False Life: Better than a Real Death

Usable By: Artificer, Sorcerer, Wizard

Spell Level: 1

School: Necromancy

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Self

Duration: 1 hour

Components: V, S, M (a small amount of alcohol or distilled spirits)

Bolstering yourself with a necromantic facsimile of life, you gain 1d4 + 4 temporary hit points for the duration.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, you gain 5 additional temporary hit points for each slot level above 1st.

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Temporary hit points are a weird little mechanic in 5e. In attempts to restrain the numbers from ballooning to the astronomical +15 and +20s of older editions, 5e deliberately attempted to make mechanical benefits non-stackable. Temporary hit points are one such example; they’re a pool of hit points that go on top of your regular hit points, are lost first when taking damage, and don’t combine with other temporary hit points, instead just taking whichever temporary hit point source provides most at a given time. False Life is one such source of temporary hit points, but even with the low cost of a single 1st level spell slot, I struggle to fit this in on characters who have spell slots to burn just because its actual impact is so minimal.

In the early tiers, when enemies are dealing the least amount of damage, trading one of your few precious spell slots for temporary hit points that will eat around a single hit feels real bad. Shield tends to be a far better version of this effect; it can mitigate all of the damage from an attack you know otherwise would hit you AND can mitigate any number of other attacks with its round long bonus. Going from taking some damage to no damage is way better than mitigating a fixed quantity of damage most of the time, making Shield something you’re happy to cast when you need it, and False Life something you hope casting will provide meaningful benefits with no real certainty.

As the game progresses, and monsters start dealing multiple larger damage dice of damage with each hit of their multiple attacks, this spell gets a lot worse, especially when compared to Shield. At the low tiers at least False Life provides a cushion from one-ish attacks; at higher levels this is blocking a quarter of a hit or less sometimes, or one of six tiny attacks made at the same time. Up-casting this makes it marginally better, but unless you have oodles of spell slots to burn and nothing else to do with them, you’ll almost always be better off casting something else, even if it's only with a 2nd or 3rd level spell. +5 temporary hit points per spell level isn’t going up fast enough to justify it.

If you’re DMing and want a lich to be able to take some more hits, you could consider having them start with a 7th or 8th level False Life on, which can be a helpful tool against parties that deal a lot of damage in short bursts. If you’re a warlock, getting Fiendish Vigor can be an enormous boon, especially early on, to aid your survivability. Casting False Life for free means you’re able to constantly refresh until you’re getting the eight temporary hp max, and so long as you have about a minute between fights, you can refresh it as needed. For a spell slot, though, even at its cheapest, I just have a hard time envisioning this being worth it over better lower level options at almost all stages of the game. Shield replaces it easily early, and Shield and Absorb Elements together make it a non-factor in the upper tiers. Stick with those instead.

5e Spells

False Life: Better than a Real Death