Short answer, I don't believe so.
While certain sources of negative damage can heal undead, it isn't universally applicable.
No, even the strikes deal negative energy damage they don't heal undead. It's just that: damage.
If an effect can heal it will say so. ...Otherwise a Spirit Barbarian could also punch you to full health. :)
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No, even the strikes deal negative energy damage they don't heal undead. It's just that: damage.
If an effect can heal it will say so. ...Otherwise a Spirit Barbarian could also punch you to full health. :)
Despite not wanting it to work that way, Masda and Gentleman have both come to the opposite conclusion of the RAW. They heal each other.
CRB pg 451:
When an attack deals a type of damage, the attack action gains that trait. For example, the Strikes and attack actions you use wielding a sword when its flaming rune is active gain the fire trait, since the rune gives the weapon the ability to deal fire damage.
CRB page 634: Negative
Effects with this trait heal undead creatures with negative energy, deal negative damage to living creatures, or manipulate negative energy. Planes with this trait are vast, empty reaches that suck the life from the living.
CRB pg 637:
...Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don’t benefit from healing effects.
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No, even the strikes deal negative energy damage they don't heal undead. It's just that: damage.
If an effect can heal it will say so. ...Otherwise a Spirit Barbarian could also punch you to full health. :)Despite not wanting it to work that way, Masda and Gentleman have both come to the opposite conclusion of the RAW. They heal each other.
CRB pg 451:
When an attack deals a type of damage, the attack action gains that trait. For example, the Strikes and attack actions you use wielding a sword when its flaming rune is active gain the fire trait, since the rune gives the weapon the ability to deal fire damage.
CRB page 634: Negative
Effects with this trait heal undead creatures with negative energy, deal negative damage to living creatures, or manipulate negative energy. Planes with this trait are vast, empty reaches that suck the life from the living.
CRB pg 637:
...Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don’t benefit from healing effects.
You put the emphasis in the wrong place. Those are saying things that effects with the Negative Trait CAN do, not what they all DO do. If that was the case, Harm would not have to specifically say it heals Undead.
Effects with this trait heal undead creatures with negative energy, deal negative damage to living creatures, or manipulate negative energy. Planes with this trait are vast, empty reaches that suck the life from the living.
Also, Page 452
Energy Damage
Many spells and other magical effects deal energy damage.
Energy damage is also dealt from effects in the world, such
as the biting cold of a blizzard to a raging forest fire. The
main types of energy damage are acid, cold, electricity, fire,
and sonic. Acid damage can be delivered by gases, liquids,
and certain solids that dissolve flesh, and sometimes
harder materials. Cold damage freezes material by way
of contact with chilling gases and ice. Electricity damage
comes from the discharge of powerful lightning and sparks.
Fire damage burns through heat and combustion. Sonic
damage assaults matter with high-frequency vibration
and sound waves. Many times, you deal energy damage
by casting magic spells, and doing so is often useful
against creatures that have immunities or resistances to
physical damage.
Two special types of energy damage specifically target
the living and the undead. Positive energy often manifests
as healing energy to living creatures but can create
positive damage that withers undead bodies and disrupts
and injures incorporeal undead. Negative energy often
revivifies the unnatural, unliving power of undead, while
manifesting as negative damage that gnaws at the living.
Powerful and pure magical energy can manifest itself
as force damage. Few things can resist this type of
damage—not even incorporeal creatures such as ghosts
and wraiths.
Chill Touch has the Negative Trait and certainly does not heal Undead.
Horrid Wilting doesn't heal Undead.
Massacre does Negative damage and can damage Undead just fine.
No, even the strikes deal negative energy damage they don't heal undead. It's just that: damage.
If an effect can heal it will say so. ...Otherwise a Spirit Barbarian could also punch you to full health. :)Despite not wanting it to work that way, Masda and Gentleman have both come to the opposite conclusion of the RAW. They heal each other.
CRB pg 451:
When an attack deals a type of damage, the attack action gains that trait. For example, the Strikes and attack actions you use wielding a sword when its flaming rune is active gain the fire trait, since the rune gives the weapon the ability to deal fire damage.
