Anyone else really dislike Ability Damage & Ability Drain?

[Michael Silverbane]

Ability damage and drain can slow (or stop) the game when it happens, but I can live with that for the extra variety that it adds to combats.

I tend to use it somewhat sparsely in the games that I run, so maybe that's why I don't hate it so much...

 

[the Jester]

If it wasn't for all the recalculation, I would totally love ability damage and drain.

With it, it's terrible.

Which is why my homebrewed version of D&D will use ability damage and drain but not ability score bonuses, so it becomes a non-issue.

 

[Vegepygmy]

Heck no. I still enjoy the flexibility stat damage gives me to hamper the PCs in ways not necessarily fatal.

In fact, stat damage was an ideal way for me to translate 1e's Dungeons of the Slavelords into 3.5. Rather than say that characters had burned spells by fiat (how exactly do you do that for spontaneous casters anyway?), I was able to say that the Slavelords kept the spellcasting PCs drugged, leaving stat damage that prevented their casting stat to be over 11 on the first day of the escape.

Heh. I did exactly the same thing.

I don't mind ability damage/drain at all. Its benefits are easily worth the slight annoyance of having to recalculate things.

 

[Celebrim]

Isn't ability damage and a scaleable standard condition like 'weakened' or something effectively the same thing.

Is there any real difference in saying that you have 8 STR damage, and you are 'Weakened (-4 on all strength related tasks)'. I generally tell players to not recalculate there stats, just apply the appropriate penalty to them. It's effectively as complicated as remembering that they have a standard condition like 'stunned' applied to them.

With Energy Drain I'm more sympathetic to the problems people have simply because Energy Drain is such a complicated condition with such complicated story implications. But ability damage really is usually nothing more than a straight forward standard condition with usually no more lasting of an impact on the story than hit point loss.

Beyond that, ability damage also tends to make an injury feel like an injury, a problem that D&D has in its absence to a real extreme. I use ability damage to simulate everything from insanity, to prolonged sickness to broken legs. It's just an incredibly effective, evocative, and versital tool.

One of the problems with claiming that 3e ability damage is too complicated is that the system that replaced it - large numbers of even more temporary, more frequent, named standard conditions - is if anything even more complicated and is one of the reasons 4e combat doesn't actually run any faster than 3e combat. Not only do you have the problem of tracking the size of penalties to apply, but you have the problem of continually 'recalculating' the sum of these penalties, and remembering that you are in fact penalized and when to remove the penalty. Plus, because the named standard conditions aren't really as evocative as ability damage, the system has tried to replace that lost flexibility and gripping 'realism' by having numerous powers triggered by the presence or absence of the named condition. Without that, much of the feeling of real danger you get from 'save or die' (in 1e) or 'ability drain' (in 3e) is lost. But of course, this mechanic just makes it that much more essential to track everything on a moment by moment basis.

I can understand that you find Con loss to be a real hassle at times, but any dislike of Constitution loss as a mechanic has to be tempered by what you could potentially replace it with. Do you go back to something like 1e where you simply saved or died when clawed by a 3' long centipede, and at any time in the game you were either dead or you were fully healthy? Do you go foward to 4e and track lots and lots of temporary named conditions on a moment by moment basis? Giving up Ability Drain as a mechanic does give you something (all that is lost by the drawbacks of the mechanic), but it also losses you something (all that you gain from it). In my mind, this is a net loss: the pros outweigh the cons.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Ability damage is a great way of modeling real injuries. Since we have put so much thought into understanding what ability scores mean, it is easy to conceptualize what ability damage is. I wish the math were easier but even as it is it's worth it.

 

[the Jester]

Is there any real difference in saying that you have 8 STR damage, and you are 'Weakened (-4 on all strength related tasks)'.

Just think of the difference it makes for a guy with a greataxe using Power Attack!

Not to mention things like losing access to feats or prestige class abilities because you no longer qualify for them.

So I would say, yes, there is a significant difference.

 

[Celebrim]

Just think of the difference it makes for a guy with a greataxe using Power Attack!

Are you talking about the difference in calculation time or the difference in effectiveness? Because, in terms of calculation time, not having access to Power Attack and similar round to round options might actually speed play so I'm not convinced this particular example is a strong one. In fact, I'd say its not the long term status changes that really slow down my play, but the plethera of minor tactical options - like Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Fighting Defensively, etc. - that tend to slow down attack resolution both on the front end by causing the player to dither and spend addiitonal time describing his choices and on the back end by forcing me to remember them (when attacked later, or when the player later in the rounds draws an AoO) and help the player calculate the results of his moment by moment choices.

Not to mention things like losing access to feats or prestige class abilities because you no longer qualify for them.

I admit I hadn't really thought about this. You should know however that any time prestige classes are mentioned in the context of a problem, I'm typically going to answer that its the prestige class that is the primary source of the problem. As far as lost character abilities gained through feats, I don't see 'You could have Cleaved in this situation, but because you've taken 8 ability damage' or 'Your Int has fallen to 14 so now you can't cast your 5th level spells' as being a serious enough of an issue to seriously impact my position. To the extent that it is an issue, I'd personally find it more satisfying to remove the ability score requirements from feats than to remove ability damage, or to simply rule that ability drain did not impact access to feats.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Yeah, I'm another one that _seriously_ dislikes Ability damage/drain. While other folks think it adds all sorts of great whatever to their game, all it adds to mine is annoyances.

I go with the "add a penalty equal to the damage" option and call it good. In certain instances I might add a "hit point kicker" to it as well; either a flat 5 hit points of damage or 10 hit points, depending on several factors. The damage is actual damage though, so simply healing up the ability damage doesn't heal the hit point damage.

Conversely, it means that the damage _can_ be healed, even if the ability damage can't be sorted out at that time. But like I said, the hit point damage thing is an optional deal and not the "standard" way I deal with stuff.

I've thought about condition track stuff before, but I'm honestly not convinced it really brings a benefit to the table; instead, it just seems to be swapping out one set of problems with another. A simple penalty to all actions hits the balance for me between fiddly and doing something other than pure hit point damage.

Although to be honest... given how everyone constantly goes on about hit points being an "abstract measurement of many different factors, not just 'wound points'" there's not a whole lot of reason to _not_ just use hit point damage. Since most folks claim they're "abstract" (despite having spells that cure HP... how do you heal uneven footing?) they should be perfectly fine with simply whacking chunks of HP each time ability drain/damage is done.

Just carving out a flat amount of damage (ability drain is 5 HP, level drain is 10 HP) would be the simplest approach there is. But I don't especially care for arguments about how "realistic" that is, since so many things in D&D are abstracted out anyway; so my views are certainly a minority.

 

[messy]

i fall into the "more trouble than it's worth" category.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Yay - Dissension!!!

I LOVE ability/level drain. The real world sucks, get used to it. I get tired of "fools who rush in where angels fear to tread." and then complain that "that's not fair, I lost a level." Suck it up poindexter, you ignored the risks and went in because you thought you were invincible, surprise, you aren't.

Are they a pain in the butt to figure at the table, yeah, except that I keep records of the PCs stats anyway and make cheat sheets prior to the game so I can have ready access if things go south. It's all about being prepared if you DM and understanding that as a PC, it's a dangerous world, you chose your profession, deal with the consequences.