[RPG] ny way to be healed by energy (fire) damage

dnd-5e

Pretty much what the title says. Is there any published content (or combination thereof), whether a class feature, spell, feat, racial trait, magic item or whatever that would let a character by healed instead when taking elemental damage? I'm mostly interested in Fire damage, but if it's only possible with some other element that's also fine.

This needs to be for a player character. I know there's some monsters that can do it, but they're not playable.

Best Answer

The Dragon Masks from the Rise of Tiamat Supplement

The Rise of Tiamat Supplement contains notes on several legendary magic Dragon Masks, one for each color of chromatic dragon. All masks share the same relevant property:

Damage Absorption. You have resistance against the mask’s damage type. If you already have resistance to that damage type from another source, you instead have immunity to that damage type. If you already have immunity to that damage type from another source, whenever you are subjected to damage of that type, you take none of that damage and regain a number of hit points equal to half the damage dealt of that type.

If you somehow gain immunity to fire damage and attune to the Red Dragon mask (which is associated with fire), you will take no fire damage and instead be healed for half of the fire damage that would have been dealt.

Yes, there is now an (un)official statement

Jeremy Crawford has clarified in a Tweet:

Q: A firbolg PC casts booming blade then uses hidden step to go invisible. The creature that is hit with booming blade moves away and thus takes damage. Does hidden step deactivate?

A: Hidden Step ends if you make a damage roll, no matter when you make it.

Q: So it doesn't matter if a spell/effect is initiated by you before hidden step was activated? As long as you make a creature do a saving throw or attack or roll damage for any reason then hidden step ends?

A: That's correct.

So, passive or not, as long as a creature is making a saving throw or taking damage from an effect you initiated (no matter when you initiated it) for any reason, hidden step will end.

This matches the intent we can understand when reading the ability itself.

Intent is clear from reading as well: if the user causes a harmful effect, hidden step deactivates.

The ability is explicitly written to restrict just about every way you can damage or harm an opponent (regardless of when said effect was initiated), so it seems clear that the intent was to prevent the user from doing harmful things. As such, allowing a loophole for spells and effects cast/initiated before the user used hidden step runs counter to that intent.

It may also be helpful to note that the designers also intentionally wrote this ability so as not to restrict beneficial spells and abilities being used.

The ability is already quite powerful and from a DM standpoint this argument would seem like an attempt to cheese additional power out of the ability by circumventing its primary restrictions.

This also seems wholly fair. In the example of booming blade, the only reason to cast such a spell is to try to cause damage. If you also choose to use hidden step you are taking the risk that the opponent triggers that damage and thus cancels your ability. It was player choice to cast the spell and to use the ability.

Allowing this opens the door for plenty of bad things/cheese

Our heroic firbolgs casts delayed blast fireball at a group of 4 enemies, uses hidden step, then immediately stops concentrating on the spell. It takes no action to stop concentrating on a spell so this is the exact same scenario as with booming blade. This causes 4 saving throws and 4 creatures to take up to 12d6 damage.

Does it seem to be intended to allow such an effect to not break hidden step? This seems like an overtly harmful action and I really do not think for one second that the designers intended this to be the case.

And this is only a cursory look at one spell. I'm sure that there are many more and possibly even worse spells/effects one could get away with through this loophole.

Neither RAW nor RAI support allowing a loophole for effects initiated before hidden step is activated.

As always, a DM may, of course, allow this if they want to for any reason.

[RPG] Achieving highest Rogue DPR at 3rd level using PHB+1

So, I couldn't sleep and decided to work on that. Here's the best I got until the moment - using only PHB.

I have done the math for 3 builds so far, all using Variant Human and fighting style Archery when multiclassed:

Rogue 3, Crossbow Expert, Hand Crossbow +1;
Rogue 2/Fighter 1, Sharpshooter, Heavy Crossbow +1;
Rogue 2/Fighter 1, Crossbow Expert, Hand Crossbow +1;

Sneak Attack procs are assumed every round, as there are melee allies. I'm the first to say I was not very creative with the use of subclasses or magic items. As noted by András in the comments, Sneak Attack only procs once per turn, so the second Hand Crossbow attack does not deal the extra 2d6 damage, putting both builds roughly 2.5 average points below the Sharpshooter.

Assuming you you can hide to get unseen every turn

If Hide = Unseen = Attack with advantage is a thing (this depends on your stealth checks, but with expertise they should be very likely to work), the highest damaging build becomes Rogue 2/Fighter 1, Sharpshooter, Heavy Crossbow +1.

Cunning action for hiding.
Attack with advantage. Damage on hit = \$5.5 (1\textrm{d}10) + 3.5 (1\textrm{d}6) + 10 + 5 = 24\$. Damage on critical = \$11 + 7 + 10 + 5 = 33\$.
The probability of hitting without a crit is given by \$1 - (1 - \textrm{Usual probability})^2\$, where Usual probability is calculated using the +4 Modifier. Against ACs 16, 17, and 18, that works out to \$\{0.64, 0.5775, 0.51 \}\$ respectively.
The probability of a crit with advantage is \$1 - 0.95^2 = 0.0975\$.
The final average damage is \$ \{18.57, 17.07, 15.45 \} \$, for ACs 16, 17 and 18, respectively.

For the Rogue 3, Crossbow Expert build, assuming we can attack with the same hand crossbow twice, we have nine possible situations. Each one has a \$P_i\$ associated with it and an average damage \$ d_i \$. The average total damage is given by \$ \sum_{i=1}^{9} P_i \cdot d_i \$. Let \$ P = \{ 0.55, 0.5, 0.45 \} \$ be the probability of hitting an individual hit and \$ P_c = 0.05\$ the probability of landing a critical hit.

First attack hits, second misses. \$ P_1 = P \cdot (1 - P - P_c) \$; \$ d_1 = 3.5 + 7 + 5 = 15.5\$.
First attack misses, second hits. \$ P_2 = (1 - P - P_c) \cdot P \$; \$d_2 = 15.5\$.
First attack crits, second misses. \$ P_3 = P_c \cdot (1 - P - P_c) \$; \$d_3 = 7 + 14 + 5 = 26 \$.
First attack misses, second crits. \$ P_4 = (1 - P - P_c) \cdot P_c \$; \$d_4 = 26 \$.
First attack hits, second crits. \$ P_5 = P \cdot P_c \$; \$d_5 = 3.5 + 7 + 5 + 7 + 5 = 27.5 \$.
First attack crits, second hits. \$ P_6 = P_c \cdot P \$; \$d_6 = 7 + 14 + 5 + 3.5 + 5 = 34.5 \$.
Both attacks crit. \$P_7 = P_c \cdot P_c\$; \$d_7 = 7 + 14 + 5 + 7 + 5 = 38 \$.
Both attacks hit. \$ P_8 = P \cdot P \$; \$ d_8 = 3.5 + 7 + 5 + 3.5 + 5 = 24\$.
Both attacks miss. \$P_9 = (1 - P - P_c) \cdot (1 - P - P_c)\$; \$d_9 = 0\$.

The result of the summation, if I did everything right, gives us an average damage of \$ \{16.92, 15.79, 14.62 \} \$.

Similarly, for Rogue 2/Fighter 1, removing the 1d6 from Sneak Attack, we get \$\mathbf{d} = \{12, 12, 19, 19, 24, 27.5, 31, 20.5\} \$, but increasing the Probabilities to \$ \{ 0.65, 0.6, 0.55\}\$, we get an average damage of \$ \{ 15.66, 14.70, 13.73 \} \$.