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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 8613669" data-attributes="member: 23751">1e and 2e had poison that just plain insta-killed, starting at level 1.  Energy drains started at level 3 or 4 and had no save and you generally weren't able to stop them or recover those levels when you first started encountering them.  Unless the DM artificially changed random encounters with those undead to something else, you rarely hit anything higher than 6th or 7th level.  Even if you did manage to get the level(s) back, you still lost every point of experience you earned towards the next level and started back at 0 earned towards it.  So if you were a wizard that needed 20,000 xp to reach level 5 and got drained at 19950 xp, when you got the level back you only had 10,000 xp and were starting all over again.  Low level casters had few spell slots, far fewer than 3e gave and no cantrips like 4e and 5e gave.  That meant far less healing in combat and you often died when you got knocked out, because you just kept losing hit points each round until -10.  It wasn't unusual to get knocked to -7, -8 or -9 in the middle of a combat.  Hit points were rolled starting at level 1(no max roll at 1st) and con bonuses often weren't present, even for fighting classes.  I had many fighters who started the game with 1-3 hit points, wizards who started with 1, etc.  Super easy to hit those negative numbers above and end up dead.</blockquote>