Ability Drain attacks

[JoeNotCharles]

I'm trying to convert the Soul Eater, from X4 - Master of the Desert Nomads. It's main ability is that it every hit does damage and drains Wisdom points. Characters die when their Wisdom reaches 0, otherwise they regain Wisdom slowly (I think it was a point a week or something like that).

What's a good way to adapt this power to 4E? I think altering the Wis score during combat could lead to a lot of recalculating, so I don't think that's good.

I was thinking of just giving it a lot of attacks vs. Will that do psychic damage, and make the primary attack impose a cumulative Will penalty. There are still some questions here - when would the penalty end? (Save ends, next time a healing surge is spent to heal damage, end of encounter and end of day are the obvious ones - end of day, so it would affect upcoming encounters too, would be the best emulation of the total draining effect, but it's not very 4E-ish.) Would multiple hits cause a cumulative penalty? (A lot of bookkeeping there, but it should be beneficial for the thing to keep going after one character instead of just tagging each for the penalty. If a save ends it would at least have to keep hitting over and over.)

 

[Nebulous]

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What's a good way to adapt this power to 4E? I think altering the Wis score during combat could lead to a lot of recalculating, so I don't think that's good.

I dunno, if it was me, i'd still go for the Wisdom drain. For one, it makes your monster "unique." Nothing else in 4e will ever officially drain ability score points. Just because 4e scrapped that mechanic doesn't mean it was a bad idea, it could just get unwieldy if it happened a lot. Which it did.

No, i think when the player takes damage and loses some Wisdom, and you tell that player he or she will be a catatonic brain dead vegetable at 0 Wisdom, he or she will be scared. It will also mean, unfortunatley, that the bad guy will have to hit that ONE person somewhere between 10 and 20 times, depending on their Wisdom score.

So, you might want to implement a 1d4 Wisdom Damage, or set it to 2 points of damage every hit.

As for recalculating the Will Defense, i wouldn't even bother. Just say that the Wisdom is completely restored after an extended rest. Or if it's important, calculate it after the fight. Don't worry about it dropping or doing the math during the encounter.

I'm all about salvaging ideas from past editions and incorporating them into 4e. In my opinion, everything starts feeling the same too quickly.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

I think making a monster drain wisdom (or any other score) sets bad precedent; In some situations, it is more powerful or less powerful, but in all of them, it will slow combat to a crawl. Also, AFAIK, there are no rules for ability score loss, or the loss of prerequisites (only rules for retraining), so if a Wis-drained char had a feat that required wisdom, even more ad-hoc rules would be needed. Seems like too many headaches to me.

My suggestion: Make the creature deal psychic damage instead, and possibly daze/weaken the target. Ongoing psychic damage could also work. Its faster, and the players will be more familiar with the mechanics of it.

If you want a unique mechanic for a unique monster, you could invent your own Wisdom draining rules, or some sort of unique ongoing effect like you describe. Just consider it from a player perspective, and beware of the precedent you set by incorporating rules like this. Unique rules for special abilities are fine; Great even. But Unique rules are harder to judge as far as game balance goes.

 

[Dragonblade]

Here is my take. Don't try to duplicate the mechanics of the original monster, try to replicate the flavor using 4e mechanics. So presumably this creature drains your soul and this was mechanically described as draining Wisdom.

Back in 1e, Wis drain didn't really require a lot of recalcing of abilities so this mechanic wasn't too onerous. In 3e, due to the ability score cascade effect, making creatures that targeted abilities became problematic. 4e still has ability score dependencies so it solved the problem by removing ability drain.

I would keep that in mind and not re-introduce ability drain. So to simulate this creature soul draining, I would give it some kind of special attack, probably that it has to recharge (unless you want this thing to be nasty), that inflicts Weakness (Save Ends), for example. Or you can look at monsters with similar life draining abilities that already exist in the monster manual. I think there are wraiths or something that drain healing surges, for example. I would look at all of those and just steal those mechanics since they are already designed under the 4e paradigm.

 

[JoeNotCharles]

I would keep that in mind and not re-introduce ability drain. So to simulate this creature soul draining, I would give it some kind of special attack, probably that it has to recharge (unless you want this thing to be nasty), that inflicts Weakness (Save Ends), for example. Or you can look at monsters with similar life draining abilities that already exist in the monster manual. I think there are wraiths or something that drain healing surges, for example. I would look at all of those and just steal those mechanics since they are already designed under the 4e paradigm.

Thanks for the tip about wraiths - I looked them up and they just cause weakness, nothing about draining healing surges.

I think I'll go back to my first idea and give it a will penalty - its basic attack will be vs. Reflex, and cause normal damage plus a secondary attack vs. Will that causes weakness (save ends). It will also have a ranged soul drain encounter power that causes a Will penalty, which stacks nicely with the secondary attack and is kind of like a Wisdom drain except less onerous.

 

[Dragonblade]

Thanks for the tip about wraiths - I looked them up and they just cause weakness, nothing about draining healing surges.

I think I'll go back to my first idea and give it a will penalty - its basic attack will be vs. Reflex, and cause normal damage plus a secondary attack vs. Will that causes weakness (save ends). It will also have a ranged soul drain encounter power that causes a Will penalty, which stacks nicely with the secondary attack and is kind of like a Wisdom drain except less onerous.

Sorry. I was thinking of the Bodak. They are the ones with the life drain power that takes healing surges.