Fell drain and multihit spells

[Efrate]

How does this interact? Is it each hit gives a negative level, or once per spell? Or is it a DM discretion thing?

[Troacctid]

DM discretion.

[Zanos]

Most sane people interpret it as working on each affected creature only once per spell. So a fell drain fireball gives everyone 1 negative level, but a fell drain scorching ray doesn't give someone three, although you could hit three separate targets for one each.

[The_Snark]

The text is vague but I've never seen anyone interpret it as working per hit, most likely because that's horribly open to abuse (Magic Missile).

If you really want textual backing, the text says "any living creature that is dealt damage gains a negative level" rather than "whenever a living creature is dealt damage by the spell it gains a negative level" but I don't think that's ironclad.

[Efrate]

Magic missle was specifically what I was thinking of. Itss for the BBEG so I don't know if I want to go once a hit but no more than 1 neg level a target per casting. Giving a negative level to each party member every round for a 3rd level slot seems kind of insane. Better than 5 a round to one but still.

[Val666]

Magic missle was specifically what I was thinking of. Itss for the BBEG so I don't know if I want to go once a hit but no more than 1 neg level a target per casting. Giving a negative level to each party member every round for a 3rd level slot seems kind of insane. Better than 5 a round to one but still.

It actually depends. It seems the BBEG is a spellcaster. If the party is between level 5-15, the BBEG can kill any of them buffing defensively and taking 5 NL each round lol. Maybe you can just use the Magic Missile to inflict 1 NL to the party every 3 rounds. Sort of a "BBEG debuff" that grows with time, so the party must kill the BBEG quickly.

[Fouredged Sword]

What is even more unclear is how this works with spells such as cloud of knives or other spells that make multiple attacks over multiple turns.

I personally read it as once per spell per target regardless of the number of hits or the spacing of the hits.

[ExLibrisMortis]

At higher levels, death ward becomes very common, to the point of Fell Drain being useless. At that point, there's no problem with one-per-hit interpretations of Fell Drain. This is, of course, assuming that you rule the Fell Drain negative levels being a consequence of negative energy, which isn't specified in the feat. If you don't, FD negative levels are very hard to avoid, and it becomes pretty relevant to go with a one-per-spell interpretation.

[Troacctid]

I just rule it the same way as Warmage Edge, since it's a similar effect. Fell Drain Fireball gives everyone a negative level. Fell Drain Magic Missile only gives a negative level with the first missile, even if there are multiple targets. Fell Drain Acid Arrow gives a negative level up to once per round. This is also consistent with the weaponlike spell rules.

[Fouredged Sword]

The problem isn't high level, the problem is lower levels where a character can spec for metamagic reduction and basically turn it into a doom spell that is VERY hard to counter.

Fell Drain cloud of knives is accessible at 4th level for a sorcerer and basically is better than Enervation full stop. The ability to deal 2 (you share this with your familiar) negative level per CL devided as you please, touch attacks with no save? Easy Metamagic and practical spellcaster turns this into an early game game breaker.