For the purpose of the spell Life Transference, if the caster only has 1 HP can he grant more than 2 HP to the target of the spell?No.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) November 14, 2017
For the purpose of the spell Life Transference, if the caster only has 1 HP can he grant more than 2 HP to the target of the spell?No.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) November 14, 2017
Crawford is dead wrong.
The key point is the phrase “take damage” or “taking damage”. You can take more damage than you have current hit points, or even maximum hit points.
This is directly illustrated in the rules for Instant Death and “Massive Damage”. They even go so far as to spell it out their own written example:
A character with a maximum of 12 hit points and 6 current hit points -takes- 18 damage, is -reduced- to 0 current hit points, and 12 damage -remains-, which equals or exceeds their hit point maximum, and thus they die.
Life Transference explicity states that “You -take- 4d8 necrotic damage, and one creature of your choice you can see within range regains a number of hit points equal to twice the necrotic damage you -take-.”
It doesn’t matter if you have 1 current hit point or 100, you still -take- the listed damage of the spell, and the target still heals for twice the amount -taken-.
Yeah — JC really dropped the ball on this one… especially given the specific phrases/terms used. He’s usually better than this, though it’s happened before that he didn’t double-check “x” for “y” details. (For his reply to be “correct”, he’d have to include at least a RAI explanation as to the the variant intent of the phrasing used, or otherwise include an errata clarification about the the HP received by the other creature not being more than twice the HP that the caster *lost* vs damage *taken*.)