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Official Answer: Stalk the FAQ page.
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One of many things Paizo should clean up.
1) Heal has its own rules. Technically a Dhampir is targeted as a willing living creature. So the spell tries to heal but Negative Healing says that a Dhampir is is not healed by positive healing effects.
So nothing happens.
2) If you cast Harm on a Dhampir at least it doesn't have to be willing. But a Dhampir is protected by Negative Healing again as it does not take negative damage.
So neither work.
Personally I house rule it and ignore the targeting resrictions on ALL these sorts of spells and effects. I treat all creatures with negative healing as if they were undead. That is how I think it should work.
The rules remain totally stuffed. The latest errata didn't even do a decent job of fixing Soothe. Paizo keep dropping the ball on this. They just don't seem to see how broken it is.
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The second bullet point you posted seems pretty abundantly clear.
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The second bullet point you posted seems pretty abundantly clear.I agree it is clear on intent. However, that is just descriptive fluff referencing the mechanics in Negative Healing (which does not say what that descriptive text says it does).
We're not talking about intent, although I agree intent is clear, we're talking about what that line of rules text says, which is also pretty clear.
We're not talking about intent, although I agree intent is clear, we're talking about what that line of rules text says, which is also pretty clear.The second bullet point you posted seems pretty abundantly clear.I agree it is clear on intent. However, that is just descriptive fluff referencing the mechanics in Negative Healing (which does not say what that descriptive text says it does).But that line is NOT a rules line. In full, it 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"which means..." is an (incorrect) description of what Negative Healing does - not a rule. A rule would have been "The Dhampir counts as undead for purposes of positive damage and negative effects".
Well, according to Nethys, the Negative Healing ability references the monster ability Negative Healing, spelled out in the Beastiary, and the entry in the Dhampir write-up is just a shorthand reference. Here's what the original entry actually says:
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.
So, we are told the following from this short excerpt:
1. Dhampir are damaged by Positive Damage.
2. Dhampir are not healed by Positive Healing effects.
3. Dhampir are not damaged by Negative Damage.
4. Dhampir are healed by Negative Effects that heal Undead.
Granted, every time Positive Damage is referenced, the requirement for targeting things with Positive Damage almost always requires an Undead target, the idea that they would reference it being able to be damaged by Positive Damage would seem to suggest that for the purposes of targeting via Positive effects, they would count as an Undead creature; otherwise, the reference for it to be susceptible to Positive Damage does nothing, as these effects require an Undead target to work. Just as well, Dhampir aren't the only creatures with this type of ability, so it stands to reason that all creatures with this ability are treated as Undead creatures for the purposes of targeting with Positive Energy.
In short, take everything you know about Undead, and treat the Dhampir as Undead for those exceptions. Most anything else, the Dhampir counts as a Living creature.
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That was just more duplication.
You are still missing the point.
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The dhampir ancestry says they're affected as undead. So the intent is clear.
The line between (somewhat fragile) reminder text and specific rules for a specific case is often blurry with Paizo. We've seen that in several other places too.
I'm imagining a GM that every time a player then starts with "but well technically..." pulls a cord to open a trapdoor beneath the player's chair.
The best way to play the rules is not to stumble over technicalities but try to run them as intended.
That was just more duplication.
You are still missing the point.
If the intent is Dhampir are Undead creatures, then give them an Undead trait tag in addition to the Dhampir tag. The fact they don't have this should mean something.
The idea that they count as Undead only for certain things seems far more intended than "They're just Undead with a different nametag."
Official Answer: Stalk the FAQ page.Where in the FAQ page? As I said, I read the FAQ/errata but, if it's in there, I missed seeing it.
It's not there. At least not yet. That's why you and the rest of us are stalking that page waiting for it to show up.
We can argue ourselves in circles repeatedly - and have done so several times already - but nothing we say is official.
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But that line is NOT a rules line.
It isn't? Why not?
As far as I am aware, there is no style guide or formatting laid out by Paizo to indicate which pieces of text we're intended to ignore and which we aren't.
A rule would have been "The Dhampir counts as undead for purposes of positive damage and negative effects".
Which is literally what the part you're saying doesn't count says.
Negative healing should get cleaned up in general, but the dhampir entry is pretty clear on how it works for them.
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In the absence of something 'official' cleaning up the language, I'm okay with "Healed by Negative, Harmed by Positive"
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My take on strict RAW for this interaction:
Dhampir has Negative Healing which says
It is damaged by positive damage and is not healed by positive healing effects.
The Dhampir heritage entry itself says something very similar.
You have the negative healing ability, which means you are harmed by positive damage and healed by negative effects as if you were undead.
Dhampir is also a living creature. The heritage description says half living and half undead, but mechanically they do not have the undead trait and nothing says that they are not a living creature - which is the default for the Ancestries.
The Heal spell targets either a willing living creature or an undead creature. The Dhampir is a living creature so that qualifies if we assume that the Dhampir character is willing to be targeted.
The spell description says
If the target is a willing living creature, you restore 1d8 Hit Points.
However, the Dhampir Negative Healing rules prevent being healed by positive healing effects.
Healing effects do not cause damage though. Same as damaging effects do not cause healing.
