I have a couple of questions concerning Vampiric Touch:
1. If I quicken Vampiric Touch, is the meelee touch attack included in the swift action, or do I still need a Standard Action? If it was part of the swift action, would the attack count against my attacks per round?
2. If I have a Wand of Vampiric Touch, can I deliver the touch attack with the wand, or do I need a second, free hand?
3. How does it interact with TWF? If I hold a weapon in my main hand and want to deliver the touch attack with my off-hand, do the normal TWF penalties apply?
|
You raise some interesting questions, but I fear I can only answer number 2 with an example from my group(s).
We call Wands of Cure X "feel-good" or "happy" sticks. Most of the time we tap a character with it, and they heal, no need to touch them with anything but the wand. We also called a Wand of Shocking Grasp a cattle prod, and used it as such(except the "cattle" was goblins).
1. You'd get to make the touch attack as part of the swift action that would not count against your attacks per round. A couple of caveats, tho. If you missed and wanted to hold the charge, you'd lose the charge if you cast another spell in the same round, or touched anything, i.e. drawing a weapon with your last free hand.
2. The rules aren't very clear about this, but I think that most people would rule that you could touch them with the wand.
3. Well, that depends. If you're holding a sword in one hand and the other is free, and all you want to do in that round is make the touch attack, then, no. You can declare any attack you make in a round as the primary attack. It's not a dominant/weaker hand sort of thing. Either hand can be the primary in any particular round. You can even change it from round to round. You could even declare a dagger as the primary, and a longsword as the off-hand, altho doing so would be pretty silly.
Now, if you're asking about using a touch attack as part of TWF, then the answer gets a little complicated. By the rules, in order to incorporate the touch attack into an attack routine, you'd have to make an unarmed strike, which isn't a touch attack, but a regular attack. You'd get to add your unarmed strike damage to the spell damage on a successful hit, tho. Unless you have Improved Unarmed Strike, this attack would trigger an AoO (I believe the rules for this are on p185-6 of the PF core rules). Both the weapon attack and the unarmed attack would suffer from the normal TWF penalties. An unarmed strike is treated as a light weapon.
I suspect that most DM's would allow you to just go ahead and make a normal touch attack as an off-hand (or primary) attack as part of TWF, suffering the penalties as normal. The rules don't allow for it, but it's by far the simplest way to handle the situation, and does make sense. Again, it is not RAW, however.
Hope this helps.
Thank you both for your answers!
The goal I have in my mind is to build an Eldritch Knight character (just as an exercise) which uses a one-handed weapon and combines it with an occasional touch spell.
Vampiric Touch seems to me like a good choice to combine damaging your opponent with healing yourself.
1. If I quicken Vampiric Touch, is the meelee touch attack included in the swift action, or do I still need a Standard Action? If it was part of the swift action, would the attack count against my attacks per round?
You deliver the touch as part of casting the spell. Otherwise you're holding the charge. If you use a swift action to cast the spell (and deliver the touch given with casting the spell), you can still make a full attack. If you fail to discharge the spell, you make a standard action in future rounds to discharge the spell with a melee touch attack. You can also discharge the spell via unarmed strike or a natural weapon.
2. If I have a Wand of Vampiric Touch, can I deliver the touch attack with the wand, or do I need a second, free hand?
The rules do not mention that you need a free hand to cast a touch spell. You could touch someone with the hand holding a wand/sword/whatever. I would be hesitant to allow the spell being discharged through the wand -- since that's not how touch spells work.
3. How does it interact with TWF? If I hold a weapon in my main hand and want to deliver the touch attack with my off-hand, do the normal TWF penalties apply?
You can't use a touch attack as part of TWF. While you are considered armed while holding a charge for a touch spell, the spell's effect is not weapon-like. You can only make iterative attacks in a full-attack action that use weapons or weapon-like effects (flame blade). This has been clarified by James Jacobs.
Make your primary weapon a Spell Storing weapon and put Vampiric Touch in it. Problem solved.
Good advice. Thanks!
Thank you both for your answers!
The goal I have in my mind is to build an Eldritch Knight character (just as an exercise) which uses a one-handed weapon and combines it with an occasional touch spell.
Vampiric Touch seems to me like a good choice to combine damaging your opponent with healing yourself.
In Re: Eldritch Knight (EK) build. If you have the feats for it, consider Exotic Weapon Prof: Bastard sword. it can be wielded in one hand when you need to, or two hands when you want a little extra power.
