Death Attack vs Close Wounds

[Kelt]

How would an assassin's death attack (DMG 180) and the spell close wounds (MH 34) interact? I.E., if an enemy assassin targeted a PC with a death attack and a cleric cast it as a reaction to save the PC, would it have any effect? Thanks in advance

[Zaq]

Death attack kills the target outright assuming that the attack hits, it does damage, it meets the conditions (must be a sneak attack, must have studied for 3 rounds, etc.), and the target fails their save. The death attack kills the target regardless of their HP total (assuming all the other conditions are met).

The only one of the conditions that Close Wounds can theoretically interrupt is the "deal damage" part, and that's only the case because Close Wounds has a clause explicitly saying that "if you cast this spell immediately after the target takes damage, it effectively prevents the damage." But you'd need to have enough juice behind your Close Wounds to prevent every single point of damage from the sneak attack/death attack, or else the death portion of the death attack would kick in.

[Necroticplague]

How would an assassin's death attack (DMG 180) and the spell close wounds (MH 34) interact? I.E., if an enemy assassin targeted a PC with a death attack and a cleric cast it as a reaction to save the PC, would it have any effect? Thanks in advance

To answer the first: not at all. They're entirely unrelated things.

To answer the second: Yes, but it's very risky and likely to go wrong.
As per close wounds:


If you cast this spell immediately after the subject takes damage, it effectively prevents the damage.
Meanwhile, Death Attack states:

If an assassin studies his victim for 3 rounds and then makes a sneak attack with a melee weapon that successfully deals damage,

If you use Close Wounds to prevent the Sneak Attack from doing any damage, the 'that successfully deals damage' part of Death Attack is false, so the Sneak Attack can't be a Death Attack.

Of course, given how Close Wounds is only 2d4, it's very unlikely for this to be successfully pulled of.
Also, readying an action is unnecessary, since the spell says it can be cast when it isn't your turn.

Though it seems rather odd that it lists casting time as a swift action and then says that. You'd think it's be easier to just say that it has a casting time of an immediate action.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Wrong Close Wounds. It was updated in Spell Compendium to be an immediate action that heals 1d4+CL (max 5).

That being said, unless you get really pendantic, it is probably not gonna soak a sneak attack.

[Kelt]

Thank you all so much! Especially for the spell compendium version of close wounds, I wasn't aware there was one in there. Thanks!

[Crake]

Considering an assassin's death attack is probably going to be in a surprise round when everyone is flat footed, you can't really cast close wounds, since you can't use immediate actions while flat footed.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Considering an assassin's death attack is probably going to be in a surprise round when everyone is flat footed, you can't really cast close wounds, since you can't use immediate actions while flat footed.

There are ways of being immune to flat footed scattered around and while your statement contains truth certainly nothing prevents the interaction of these two as outlined above.

[Falontani]

Level 5 Healer can cast Close Wounds to heal 1d4+5+Cha mod, in Complete Divine we have the feat Augment Healing, which Heals an additional 2 point/spell level, so now we heal for 1d4+9+cha. Twin Spell allows us to double that for 2d4+18+2*Cha. Heighten spell increases the total by 2 per spell level. So a Healer completely dedicated to healing could theoretically heal 2d4+38+2*Cha mod. With a 9th level spell slot. Yes you could bring them back from the dead, but you could also just tell them that they were never dead in the first place!

[tterreb]

Level 5 Healer can cast Close Wounds to heal 1d4+5+Cha mod, in Complete Divine we have the feat Augment Healing, which Heals an additional 2 point/spell level, so now we heal for 1d4+9+cha. Twin Spell allows us to double that for 2d4+18+2*Cha. Heighten spell increases the total by 2 per spell level. So a Healer completely dedicated to healing could theoretically heal 2d4+38+2*Cha mod. With a 9th level spell slot. Yes you could bring them back from the dead, but you could also just tell them that they were never dead in the first place!

So, assuming level 17 and a Cha mod of 6, that gives you an average of 55 points of healing or a range of 52-58. At that level a decent assassin would probably be doing 9d6 sneak attack and most likely have craven. Give him a regular shortbow and he'll be doing 1d6+9d6+17 for an average damage of about 52, or a range of 26-77. So your chances of succeeding are roughly half. But that's an unoptimized assassin and who uses those?