Can I apply the Undead Warlock’s Grave Touched feature to the Topaz Dragonborn’s breath weapon

class-featurednd-5eracial-traitswarlock

The Undead warlock has a feature called Grave Touched that states:

Grave Touched:
At 6th level, your patron’s powers have a profound effect on your body and magic. You don’t need to eat, drink, or breathe. In addition, once during each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an attack and roll damage against the creature, you can replace the damage type with necrotic damage. While you are using your Form of Dread, you can roll one additional damage die when determining the necrotic damage the target takes.

The part I am interested in is the part that states that you can roll an extra damage die when determining the necrotic damage a target takes. Would it be possible to use this feature on any source of necrotic damage, or does it only apply to attacks converted to necrotic damage with Grave Touched? I'm thinking of making a Topaz Dragonborn warlock and am wondering if I could use Grave Touched to amplify the necrotic damage from the Topaz dragonborn's breath weapon.

Best Answer

The extra damage is part of the necrotic damage ability.

The benefits of the Grave Touched feature can be parsed thusly (emphasis mine):

  • You don’t need to eat, drink, or breathe.
  • Once during each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an attack and roll damage against the creature, you can replace the damage type with necrotic damage. While you are using your Form of Dread, you can roll one additional damage die when determining the necrotic damage the target takes

We can tell that the last two sentences are part of the same ability because of how the second sentence is phrased; it refers to “the target”, which in this context can only refer to the target of the attack mentioned in the previous sentence.

If the intent of the last sentence of this feature was that it would add damage to all necrotic damage sources, it would be worded differently —- something like “whenever you deal necrotic damage, you may roll one additional damage die”.

So, no, the Grave Touched feature doesn’t allow the warlock to increase all necrotic damage dealt while using Form of Dread; just the damage done by replacing an attack with necrotic damage.

Note that the attack whose damage is replaced in this way can be one which normally does necrotic damage -- if the warlock casts chill touch and hits while using Form of Dread, this feature allows them to roll an extra d8 of damage.

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