CRB page 634: Negative
Effects with this trait heal undead creatures with negative energy, deal negative damage to living creatures, or manipulate negative energy. Planes with this trait are vast, empty reaches that suck the life from the living.
CRB pg 637:
...Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don’t benefit from healing effects.
I am surprised to say that this is convincing.
Just randomly looking at Undead creatures, all of them so far have the phrase "negative healing" next to their HP. I can't find this trait defined, but it is recommend for Undead creatures under the Creature Building rules.
What does "Negative Healing" mean?
If anyone accepts that logic, then their party should be 4 Spirit Instinct Barbarians, as by the same logic, a Spirit Instict Barbarian can punch a living creature healthy.
positive (trait) Effects with this trait heal living creatures with positive energy, deal
positive energy damage to undead, or manipulate positive energy.
Spirit Rage (Instinct Ability)
When you are raging, you can increase your damage from
Rage from 2 to 3 and deal negative or positive damage,
instead of the normal damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack (choose each
time you Rage). If you choose to deal negative or positive damage, your weapon or
unarmed attack gains the effects of the ghost touch property rune, which makes it
more effective against incorporeal creatures, and your Rage action gains the divine
and necromancy traits, plus negative or positive, as appropriate.
Better healer than a Cleric could ever hope to be.
Have to agree that Harm would not specifically call out healing undead if negative damage always healed undead.
If anyone accepts that logic, then their party should be 4 Spirit Instinct Barbarians, as by the same logic, a Spirit Instict Barbarian can punch a living creature healthy.
positive (trait) Effects with this trait heal living creatures with positive energy, deal
positive energy damage to undead, or manipulate positive energy.Better healer than a Cleric could ever hope to be.Spirit Rage (Instinct Ability)
When you are raging, you can increase your damage from
Rage from 2 to 3 and deal negative or positive damage,
instead of the normal damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack (choose each
time you Rage). If you choose to deal negative or positive damage, your weapon or
unarmed attack gains the effects of the ghost touch property rune, which makes it
more effective against incorporeal creatures, and your Rage action gains the divine
and necromancy traits, plus negative or positive, as appropriate.
Excellent point. I do think there is a bit of imprecise writing though.
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Under the "Undead" trait:
"Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don’t benefit from healing effects."
So I think it's definitive that that's how it's supposed to be. I guess the 4 Spirit Barbarian Dhampir party is gonna be the new meta, huh?
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It’s not.
If they wanted Spirit Barbarian to heal people with their strikes they would have called that out, or at the least mentioned it earlier in the ability instead of saying that it gains the trait at the end after mentioning how the damage works.
The Trait is relying on that “or” in both the Positive and Negative Traits, it doesn’t convert their entire damage to either Positive or Negative, and thus potentially turning all of their damage into potential healing.
It would make the wording of the first part of the ability rather superfluous.
The Core Rulebook even has “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is” as one of its rules.
No, the full weapon damage would not heal them completely, but the little amount of Positive/Negative I'd argue would. So it'd be a BAD method to try to heal people, but it'd still heal somewhat.
So if a Barbarian dealt 12 damage + 3 Negative damage against a ghost, I'd see it as 9 damage total. Healing was dealt, but not enough to be an efficient method of healing. It's just an incidental penalty to the overall damage dealt.
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This is a pretty fun/funny discussion. I particularly like the parts about a spirit barbarian punching its allies into good health. Classic!
I'm in the camp of that "or" being critical. IMO "or" is a binary word.
Examples:
Should we go to Chilis or Applebees? This is exclusive, you'll only go to one place.
Similarly, "A rule can do this specific thing or that specific thing." It will only do one of those two clauses at a time.
I also see an "often" in the rules, which tells you that there is a strong trend that is not followed 100% of the time.
While it is very funny to think of a party of Spirit Barbarians fighting a party of ghosts, and every few rounds both groups stop attacking their enemies and begin punching their buddies... it's just nonsensical. Right? I mean... of course it is, right? And yeah, I get it, interpretation of game rules doesn't always rely on common sense because sometimes you just need something to work in a specific way for *other* reasons, so common sense gets put aside for a moment...
but really, this seems like a slam dunk. Your barbarian isn't going to go around great-cleaving his allies into better health... And as a GM, I would never have a ghost punch its buddy to heal it.
