What level should this spell be?

3/4 level sounds fine. The thing is it’s such a situational spell.

In players hands it’s not that great. Even against a bbeg I don’t think this would be my go to spell.

Against players it’s scary strong. Exhaustion is actually very hard to get rid of. Throw this spell out in the first encounter of the day, and you could do more to hinder that player than most anything else you can do (including killing them...death is easier to fix than exhaustion!)

The way 5e is so stingy with exhaustion and applying conditions in general, it should be a fairly high level spell. You could easily kill someone by keeping this spell on them for 5+ rounds, as most targets won't be great at make an constitution check. Even the 4th level Sickening Radiance has the exhaustion levels end when the spell ends. Personally, I would probably add the exhaustion effect to an already existing but subpar necromancy spell, like Blight, Horrid Wilting, or Negative Energy Flood.

So let's compare to existing things:

1. Removing effects of this spell is rough. It requires a 5th level spell (Greater Restoration) with 100gp component consumed, for one level per casting. Damage to hit points is, on the flipside, instantly restored by a variety of easy means. We're dealing with a spell that can kill if maintained and has only 3 remedies beyond the save: long rest, Greater Restoration, Potion of Vitality.

2. Xanathar's Guide spell "Sickening Radiance," a 4th level concentration spell that causes anything that enters or starts turns in the fixed 30' sphere to make a Constitution save or take damage + gain a level of exhaustion. This exhaustion goes away when the spell ends. That's huge, and intentional because Exhaustion is a bitch to get rid of and severely debilitating.

If the Exhaustion sticks around after the spell ends, that's nasty as the effects quickly lead to a character being useless. Half speed, then disadvantage on all saves (pretty much guaranteeing death is on its way by round 3 if the character is optimally statted for casting). The disadvantage on skill checks renders them super vulnerable to Grapples, etc., and a horde of spell effects and so on.

I'd go 3rd level if the effects fade by spell's end, and you modify the duration to 6 rounds. It's still a spell that can kill if we get to effect 6. Any spell that guarantees a kill at some point pretty nasty. And, it's really impossible to mitigate or reverse the effects in battle. How many targets will ever have access to Greater Restoration or the rare Potion in the heat of battle?

I'd go 5th if the effects don't fade. This makes it an alternative to Sickening Radiance but with lasting effects that can only be cured by a spell of equal level, and even so, 1 casting per level.

To me, it's really about the rarity of remedies for Exhaustion that drives the level, not comparing it to spells that do damage and so on.

Yunru said:

Drain Stamina:
Spell School: Necrotic
Casting time: 1 action
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Range: 60 feet?
Chose a creature you can see. At the beginning of each of that creature's turns, it must make a Constitution check or lose (gain?) one level of Exhaustion. The spell ends if the creature leaves the range of the spell or succeeds on their check.

Click to expand...

It seems like this spell benefits NPC's as much as PC's, so I would probably start with when do you want PC's to get hit by the spell. Then I would look at monsters that are roughly of the CR level that would solo the party at that level, and see if any have single-target 1/day spells, and if any pattern emerges, set the level of this spell to the level of the 1/day spells.

Yunru said:

Drain Stamina:
Spell School: Necrotic
Casting time: 1 action
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Range: 60 feet?
Chose a creature you can see. At the beginning of each of that creature's turns, it must make a Constitution check or lose (gain?) one level of Exhaustion. The spell ends if the creature leaves the range of the spell or succeeds on their check.

Click to expand...

Compare to sickening radiance from Xanathar's...

[SECTION]Sickening Radiance
4th level evocation
Casting time: 1 Action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
Dim, greenish light spreads within a 30-foot-radius sphere centered on a point you choose within range. The light spreads around corners, and it lasts until the spell ends.
When a creature moves into the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, that creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or take 4d10 radiant damage, and it suffers one level of exhaustion and emits a dim, greenish light in a 5-foot radius. This light makes it impossible for the creature to benefit from being invisible. The light and any levels of exhaustion caused by this spell go away when the spell ends.[/SECTION]

Your proposed spell affects one creature instead of several. So maybe it's -1 level compared to sickening radiance.

Your spell also deals no damage (nor has the "emit greenish light" rider). So maybe it's -1 more level.

However, your spell makes it possible to impose multiple levels of exhaustion...and circumvents the usual save rules, calling for a Con "check" (to which proficiency bonus never applies). Exhaustion is one of the most dangerous things in the game (right up there with choking & poisons that KO). So that's probably +2 levels.

Lastly, we need to compare the end conditions. Exhaustion imposed by sickening radiance goes away when the spell ends (i.e. the caster's concentration is broken, the caster willingly ends spell, or effect is dispelled).

