You're still dealing damage, e.g. it could kill you from the massive damage rule if you dealt enough. Vampiric touch counts how much damage you deal, not how much hp the target loses.

I’m in the middle of the 5e version at the moment. We’re level 11 and have reached floor 9 so far. We started December 1st of 2022 and play at least once a week.

You can make it permanent if you cast it 53 times, and by the time you hit level 15, 500gp for a week of downtime with comfort and security is occasionally worth it. Our druid/cleric regularly casts greater restoration rather than wait for me to prepare remove curse the next morning.

I’m the party wizard/necromancer/note taker and sometimes I do make maps. ::: spoiler Heavy Spoilers for floor 9. We got the initial map image from the DM. This is annotated and updated. :::

This is from a show called Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. This is an edited clip from the 2016 version.

Edit: I put together a brief clip of a scene more representative of the tone of the show, to give people an idea of what they’re actually in for if they go looking for it.

The spell mighty fortress is very specific about the size and shape of the castle it makes, but not about where walls are connected. Both are 120' square areas with four 20' turrets connected by 80' walls, but the second one you get more interior space and can access your turrets without leaving the outer walls.

Loving it so far. I haven’t had a good old fashioned dungeon crawl for quite some time. Megadungeon in 5e does throw me off occasionally, but we’re doing pretty well. Only one PC died so far, but the druid/cleric revivified him before it stuck.

As I've pointed out in other comments there's a specific rule for damage past 0 HP. It's called “Damage at 0 Hit Points.” under the Death Saving Throws section, and it doesn't say anything about it getting cancelled out.

Vampiric touch counts how much damage you deal, not how much hp the target loses.

It's definitely a flavor fail, but unless you houserule in a cap to damage dealt at 0 hp, (and houserules for how to handle massive damage and the rules for being dealt damage at 0 hp that would be affected,) there's not a limit to how much hp you gain based on the hp of the target.

It should fit pretty well. 😁 The audio matches the subtitles for all but one word.

Still better than the 50,000 gp construction cost and 400 days for a "Keep or small castle" using Building a Stronghold. Actual time spent on labor amounts to a minute per week for a high enough level wizard.

Well, true polymorph and mass polymorph at least aren't overpowered for their levels. Comparatively polymorph as commonly interpreted to be a "caster decides" effect, is routinely considered the best 4th level spell overall. It has better single-target save-or-suck disabling ability than banishment, it rival arcane eye in terms of scouting utility, and as emergency temporary healing or a combat buff it outperforms the 6th level Tenser's transformation.

The only other 4th level spell that even comes close is the "caster decides" interpretation of conjure woodland beings, mostly because you get eight polymorphs for the price of one.

Powder does the same thing, unless you have a ring or artifact that grants you polymorph control.

But, as an aside, a CR 𝓝 creature is intended to be an appropriate challenge for a party of 𝓝 level characters, not the equivalent in power to one of them. If you were to actually calculate the CR of an 𝓝 level character it's closer to ½𝓝 like in mass polymorph.

You don't even need to homebrew. Spell scrolls exist. It's not unreasonable to think a spell scroll of mighty fortress would be stored away for safekeeping somewhere for a long time before the PCs find it. 👍🏻

Well, technically it doesn't say your connecting walls have to be straight, just 80 feet long. Not exactly sure how you're going to make them connect up into a hexagon or star out of "four turrets with square bases, each one 20 feet on a side and 30 feet tall, with one turret on each corner", but if you've got a diagram I'd love to see it. 😆

Don’t worry. It sounds like WotC is planning to fix the issue with not enough people wanting to DM their jank by implementing AI DMs in their new VTT.

They did say before that no one at Wizards was working on AI DMs, but it’s all but officially confirmed Hasbro had a 3rd party working on it for them. That’s why you gotta keep your eye out for those little loopholes. 😲

The battlecry of the BBEG bard.

Yeah. This is the 4e version of the 1st floor map. The 5e version is only a small corner of this, but I exaggerated a bit for the meme.

Lorewise maruts are damn near incorruptable, but even just a rogue modron could be cool if done right. A marut is also unlikely to misinterpret the contract, but the signatories might have.

“[…] A marut enforces what is written, not what was meant by or supposed to be understood from the writing. The Kolyarut rejects contracts that contain vague, contradictory, or unenforceable terms. Beyond that, it doesn’t care whether both parties understand what they’re agreeing to.” There’s also a reason they’re called “nigh-unstoppable inevitables”.

I guess now that I think about it, a simulacrum is a construct as well, but I’d have a hard time counting one of them. Most powerful constructs tend to be golems or a colossus like the Walking Statues of Waterdeep, not independent thinkers, just powerful brute force minions.

Well, at least they promised that rumors of a planned $30 subscription fee weren't true.