Further, I'm typically a "it doesn't matter how boneheaded my GM's rule call is, I'll follow it for the session" sort of person, but if my GM had heal-punching ghosts or barbarians attacking the party.... I'm pretty sure even I'd call shenanigans on that.
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Does it say anywhere that non-undead are healed by positive energy? If not then the Barbarian thing wont matter when compared to undead negative healing. Though I am on the side ghost not being able to heal each other that way. You just can't apply the opposite rule to something.
Literally in the text I quoted.
No, the full weapon damage would not heal them completely, but the little amount of Positive/Negative I'd argue would. So it'd be a BAD method to try to heal people, but it'd still heal somewhat.
So if a Barbarian dealt 12 damage + 3 Negative damage against a ghost, I'd see it as 9 damage total. Healing was dealt, but not enough to be an efficient method of healing. It's just an incidental penalty to the overall damage dealt.
Except it absolutely does turn ALL of the damage into Positive or Negative damage. The ability specifically says that.
Spirit Rage (Instinct Ability)
When you are raging, you can increase your damage from Rage from 2 to 3 and deal negative or positive damage, instead of the normal damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack (choose each time you Rage).
I am not advocating that this actually heals living creatures. I am pointing out the absurdity of that logic. Living Creatures are healed by Positive Energy healing, like Heal, not Positive Damage. Undead are healed by Negative Energy healing, like Harm, not Negative Damage.
Spirit rage, like dragon rage, only affects the extra rage damage. It doesn’t convert the entire attack’s damage.
I disagree. The two abilities are worded differently. Dragon Instinct specifies that it changes the type of the Rage Damage. Spirit Instinct doesn't.
Draconic Rage (Instinct Ability)
While raging, you can increase the additional damage from Rage from 2 to 4 and change its damage type to match that of your dragon’s breath weapon instead of the damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack. If you do this, your Rage action gains the arcane and evocation traits, as well as the trait matching the damage type.
Spirit Rage (Instinct Ability)
When you are raging, you can increase your damage from Rage from 2 to 3 and deal negative or positive damage, instead of the normal damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack (choose each time you Rage). If you choose to deal negative or positive damage, your weapon or unarmed attack gains the effects of the ghost touch property rune, which makes it more effective against incorporeal creatures, and your Rage action gains the divine and necromancy traits, plus negative or positive, as appropriate.
This seems intentional, to offset the pathetic Rage Damage that Spirit Instinct gains compared to other Instincts.
Have to agree that Harm would not specifically call out healing undead if negative damage always healed undead.
While I don't necessary agree with their conclusion, I have to say that this isn't really convincing evidence against it either.
There are many instances of Paizo restating how basic rules work in specific entries in order to make it clearer how those abilities function.
So arguing they wouldn't waste time restating general rules doesn't hold, because they've already done that a lot.
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Spirit rage, like dragon rage, only affects the extra rage damage. It doesn’t convert the entire attack’s damage.I disagree. The two abilities are worded differently. Dragon Instinct specifies that it changes the type of the Rage Damage. Spirit Instinct doesn't.
Draconic Rage (Instinct Ability)
While raging, you can increase the additional damage from Rage from 2 to 4 and change its damage type to match that of your dragon’s breath weapon instead of the damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack. If you do this, your Rage action gains the arcane and evocation traits, as well as the trait matching the damage type.This seems intentional, to offset the pathetic Rage Damage that Spirit Instinct gains compared to other Instincts.Spirit Rage (Instinct Ability)
When you are raging, you can increase your damage from Rage from 2 to 3 and deal negative or positive damage, instead of the normal damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack (choose each time you Rage). If you choose to deal negative or positive damage, your weapon or unarmed attack gains the effects of the ghost touch property rune, which makes it more effective against incorporeal creatures, and your Rage action gains the divine and necromancy traits, plus negative or positive, as appropriate.
It wasn’t intentional, and when brought up to Designers they’ve said that section is slated for corrective text.
