based on some other value. If you roll the 3d6 and do 10 damage, you're regaining 5 HP. The max of 5 is 5.

Random or not, the "maximum possible" healed by a hit of non-upcasted Vamp Touch is 9. There is no mention of randomness nor of rolling in the Bacon description. All it says is "maximum possible".

 

[billd91]

Regarding the RAI, Crawford put out a Sage Advice in 2017 about a very similar case (interaction of the Bacon with the Life Transference spell, rather than Vamp Touch). And while Life Transference (from XGE) had not been reprinted since then, so one might argue that the SA is still valid as far as that specific combo is concerned, the Bacon spell has been reprinted in the 2024 PHB and therefore that outdated SA loses its validity, and the RAW regains its full legal strength. It is especially clear since the community voiced that they had doubts about the RAI, Crawford addressed the question, it was recorded in a SA, and later during the editing of 2024 the designers chose to ignore the SA and not clarify the Bacon spell.

Maybe they didn't clarify it because it needed no further clarification - particularly once JC explained the rationale behind his Sage Advice. The beacon's wording hasn't changed significantly, why would we expect the rationale to change, and thus change the advice about whether beacon affects a damage roll?

 

[Deset Gled]

Random or not, the "maximum possible" healed by a hit of non-upcasted Vamp Touch is 9. There is no mention of randomness nor of rolling in the Bacon description. All it says is "maximum possible".

The maximum amount healed by VT is half the damage dealt. You can't know that's 9. That might be 0 if the target is immune to necrotic damage. That might be 18 if they take double damage. That might be more or less if there's metamagic, magic items, legendary abilities, or any number of other factors. But no matter how much damage is done, the maximum amount healed is still half of the damage dealt.

 

[AlViking]

Random or not, the "maximum possible" healed by a hit of non-upcasted Vamp Touch is 9. There is no mention of randomness nor of rolling in the Bacon description. All it says is "maximum possible".

Exactly. Since the amount HP you are going to recover is determined before you actually recover those hit points you are getting the maximum of the number - the single number equal to 1/2 the damage dealt. It's no different than an orc dropping to 0 for the first time in a day and instead having 1 HP. Beacon of Hope has no impact because they're going to get a fixed 1 HP.

In any case, that's how I would rule at my table. Feel free to rule differently.

 

[Silam]

Maybe they didn't clarify it because it needed no further clarification - particularly once JC explained the rationale behind his Sage Advice.

Maybe it’s just me and this sounds fine to everyone else… but this sounds like an oxymoron to me. It cannot be the case that it needed no clarification if a Sage Advice was warranted. And it does not make sense to me to revise a spell that warranted a SA, tweak its wording superficially (the first sentence of fluff got cut), but not change the significant part. Especially since the SA explicitly disagrees with the RAW.

The beacon's wording hasn't changed significantly, why would we expect the rationale to change, and thus change the advice about whether beacon affects a damage roll?

These are exactly the questions which prompt me to have this thread !

It’s shoddy work to reprint the PHB for 5.5e in a way that is dead on arrival because it cannot be correctly used without also consulting some 2017 entry on some random fan-made website (i.e., correctly in the sense of adhering to the RAI, when the RAW disagrees with the RAI). We can assume that WotC does shoddy work and indeed their 5.5e PHB is dead on arrival, but I would rather grant them a more charitable interpretation, which is that they did the due diligence, revised the relevant Sage Advices, and chose to ignore some fraction of them because they no longer felt that those past Sage Advices represented the RAI or spirit of the game they were going for. But I could be wrong. Maybe I am overly charitable.

 

[AlViking]

Maybe it’s just me and this sounds fine to everyone else… but this sounds like an oxymoron to me. It cannot be the case that it needed no clarification if a Sage Advice was warranted. And it does not make sense to me to revise a spell that warranted a SA, tweak its wording superficially (the first sentence of fluff got cut), but not change the significant part. Especially since the SA explicitly disagrees with the RAW.



These are exactly the questions which prompt me to have this thread !

It’s shoddy work to reprint the PHB for 5.5e in a way that is dead on arrival because it cannot be correctly used without also consulting some 2017 entry on some random fan-made website (i.e., correctly in the sense of adhering to the RAI, when the RAW disagrees with the RAI). We can assume that WotC does shoddy work and indeed their 5.5e PHB is dead on arrival, but I would rather grant them a more charitable interpretation, which is that they did the due diligence, revised the relevant Sage Advices, and chose to ignore some fraction of them because they no longer felt that those past Sage Advices represented the RAI or spirit of the game they were going for. But I could be wrong. Maybe I am overly charitable.

It can be correctly used. Someone, usually the DM, makes a ruling on it if you find it confusing (I don't) and you move on. Besides, the tweets were never considered official sage advice, they admitted that they didn't really put a lot of thought into them.

 

[Silam]

It can be correctly used. Someone, usually the DM, makes a ruling on it if you find it confusing (I don't) and you move on.

Totally agree. I don’t find it confusing either (even though we come to opposite conclusions). I also agree that ultimately it’s the DM’s responsibility to make the call and I’d be fine playing it both ways with two different DMs (or even the same DM who changes their mind from one session to the next …).

Besides, the tweets were never considered official sage advice, they admitted that they didn't really put a lot of thought into them.

That’s interesting. I had not come across that statement. It certainly feels like some of the SA answers were not thought through very deeply, or even formulated clearly in many cases…

In any case, given the official guidance that any 2014 rule is fair game unless it’s been reprinted, I consider that Sage Advices are by and large all obsolete already, except in the few cases where they pertain to non-reprinted 2014 content (and those are diminishing every time a new book gets released).