D&D 5E psychic scream: 0hp or killed

[seebs]

Psychic scream causes head exploding if it kills a creature.

Options:
1. They meant "if it reduces the target to 0hp".
2. They meant "if it does enough damage past the creature's current hit points to exceed its maximum hit points".
3. It is either of those, depending on whether the GM causes "monsters" to die at 0hp instead of making death saves, and as such, can be used as a test for is-an-NPC.
4. Other.

I'm currently reading it as 2. Damage is pretty low compared to some other spells (say, meteor swarm), but picking your targets is really nice.

 

[Umbran]

Why the heck do you want to test to see if characters are NPCs by killing them?

In my opinion, heads exploding is flavor text. It can be applied when the GM feels it is appropriate, or the GM asks a player to narrate a final blow. It is not mechanically meaningful.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Why the heck do you want to test to see if characters are NPCs by killing them?

In my opinion, heads exploding is flavor text. It can be applied when the GM feels it is appropriate, or the GM asks a player to narrate a final blow. It is not mechanically meaningful.

Some PCs really fulfill the definition of murder hobo to the tee.

 

[seebs]

Why the heck do you want to test to see if characters are NPCs by killing them?

I don't know, but that's the logical application of (1) "if this kills a creature" and (2) the thing saying that some GMs will not bother with death saves for "monsters". It doesn't seem useful, really, but hey, it's a 9th level spell, it should admit creative interpretations.

 

[Umbran]

I don't know, but that's the logical application of...

You seem to have an interesting definition of, "logical application."

 

[seebs]

Yes, yes I do. I am active on a programming slack server and they added a :seebsno: emoji after a while.

My thought is that if the head-exploding thing happens only if something is outright killed by the spell, it's just flavor text. If it's intended to happen at 0hp, which some people seem to believe, it becomes a bit more like disintegrate, in that you can use it to kill outright opponents that would otherwise just be knocked out and making death saves. And that would make it significantly more powerful... Except that this depends on whether your GM gives NPCs in general death saves in the first place. And then I got to thinking "so you can tell whether someone is an NPC in such a setting..."

 

[Shiroiken]

Whatever the DM decides to do. If you're the DM, feel free to explode the Druid's head when its animal form reaches 0 HP. I'd expect the player to be rather upset if you do though...

 

[bedir than]

More exploding heads is cool. If your campaign makes it to the point where they can cast Psychic Scream blow the heads up

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Put it this way: the exploding head effect cannot kill in an of itself.

 

[Xenonnonex]

You could be both operatic and psychedelic with exploding heads