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I tried searching the archives and I cannot find where this has been addressed. In this weekends game I had a BBEG cast phantasmal killer on the party Barbarian, who was tactically in position to be the best target for the spell, and in a meta-game sense, the target I wanted to cast it on since he had a decent chance to live through it. ( I dont like to outright kill PCs, but I understand it happens.) According to the spell description, the character is flat out dead, no HP damage is actually taken if the target fails both the Will save to disbelieve and the Fortitude save to take the damage. The party Cleric happened to have breath of life prayed for, and I ruled to allow the Cleric to cast it, saying that the Barbarian had the dead condition and was at exactly negative CON HP. Was this ruling correct, or should I have let the Barbarian remain dead?
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Well, here's how it looks, wording wise:
Phantasmal Killer
Fail Will Save, need to roll Fortitude save. Fail Fortitude save, considered dead (no damage).
Breath of Life
Cures hitpoint damage. If target was dead within the last round, and hitpoints are higher than negative Con, person comes back to life.
So the qualifiers are:
1. If the target became dead within 1 round: check.
2. Hitpoints are higher than negative Con: check.
Sounds fine to me.
If Phantasmal Killer were a death effect, then it'd be different. But you are dying from fear (fort save or heart gives out, etc). No hitpoint damage (not being physically injured).
Think of the Breath of Life as a defibrilator paddles. Gives that shock of life back to the target, and they come back as long as they aren't still below negative Con.
This fits for a 4th level spell that kills. Two saves, and NOT a death effect.
5th level magic (the level of Breath of Life, Raise Dead, and Slay Living) have the death effect stuff.
A 5th level spell should trump a 4th level spell. I see no problem with bringing him back, and even healing him if he had any hitpoint damage.
That's what the BBEG gets for using a 4th level slaying spell against people that can cast 5th level spells in response.
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I'm with Kaisoku. Considering how often phantasmal killer gets thrown around I'm perfectly fine with the defibrilator spell counteracting it.
I think the spell very rarely gets used, precisely because it allows two saves.
Except against obvious Rogues, in which case they're often screwed.There was a 3.5 spell (Phantasmal Assailants) in the Spell Compendium, that was a lower-level version of phantasmal killer, which I used to prep more often. It dealt Wis and Dex damage on a successful save, so it was good for setting targets up for another Will or Reflex save spell on the next round.
I tried searching the archives and I cannot find where this has been addressed. In this weekends game I had a BBEG cast phantasmal killer on the party Barbarian, who was tactically in position to be the best target for the spell, and in a meta-game sense, the target I wanted to cast it on since he had a decent chance to live through it. ( I dont like to outright kill PCs, but I understand it happens.) According to the spell description, the character is flat out dead, no HP damage is actually taken if the target fails both the Will save to disbelieve and the Fortitude save to take the damage. The party Cleric happened to have breath of life prayed for, and I ruled to allow the Cleric to cast it, saying that the Barbarian had the dead condition and was at exactly negative CON HP. Was this ruling correct, or should I have let the Barbarian remain dead?
As a GM, I think you made the right call. It is seldom rewarding to the game to kill characters. While it should something that the PCs risk, to keep suspense in the game, I would rather reward the cleric for having prepared for the eventually, and be useful in the situation.
As for the rules, my interpretation is that it cannot be done. While Phantasmal Killer isn't a death effect, it kills without hit point damage. As such the character isn't at a certain negative hp, which breath of life can raise him above. Either ruling requires assumptions that are not given within the game parameters.
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As for the rules, my interpretation is that it cannot be done. While Phantasmal Killer isn't a death effect, it kills without hit point damage. As such the character isn't at a certain negative hp, which breath of life can raise him above. Either ruling requires assumptions that are not given within the game parameters.
I can see your point; I thought that all effects that just killed someone dead with no hp damage, were death effects by default, and I'm surprised to see that it isn't labelled as such.
So I can see the argument in favour of allowing Raise Dead.
Maybe the issue is not with phantasmal killer, but that breath of life is too good? I know death is a revolving door in D&D, but it would be nice if the PC could actually hit the floor before jumping back into the fray.
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Breath of Life states that:
Creatures slain by death effects cannot be saved by breath of life.
The problem is a death attack states:
In most cases, a death attack allows the victim a Fortitude save to avoid the effect, but if the save fails, the character dies instantly.
Raise dead doesn't work on someone killed by a death attack or effect.
Death attacks slay instantly. A victim cannot be made stable and thereby kept alive.
In case it matters, a dead character, no matter how he died, has hit points equal to or less than his negative Constitution score.
The spell death ward protects against these attacks.
Phantasmal Killer does grants a Fortitude save or be slain instantly. That would indicate it is indeed a death effect.
Yeah, I would definitely say BoL is a death effect, sure, an ILLUSIONARY death effect, but if you fail the Will Save, you just beleived it`s a death effect with all your soul.
...would be nice to get Paizo clarification, on this one specifically, and on what is the border-line to qualify as a death effect, whether or not it has the death tag per se, or just a save failure = death regardless of HPs.
By my reading, Phantasmal Killer is shut down by passing your Save, Immunity to Illusions/Mind-Affecting, Immunity to Fear, Immunity to Death effects (and bonuses against all of those should apply to the perinent Save). That, and it can be turned agsinst the caster, so if this is so common a spell Helms of Telepathy should be pretty useful (or Illusioning your Improved Familar with Telepathy to impersonate you)
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We actually had a similar situation come up this past Saturday, but I think it was a Symbol of Death.
Anyway, in our campaign, we houseruled two things:
1. Death effects put you at negative (CON+1), so you are actually dead.
2. Breath of Life is a cure spell that can be spontaneously cast, and it does work on death effects. Incidentally, we also houseruled that BoL doesn't have to be cast immediately after someone dies to work, but can be cast within I think 2 or 3 rounds.
So in our session, BoL did work to revive the party member who was killed by the Symbol of Death, even though the cleric couldn't get to him until two rounds after the symbol went off.
We recognize this goes against the description of BoL in the rules, but we thought these houserules would work better in our campaign because character death from death effects was coming up a bit more often than any of us wanted.