It wasn’t intentional, and when brought up to Designers they’ve said that section is slated for corrective text.Spirit rage, like dragon rage, only affects the extra rage damage. It doesn’t convert the entire attack’s damage.I disagree. The two abilities are worded differently. Dragon Instinct specifies that it changes the type of the Rage Damage. Spirit Instinct doesn't.
Draconic Rage (Instinct Ability)
While raging, you can increase the additional damage from Rage from 2 to 4 and change its damage type to match that of your dragon’s breath weapon instead of the damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack. If you do this, your Rage action gains the arcane and evocation traits, as well as the trait matching the damage type.This seems intentional, to offset the pathetic Rage Damage that Spirit Instinct gains compared to other Instincts.Spirit Rage (Instinct Ability)
When you are raging, you can increase your damage from Rage from 2 to 3 and deal negative or positive damage, instead of the normal damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack (choose each time you Rage). If you choose to deal negative or positive damage, your weapon or unarmed attack gains the effects of the ghost touch property rune, which makes it more effective against incorporeal creatures, and your Rage action gains the divine and necromancy traits, plus negative or positive, as appropriate.
Do you have a link for that please?
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Do you have a link for that please?It wasn’t intentional, and when brought up to Designers they’ve said that section is slated for corrective text.Spirit rage, like dragon rage, only affects the extra rage damage. It doesn’t convert the entire attack’s damage.I disagree. The two abilities are worded differently. Dragon Instinct specifies that it changes the type of the Rage Damage. Spirit Instinct doesn't.
Draconic Rage (Instinct Ability)
While raging, you can increase the additional damage from Rage from 2 to 4 and change its damage type to match that of your dragon’s breath weapon instead of the damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack. If you do this, your Rage action gains the arcane and evocation traits, as well as the trait matching the damage type.This seems intentional, to offset the pathetic Rage Damage that Spirit Instinct gains compared to other Instincts.Spirit Rage (Instinct Ability)
When you are raging, you can increase your damage from Rage from 2 to 3 and deal negative or positive damage, instead of the normal damage type for your weapon or unarmed attack (choose each time you Rage). If you choose to deal negative or positive damage, your weapon or unarmed attack gains the effects of the ghost touch property rune, which makes it more effective against incorporeal creatures, and your Rage action gains the divine and necromancy traits, plus negative or positive, as appropriate.
I don't know specifically what Rysky is talking about, but I do know that there was a Spirit Barbarian on Knights of Everflame and only her rage damage was positive/negative.
If anyone accepts that logic, then their party should be 4 Spirit Instinct Barbarians, as by the same logic, a Spirit Instict Barbarian can punch a living creature healthy.
I'm not saying I want or advocate for that line of reasoning, but follow your thought to it's conclusion. Why would a spirit barbarian ever choose to deal negative damage with their instinct specialty?
Positive damage will always be a better choice for them as nothing resists positive energy, unless resist all (at least nothing that a search on archives could find), incorporeal undead are resistant to negative damage by virtue of resist all, and many if not most undead are vulnerable to positive damage.
Chill Touch
Chill Touch does not help your case. The spell has the Negative Trait and does ZERO damage to undead, circumventing the "negative energy heals undead" clauses. Undead aren't immune to the negative trait, just healed by negative energy.
Thanks to the Undead creature type entry, "Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don’t benefit from healing effects." There are no "some" limitors for those effects.
Note it doesn't say damaged by positive energy that heals, nor healed by negative energy that damages.
Following the logic that only effects that explicitly say they heal undead do so, how does a wraith recover from injury? They have no natural recuperative ability, they cannot be affected by healing effects. So they take 20 damage, the party runs away. Come back 2 days later and it's still missing 20 HP? A month later after they level up?
Does the wraith sit around waiting for a helpful evil cleric/sorcerer to use "Harm" on them? Or do they maybe stew in their anger and solitude, knitting themselves back together with the horrid energies that have cursed them to unlife?
If something doing negative damage meant that it healed undead automatically, the harm spell would not need to say "If the target is a willing undead creature, you restore that amount of hit points." because "deal 1d8 negative damage to it" from the prior sentence in the spell's description would cover that already.
Why would the negative energy trait bother to say "deal negative damage to living creatures" if negative damage is dealt to ALL creatures unless said otherwise? It's just as redundant then as your emphasis, unless harm's inclusion is just a reminder of how it works.
