D&D 5E Exhaustion for old 1e undead level drain

[DND_Reborn]

Ok, back from lunch. So, if you want to have a discussion (and not just argue)...

I would be interested to see how the party tactics actually interferes with your statistics. In our games, about half the fights are started by the PCs, so you can bet that they are making sure that the casters are at the back when this happens.

This depends greatly on the style of game you are running IMO.

If you mostly do dungeon-crawl, then the party starting the fight first depends enormously on how successful you are in infiltrating the dungeon (complex, castle, etc.) and how well the DM runs the "reality" of the location. IME too many DMs treat encounters almost like islands, where one has little if any impact on the other. Once the PCs fail to move to the next area successfully without alerting the entire complex (in a fashion dependent on the scenario of the adventure, of course), the PCs can often expect to be "encountered" as often as they do the encountering. Wandering monsters (if used, it is old-school for many games IME) will more than often initiate the fight.

During travel, random encounters are nearly always initiated by the monsters, but this also depends a lot on the scene, what the encounter is, and how the DM sets it up.

If the PCs start the fight, they usually have only one point of entry, but often need a martial to watch the rear because very often the enemy will move to flank and attack from behind if possible. While many monsters are not very intelligent, the average INT for anything CR 1/2 or higher is 10, and it rises with CR. So, with the exception of super-low CR creatures (many are beasts and such), most foes WILL be smart enough to employ tactics that suite them best in defeating the party. I'm not saying those tactics have to be brilliant or anything, but flanking and rear attacks are not hard concepts when you have numbers.

Given that most parties have 4 PCs, in general if you want an encounter to be any real challenge at all, CR monsters half the level or lower of the PCs will at least match their number, of often outnumber them. Even BBEG encounters will have minions to support the BBEG by harassing fringe party members when the front-liners engage. FWIW, as DM, I also try to have my encounters be a mixture of CRs (if it makes sense to do so), and have smaller CR minions in larger numbers because with bounded accuracy they can make a difference.

At any rate, casters in the rear is a mistake more often than not, they should be center of the party, or they are subject to all kinds of nastiness. Depending on the encounter set-up, even then they aren't necessarily "safe" by any means compared to the martials. More intelligent foes will attack casters with range, numbers, flanking, or whatever. If martials are engaged, they have to disengage to help the caster or wait until they are otherwise free to do so. Your "rear-guard" might be a ranged martial or mobile one who can move up if it is safe to leave the casters behind.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Keeping characters alive is up to the players, not the DM.

Yes and no.

Players are responsible for their decisions, bad or ill. But so are DMs.

If you, as a DM, set up a situation where (essentially) the only way to survive the encounter is to avoid it entirely, but there’s only a1% chance of actually avoiding it, then the probable TPK is on you.

(Example: I was a player in an adventure in which the party’s success in one encounter hinged entirely in one of the several casters casting a particular spell. Problem: no caster had that spell. Result: party had no way to proceed, campaign world doomed. Coda: DM retconned the adventure out of existence.)

 

[overgeeked]

Yes and no.

Players are responsible for their decisions, bad or ill. But so are DMs.

If you, as a DM, set up a situation where (essentially) the only way to survive the encounter is to avoid it entirely, but there’s only a1% chance of actually avoiding it, then the probable TPK is on you.

(Example: I was a player in an adventure in which the party’s success in one encounter hinged entirely in one of the several casters casting a particular spell. Problem: no caster had that spell. Result: party had no way to proceed, campaign world doomed. Coda: DM retconned the adventure out of existence.)

No and no.

Players are responsible for their own decisions. Period.

DMs are responsible for their own decisions. Period.

It's up to the players to deal with the obstacles the DM puts in the world. The DM is under no obligation to make every (or any) encounter (combat, social, exploration, etc) a fair one. If players think they're hammers and see every single problem as a nail, well...that's on them. If the players don't bother planning anything ever, or insist on stupid plans, well...that's on them.

If the DM says "rocks fall, everyone dies" that's entirely on the DM. Short of that, short of completely removing agency from the players (i.e. railroading), the decisions of the players in how they handle whatever obstacles the DM puts in their path is squarely on the players. The players can (almost) always choose to have their characters run. If they don't, that's on them. The players choose to have their characters surrender. If they don't, that's on them. For whatever reason, players have somehow been trained to think that every NPC, monster, or rock they come across is a combat encounter and one that's perfectly balanced to their characters. That's not the case. At least in my games. If players control their characters in stupid ways and do stupid things...like say threatening a god, which one of my West Marches groups literally just did...then they will face the consequences of that choice. It's on them that they decided to threaten and attack something that was obviously wildly more powerful than them.

 

[Voadam]

Ray of Enfeeblement. While it doesn’t drain life like undead, it DOES sap Str. And 3.5Ed’s Fatigue rules also sap Str.

So when you move to a fatigue mechanism for life draining, both the cantrip (and similar effects) are suddenly doing the same thing. It’s a LOT easier to get someone to 0 Str in a group of life-draining undead with even a low-level caster.

Still confused.

Ray of Enfeeblement is a 2nd level spell in 5e that uses a different mechanic than str damage/drain or fatigue, and it was a 1st level spell in 3.5 that imposed a nonstackable penalty to str that could not take strength below 1.

Touch of Fatigue was a cantrip in 3.5 but it explicitly could only take a target to the first level of fatigue and no further and only lasted for 1 round/level.

