Lanefan
Victoria Rules
My point is that maybe such thought should be given; not necessarily to level drain specifically but to ways and means of making 5e just plain nastier, of which level drain is but one.Bringing up Level Drain in 2022 is about as close to a bad faith argument as you can get without actually being in bad faith.
No one in my generation of D&D players, that is, 5E gives any thought whatsoever to the concept of Level Drain.
Or talk about how it should never have left and that it didn't in fact became outdated.It is so horribly outdated and irrelevant that it pretty much only exists so that people over the age of 35-40 can talk about how stupid of an idea it was 50 years after the fact.
With this I agree.As for Power Creep and what that means in 2022, what has to be remembered is that TTRPGs are not video games. The search for truly perfect balance is a mistake, because only a niche crowd cares about actual super-rigid balance. Most people want to have a fair chance at winning, want to have moments to feel cool, and want to feel like they contribute to the success of the adventuring party.
I think where power creep rears its head is when people look at a 5e character rolled up in 2016 using then-current material and ask whether it has the same ability to contribute in tonight's game as would the same character rolled up in 2022 using what's out there today. If the answer is no, then power creep is a problem.
It happened in 1e, it happened in 2e, and dear gods did it ever happen in 3e. No reason to think 5e is any different.