So you can target a Dhampir with Heal, but it won't do anything.
There is actually similar logic for Harm. The spell will treat the Dhampir as a living creature and try to do negative damage to them. Since Negative Healing prevents taking negative damage and damage never heals, Harm won't affect the Dhampir either.
Now, obviously this strict RAW reading is somewhat broken for actually trying to play the game and have fun. The table will need to decide on which way to tweak things. Do the Dhampir follow undead rules and they are harmed by Heal and healed by Harm? That seems to be the most likely intended implication for Negative Healing. If you aren't happy with that, come up with a different way of running it at your table that both the Dhampir character's player, the GM, and the rest of the players at the table are all on board with.
The dhampir ancestry says they're affected as undead. So the intent is clear.
The line between (somewhat fragile) reminder text and specific rules for a specific case is often blurry with Paizo. We've seen that in several other places too.
I'm imagining a GM that every time a player then starts with "but well technically..." pulls a cord to open a trapdoor beneath the player's chair.
The best way to play the rules is not to stumble over technicalities but try to run them as intended.
Sounds nice but in practice we all do it differently. We do regularly disagree about what was intended. Lots of people have interpretations that give Dhampir major problems. So we end up with lots of groups that ignore a game feature because they just don't know what is going on. Or they just work away from the game. I have seen it often enough.
Paizo need to fix this. It is a really terrible experience.
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What exactly is the opposite belief about intention here?
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What exactly is the opposite belief about intention here?
That neither heal nor harm work on Dhampir at all. The net result being Dhampir only have a few healing options.
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What exactly is the opposite belief about intention here?That neither heal nor harm work on Dhampir at all. The net result being Dhampir only have a few healing options.
Do you really believe that was intended? That seems to me to be too strange, too buried in technical minutiae, to be true. Also, it'd be too bad to be true.
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Do you really believe that was intended? That seems to me to be too strange, too buried in technical minutiae, to be true. Also, it'd be too bad to be true.What exactly is the opposite belief about intention here?That neither heal nor harm work on Dhampir at all. The net result being Dhampir only have a few healing options.
No I don't belive so as I've already said. But there are always people who believe that RAW is RAI because this is a game with all sorts of arcane minutia. Then there are always people who are totally literal. There is a name for that mental condition.
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For the Heal spell specifically, there is a question of whether the spell will do the effect for living creatures and end up having no effect at all, or if it will do the effect for undead creatures and deal positive damage to a Dhampir.
por qué no los dos
That would be equivalent to just doing the damage.
Which still leaves unanswered 'why not do nothing' - which is what RAW technically says, but is probably not intended.
Personally I house rule it and ignore the targeting resrictions on ALL these sorts of spells and effects. I treat all creatures with negative healing as if they were undead. That is how I think it should work.
I haven't GM'd in a bit so I don't remember exactly how I tackled this but I think that's is how I did it. Probably not entirely rules accurate but it's the only way it's ever been the most functional and the least confusing in my experience as both a GM or player.
I think how exactly I did is that anything with negative healing that's also living is simply targetable as undead and prioritized as so if at all possible. So things like Heal and Harm that can target both, has targets you as undead. Effects that exclusively target the living work on you normally, while effects that exclusively target the undead will work on you as if you're undead. Of course the most important part is that these ONLY apply if the effect in question involves positive and negative healing and damage AKA if it interacts in any way with the Negative Healing ability.
I'm sure there are effects that exclusively target undead with no relation to Negative Healing that could be problematic if it worked on a technically living creature. Although I think this is where a living creature with Negative Healing AND has the undead trait would be relevant? So not the Dhampir but the Undead Eidolon qualifies for such effects.
This subject is so consistently confusing, a clarification on all of it would be so relieving. This is probably the only rule that renews my confusion whenever I come back to it and have to reprocess how I understand it, lol.
How is it confusing? I didn't even know there was a controversy. I just defaulted to the PF1 wording.
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How is it confusing? I didn't even know there was a controversy. I just defaulted to the PF1 wording.
Sadly Paizo agrees with you.
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Yeah, I'm just not seeing how the actual intent is confusing here. Heal and harm are meant to just treat Dhampir as undead.
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And since that's obviously wrong, there's no actual confusion. ProblemWhat exactly is the opposite belief about intention here?That neither heal nor harm work on Dhampir at all. The net result being Dhampir only have a few healing options.solvednever existed.
Having to ignore what is literally written and run the game according to the interpretations of the players at a particular table - which may change from table to table - is often considered its own problem. Even if the strict RAW is clearly broken and not working and obviously needs changed somewhere.
Similar examples:
Being unable to use Escape while in a polymorph form - which did eventually get errata.
Having Magus Arcane Cascade end immediately after using the action to start it because its requirements are then violated.
Being unable to use a Ghost Touch weapon to make a Strength based Strike against an incorporeal creature.
I've had enough different people argue and ask about things like Malignant Sustenance if it can target Dhampir's in the first place or not to consider it confusing.
I just rule Negative Healing as if it says to also treat the living with Negative Healing as undead even for targeting purposes AKA what Gortle said. It doesn't say it but it's the simplest and probably the most intended way of interpreting it.