If you changed these all to stackable non short duration fatigue levels they could add up, but there does not seem to be a necessity for that.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes and no.

Players are responsible for their decisions, bad or ill. But so are DMs.

If you, as a DM, set up a situation where (essentially) the only way to survive the encounter is to avoid it entirely, but there’s only a1% chance of actually avoiding it, then the probable TPK is on you.

(Example: I was a player in an adventure in which the party’s success in one encounter hinged entirely in one of the several casters casting a particular spell. Problem: no caster had that spell. Result: party had no way to proceed, campaign world doomed. Coda: DM retconned the adventure out of existence.)

Absolutely. If I misjudge an encounter and it's going to kill them, I'm going to take steps to remedy the situation before they die. The party isn't going to be wiped due to my error. That's not the same as me planning a tough, but winnable fight and the party losing.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, de facto, the martial are more often at the front of the action and the casters at the rear. It's not always the case, but it's often enough the case that it biases the effect of Level Drain, especially for AD&D type games.

Hmmm...seeing as I have records to hand covering nearly 40 years of 1e-style play, now I want to run the numbers and see how much level-drain occurrence varies by class/role.

This won't be fast. I'll get back to you when I'm done.

EDIT to add: and seeing as @DND_Reborn has self-proclaimed as a stats whiz, maybe I'll just post the raw numbers and let 'em at it...

 

[Lanefan]

Its interesting in that spectres look a lot like they were intended to be Nazgul ringwraith stand ins, relatively top tier scary undead. But ringwraiths ride mounts and wield weapons. Whether spectres could pick up objects or not and whether they could walk through walls or not seems undefined in AD&D.

In OD&D however spectres explicitly were incorporeal.

SPECTRES: These monsters have no corporeal body which makes them totally impervious to all normal weaponry (but can be struck by all magical weapons), including silver-tipped arrows.

In contrast OD&D wraiths were simply more powerful flying wights that other than the name you would not expect them to be incorporeal from their description.

WRAITHS: These monsters are simply high-class Wights with more mobility, hit dice, and treasure. Hits by silver-tipped arrows will score only 1/2 die of damage, and magic arrows only score 1 die of damage when they hit.

The 1e wraithform spell makes it sound like wraiths might be more like vaporous smoke that needs small openings than incorporeal that can go through solid walls, but this could just be the spell form acting only fairly similar to the actual nature of wraiths.

Then why, I wonder, did we have Wraiths behaving this way before that spell was ever published? As a player I remember from very early days a situation where we were dealing with a Wraith we couldn't handle and the only way we could get away from it was to use the wax from all our candles to make an airtight seal on the door before the Cleric's 'turn' wore off, implying Wraiths behaved as per the spell even then, and this would have been about 1983.

I suspect the cues were originally taken from the MM illustration, which depicts the Wraith as being anythng but solid.

 

[Lanefan]

This is assuming that enemies are intelligent, they are not necessarily so.

Once you get past Wights, who despite thier MM entry I've never seen as being the brightest bulbs in the shed, the level-draining undead in 1e are all "average" intelligence or higher; in some cases much higher.

 

[Quartz]

Problem: no caster had that spell. Result: party had no way to proceed, campaign world doomed. Coda: DM retconned the adventure out of existence.)

If an adventure depends upon the use of a particular spell, make sure you provide that spell on a scroll or other device within the adventure. Preferably more than once.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, that went faster than I expected thanks to the glory that is Excel!

Level Drains By Class

The following data includes every player-character in every 1e-derivative game or campaign I have records for; this includes one-offs and some gonzo games as well as the long campaigns, but note that all or nearly all of the level drains occurred in longer campaigns rather than these one-offs. Adventuring NPCs in parties, which I also track, seem to follow vaguely similar drain rates overall with a few glaring exceptions, noted below.

My apologies for the messy formatting below.

Class --- Played --- Total levels lost

Fighter --- 150 --- 53
Ranger --- 69 --- 17
Cavalier --- 22 --- 7
Paladin --- 11 --- 1 (Paladins do not exist in several of our major campaigns)
Ntr Clc --- 38 --- 6 (our version of Druid)
Cleric --- 50 --- 6
War Clc --- 43 --- 13 (a long-standing homebrew class)
MagicU --- 61 --- 11
Illusion't --- 15 --- 4
Necromcr --- 6 --- 10 (a new-ish homebrew class)
Thief --- 64 --- 12
Assassin --- 21 --- 9
Bard --- 24 --- 5 (includes several homebrew versions and the classic 1e version)
Monk --- 21 --- 0
Multi --- 149 --- 34
Other --- 1 --- 0

Notes to the above:

--- Drains are total by levels lost, not by characters affected, e.g. the 6 lost Cleric levels does not mean 6 different Clerics got drained.
--- The "other" is a very-long-ago PC of which there is no remaining record of its class.
--- All 9 of the lost levels for Assassins happened to the same character; no other Assassin either PC or NPC has ever been drained.
--- No Monk of any kind has ever been drained (I find this quite amazing!).
--- Every War Cleric level loss has happened to a PC, no adventuring NPCs have lost levels
--- Multi-class characters muddy things somewhat; as there's been about 30+ different combinations, many of which have only occurred once or twice, I wasn't about to break them down into each combination. The data for individual classes is for single-class characters, or those close enough to single-class to make no difference.

So, @DND_Reborn , here's the numbers - have at it!