The Nine Lives Stealer's Fine Print
The Nine Lives Stealer (a heavy crossbow in D&D 5e) grants a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls. That alone earns it a spot in the quiver. The name promises more, and the name is where people stop reading.
The instant kill does not fire on any hit. It requires a natural 20, which spends one of the weapon’s charges, and it forces the target into a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. Fail, and the creature dies. But the effect only applies to targets with fewer than 100 Hit Points. A creature at 100 or above is simply immune to it, and constructs and undead automatically succeed on the save. The charges are finite. Rolling a 20 into a target that laughs off the death effect burns a charge and buys nothing.
So the weapon is two items stapled together: a reliable +2 crossbow with no strings, and a conditional execution that only pays out against a specific weight class of enemy. Track the target’s likely HP before you get excited about the die.
At the table: Save the death charges for a bloodied minion or a low-HP caster under 100 HP, not the boss with 250 and a construct’s metabolism.
Related
- Spells Are Verbs, Not Damage Rolls
- Monster Tactic: The Statblock Is Not the Fight
- The Myth at the Table
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