Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ranger19k" data-source="post: 5649136" data-attributes="member: 98621">Last gaming session, our party was locked in mortal combat with a Lich.  The cleric tried to drop the Lich with a heal spell: he cast the spell and then attempted a touch attack against the Lich….and missed. (He rolled a 2 or something similarly painful).  The cleric then “held the charge” in his right hand, fully prepared to successfully “heal” the Lich the next round.  Unfortunately for him, the Lich tagged him with a Flame Strike before his next turn, which, after failing his reflex save, dropped the Cleric to -25hp, killing him instantly.  And this is how we left it.  After the gaming session however, I was thinking about the situation and decided that it was really silly that the Cleric was holding in his hand the power to save himself when he was killed.  I was wondering if anyone on the board would allow a PC to release a held charge on himself as a free action, and in this case, potentially save himself from death?  The cleric in this scenario is already dead, so this is more of an academic / rules judgment question rather than an attempt to re-adjudicate campaign events.  Here’s the logic:      PH p 141 has the rules for “holding a charge” :      It clearly states that it takes a standard action to use the “held spell” in a touch attack.  But that standard action really comes from the touch attack, right?  After all, the spell has already been cast, so that doesn’t take any time, so the action time comes from the act of reaching out to touch an enemy.  But if you choose to use the touch spell on yourself, the spell is already touching you, so there is no movement or attack required, so wouldn’t that eliminate the need for the use of a standard action?  Another possibility I see is that part of the requirement for the standard action is a mental action that controls the spell – telling the spell when to release.  But what kind of action is this?  If it is a matter of concentration, the chart on PH 141 says that concentrating to maintain a spell is a standard action, BUT ceasing concentration on a spell is a free action.  Does it make sense to anyone else that a caster holding a charge needs to concentrate to maintain that spell in his hand (thus the standard action to touch attack and a reason why you lose that held charge if you cast any other spell), but to release that spell on himself would be a simple matter of ceasing concentration – which is a free action?   This is different than “dismissing” the spell, which requires a standard action, since it takes extra concentration to get rid of the spell without affecting anyone.  In this particular case, it seems that releasing the held charge onto oneself would fall into the “cease concentration” category rather than the “dismiss a spell category”, and thus be a free action.  If you accept this logic, then the question is if the free action of “ceasing concentration” and releasing the touch spell on yourself can only be completed on your turn or not.   While most free actions can only be performed on your turn, others (like speaking) can be performed at will.  The addition of immediate action spells to the rules-set suggests that certain mental abilities fall into this category of being capable of performing at will.  But would “ceasing concentration” on a spell fall into this category of performing at will?  I am not sure of the answer, and am interested in how other DM’s would adjudicate this situation.  It is a pretty rare situation where a player would ever want to have a held spell affect himself after failing a touch attack to affect an enemy (in fact a healing spell against undead might be the only case I can think of), but has anyone else run into this?  And if you would adjudicate allowing the player to save himself by releasing the healing spell onto himself, is this a common-sense “gut” call, or do you agree with the logic that it might be based in the rules?     Thanks.</blockquote>

Verification