So, a character died from Draining Kiss of a succubus and his Max HP is 0. Can he be restored by Raise Dead, or does he need a higher level spell? Or a Greater Restoration cast on his lifeless body before Raise dead?
I'm probably interested in RAW interpretation, since the character is in Adventurerer's league.
[RPG] Can Raise Dead revive a character with zero maximum Hit Points
character-deathdnd-5ednd-adventurers-league
Related Solutions
I play this character. My GM and I discussed the build extensively before starting Storm King's Thunder because I was worried about this. Both from pre-planning and from experience, here're the things we've come up with:
0. Discuss this with your player.
Be open and tell the player that you're struggling to engage all of the party while allowing their character to shine when in its element. Ask them for the limitations they see to the character: any you invoke that came from their mouth will seem inherently "fairer" than those you invoke on your own. Some would call this metagaming, I call it being explicit about the social contract. "We all cleared our schedules, so let's try and make it fun for all to play."
1. Sightlines.
That 600' range (I'm assuming a longbow in this part) can let a sharpshooter get off four or five "free" shots before a foe has a chance to respond. If they have a sightline. Yes, the sharpshooter ignores 1/2 and 3/4 cover. But they don't ignore total cover, which is what's granted by an interposed building, hill, &c. And at 600' off, moving laterally to "see around" a small hill is going to take your sharpshooter some time.
Real-play example: on the road my party encountered some giants wrecking a small keep. I got one shot in, and the giants circled to the other side of the building. While I was circling around to get a look at them the rest of the party snuck into their effective ranges, and the encounter basically started off with giants and rest-of-party at 100', me at standoff range. Only got one "free" shot.
2. Numbers.
That sharpshooter's great at delivering a big punch at a low-AC target. But 25 damage vs. 15 damage is moot to a 10hp target. I understand you can't play too much with encounters' composition (because of AL), but you can play a lot with monster tactics. If the encounter has a mix of big-target and small-target foes your sharpshooter would much rather be swinging for the fences against the big target. So rush them with little targets.
Real-play example: a giant was coming through the forest, but just as we started to see his head a group of I-forget-whats came out 100' ahead of us. I could take my shots at the giant, but a dozen magmin were bearing down on us....
3. Focus on party-mates.
The nice thing about being the sniper is that you stay relatively safe, raining death from a minute's sprint away. The not-nice thing about having a sniper is that the damage your opponents are dealing tends to be concentrated on \$N-1\$ party members rather than on \$N\$ party members. That sniper can't stabilize an ally or drag away a body. It doesn't take too many times choosing to stay safe before you'll see a mate drop and there be nothing to do about it. Choosing to stay at standoff range also chooses to write oneself out of a lot of interactions.
4. Size of strike.
So far these have all focused on the range-portion of Sharpshooter. But what about the size of that strike? I'd claim it's not actually that large, as compared to other characters built to deal single-target damage. For example:
A Sharpshooter (feat) archery (fighting style) Ftr4 can expect +3 to hit & 19.5 expected damage (d10 weapon damage, assuming Heavy Crossbow + 4 DEX + 10 sharpshooter).
A dueling (fighting style) Ftr1/Ro3 can expect +6 to hit & 17.5 expected damage (d8 weapon damage + 2 dueling + 4 STR + 7 sneak attack). (And we haven't even piled a feat onto there.)
A Dual Wielder (feat) two-weapon (fighting style) Ftr4 can expect +6 to hit & 17 expected damage (4.5 weapon damage + 4 DEX, twice).
Now the expected damage per attack between those two will depend on AC, but for many ACs the duelist fighter/rogue or two-weapon fighter is delivering a bigger punch, just as sustainably. In effect, with a sharpshooter you're trading a bit lower damage for safety (from range).
You mentioned how large the damage gets once your sharpshooter grabs second attack and piles on an action surge for a third, but that's. frankly, a red herring. Any fighter build is going to have that "problem"--it's a class feature, having nothing to do with Sharpshooter.
5. And sometimes, let them shine.
Sometimes you'll be fighting a crowd of kobolds in their warren of tunnels, and the sharpshooter'll effectively be mooted. And they'll bemoan the opportunity cost of not taking Sentinel or Polearm Master instead of Sharpshooter.
But every once in a while they'll be standing on a battlement on a sunny day with a clear view to the forest's edge a half-mile out and three giants approaching. With a smile, they'll turn to the party and say "don't worry, I got this. [Aside] 'I love it when a plan comes together.'"
So, you fought some Vampire Spawn, which have the annoying:
Energy Drain (Su): A creature hit by a vampire spawn's slam (or other natural weapon) gains one negative level. This ability only triggers once per round, regardless of the number of attacks a vampire spawn makes.
Those negative levels provided by the vampire spawn are temporary until after the duration specified and saving throw mechanics. After 24 hours, and after a failed save, they would then become permanent.
Negative levels remain until 24 hours have passed or until they are removed with a spell such as restoration. If a negative level is not removed before 24 hours have passed, the affected creature must attempt a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1/2 the draining creature’s racial HD + the draining creature’s Cha modifier; the exact DC is given in the creature’s descriptive text). On a success, the negative level goes away with no harm to the creature. On a failure, the negative level becomes permanent. A separate saving throw is required for each negative level.
What does this mean? The character is dead. The temporary negative level remains. The negative level would have to be removed, otherwise he'd just die again.
Raising the character from the dead would have to have a restoration spell handy to remove the temporary negative levels, the same as if it were permanent negative levels.