With the option of wielding with one hand, you can wield a wand in one hand and the sword in the other to make sure you always have a viable ranged and melee option. It's possible to work in a buckler, as well. Add in Power Attack and Cleave for a good melee build, and vital strike and arcane strike are good as well.
Me likey the EK.
Thank you both for your answers!
The goal I have in my mind is to build an Eldritch Knight character (just as an exercise) which uses a one-handed weapon and combines it with an occasional touch spell.
Vampiric Touch seems to me like a good choice to combine damaging your opponent with healing yourself.
In Re: Eldritch Knight (EK) build. If you have the feats for it, consider Exotic Weapon Prof: Bastard sword. it can be wielded in one hand when you need to, or two hands when you want a little extra power.
With the option of wielding with one hand, you can wield a wand in one hand and the sword in the other to make sure you always have a viable ranged and melee option. It's possible to work in a buckler, as well. Add in Power Attack and Cleave for a good melee build, and vital strike and arcane strike are good as well.
Me likey the EK.
Thats all true concerning the Bastard sword.
But consider, you can do the same thing with a long sword--you can wield it in one hand or in two to get extra Strength and Power attack damage. And you wouldn't need am extra feat to do it. On average, the Bastard sword will do one extra point of damage than the longsword. (d10 averages 5.5, d8 averages 4.5). If you do vital strike type attacks that might be worth it as the extra d10s would add up. But otherwise its probably not worth the extra feat just to get an additional one point of damage per hit.
Please note that this is simply from an optimization point of view. It is definitely cooler wielding a bastard sword than a longsword!
I likey the EK too and always have. I likey that its better now!
Remember kids no one likes a life stealing twinkle.
Father knows best.
No seriously, he's right. B-swords are just kinda cool. You'd probably be better off using the feat for arcane armor training or whatever it's called.
I'd also suggest you consider Diviner as your wizard specialty, if you're going to take one. I been running a game with an EK Diviner, and I gotta say, the initiative bonus and the ability to always act in the surprise round is turning out to make a real difference. It's a lot more powerful than I had thought.
Here's another question about vampiric touch- if you make a sneak attack with it, or land a critical, do you gain more temporary HP?
yes, both damages convert to the damage nature of the spell.
basically yes, it is one good reason to use it on helpless targets, as a fullround action automatically crit them ^^
Here's another question about vampiric touch- if you make a sneak attack with it, or land a critical, do you gain more temporary HP?
Yes this will net you more damage/temp hp, but mind the limitations of the spell: you can't gain more hp then it takes damage to kill the target. If yo deal 40 damage, but only need 10 to kill the target, you only gain 10 temp hp.
Agreed that bastard swords are cooler than long swords, flavorwise, but arcane strike would be a better feat than EWP for an EK. He doesn't get that many feats, after all, and the extra damage from the feat goes up with his caster levels. IOW, 1d8+1 or more is better than 1d10.
Bastard sword proficiency is a good feat for a sword-n-board fighter. That extra +1 avg. damage per hit over his career as a melee character will help.
That, and it just looks cool!
If cast multiple times in the same round would the temporary hit points from Vampiric Touch stack? I was thinking of a Magus with a Vicious weapon in one hand and a wand of Vampiric Touch in the other
No, they don't stack any more than multiple castings of, say, Cat's Grace would stack. They do, however, overlap, so if you got AoO'ed between your Vampiric Touches, you'd get the benefit.
Here's another question about vampiric touch- if you make a sneak attack with it, or land a critical, do you gain more temporary HP?Yes this will net you more damage/temp hp, but mind the limitations of the spell: you can't gain more hp then it takes damage to kill the target. If yo deal 40 damage, but only need 10 to kill the target, you only gain 10 temp hp.
True, but you have to deal enough damage to take the opponent to negative CON to kill it. Against a conscious, non-staggered foe, that's minimum 11 damage.
Plus, there's a lot of large-sized or larger creatures in the Bestiary which have fairly high CON, so anything the Fighter can't trip, you won't have to worry about over-killing it with Vampiric Touch.
No, they don't stack any more than multiple castings of, say, Cat's Grace would stack. They do, however, overlap, so if you got AoO'ed between your Vampiric Touches, you'd get the benefit.
Like all HP, temporary HP stack. That's like saying multiple castings of CLW don't stack.
So I can cast false life as many times as I can and all the temp HP stack ?
See this thread and draw your own conclusion