Negative Energy Flood: Bad Vibes
Spell Level: 5
School: Necromancy
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Duration: Instantaneous
Components: V, M (a broken bone and a square of black silk)
You send ribbons of negative energy at one creature you can see within range. Unless the target is undead, it must make a Constitution saving throw, taking 5d12 necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. A target killed by this damage rises up as a zombie at the start of your next turn. The zombie pursues whatever creature it can see that is closest to it. Statistics for the zombie are in the Monster Manual. If you target an undead with this spell, the target doesn’t make a saving throw. Instead, roll 5d12. The target gains half the total as temporary hit points.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Negative Energy Flood deals 5d12 necrotic damage. 5d12 damage is roughly 33 damage. Fireball, a 3rd level spell, is dealing 8d6, or roughly 28 damage. Fireball hits lots of things; Negative Energy Flood hits one thing. So is the possibility of getting a single zombie to animate and start whacking things worth it? Is the temp HP you can bestow upon a zombie worth the 5th level slot?
Nope! And what’s wild to me is there aren’t a ton of single target damage options at 5th level. This could have been a pretty helpful single target damage spell with some cool utility that would pop up every once in a while. If this spell did an extra 2d12 damage, it’d be in the realm of “I mean it's a fine damage spell for its level”; where it's at, this is just worse numbers. Nobody wants just worse numbers. Even in the making custom spells section of the DMG, outside of the context of other existing spells, it recommends a 5th level spell that hits a single target deal 44 average damage. The raised chaos zombie that can attack you or your friends doesn’t justify ten less damage. The ability to instead give an undead 33 temporary hit points isn’t worth ten damage. These two things combined are not worth it, especially when you can’t guarantee the zombie rises should you not kill it.
I get bummed out when spells just feel bad to use because they’re under damaged. If you’re not at a particularly competitive table, this may still do a ton of damage and feel great, but if you ever see a Fireball cast around the area, you’ll immediately recognize how bad this is. The effects are cool. I love the idea of damaging spells that do other things. Negative Energy Flood does not deal enough damage for the slot; that kills it to me.
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