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Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 5521162" data-attributes="member: 12460">I nerf most ability damage and ability drain effects so that they are a minor annoyance, but not absolutely debilitating. I, too, have noticed that ability damage/drain tend to slow combat down quite a bit.Poison in my campaigns deals damage every round (on a failed save) but deals a much smaller amount. A poison that deals 1d6 Con damage initial and 2d6 Con damage secondary will deal 1 Con damage per round for six rounds and 2 Con damage per round for 6 more rounds. Mathematically this is exactly the same as the RAW if the poison is allowed to run its course. But this gives PCs a chance to deal with poison before it crushes them. Since a Heal check can remove the poison, this is how my PCs usually manage it and it is gone within a round or two.Monsters that deal ability damage/drain with an attack usually deal a number of points of damage equal to the number of dice they normally roll for the damage/drain. This means a shadow's touch deals only 1 point of Str damage rather than 1d6. It's still nasty, but won't reduce you to 0 on the first round of combat if you get whacked by 2 or 3 shadows (and incorporeal creatures tend to always get surprise).</blockquote>