Vampiric Touch: A Spell That Truly Sucks
Spell Level: 3
School: Necromancy
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Components: V, S
The touch of your shadow-wreathed hand can siphon life force from others to heal your wounds. Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach. On a hit, the target takes 3d6 necrotic damage, and you regain hit points equal to half the amount of necrotic damage dealt. Until the spell ends, you can make the attack again on each of your turns as an action.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 3rd.
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
A iron wrought knight with a cracked black blade in one hand lifts the squirming townsfolk in the other, color draining from their gasping face as a red mist flows from their orifices into the cold form of the knight. Vampiric Touch sounds metal. This is supposed to be the dark draining fantasy, sucking the life force from your foes to bolster your own. Unfortunately, in play, this spell is almost unusably bad.
The first and most glaring issue with the spell is when would you want to cast it? If you’re casting while you’re already damaged and want to heal, that means you’re probably being attacked. If you’re being attacked and taking damage you want to heal, this spell will promptly end, as it's attached to concentration. So you don’t want to be taking damage while you use it, cool; if you aren’t getting hit anyway, you don’t really need the hit points. You get caught in this awkward loop where it never feels like the right time to use this.
To make matters worse, this spell is dealing at most 3d6 necrotic damage for a 3rd level slot to one creature the turn you use it. Fireball is dealing 8d6, at least half guaranteed, for the same level at a better range. Fireballing just one target, if you care about damage output for spell slot, means you’d need to hit three times with Vampiric Touch to justify its slot. If there are two creatures, that jumps up to six times. Any more than that and even in a perfect world where you don’t drop concentration there literally aren’t enough rounds in the fight to make up the difference, and all of that is before you consider this eats your action every turn. An action that could be spent casting cantrips at minimum. Yikes.
At least for warlocks it scales with spell level. 5d6 damage for an action isn’t great, especially compared to other 5th level slots, but as you’re limited on slots as a warlock at least this gives you an effect that can empower your action over a full fight. You definitely can make warlocks with WAY more effective play patterns in combat by 9th level than this, but as a floor, as a 5th level warlock spell, in a build with War Caster or some other tools to help maintain your concentration, you might consider this. But that is a very niche case, and more often than not you’ll want almost any other 5th level spell than this. If you’re outside this niche, don’t waste your breath with Vampiric Touch. The spell is really bad.
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