D&D 5E Wights and wraiths

[GameDoc]

I think energy drain needs to be a lasting effect that takes time to overcome (thinking of Jonathan Harker having to recover in Dracula) without magical aid.

However, I'm not to keen on going back to actually losing a level across the board. It's hard for me to imagine a person altogether forgetting a new skill, talent, or spell they've just learned as a result of energy drain. Hit Points, Ability Scores, even bonuses to attacks, saves, and checks, I can see. I guess I also kind of imagine Raistlin as a victim of a severe energy drain and he kept on casting his spells despite the effects.

I'd rather see it impose a hefty set of limitations or penalties to what a character can do rather than stripping them of their ability to do it at all. Perhaps the next plot hook is trying to find a faster route of recovery for the party member who got drained so he can get back up to full speed. Perhaps having to gather reagents for a restoring ritual or offering a blood sacrifice to fuel a supernatural recovery.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Losing levels is lame, but the effect should absolutely be long-lasting. I know they're resetting stuff after an extended rest, but this is just another point in favor of having an extended rest take a week.

I don't get their panic over "OMG SPAWNING UNDEAD TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!" If these things are scary monsters, they're exceptional beings, rare and unusual, with their own stories that created them. Spawning isn't necessarily a goal of theirs, nor are they necessarily capable or interested in dominating the world. On the flip side, if these things are just out there and not especially unusual, you should have clerics who are the same, and thus keep them in check (a la 3e assumptions).

That said...I won't really miss it. Just like I won't really miss actual "level drain." Spawning can be unique. It's an especially grisly way to go, to be turned into a horrible monster. I don't mind saving it for epic boss battles.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

I have two points of contention with this. The first is that energy drain has to be permanent or it isn't energy drain. Energy drain is an effect that consumes part of your spirit. That part never comes back.

Where in the name does "energy drain" say permanent? All the name says is that energy flows out of something, there is an implicit idea that what ever is drained has to go somewhere, but nothing to say that it can not be recovered from or is permanent. The type of energy drained isn't even stated.

The second is that magic, by definition, breaks the rules of reality. Thus, there have to be things that only magic can do. In this case, it's restoring the part of your spirit that was consumed.

Check your definition.

Magic
Noun
1. The power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces

2. Mysterious tricks, such as making things disappear and appear again, performed as entertainment

3. A quality that makes something seem removed from everyday life, esp. in a way that gives delight

4. Something that has such a quality

Magic does not necessarily "break the rules of reality" it just has to be mysterious or outside common understanding.

Now, it sounds to me like you're the kind of player who isn't too concerned with verisimilitude. You clearly like the idea of being brought to full health after a long rest. I presume you prefer to be doing big things, getting in to grand fights, and generally doing the high power hero stuff. That's cool. The game needs to support that. But energy drain is not intended for that style of play, and the default rules should reflect that.

Energy Drain is just an ability. Versions of this ability are feared in many editions of D&D and games based on those editions, but other versions are considered minor annoyances in other games. There is no inherent style of play associated with it.

The version you seem to be espousing as the "One True Way" is one of the versions which inflicts damage that is either permanent or recovered from in a non-standard or easy way. Not everyone agrees with you.

 

[Li Shenron]

As a DM, level drain taking away XP is the part I actually hate the most about level drain. I still want it to be terrifying and something difficult to recover from (maybe a 4E-like disease track you only get a chance to improve by taking a lost rest - no guarantee of it automatically going away or getting better), but I'm happy to lose the lost XP portion of energy drain for good.

How about level drain taking away future XP? Like forcing an XP debt on you that you have to pay before going really up again. This way there is no need for rewriting character sheets.

 

[Li Shenron]

Energy Drain is just an ability. Versions of this ability are feared in many editions of D&D and games based on those editions, but other versions are considered minor annoyances in other games. There is no inherent style of play associated with it.

Yes there is

Energy Drain has not been the same across different editions, but 5e needs to find what is common to all versions within the history of D&D, and if necessary it needs to drop versions that strayed too far away, or at least give them less weight. And this does not apply only to Energy Drain of course.

Allowing as many styles as possible is a noble target for 5e, but D&D styles always take precedence, otherwise the brand loses its identity. "Ubi maior, minor cessat".

 

[The Shadow]

I might even go so far as to throw in the ghoul/ghast pairing there as well. Ghouls don't spawn other ghouls... ghouls eat the human flesh they paralyze and kill. Ghasts (being the elder brother to the ghoul) are the ones that will change a killed being into a ghoul spawn. This makes more sense.

I agree, I like that.

So you have your basic level of three mindless or less-intelligent undead, along with the three more powerful, more intelligent, more likely to create spawn whom they control and influence "older brothers" of undead:

Zombie < Wight
Ghoul < Ghast
Shadow < Wraith

Doesn't that sort of imply that there should be an 'elder brother' of skeletons as well? Or are skeletons simply zombies whose flesh has rotted away?

