Morrowind talk:Absorb Health

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Effects not temporary[edit]

It seems that the effects of Absorb Health are not temporary. I use it against ghosts (or other enemies invulnerable to conventional weapons), and I am always able to kill them, and the health gained does not disappear after the death of the enemy. --86.125.180.178 17:56, 19 March 2007 (EDT)

I concur with this. Absorb Health, Fatigue, and Magicka are all permanent effects that do not allow you to exceed your maximum value. --Gaebrial 02:26, 16 August 2007 (EDT)
I agree that in practical application, this is true. However, when a PC gets killed, we don't get to observe the health of an opponent NPC afterward. Otherwise, the opponent NPC gets killed, and there is no one to whom the absorbed health can return.
To truly test the assertion of the game that absorbed health returns to the victim after battle, we would need to either prolong combat or cast a successful Calm or Command spell on the opponent to stop combat so we can observe what occurs when the spell wears off. (My PC currently kills most enemies with a single attack, so I haven't managed to do this.) Downstrike (talk) 07:12, 26 February 2013 (GMT)

Absorb Health safe?[edit]

I know this is a widely held belief, but not true in my extensive use of Cast-on-Strike weapons. Absorb Health reflected can damage you. Here is a little test I did today:

Foe: Karstaag Reflect 50%

My weapons: Ancient Nordic Pickaxe, 1 pt. Calm Creature on Target, 20 seconds, 20-20 Absorb Health

Made this one to make sure he would hold still and to guarantee that any damage would come from reflect. 2 out of 4 would damage me, matching the 50% reflect. Audible response were many Ouch from my character, with Karstaag just standing still, without attacking.

Other weapon: The popular Daedric Dai-Katana, 11-10% Weakness to Magicka (RVM, target, doubles damage of following effect), Absorb Health 49-47

Using that weapon, I almost killed myself, with Karstaag only getting 2 swings in. I also tried alternating the two, so that he'd be calm when being hit by the DDK. I don't know if this is from the target attribute of the first spell, or if there is a delay going on, but definitely not a zero-sum game here.

Second Test: Tested the Pickaxe, same as above, but with 1 pt. Calm on Touch instead. That gave me only the visual, red damage indicator, and no change in the health bar, the zero-sum game as described on the page. So it looks like a target effect before Absorb Health is what causes damage to self. Further, what is interesting is that Reflect bypasses my 75 pt Spell Absorption (Atronach + Necromancer's Amulet) and my 100% Resist Magicka that was active during this test. In contrast, Fire damage from Trueflame gets resisted correctly by my 100% Fire resistance. Not sure if that is a known quantity of Reflect. Puzzling, any thoughts? --BenouldTC 21:32, 21 July 2008 (EDT)

I was under the impression that once a spell was Reflected, that it would automatically hit the new target, bypassing any protections. That is confirmed by your demonstration that you were not protected by your Absorption or Resist. --Brf 08:04, 22 July 2008 (EDT)
Now that's... interesting. Certainly, if Absorb Health is used on its own, or in conjunction with other 'touch' effects, it doesn't damage the player when reflected. I have used many a weapon with absorb health on touch and have not suffered ill effects from it being reflected.
On the subject of reflect... I've played a Nord with a frost damage weapon. Any reflected frost damage was correctly resisted. I've also played characters with the atronach sign, and they have successfully absorbed reflected enchantments and spells. I've also seen the same happen when my character has reflected spells cast at them - for example, flame atronachs resisting those fire damage spells that get reflected.
Looks like something weird is going on when you include an 'on target' effect. Does it work the same if the absorb effect is before the 'on target' effect?
Incidentally, I believe (but I am not in a position to prove at the moment) that reflect & absorb work on each effect individually, so I don't think that the 'on target' effect necessarily needs to be reflected, it just presumably needs to be present.
--Gaebrial 05:24, 29 July 2008 (EDT)
Will have test Touch before Target, Gaebrial. The reason why a short target spell is popular is because it doubles the following damage. Developed by SR71, a 11-9 Weakness to Magicka on target, 49-47 Absorb Health on touch on a Daedric Dai-Katana is the standard, but this works on many weapons. This "effect" might be the culprit. --BenouldTC 11:07, 29 July 2008 (EDT)
Also with the "on target", I could not hurt myself with absorb, so I think it has to do with the "target glitch", that the reflected damage goes through. --92.217.25.112 16:06, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
I've just spent a fair amount of time testing this. Basically, when you add any "on target" effect to an Absorb Health weapon, it can get reflected. I tried it with the obvious effects like Weakness to Magicka, Fire etc as well as ones like Blind. Every time, Karstaag (great choice BTW, Benould!) almost killed me despite me taking a more direct route to disabling him and using tai. This happened whether I put the target effect before or after the absorb effect. When I changed the target effect to a touch effect, there was no problem. I tried with a few different durations and values for both effects and the same thing happened.
In the meantime I'm going to leave the VN in place. It needs more testing as an on target effect, for instance, combined with other target and touch effects. –RpehTCE 15:21, 4 September 2008 (EDT)
Thank you for your effort and analysis; you've spared me a great deal of consternation and frustration. Downstrike (talk) 12:35, 24 February 2013 (GMT)

duration[edit]

in game it says after the duration expires you lose the borrowed health and the enemy regains it is that true? (Eddie the head 12:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC))

Judging by the "Effects not temporary" above, I don't think so. rpeh •TCE 12:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)