Automatic damage upon hit effect

[marcusrife]

Is there some way to code an effect so that when you hit an enemy with a melee attack the attacker takes some damage. Remembering to apply all the different features that act this way can be tedious and easy to forget. This seems like it would be a nice quality of life improvement to have.

[Zacchaeus]

No, there isn't an automatic way to do it. Damage effects need to sit on the attacker and fire when damage is dealt - not when an attack is rolled. So you have two issues - doing damage on an attack, and doing the damage to a target that doesn't have any effects on them. The only way to do this would be for the attacker to damage themselves when they make an attack by drag/dropping a damage effect onto themselves. I assume that this is an effect following a spell of some kind (I can't think off hand what it might be) but if that is the case then it would be the responsibility of the player (or the DM if it's an NPC) to deal the damage when the attacker made the attack.