necromancy cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Component: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous
You target two creatures which you must touch (one can be yourself) who must both must be willing, restrained, or incapacitated. One of the creatures suffers a point of damage and the other regains one hit point. If the damage is prevented or reduced in any way no benefit is gained by the other target.
This spell has no effect on constructs.
While we're all very familiar with the shrouded necromancer cackling as he raises and leads his unliving slaves, I feel that necromancy is, or should be, a tradition of unexplored duality and dichotomy. I've mentioned before my obsession with "light" necromancers, rather than the necronarcissists we're so familiar with. This is spell is another thing that I've ended up recreating in several editions of D&D because it speaks to the most fundamental activity of a necromancer, the manipulation of life and death, in an utterly neutral manner. At face value the cantrip allows resources to be shifted between members of the party to maximize the value they get from their short rest healing. A darker read turns prisoners into batteries for the adventurers. And this is how characters are lured into evil. Simple expediencies, sacrificing morality to immediate increases in power that aren't, truly, all that big.
An argument could be made that, even at it's most morally pure, this violates the suggestion that there be no healing cantrips and a counter-argument that, strictly speaking, it specifically does not heal. When it comes to game balance, I feel that this spell is more limited as a cantrip than it would be as a ritual, and attempting to "power it up" to make it anything else breaks the concept behind it. What it doesn't do, though, is add resources for free- which is the underlying concern with healing cantrips. While it makes the healing available slightly more efficient, I'm not sure it makes it enough more efficient to offset the utility sacrificed by not choosing another cantrip.
While the evil route does increase party health capacity, in any but the darkest scenario the inevitable repercussions of doing this with any regularity should be dramatic and crushing. Enemies fighting to the death rather than risk capture, heroes emerging to stop your slaving ways, trust evaporating as everyone realizes that the party will treat life itself as a resource...
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Component: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous
You target two creatures which you must touch (one can be yourself) who must both must be willing, restrained, or incapacitated. One of the creatures suffers a point of damage and the other regains one hit point. If the damage is prevented or reduced in any way no benefit is gained by the other target.
This spell has no effect on constructs.
~~*~~
While we're all very familiar with the shrouded necromancer cackling as he raises and leads his unliving slaves, I feel that necromancy is, or should be, a tradition of unexplored duality and dichotomy. I've mentioned before my obsession with "light" necromancers, rather than the necronarcissists we're so familiar with. This is spell is another thing that I've ended up recreating in several editions of D&D because it speaks to the most fundamental activity of a necromancer, the manipulation of life and death, in an utterly neutral manner. At face value the cantrip allows resources to be shifted between members of the party to maximize the value they get from their short rest healing. A darker read turns prisoners into batteries for the adventurers. And this is how characters are lured into evil. Simple expediencies, sacrificing morality to immediate increases in power that aren't, truly, all that big.
An argument could be made that, even at it's most morally pure, this violates the suggestion that there be no healing cantrips and a counter-argument that, strictly speaking, it specifically does not heal. When it comes to game balance, I feel that this spell is more limited as a cantrip than it would be as a ritual, and attempting to "power it up" to make it anything else breaks the concept behind it. What it doesn't do, though, is add resources for free- which is the underlying concern with healing cantrips. While it makes the healing available slightly more efficient, I'm not sure it makes it enough more efficient to offset the utility sacrificed by not choosing another cantrip.
While the evil route does increase party health capacity, in any but the darkest scenario the inevitable repercussions of doing this with any regularity should be dramatic and crushing. Enemies fighting to the death rather than risk capture, heroes emerging to stop your slaving ways, trust evaporating as everyone realizes that the party will treat life itself as a resource...
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