Your homebrew spell follows a different method: to stop the exhaustion from accruing, all you need to do is move 60 feet away from the caster (I believe that's your intent – this verbiage is problematic for a couple reasons) OR succeed on your Con check. HOWEVER, the way you've written it the exhaustion you've suffered up until that point does not go away (as is the case with sickening radiance). That's a very significant difference. It's hard to determine how that should adjust the spell's level, because lasting exhaustion means different things for a PC vs. for a monster/NPC (who usually has less "screen time") – thus, it affects the PC more.

One thing to be aware of is that your homebrew spell could be devastating when combined with hold person or similar spells/effects that restrain/paralyze. Heck, it would even be devastating with grapple tactics. If the target can't move away, then their only recourse is to hope they succeed on their Con checks sooner than later. Because of this synchronicity – and because my hunch is that my previous point about long-lasting exhaustion implies your version is more potent than sickening radiance – I think this is probably +1 level.

So my hunch is that – in it's current version – your Drain Stamina is a 5th level spell.

This makes sense if you look at another 5th level spell – greater restoration – which introduces the ability to offset one level of exhaustion per casting. That parallels your homebrew nicely, don't you think?

EDIT: Ninja'd by [MENTION=19270]toucanbuzz[/MENTION]!

Anytime you start a bypass hp to dead sequence my red lights start flashing. Then add in the gimmick of checks not saves and first fail making your checks disad and the long rest vs one exhaustion... yeah... it's a dire wolf in sheeps clothing especially if two have it in a gtoup.

6th maybe 7th.

Doubt I would allow it unless the game allowed a lot more ways to restore exhaustion or gain immunity to exhaustion.

I concur with what most others have said about the dangers of permanent (well, beyond the spell duration) exhaustion. I would also like to add that I don't think making it the same level as Greater Restoration is automatically a good balance. Greater Restoration, as written, removes one level of exhaustion, while the victim of this spell is likely to have more than one level inflicted.

On a side note, I've always found it strange that the system makes it harder to recover from a single level of exhaustion than death (well, at least through spells), with Revivify being a third level spell and Greater Restoration being 5th level.

Back to observations about the spell in question: the point about Exhaustion effects being more devastating to PCs than to monsters is very relevant. A level (or even two) of exhaustion on a monster in your average encounter will help, depending on party composition and strategy, but it doesn't get really devastating until level three. On a PC, however, persistent exhaustion can really ruin your day or adventure. This is a problem I've run into when considering upgrading some of the less desirable necromancy spells I mentioned above by having them add a level of exhaustion: it is far more effective to use against the PCs than for the PCs to use against the monsters.

Spells that restore hit points usually restore fewer hit points than the damage inflicted by damaging spells of the same level. E.g., cure wounds heals 1d8+mod, and inflict wounds is a whopping 3d10 damage. You'd have to cast cure wounds at 2nd-3rd level to heal that damage.

By analogy, then, if you can remove a level of exhaustion with a 5th-level spell, then a 5th-level spell that inflicts exhaustion should inflict multiple levels. Which this one does. So I think making it 5th level is legit.

77IM said:

Spells that restore hit points usually restore fewer hit points than the damage inflicted by damaging spells of the same level. E.g., cure wounds heals 1d8+mod, and inflict wounds is a whopping 3d10 damage. You'd have to cast cure wounds at 2nd-3rd level to heal that damage.

By analogy, then, if you can remove a level of exhaustion with a 5th-level spell, then a 5th-level spell that inflicts exhaustion should inflict multiple levels. Which this one does. So I think making it 5th level is legit.

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Cure wounds at first level- with a +3 mod is avg 7.5 hp restored.
Inflict is 3d10 (avg 16.5) **after** to-hit roll - if you guess at say 50% hit chance you get that down to 8.25 which is pretty close. There are also lots of ways to regain HP that font require slots.

Tagging in an answer to the other post above you who pondered why exhaustion was so hard to recover... it is good dedign to have persistent form of alternative "harm" that is only gonna show up in a few cases and is tough to get rid of. They used exhaustion. It adds a tool that can be used a lot of different ways. **But** the key is to not have it start popping up as a on-demand effect - that breaks that mold and turns it into the express lane to get rid of bosses.

77IM said:

Spells that restore hit points usually restore fewer hit points than the damage inflicted by damaging spells of the same level. E.g., cure wounds heals 1d8+mod, and inflict wounds is a whopping 3d10 damage. You'd have to cast cure wounds at 2nd-3rd level to heal that damage.

By analogy, then, if you can remove a level of exhaustion with a 5th-level spell, then a 5th-level spell that inflicts exhaustion should inflict multiple levels. Which this one does. So I think making it 5th level is legit.

Click to expand...

You are missing a very important part of damaging spells. They typically have a miss or save for half chance attached. Healing spells on the other hand always heal for the amount listed. I'd say 3d10 damage with decent chance to miss is nearly equivalent to 1d8+mod always heal.