Handling Issues: Permanent level loss

[Cyraneth]

One of many hard-to-handle issues is when a character has suffered from a negative level for 24 hours and then fails his Fortitude save to remove it. All of a sudden, we have to remember what skills the player chose to increase at his last level-up, what feat he chose, how many hit points he got, etc...

How do you handle this situation?

Another "bug" about losing levels is that players might suddenly opt for another path. A 10th-level fighter, who loses 6 levels, might choose to advance as cleric becoming a 4th-level fighter/6th-level cleric instead. This is mainly a "bug" for DMs who let characters keep some of the features (skills, feats, class abilities, etc.) when they lose levels "temporarily".

- Cyraneth

 

[Crothian]

Here's what I do. When a level is lost, all that is really lost is the XP. So a 5th level fighter with 13,000xp losses a level, he is reduced to 8,000xp but is still considered 5th level. Just needs a lot of XP for 6th level.

 

[Cloudgatherer]

XP debt of 500 XP * character level. I posted the basic idea in the "Resurrection Variants" (or similar name) thread.

Later.

 

[nsruf]

One of many hard-to-handle issues is when a character has suffered from a negative level for 24 hours and then fails his Fortitude save to remove it. All of a sudden, we have to remember what skills the player chose to increase at his last level-up, what feat he chose, how many hit points he got, etc...

How do you handle this situation?

Skills can be difficult, but you could allow skill points to be taken off anything, as long as max skill ranks are not exceeded. As I play with fixed hp, these are not an issue. And feats are rare enough that you should be able to remember (if not, do the same as for skills, i.e. allow any feats to be discarded as long as they do not interrupt a feat chain).

Another "bug" about losing levels is that players might suddenly opt for another path. A 10th-level fighter, who loses 6 levels, might choose to advance as cleric becoming a 4th-level fighter/6th-level cleric instead. This is mainly a "bug" for DMs who let characters keep some of the features (skills, feats, class abilities, etc.) when they lose levels "temporarily".

That is really just a house rules issue, if you allow keeping higher level abilities. I don't do that in my game, so I have no idea how it works out. By the core rules, it would be perfectly legal to advance in another class, provided you do get the levels back "the hard way" and don't restore them with Restoration.