RPGMemes

So this sent me down an absolute rabbit hole. As a DM there's a few ways I'd consider to stop this being entirely game-breaking:

• You could argue that the only thing strength before death shows is that you can activate strength before death between hitting 0 and getting knocked out. A wizard is no samurai. Therefore concentration spells are not allowed.
• You could argue that life steal requires life to steal, and as such you can't life steal yourself.
• You could enforce the requirement of the figurine required for vampiric touch, then engineer a scenario to remove it at a critical moment and see if they realise.

Personally I would instead depart from RAW and point out a version of option 2, but a lenient one. Something like "you can do this but you are sapping your very essence to do it. Every time you do it, you permanently lose 10% of your HP" or "every time you do this you increase the number of death saving throws you must succeed before you die". Or my personal favourite: "every time you do this you perturb the very laws of nature. Nature is rather fond of its laws and so decides to perturb you right back. Roll on this table to see what happens." and make the table include the above alongside a few other things and maybe a roll on the wild magic table.

In the end I enjoy ingenuity but the role of DM gives you a lot of latitude to... handle... those who believe they found a loophole.

Unfortunately:

1. half of zero is still zero, and
2. since one can't go below 0HP there's no HP pool to take health from.

As someone who had to DM more than I'd like, no dice, mate.

since there is no negative HP you are doing no damage past 0. So even if the spell hits it does no damage since there is no damage left to do, half of 0 is 0.

Having DMed too much. Nope.

This is easily a rule as intended type of thing. If you hit someone else. Sure fine, this is actually awesome and very creative and totally in the spirit of the game.

If you're just trying to break the game. Nope. RPGs aren't about trying to pull apart the systems in place for a group of friends to have fun. Not at our table anyway.

Even the damage dealt thing is silly. Is argue you cant deal damage to something that is fully damaged.

As a DM I don't mind rules-lawyering, but you better be prepared for Consequences later on.

I am a big believer in the rule of cool and as long as everybody is having a good time, I don't mind looking the other way if a player makes a creative interpretation of the rules.

...But you better believe I'm gonna spend some time thinking about what should happen thematically if your wizard starts draining their own death energy to revive themselves.

I like a number of the suggestions here. I think my "solution" here would be to let once slide. The second time, I hand the player a folded note informing them that the toes on their left foot didn't come back with them, causing a visible limp, reduced movement speed and -1 to DEX.

...And we can build from there. Possibly start building a Final Destination style plan.

Cheating Death must have Consequences.

This is the reason I only DM barebones frameworks like Mini6. No rules lawyeringˆˆ

RAI you definitely would not be able to target yourself. The spell description starts with: "The touch of your shadow-wreathed hand can siphon force from others to heal your wounds." Technically this sentence is flavor only, but in this case it clearly reveals the intention of the designers.

RAW your meme still works, but I would restrict the spell to target only creatures other than yourself for the reason above. Only if the player has a really cool way to describe how to siphon your own life force and somehow convert it into more life force for yourself, I might allow it...

Where is the extra HP coming from tho

I’d allow it, but instead of HP damage, you take as many levels of exhaustion.

1. You take damage that reduces you to 0 Hit Points and fall unconscious
2. Contingency triggers and Vampiric Touch takes effect
3. Vampiric Touch is lost beacuse you lose concentration on a spell if you are incapacitated

I’d allow it, but instead of HP damage, you take as many levels of exhaustion.