Death Domain Ability

[Ojoxsofeta]

Per SRD:

Death Domain
Granted Power

You may use a death touch once per day. Your death touch is a supernatural ability that produces a death effect. You must succeed on a melee touch attack against a living creature (using the rules for touch spells). When you touch, roll 1d6 per cleric level you possess. If the total at least equals the creature’s current hit points, it dies (no save).

A player brought this up while playing last night - what happens if this total rolled is less than the present hit point level? It does not explicitly state that it does damage, but this is central to a rather large encounter in a Eberron module that I'm running, where it states that a fifth level cleric does 5d6 damage with the successful touch attack.

Thanks.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

It does absolutely nothing.

If it did anything or dealt actual damage, the ability would say so directly.

[marjan]

If you roll less it does nothing, since it doesn't state it does. Simple as that.

EDIT: Ninja'd.

[Person_Man]

It does nothing. The only advantages to the Death Domain powers are that it bypasses DR and its a Supernatural ability. In general though, its a huge waste, since almost everyone goes into a PrC as soon as possible when they play a Cleric.

[Ojoxsofeta]

That's what he thought, but the mod wasn't terribly clear on that matter. One would have expected Wizards to have gotten it right.

[Ojoxsofeta]

It does nothing. The only advantages to the Death Domain powers are that it bypasses DR and its a Supernatural ability. In general though, its a huge waste, since almost everyone goes into a PrC as soon as possible when they play a Cleric.

Isn't that a sleight against more core domains though? You either get some sort of elemental turning, a bonus to a caster level, a new class skill or two (limited to the cleric class) or a cleric-level dependent ability. Beyond that, you have Luck, War, Magic and Sun; Magic's lovely little ability entails keeping up a second spellcasting stat and Luck pins you down to a very small list of deities. If you aren't fighting undead, the Sun Domain only really gives spells, and the War Domain's real oomph is in the Power Words (IMO).

[Riffington]

You do not need to leave Cleric at all. It is a very strong class as is, and does not necessarily gain a tremendous amount from prestige classes (unless you like the flavor).

[Duke Malagigi]

I remember a PDF supplement for warlocks that included optional rules for Harry Potter style wizards. Basically you take a warlock from Complete Arcane and gut it of everything but non-eldritch blast related invocations, give some more knowledge skills and quadruple its invocations. It also had quite a few Harry Potter spells written as invocations, including Avada Kedavera. The Killing Curse was stated as a Dark invocation that functioned sort of like a ranged death touch. If the intended victim passed their saving throw, you would 1d8 per level. If the victim failed you would roll 2d6 per level instead. If the dice rolled are equal to or greater than the amount of hit point damage needed to kill the target, he or she would die. Now according to Dicefreaks and my own opinion Voldemort would be between 12th and 14th level. Albus Dumboldore would be around 16th level which would be Epic for his world. Now then, what do you think a Lord Voldemort versues Cohen the Barbarian fight look like?

[Curmudgeon]

You do not need to leave Cleric at all. It is a very strong class as is, and does not necessarily gain a tremendous amount from prestige classes (unless you like the flavor).

Cleric is a very strong class at 1st level, yet doesn't gain as much from additional levels. At 1st level you gain two domains and a number of daily turn undead tries based on your Charisma. You also get two good saves, and spells. What do you get at higher levels? No more domains, and no more turn attempts. There are some things, like chances of succeeding at turning undead (assuming you do that instead of powering divne feats like Divine Metamagic) that you get only with Cleric levels, but they're not much. Many prestige classes can give you things equivalent to what straight Cleric only gives you at 1st level, and still continue the divine spellcasting progression.

[Chronos]

Isn't that a sleight against more core domains though?

Many domain powers scale with level, but some scale better than others. With the Travel domain power, for instance, a single round of Freedom of Movement might be quite adequate to escape from whatever effect is hindering you, and two or three rounds is probably enough to finish the encounter and buy time for a Remove Paralysis or similar. Any additional rounds per day basically just let you use it more often. And the damage granted by the Destruction domain's Smite depends on level, but the bonus to hit doesn't: You could, for instance, use your daily Smite to make sure you connect with a Harm or Slay Living spell.

And Magic domain doesn't necessarily require a high Int or Cha. Even at first level, it gives you access to all Sor/Wiz wands, and you can probably still use high-level scrolls if you can take the time to cast a Fox's Cunning or Eagle's Splendor first.

[BloodyPath]

Death Domain is pretty all or nothing, but its still pretty nice, touch attack with no saves - what more can you ask for? only annoying thing is you really want to be an evil cleric to make the most of the domain spells.. ehh well..