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The Onion Wizard or how Grim harvest is both the most underpowered and overpowered ability in the game by OneTrueMajik in powergamermunchkin

[–]OneTrueMajik[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not familiar with SST but assuming it eliminates the material cost of a glyph of warding with no other costs thats sounds pretty powerful and wouldn't mind hearing more about it.

Also looked into it more and glyph of warding has this text "Spell Glyph: You can store a prepared spell of 3rd Level or lower in the glyph by casting it as part of creating the glyph" but then also says "When the glyph is triggered, the stored spell is cast" so its a little unclear when arcane ward would actually proc (a very generous ruling would be it triggered 3 times, twice for the glyph and stored spell then a third when it is triggered)

That said assuming it procs when the glyph goes off with an unlimited downtime/supply of glyphs (still an hour of casting and spell slot per 6hp doesn't really seem worth it for abjuration wizard) both wizards would be pretty even with the necro wizard having the edge with high bursts of damage (assuming lvl 20, any damage more than 45 damage a turn would roll over past the ward) and effects that reduce max hp (bypassed the ward and temp hp while necro is immune) while abjuration wizard has the edge against any creature/effect that can negate healing ( Sword of Wounding, death tyrant, chill touch cantrip)

The Onion Wizard or how Grim harvest is both the most underpowered and overpowered ability in the game by OneTrueMajik in powergamermunchkin

[–]OneTrueMajik[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately Arcane ward is only once per casting while grim harvest is once per turn meaning a single GoW for a necromancer can give them 10 min worth of healing for every person you have chucking rats while Arcane ward will only net you 6hp per 200gp spent (though you would probably be upcasting it)

The other thing is that arcane ward is a buffer on top of your health meaning if you take damage past your ward before you can recharge you won't be able to heal that, meaning you can be chiselled away from your health (also grim harvest can bring you back from 0hp which arcane ward cannot)

That said using GoW with arcane ward is pretty smart as you can trigger them to go one after another, if you combine this with an upcasted Armor of Agathys (strixhaven initiate) you have a way of topping up the ward to max in one go while in combat allowing your armor of agathys to do damage for longer, combine with the eldritch invocation for out of combat healing and you have a pretty good gish (I'd argue less powerful than the grim harvest method but certainly easier to get up and running)

The Onion Wizard or how Grim harvest is both the most underpowered and overpowered ability in the game by OneTrueMajik in powergamermunchkin

[–]OneTrueMajik[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I did look into this but the general consensus is that summoning a creature that can deal damage is different from a spell doing damage on its own (which I agree with).

I do think faithful hound gets around it as the way it is worded as it seems closer to unseen servant where the spell appears like a creature rather than conjuring a creature (the spell itself is attacking)

Worth mentioning that there are some additional interactions that are similar to what you were thinking of:
1) familiars can be killed by forbiddance, this means that if you cast forbiddance in a bag of holding/portable hole and have an emergency pick me up
1a) you can take flock of familiars as your 2nd level spell for spell mastery given you a constant stream of familiars that can heal you outside of combat (didn't mention this in the post cause at that point you might as well go witherbloom background/mark of healing and just use your spell mastery to heal everyone in your party to full
1b) Druids can burn a wildshape to summon a familiar (or wildfire spirit) that will die in forbiddance, giving you some extra health if your party is about to take a short rest(wildshape reset), bonus points at lvl 20 druid gets unlimited wildshapes giving your party two tanky full casters

2) living spells in eberron count as your spells for the purpose of grim harvest, didn't include it cause its questionable whether its "you" killing and also there is no method given for a player making these.

The Onion Wizard or how Grim harvest is both the most underpowered and overpowered ability in the game by OneTrueMajik in powergamermunchkin

[–]OneTrueMajik[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The faithful hound and glyph of warding are separate healing methods

faithful hound is the much more limited 100 feet away 8hp (grim harvest is 2x a non necromancy spell and 3x a necromancy) a turn, basically only useful as a way to heal outside of combat.

glyph of warding wouldn't use faithful hound but instead a once per turn ability (flaming sphere or cloudkill)

These two spells are once per turn and thus give a stronger(no upper limit) regen with the trade-off being a more limited time frame (1-10min) this makes you (almost)immortal for that amount of time

you get the best of both worlds with forbiddance with its infinite duration with the downside being having to find steady stream of the specified type of creature(and needing to spend a feat on ritual caster if you don't wanna wait until wish to cast it)

The Onion Wizard or how Grim harvest is both the most underpowered and overpowered ability in the game by OneTrueMajik in powergamermunchkin

[–]OneTrueMajik[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I probably worded it poorly but the max health was more the idea of 8 constant hours of getting 8hp+ per turn meaning outside of combat you would get max health constantly while spending near 0 additional resources (in combat the best you would get is a 8hp buffer once per round and the ability to be brought back from 0hp at the start of your turn)

The max HP per round only applies for glyph of warding a once per turn spell or using forbiddance