Then above these six you have kind of the "greater" undead, in the death knights, vampires, mummies, spectres and liches.

Spectres... I kind of see GameDoc's point... Just how many ways can evil people come back, after all?

Though if we have to keep them all, I'd say the difference between a wraith and a spectre is that a spectre is basically a malevolent ghost with specific goals, while a wraith is something that hardly has any vestige of humanity left - it hungers for life force and not much else.

Which kind of implies that spectres shouldn't have Energy Drain any more. Instead they should have beefed-up ghost abilities.

I would also say that spectres just kind of happen spontaneously, while wraiths are deliberately made - they've been *sent* back by fiends to wreak havoc on the Material Plane. Souls that have been tortured and twisted until they seek revenge on all living things.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The first is that energy drain has to be permanent or it isn't energy drain. Energy drain is an effect that consumes part of your spirit. That part never comes back.

It's an interesting dilemma. 5e needs to have a mechanic whereby the PC "gets everything back."

Energy drain -- and diseases, petrification, domination -- are things that futz with that, because they should be able to be "permanent." An attack that drains energy shouldn't heal naturally. A virulent disease shouldn't get better with just rest. If your mind is owned by an Aboleth, going to sleep doesn't fix that. If you've been turned to stone by a Medusa, you can't just wait until the effect wears off. Permanent effects still need to be in the game.

Most of the time, NEXT seems to want to deal with this by using HP. If you run out of HP, "bad things can happen," which might mean death or it might mean you turn into a zombie or (maybe) turn you to stone. HP is partially your ability to "shake it off."

Energy drain and disease futz with that because they don't rely on your character hitting 0 hp to function -- they function on a hit. So your character could survive the encounter, and still be "scarred forever" by the experience.

Which I guess is something we might have to opt into if we like it. I think there's probably room for that in the game, but I don't think the default baseline could handle it -- the default baseline needs to have a "everything comes back" mechanic, if only to make it easy for newbies and casual players to play it without having to track fiddly bits over the long term.

 

[Hautamaki]

Here's an idea I've been experimenting with for different types of attacks (like ED)

Instead of 0 HP being the death threshold, after which your character is likely to die, I could 0 HP as the serious injury threshold, after which your character is likely to suffer some kind of serious injury (but probably not death right away). For most normal attacks there is a wound table you roll on; however special attacks that reduce you below 0 have their own unique effects. For example, poison just causes normal HP damage unless it's the factor that drops you below 0, in which case poison takes its over more interesting effects like Strength reduction or whatever. ED would be the same thing--just cause normal damage unless it's the attack that drops you below 0, in which case you'd really lose a level. Also feats/special attacks like 'Wounding Blow' might allow you to choose which wound you deal if you drop the enemy below 0 HP, instead of rolling up a random one. An Ice attack that reduces you to 0 might paralyze you with cold or encase you in solid ice. Sonic attacks might render your character deaf. And of course regular healing doesn't work normally on negative HP--in that case you need more than a simple healing surge or a word of encouragement from the bard or whatever; you need some serious magical remedy or some serious rest time.

This works because according to these rules, a character is not actually struck by anything except a bruising or glancing hit until they get to 0 HP. So a poison attack might just be a tiny scratch with very little poison actually getting into your bloodstream unless it's the attack that drops you below 0.

The actual death threshold is negative your max HP; so there's plenty of time to accumulate serious injuries between 0 HP and actual definite death.

I've been running this system for a few months now and I'm pretty happy with how it works. The common complaint is that it leads to the unstoppable cycle of death; but what I've found is that when a character gets to below 0 and takes a serious wound, he just wants to get the heck out of there and this is rarely actually a problem. Instead it just gives a unique flavor to different kinds of wounds or effects and makes certain things (like ED) scary, but not to the point that it makes the game frustrating for the players.

 

[billd91]

How about level drain taking away future XP? Like forcing an XP debt on you that you have to pay before going really up again. This way there is no need for rewriting character sheets.

I really wouldn't want XP to be involved at all. Sure, losing actual character levels is one of the things players will really sit up and take notice, but I don't like the degree of metagame involved in rationalizing it. Experience is experience. The only way to lose it should be some kind of weird effect that removes the brain's memories.

My favorite solution so far has been the PF update to 3.5's energy drain. Apply negative levels, each of which imposes a -1 on lots of rolls. Roll a Fort save the next day to try to recover it. If you fail, that negative level sticks around.
In D&D Next, I could easily see rolling a Fort save each day to recover a negative level until eventually successful. The one major drawback is the relative tediousness of rolling a bunch of Fort saves if saddled with 5 or more negative levels.

 

[Klaus]

Spawning could really be a "template" added to certain creatures.

As for Energy Dragin: I'd love to see Fighters, Rogues and other non-spellcasters to be able to resist ED more than their spellcasting peers. Something about the indomitable will of these down-toearth heroes that steels them against such magical assaults.