Hannibhaal
2016-03-31, 10:29 AM
In the course of designing a character, I came across the Fell Drain feat in Libris Mortis. My question is: what happens when a spell deals damage multiple times? My group bounced the question around but failed to reach an answer. Our discussion and questions are summarized below, and I would appreciate any insights and answers.
Fell Drain says "any living creature dealt damage also gains a negative level." So, what if a spell deals damage multiple times? What happens with a spell like Melf's Acid Arrow, Wall of Fire, Spiritual Weapon, or Moon Blade (from the Spell Compendium, also the original spell that kicked off this discussion).
Clearly spells like Fireball apply the negative level to all affected creatures. Magic Missile has precedent that it is considered a single damage source per target, regardless of the number of missiles, so no exploit there. Thunderhead (Spell Compendium) would be amazing with Fell Drain if it gave a negative level with every instance of damage, but these are balance issues, not Rules, we're interested in finding out what the Rules seem to say, and then house-ruling to balance later.
One could parse the rules text to imply that it is a single occurrence. A creature is either dealt damage by the spell or it is not. A creature that walks through a Fell Drain Wall of Fire multiple times is still "a creature that is dealt damage." effectively, the flag of "is dealt damage" is switched on when they first take damage, and is unaffected by further damage instances.
My personal view is that that parsing is wrong, but I can clearly see how one could read it that way, and a member of my group clearly does. Energy drain always has this passive voice phrasing. A "creature hit by a vampire's slam attack gains a negative level" and so forth. There clearly isn't supposed to be a flag for "hit by slam" so shouldn't we not take that analysis for a Fell Drain spell? However, in that case each slam is a separate attack, so that complicates matters greatly. No one is arguing that two Fell Drain spells don't both apply a negative level.
So that's a brief summary of our lengthy debate. Thoughts, insights? This seems very ambiguous to me, but maybe there is precedent or rules elsewhere we were missing.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm looking for how you personally interpret the text. It is abundantly clear that the feat is ambiguous.
Fell Drain says "any living creature dealt damage also gains a negative level." So, what if a spell deals damage multiple times? What happens with a spell like Melf's Acid Arrow, Wall of Fire, Spiritual Weapon, or Moon Blade (from the Spell Compendium, also the original spell that kicked off this discussion).
Clearly spells like Fireball apply the negative level to all affected creatures. Magic Missile has precedent that it is considered a single damage source per target, regardless of the number of missiles, so no exploit there. Thunderhead (Spell Compendium) would be amazing with Fell Drain if it gave a negative level with every instance of damage, but these are balance issues, not Rules, we're interested in finding out what the Rules seem to say, and then house-ruling to balance later.
One could parse the rules text to imply that it is a single occurrence. A creature is either dealt damage by the spell or it is not. A creature that walks through a Fell Drain Wall of Fire multiple times is still "a creature that is dealt damage." effectively, the flag of "is dealt damage" is switched on when they first take damage, and is unaffected by further damage instances.
My personal view is that that parsing is wrong, but I can clearly see how one could read it that way, and a member of my group clearly does. Energy drain always has this passive voice phrasing. A "creature hit by a vampire's slam attack gains a negative level" and so forth. There clearly isn't supposed to be a flag for "hit by slam" so shouldn't we not take that analysis for a Fell Drain spell? However, in that case each slam is a separate attack, so that complicates matters greatly. No one is arguing that two Fell Drain spells don't both apply a negative level.
So that's a brief summary of our lengthy debate. Thoughts, insights? This seems very ambiguous to me, but maybe there is precedent or rules elsewhere we were missing.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm looking for how you personally interpret the text. It is abundantly clear that the feat is ambiguous.