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"Negative Energy" and "Negative Damage" work differently.
Or I could just cast Disrupting Weapons on my dagger and stab you to health.
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As Jader7777 says, I believe you need to separate energy and damage. Positive energy only deals positive damage to undead. Negative energy only deals negative damage to living. Positive energy only heals the living. Negative energy only heals the undead.
I believe, by definition, positive damage simply does nothing when applied to the living. I don't believe there is any text that says the damage is converted to healing, and the implication is that the creature is immune.
The text on Negative Healing:
Negative Healing
A creature with negative healing draws
health from negative energy rather than positive energy.
It is damaged by positive damage and is not healed by
positive healing effects. It does not take negative damage,
and it is healed by negative effects that heal undead.
Unless the ability explicitly converts the negative damage into negative healing, undead are not healed by negative damage. They simply do not take the negative damage. Similar conclusions can be made for positive damage.
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In addition to the key linchpin of the "negative damage always heals undead" being built on selectively ignoring the word or, there's another more general principle that I think folks should consider.
The Glossary and Index is almost never going to be the authoritative component or version of a rule. It's like 80% index, and 20% glossary. The rules there are obviously summarized as much as possible, and preference should be taken for the pages that they link to (as appropriate). This is a rare case where I think the summary is actually more "rules-y" than the rule section, so this is more of a note of caution than anything.
At any rate, I don't believe there's any general rule that says any type of damage can ever used to heal.
The real problem, as I see it, lies not in the descriptions of the spells so much as the absence of a definition for the term negative healing which is tacked onto a ton of undead statblocks without a formal definition*.
It seems to encompass both the "can be healed by negative energy spells that provide negative healing" which mostly doesn't need to be stated because it's in the spells themselves and "immune to negative damage" which I don't actually see explicitly stated anywhere in the Core Rulebook or the Bestiary.
For that matter, I also don't see anything stating that living creatures are immune to positive damage. They're sorta implied by the rules on p.452 of the CRB and the inherited tradition, but the flavorful descriptions don't actually say it.
Constructs aren't actually explicitly immune to either type of damage either, except that they're "not living creatures, nor are they undead."
In this case, taking the Glossary/Index descriptions of positive/negative traits into consideration, you could at least come to the conclusion that those traits mean that, being damage, they can only affect specific targets.
So I see basically three ways to run things:
- positive/negative damage heals living/undead respectively, and hurts undead/living respectively, presumably doesn't affect anything else (constructs/objects)
- positive/negative damage hurts undead/living respectively, everything else (so constructs/objects) is unaffected, and heals no one
- positive/negative damage hurts everything not explicitly referenced by the effect because technically no one is immune, and either is basically one of the best damage type to add to an attack if you can avoid having it specify that it affects undead or living
I think the first case is mostly unsupported by the rules. Nothing states damage becomes healing based on the type of energy. Other games may have a tradition of doing this, but "energy" and "damage" are not interchangeable rules elements, so saying something is healed by negative energy does not mean that negative damage will heal it. As others have pointed out, there are opportunities for abuse for the reverse case with positive damage and living creatures.
I think the third case is ridiculous, but also not particularly supported by the rules, as long as you take the trait descriptions into the glossary into consideration. Otherwise it's mostly irrelevant since in most cases it gets overridden by narrower text on the spell or effect dealing the damage.
I think the middle case is intended, and mostly supported by the rules. It also only comes up for a few cases like the Spirit Instinct Barbarian or monster statblocks that just casually use positive/negative damage, because most spells/weapon runes will explicitly call out being able to hurt/heal certain targets. It mirrors the rules for alignment damage, and does a good job of maintaining the consistency. It also works with Xethik's definition of negative healing, which I'm really hoping came from the Bestiary 2 since I can't find it anywhere.
Two special types of energy damage specifically target the living and the undead. Positive energy often manifests as healing energy to living creatures but can create positive damage that withers undead bodies and disrupts and injures incorporeal undead. Negative energy often revivifies the unnatural, unliving power of undead, while manifesting as negative damage that gnaws at the living.
