HELP: Custom spell for Amulent of Ravenkind

[Azyurel]

Greetings all, I'm new to Fantasy Grounds and looking to create a custom spell effect for a magic item in the Curse of Strahd campaign, Amulet of Ravenkind.

There is an effect that generates sunlight within 30 yards of the caster and I need to find a way to stop vampire regeneration on vampires within that range. If anyone has some assitance that they can provide on how I can make an effect that stops regeneration for the duration I'd be greatly appreciative.

[LordEntrails]

Welcome to the community :)

I'm not sure how you would accomplish this. I suspect you would actually have to change the regeneration trait on the vampire NPC itself. I'm thinking of the troll where if its hit by fire it stops regen for a round. But, then you will run into problems with there not being a damage type that is appropriate.

I'll think about his some more. But not sure I will come up with anything. Zaccheaus or some of the others are much better with effects than I am and maybe they will have something.

[Zacchaeus]

The only thing I can think of is to apply an effect to the vampires in range which does a tiny amount of radiant damage. Something like DMGO: 1, radiant should do the trick. This should negate the Regeneration since the vampire will take a point of radiant damage every round and if they do that should be enough to stop the regen ability.

[ronalmb]

Wouldn't the effect slowly kill the vampire over time done that way? 1 hit point a turn and negating the regen?

What if it was DMGO: 20 with no type? I'm assuming this is 5E and it looks like vampires heal that amount per turn. Doing untyped 20 damage every turn would exactly offset that healing without the slow-kill effect?

[Zacchaeus]

You misunderstand. The effect would only be applied to the Vampire when the vampire was within the required distance of the magic item (The effect would be applied from the actions tab of the PC carrying the magic item). As soon as it was outside that distance the effect would have to be removed. The 1 hp of damage per turn wouldn't, I don't think accelerate the demise of the Vampire that much - we are assuming that since the Vampire is within range of the item that combat is taking place anyway. The whole point of the magic item is to prevent the regeneration.

I'm not sure whether your solution would work exactly as intended since I'm not sure what the order of the ongoing damage and the regeneration would be. If the ongoing damage was applied first you could kill a Vampire at the start of the turn if it had say 19 hp or less left and that would be incorrect since without the ongoing damage it would have fought at least one more round. I agree that in my solution if it only had one hp left and the ongoing damage took effect before the regen it would also lose a turn of combat. However that is a narrower margin of error if you like.

[ronalmb]

Nah, I didn't misunderstand how it'd be applied. I followed!

As for 1hp tick down versus 20: Very true. I suppose the solution depends upon the order that ongoing damage is applied versus regeneration. I'll take a look in FG 5E and run both.

...

I made both affects and tested. I applied 35 points of damage to a vampire using the FG 5e sample campaign and then applied the radiant example. At the start of a turn, it ticked down 1 hp. Then i used untyped 20 damage and the vampire's 35 points of damage remained. So it looks like it applies regeneration first, then ongoing damage.

[Zacchaeus]

I made both affects and tested. I applied 35 points of damage to a vampire using the FG 5e sample campaign and then applied the radiant example. At the start of a turn, it ticked down 1 hp. Then i used untyped 20 damage and the vampire's 35 points of damage remained. So it looks like it applies regeneration first, then ongoing damage.

Try it again, but this time give the Vampire enough wounds so that it's remaining hp is less than 20 :)

You'll see that the Ongoing damage takes effect before the regeneration and it kills it before the regen kicks in. You can follow this in chat if the Vampire has more than 20 points remaining; you'll see the ongoing damage come off and then the regen taking effect.

If you now try with DMGO: 1, radiant you'll see that the Vamp takes the 1 point of damage and it prevents the regen taking effect. The DM could reinstate the point of damage of course if it was felt that it was warranted.

[ronalmb]

Quite so!

On a lark, I tried DMGO: 0, radiant in hopes that the math checking looked for < 0 not <= 0 to ignore the dmg. Sadly it ignores it at 0. I wonder how hard it would be to tweak the math there for it to let 0 radiant damage also ignore the regen.

[ronalmb]

Actually, (DMGO:1, radiant; REGEN: 1) would mean the DM only has to keep tabs on vampires exactly at 1 hp.

Hmm that probably wouldn't really work either. Vampires taking normal damage would be regenerating 21 not 20. Dang.

Guess an .extension is the only way to solve that.

Maybe the best approach is to seperate the REGEN: 20 radiant from the other effects. Have it be its own line. Then turn it ON or OFF as necessary.