How do You Apply Restoration?

[Abraxas]

Something thats come up recently regarding level loss, restoration and XP awards.

How do you folks handle restoration of lost levels?

Say you have an 10th level character that gets hit with 2 negative levels while fighting a vampire. She ultimately defeats the vamp and then heads back to town for a restoration. Before she can get a restoration spell 24 hours pass and she has to make 2 fortitude saves to prevent the negative levels from becoming actual levels lost. Unfortunately she only makes one dropping her XP total to the midpoint of 9th level. Upon arriving in town, she negotiates a restoration from a friendly cleric and has her XP total returned to the minmum need for 10th level.

Now the real question(s) - Do you

(1) Award the XP for defeating the vamp before the 24 hour period, thus losing the level causes a loss of the experience awarded.

(2) Award the experience after the level loss, so when the character is restored she loses the experience awarded.

(3) Award the experience after the restoration, so she loses accrued experience in level 10 but retains the experience awarded for defeating the vampire?

And as a secondary question, do you make the player reroll HP gained for the level restored?

 

[dcollins]

(3) The DM should really only award XP after a whole adventure is completed. For example, I'd recommend counting the search for restoration as part of the same adventure and only count XP after the whole escapade is wrapped up.

No, allowing re-roll of hp (or selection skills/feats) in a situation like this opens the door to abuse by doing it intentionally.

 

[Thanee]

We have altered the XP loss of level loss. You do not get down to a fixed number, but rather by a fixed amount (that is the XP you needed to gap the last level intervall, i.e. if you are 10th level, the XP needed from 9th to 10th level, or 9,000 XP).

I don't think Restoration has come up yet, but I guess it'll still work as normal, that is restore you to the beginning of the level only.

When something XP altering happens, we calculate XP to that point and apply them immediately, normally XP are given out at the end of the adventure, however, or if someone is close to the level, if there is a pause within.

Hit points are rolled when a level is lost (and you can let the DM reroll as we do otherwise, too), and they are rolled again, when you gain a level, thus it normally happens, that XP increase, if you lose a level, tho not beyond your maximum, of course. Hey, at least a small compensation.

Bye
Thanee

 

[hong]

What I'd probably do, if this ever comes up IMC, is replace level loss with making the negative level penalties permanent. A much simpler and more elegant mechanic IMO.

 

[Thanee]

And tougher, for those that cannot be restored, since with the lower XP total, you gain XP faster and thus at some point the disadvantage has equalized itself and vanished.

Bye
Thanee

 

[hong]

I've never seen a PC lose a level for good (ie, the time limit on getting a restoration ran out). And if you are going to get that restoration, the XP gained in the meantime under the current system is a wart I'd rather not deal with.

 

[Scharlata]

(4) Award the XP for defeating the vampire after the game session has ended, thus going for option (1) or (2). Negative levels are quite tough, but as mentioned above, "never seen a PC lose a level for good".

I let my players reroll hit point rolls and stick with the "taken" hit points after regaining the lost level(s). Skill points are normally distributed as before, because that was the way the player maxed it out in the first place. I've never seen abuse, even if there IS the chance to do so.

Kind regards

 

[Thanee]

Well, we do not always have a cleric with us or a town in vincinity.

In our current campaign we had to face a vampire and had to go through the saves (and quite a few of those), tho we made all saves in a streak of lucky rolls.

I'm pretty sure we had at least one occasion, where a level was actually lost that way (and not restored, that is).

Bye
Thanee

 

[isoChron]

We play it that way that you end 1 level lower with the same percentage to reach next level as you had before. A little bit of calculation but that doesn't happen very often.

So if you have accumulated 90% of the XP needed to reach next level and you loose 1 level (Raise Dead or something like that) you have then 90% of the XP needed to reach your lost level again.
That way it's not that hard to loose a level short before level up. No losing 1 1/2 level or just 1/2 level if you just leveled up.
But that's a house rule.