The temporary negative levels have a 24 hour duration. That duration doesn't wipe itself off the table by character death. If that were the case, then undead with a create spawn ability would never be able to create spawn - as their energy drain attacks would simply go away when the character died.
The only rule supporting spell effects that end upon death, without special text stating otherwise, is a spell effect that require concentration. Obviously, a spell caster can't concentrate when he's dead.
What can you do?
- If the GM considers a dead1 creature, as still a creature, cast Restoration on the dead creature. There's a little bit of precedence to back that up. Raise Dead, for example, says, Target: Dead Creature. Of course, Restoration obviously doesn't have the word dead in front of Target: Creature Touched, but, ask the GM to work with you a little. The worst he can do is say no.
- If you don't have a Restoration spell handy, raise the dead character back to life, and the proceeding round cast Death Ward. That would make the character immune to the negative effects of the negative levels for the duration of the spell. That could afford you more time, especially with multiple castings of Death Ward.
- Raise him from the dead at exactly 24 hours from his death. That would give the party time to rest, have that much more preparation time (i.e. hireling services from a cleric, purchases of scrolls, pray for spells, etc.) and allow the newly raised character, with the negative levels, a quick chance at a fortitude save.
- Wait for the negative levels to expire and become permanent, and proceed to raise and restore as the rules are explicitly clearer on - probably with the assistance of higher level spell caster NPC's in a temple at the next town.
- Make a new character.
1Being dead doesn't say you become an object. It just says you are a dead character. It also doesn't say effects end when you're dead. It does say, if you are raised, you're raised in the same condition as when you died. If you have temporary negative levels when you died, and are then quickly raised, you'd still have the temporary negative levels.
Best Answer
Here's a third answer, because I don't think either of the previous ones are quite correct. As a disclaimer, though, let me note that I don't actively play 5e, so this is just based on common sense and grepping the Basic Rules. It's possible that I may have missed some relevant rule, although I don't think so.
Yes, you can revive a character whose hit point maximum is 0.
This just means that they'll revive with 0 HP, and will therefore be unconscious and start making death saving throws immediately (with a −4 penalty, because they were just raised from the dead).* Since their hit point maximum is 0, they also can't regain any hit points, and they'll die immediately if they take any damage** — but they can stabilize at 0 HP.
The Raise Dead spell description does seemingly contradict what I just said, saying that the raised creature "returns to life with 1 hit point." But I would argue that this cannot override the general rule that (unless explicitly indicated otherwise) "a creature's hit points can't exceed its hit point maximum." Thus, raising a creature with a 0 hit point maximum should leave them with 0 hit points, and no way to gain more.
(I don't think "specific beats general" applies here; for that to be the case, the Raise Dead spell would have to specifically say that it permits a creature's HP to be raised above their max HP (or that it raises their max HP), which it doesn't. Compare this e.g. with the various healing spells, whose descriptions all just say that the target "regains X hit points," with the clear but unstated assumption that the target's HP are still implicitly limited by their hit point maximum, since the spell does not specifically override that.)
Still, presuming that the character you've revived won't take any damage, they won't die again until they suffer three death saving throw failures. This should give you enough time to e.g. cast Greater Restoration on them to restore their max HP, or (if you can't do that immediately for some reason) stabilize them until you can fix them properly.
Ps. The Draining Kiss ability also says that the victim will regain their max HP after a long rest. However, the rules on taking a long rest say that:
It seems pretty clear to me that the termination of the Draining Kiss effect should count as a "benefit" of the long rest, and therefore that one cannot recover from being drained to 0 max HP just by (being raised from the dead, stabilized and then) resting.
That said, if a spell like Greater Restoration is not available, I suppose one could instead use the 2nd-level abjuration spell Aid*** to temporarily raise the victim's HP and max HP to 5 for 8 hours, just enough to let them take a proper long rest at positive HP.
*) As noted in the comments below, there's an argument to be made that the revived character should be automatically stable at 0 HP, since they were not reduced to 0 HP by taking damage. On the other hand, it can also be argued that they should be unstable by default, since they haven't been stabilized through first aid or by succeeding on three death saving throws. It really depends on whether you assume to be the default state for creatures that end up at 0 HP without taking damage, something that at least the Basic Rules don't seem to explicitly state. Personally, I'd assume it to be unstable, if only because the Basic Rules first categorically state that "[w]henever you start your turn with 0 hit points, you must make [a] death saving throw", and only later describe stabilization as an exception to that, but it's possible that other rules describe it differently. In any case, I don't see it making much of a difference in the end; even if the character is revived unstable and consistently fails their death saves, there should be enough time for whoever raised them to heal and/or stabilize them before they die again.
**) There's a bit of a curious edge case here. The rules say that you die if you're at 0 HP and take damage equal to or greater than your max HP. Thus, even zero damage should be enough to kill a character with zero max HP; but the rules also pretty clearly imply that this rule is checked only if and when the character in fact does take damage. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure if there's any way in 5e for a character to take damage, with the amount of damage being zero — but if there is then, arguably, even this should be enough to kill a character with zero max HP. They're literally teetering just at the edge of death, with even an infinitesimal push being enough to send them over.
***) It's not totally clear to me whether the HP granted by the Aid spell are "temporary hit points" in the specific sense used by the rules, and apparently I'm not the only one who's confused. Still, even if they are temporary HP, and thus won't raise the 0 HP character to consciousness, it seems to me that they should still grant them the ability to take a long rest.