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D&D 2nd edition's Psionic class has a psionic power called Death Field. That power allows character to sacrifice half of his hitpoints to deal damage to all living things in some radius around character.
Is there non Psionic effect (spell, supernatural ability, magic item...) that could mimic such a power in DnD 3.5 for a non Psionic character?
The 9th level power Affinity Field, Pain has somewhat similar effects, enough to guess that it might be the spiritual descendant of the Death Field power.
In short, when the field is active, negative conditions that affect you, affect others in range. This means you can take damage, or get cursed, and get healed, but only the effects deemed negative will be shared.
As a bonus, you can pick and choose who gets affected within the area, and it is not considered evil for alignment purposes.
Note that you will also need the Expanded Psionics Handbook or the SRD, as this power references the power Affinity Field from those sources for its base effects.
In summary, Affinity Field shares all effects, both positive and negative, and doesn't allow one to discriminate targets. Handy against undead if you have a reliable source of positive energy, among other tricks.
Also note that in the case of either power, you have to be actually affected in order for a given effect to be shared, immunity to something prevents the sharing of that thing.
With regards to accessing such a power by a non-psionicist, using the magic item creation rules to make a magic or psionic item that has an activation by key word or activation by use would be the most straightforward method.
You will most likely be using one of the following to estimate the cost:
Single use, use-activated = Power/Spell level × caster level × 50 gp
Command word or thought = Power/Spell level × caster level × 1,800 gp
Use-activated or continuous = Power/Spell level × caster level × 2,000 gp
A 9th level power requires a 17th level Psion to manifest at minimum.
This yields a base cost of 7,650gp for the single use version, 275,400gp for the command word or thought version, and 306,000gp for the use anytime version.
However, magic and psionic items are limited to 200,000gp max base cost, so some limitation must be applied to the top two in order to bring the cost down to below the limit.
Regarding activation method, I suggest having to daub or splash the activating character's blood on the item. Theatrically and thematically appropriate.
While this is still a psionic power, it should be fairly trivial to convert it to a spell using other spells that have been converted to psionic powers (Secrets of Sarlona), the spellpowers rules from the web article, and perhaps the Unearthed Arcana spell point rules as guidance.
The power is found in the Dark Sun core book on Athas.org, the site designated as official by WotC at: http://athas.org/products/ds3
The pdf is named "DS3_r7".
