CerealNommer

*You might actually be able to hit them but the spell at least can't effect them, so no damage, therefore no healing.

I mean, there's always a way to houserule something to fix the broken rules. Unless you're DMing an AL game.

The touch of your shadow-wreathed hand can siphon life force from others to heal your wounds.

Doesn't say "exclusively from others". Without casting this spell you couldn't do that normally.

It also says,

On a hit, the target takes 3d6 necrotic damage, and you regain hit points equal to half the amount of necrotic damage dealt.

No qualifiers about the target having to be a creature other than you. It just has to be a creature within your reach.

Also as regards:

As a DM there’s a few ways I’d consider to stop this being entirely game-breaking:

Do you also ban death ward and healing word? What about wizards who dip a level into virtually any other spellcaster or take a feat for a healing spell who can do this kind of thing without even having to make an attack roll or take necrotic damage?

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.

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.

Catastrophic dragons and Lung dragons really get shafted in these discussions.

My picks for each category

• Chromatic:
  • Green
    • Runner up: Black
• Metallic:
  • Silver
    • Runner up: Mercury
• Gem:
  • Beljuril
    • Runner up: Obsidian
• Catastrophic:
  • Blizzard
    • Runner up: Volcanic
• Lung:
  • Tun mi lung
    • Runner up: Chiang lung
• Planar:
  • Adamantine
    • Runner up: Shadow
• Top Honorable Mentions:
  1. Draa'zekyl
  2. Mist
  3. Prismatic
  4. Dragon Turtle
  5. Dracolich

I personally just rules lawyer back twice as hard.

• Well, technically revivify requires you to target a creature not the corpse of a creature…
• Actually detect magic doesn’t exclude itself, and the passive detection is pass/fail, so unless you’re immune to divination…
• Oh, the demi-lich got errata’d to have more hit dice, but they never “corrected” the default hp based on the special Undead Nature trait, so now it actually has %60 more hit points than the stat block would imply.
• Sure, freedom of movement lets you escape these non-magical restraints, but you have to spend 5 feet of movement to do it and your speed is currently 0.

A fair chunk That Guy’s tricks depend on a lenient or permissive DM/cherry-picking the most favorable rules & interpretations. If you don’t shadow-patch a bunch of fixes to make things work how people expect them to the game breaks down. If they want me strictly following the rules I’m happy to oblige, but I’ve never seen a powergaming munchkin who could withstand the amount of nerfing actually playing RAW causes.

Did I miss something or has no one even mentioned any One Roll Engine games?

I mean I love me some Fate, and PbtA is great and all. But where are the Better Angels? The Monsters and Other Childish Things? The Dirty Worlds?

I mean... if you're homebrewing a fix anyway, just make it CR up to the CR of the target or up to half their level if they don't have a CR, to keep its power in line with other spells of that level. If the unbalanced save-or-suck is an issue at your table, give an unwilling target advantage on the save if they're not incapacitated. Unless you rebalance other things, it's just going to mean people won't take/prepare polymorph as much though.

The way you can nerf it, if needed, and still keep it RAW (for those AL DMs out there) is spelled out in the meme. 😁

Either way, let your players know how you're going to run polymorph before they design their character around certain expectations.

It may take a bit of luck, but there are some people out there who don’t really see her as “murder hobo”. Except in the strict literal sense.

Maybe your DM will have a similar view and agree that “Holistic Assassain” is a totally reasonable character archtype, and not the equivalent of “murder hobo”, at least in a spiritual sense. Good luck. 😁^👍^

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.