Undeath's Blessing and Dhampir Heritage

[cavernshark]

What happens to a Dhampir under the effects of undead sorcerer bloodline power Undeath's Blessing when they are targeted by a Heal spell?

Despite having negative healing, the Dhampir is a valid target for Undeath's Blessing since it is a "living creature."

It's clear that a Harm spell targeting the Dhampir would do it's full negative healing + 2 (from Undeath's Blessing). Undeath's Blessing clearly seems designed to allow the Harm spell to heal a living creature or an undead creature so this should work for the Dhampir regardless.

It's less clear to me what happens with the Heal spell. It definitely doesn't get the extra +2, but does it heal the Dhampir? Does it harm them? Does it do nothing? Undeath's Blessing makes the heal spell treat the Dhampir as living but it was already living, just with a reversed energy. This question would equally apply to a Bones mystery Oracle.

Context: I'd really like to play a Dhampir, but the risk of becoming a liability for a regular party trying to use a 3 action heal is a bit much. I'm looking into ways to mitigate the Negative Healing ability that comes with the versatile heritage.

[Cordell Kintner]

Negative Healing only causes you to heal from Negative effects that heal undead, and take damage from Positive Damage. You are not undead, so anything that only damages undead will not damage you.

For example, you will be healed when targeted by a Harm spell, since Harm heals Undead, and you are treated as undead for the purposes of effects that heal Undead. However, if you are targeted by a Heal spell, you are considered immune to it. The spell only deals Positive Damage to Undead creatures, which you aren't, while you're also immune to positive effects that heal you.

If you add that spell on top of Negative Healing, the only change would be the +2 from Harm Spells. Negative Healing still renders you immune to positive healing effects, and you were already considered living prior to the spell.

[Castilliano]

As Cordell covered, Negative Healing is asymmetric.
In brief, positive damage has to damage living creatures in order to damage a living creature w/ Negative Healing (i.e. Dhampir), otherwise they just do nothing. You only count as undead for negative energy effects (which is a good thing regarding those).

And I think it's partly because as you noted, it'd be too disruptive to AoE Heals if your presence prevented them. Paizo has had lots of experience w/ mixed parties and probably aimed to solve that.
On the other hand, an "all Negative Healing" party could be really potent, as most of their enemies would get hurt when they healed themselves via AoE Harms.

[Salamileg]

Cordell Kintner wrote:

Negative Healing only causes you to heal from Negative effects that heal undead, and take damage from Positive Damage. You are not undead, so anything that only damages undead will not damage you.

For example, you will be healed when targeted by a Harm spell, since Harm heals Undead, and you are treated as undead for the purposes of effects that heal Undead. However, if you are targeted by a Heal spell, you are considered immune to it. The spell only deals Positive Damage to Undead creatures, which you aren't, while you're also immune to positive effects that heal you.

If you add that spell on top of Negative Healing, the only change would be the +2 from Harm Spells. Negative Healing still renders you immune to positive healing effects, and you were already considered living prior to the spell.

But the full quote from the Dhampir heritage says "You have the negative healing ability, which means you are harmed by positive damage and healed by negative effects as if you were undead." Wouldn't that mean that Heal damage you, since positive damage and negative healing treat you as undead?

[Amaya/Polaris]

It seems pretty clear to me from the text that dhampir are treated as undead for the purposes of Heal and Harm, despite being living. And Undeath's Blessing says that Heal treats you as living, which would be despite the fact that you're treated as undead, despite the fact that you're actually living.

So...yeah, Undeath's Blessing would let a dhampir character be healed with the Heal spell, though they'd still be hurt by other positive damage sources and get no benefit from other positive healing.

(Undeath's Blessing is really weird, by the way. I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to save against it if they knew what it did, so I get the feeling it originally gave a "negative healing" effect of its own by fully treating you as undead instead of granting the best of both worlds, probably changed in that case because that'd make it pretty terrible.)

[cavernshark]

This has all kinds of weird implications. I've reread everything with all of your comments and I have a few observations.

I think I agree that Undeath's Blessing does not allow a Dhampir to receive healing from heal, however, this same reading also means that a Dhampir can only actually receive healing from Harm spells while under the effects of Undeath's Blessing. The flip side is that they'd never be at risk for accidental death if the party needs to channel positive energy. They're targeted for positive healing like the rest of the party, being a living creature; they're just immune to it.

* Heal allows you to target undead with positive damage and living creatures with positive healing.

* Harm allows you to target undead with negative healing and living creatures with positive damage.

* Undeath's Blessing allows the target to be treated as living for heal and undead for harm, essentially always being the recipient of the healing effect (positive or negative).

This means a Dhampir needs Undeath's Blessing to actually receive healing from harms at all. Under normal circumstances, a Dhampir cannot use harm to target themselves with negative healing because they are still living creatures. Harm can only target them with negative damage, which they are immune to. Undeath's Blessing switches that and allows them to target themselves as an undead creature (receiving negative healing, with the benefit of the +2).

Even weirder, it means that 3-action heals and 3-action harms do *nothing* to Dhampirs under normal circumstances (or Bones Oracles for that matter). The heal tries to give them positive healing, which they are immune, and the harm tries to give them negative damage, which they are immune to.

This same reading also means that the only thing Undeath's Blessing does most living sorcerers with the undead bloodline is shield themselves from harm spells. They are living, so the blessing would cause them to be targeted by heals as living creatures (receiving positive healing) and be targeted by harms as undead creatures (receiving negative healing with a +2 bonus). But they'd be immune to the negative healing. It doesn't, as I originally understood, allow Undead Sorcerers to use harm spells to heal living allies. And since it can't be used on undead creatures, it also can't be used to boost harm effects on undead allies.

Really sucks the wind out of this. I feel like the idea of negative healing and living vs. undead got a bit flipped at some point.

[cavernshark]

I've also realized that Bones Oracles are even more impacted by this since their own Negative Healing still doesn't bypass the specific targeting instructions in the Heal and Harm spells. They are still living, so would be subject to positive healing (immune) or negative damage (immune) from their own spells.

And since their curse makes them take half as much non-magical healing, they can't even fall back on medicine to adequately cover the fact that they're functionally immune to the two main sources of healing in the game.

[Cordell Kintner]

The problem lies with Negative Healing only mentioning being harmed by positive damage, not treated as undead for effects that cause positive damage. There are effects that just straight up cause positive damage, such as Ki Strike or Spirit Barbarians; these you would take damage from. Most spells that deal positive damage have a different effect on living targets, so unless you have the Undead trait you would be affected as if living. So in the case of Heal, you would receive positive healing, which you are immune to.

On the other side, it explicitly states you are treated as undead when it comes to effects that provide negative healing, such as Harm, so when targeted by a harm spell you are treated as having the Undead trait.

[Amaya/Polaris]

Say what you will about the wording of Negative Healing itself, but both the text Salamileg pointed out and the "You might..." section suggesting they'd take precautions against such magic suggest that the intention of the rules is a character with negative healing being treated as undead for both sides of the equation.

(Also because it would make little sense to do it asymmetrically -- if the intention were to give a buff to characters with negative healing, they'd probably outright mention the buff.)

[Cordell Kintner]

I'm sure that was the intent, but RAW its not. Feel free to adjust to your games but for situations like PFS it's actually good, so they don't have to approve every time an ally wants to cast a 3 action heal with them in range.