Undead Once living, these creatures were infused after death with negative energy and soul-corrupting evil magic. When reduced to 0 Hit Points, an undead creature is destroyed. Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don’t benefit from healing effects.
Agree a lot of confusion seems to come from the negative healing feature, which on closer inspection doesn't actually appear to do anything.
The text on Negative Healing:
Negative Healing
A creature with negative healing draws
health from negative energy rather than positive energy.
It is damaged by positive damage and is not healed by
positive healing effects. It does not take negative damage,
and it is healed by negative effects that heal undead.
To answer my earlier question: This is text from Bestiary 2. Negative Healing now has a definition.
Someone did a flip through on YouTube and the relevant text is visible: https://youtu.be/Oakh9p1NVDE?t=1340
Sorry! Just saw this. Yes, that was from my copy of Bestiary 2. I honestly would have checked Bestiary 1 but Bestiary 2 was the one I happened to have open! Hah, no wonder I couldn't find it on Nethys.
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Yep, the text was missing in Bestiary 1 but we'll make sure to get it back there in errata. I first noticed it wasn't in the book based on how many people were confused by this. I was like "Shouldn't the definition of negative healing cover this?" and then it wasn't there. I would suggest to go with the Bestiary 2 definition. Negative damage is damage that undead and constructs don't take. Positive damage is damage that living creatures and constructs don't take. And healing is healing.
Man, constructs are immune to negative damage and positive damage. And healing. Neat.
One thing I was excited to do as soon as I saw the dhampir ancestry was to make a cleric or other divine class with the undead domain. As far as I can tell it's the only domain that can get you a negative healing focus spell. Sadly you won't be able to get it in pfs, because all the gods that allow it are evil and restricted! Little disappointed that there's no good or neutral gods that can have the undead domain, but it does make sense I guess. Would be cool if there was a non evil vampire God or something.
Still won't work for PFS, on account of being restricted, but if in a home-game you want a non-Evil Cleric with the Undeath domain there is the Splinter Faith feat. Won't work for, say, Pharasma, but anyone where the Undead aren't Anathema, if you can explain away why Undeath is a reasonable thing for your deity to relate to, you can get the Domain.
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One thing I was excited to do as soon as I saw the dhampir ancestry was to make a cleric or other divine class with the undead domain. As far as I can tell it's the only domain that can get you a negative healing focus spell. Sadly you won't be able to get it in pfs, because all the gods that allow it are evil and restricted! Little disappointed that there's no good or neutral gods that can have the undead domain, but it does make sense I guess. Would be cool if there was a non evil vampire God or something.
All hail the dhampir leaf druid, whose goodberries do not discriminate against the post-mortal.
I'm sure there are quite a few ways that dhampir characters still can heal, any non positive healing basically. I just liked the idea of using actual negative healing I guess, and it would've been nice to have focus point healing. Not the end of the world but thematically would've been neat.
I can see ghosts funneling energy into each other to heal or other types of undead. I don't think it would be a problem for some undead to have some healing.
One thing I was excited to do as soon as I saw the dhampir ancestry was to make a cleric or other divine class with the undead domain. As far as I can tell it's the only domain that can get you a negative healing focus spell. Sadly you won't be able to get it in pfs, because all the gods that allow it are evil and restricted! Little disappointed that there's no good or neutral gods that can have the undead domain, but it does make sense I guess. Would be cool if there was a non evil vampire God or something.All hail the dhampir leaf druid, whose goodberries do not discriminate against the post-mortal.
As far as I can tell, undead creatures cannot heal from goodberries because of their immunity to healing effects from the undead trait. The spell harm only has the necromancy and negative traits so that should work to heal them. Soothe would also not work because of the healing trait on it.
Once living, these creatures were infused after death with negative energy and soul-corrupting evil magic. When reduced to 0 Hit Points, an undead creature is destroyed. Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don’t benefit from healing effects.
Thanks everyone for participating in this lively, and mostly reasoned debate. I'm pleased to be wrong in the conclusion. I never wanted the outcome to be what I thought it was as written. My stance was mostly that things seemed to indicate that negative energy attacks could heal ghosts, as there was no definition of Negative Healing.
I'm glad to see there shouldn't be any more confusion on this subject. One disagreement done, 99 more to go?? /s