Is there something to protect against ability drain?

[Vahktang]

So, I have a group of 18th level characters in the party I GM.
I had an encounter with a dozen ghosts, for a good CR 18.
I gave them all the ability drain, as well as some randomness.
After the failed randomness, they ganged up on one character and almost killed him.
Well, made it so he couldn't move.
First off, you can get 18+ ghosts around a character due to flying and incorporability.
Second off, if you ability drain, you only have to get less than 20 pts of damage to make the person helpless, not the triple digit hit points you have to do at this level.
Not that hard with multiple bad guys and D4 damage to a characteristic.
So, I looked around and couldn't find a defence.
It's not negative energy or a death affect (even though it is done by an undead creature) so Death Ward doesn't help.
Sure a heal or a restoration would cure all the damage, but you'd have to do it each round or so.
One could say they go after the primary characteristic, Strength for fighters, Int for wizards, as a kind of ironic thing.
Any suggestions for next time?

Thanks.

More later,

Vahktang

 

[Jack Simth]

Well, it's an Incorporeal Touch attack, not a normal Touch Attack, so Ghost Touch armor or Bracers of Armor are good for deflecting the blow.

Beyond that, do remember that Force and Abjouration effects affect incorporeal and ethereal critters (Ghosts tend to be both) - so Walls of Force, Resilient Spheres, Forcecages, Prismatic Walls, Prismatic Spheres, and the like will be able to corral them up so you can deal with them one at a time.

 

[MarkB]

Construct essence (Artificer 5, Sor/Wiz 5), from Races of Eberron. Grants the subject a whole slew of construct-like resistances, including immunity to ability damage, ability drain and death effects. Lasts 1 minute/level.

 

[kerbarian]

So, I have a group of 18th level characters in the party I GM.
I had an encounter with a dozen ghosts, for a good CR 18.
I gave them all the ability drain, as well as some randomness.
After the failed randomness, they ganged up on one character and almost killed him.

If the party knew what they were going to face, Ghost Trap would have handled it nicely. The ghosts become corporeal, so they have to attack against the characters' full AC.

More generally, there are some types of encounters where large numbers of identical creatures can be more effective than the CR would indicate. Specifically, when they have some sort of attack that has a very good chance of affecting higher-level targets and they can focus all their attacks on a single target.

As a simple example, consider a human, 1st-level Warmage with 16 Int, 12+ Cha, and sudden maximize. Standard CR1 encounter. A dozen of them is a CR8 encounter.

Those dozen warmages could deal 96 magic missile damage to a single target in the first round and an average of 78 damage/round for another 3 rounds. Unless they have advance warning, I'd expect that to wipe out most 8th-level parties.

If you go off the chart and follow the general rule of +2CR for each doubling of the number of monsters (the DMG doesn't include higher multiples because it says they'd be too *weak* for their CR), you could have a CR18 encounter with 384 of these guys -- that's over 3000 magic missile damage in the first round.

As a side note, this is a pretty interesting possibility for those dozens of 1st-level followers you can get from Leadership

 

[ElectricDragon]

Isn't ability drain a negative energy effect? I have always played it so and Death Ward is then effective.

Ciao
Dave

 

[Steve Jung]

Anti-magic field suppresses supernatural effects inside it. Undead ability drain tends to be supernatural.

 

[Legildur]

Well, it's an Incorporeal Touch attack, not a normal Touch Attack, so Ghost Touch armor or Bracers of Armor are good for deflecting the blow.

The propoerties of bracers of armor are why my fighters tend to beg for hand-me-downs from other armorless characters upgrading their bracers so that it increases his AC against incorporeal touch attacks. This assumes, of course, that you don't have a better use for that body slot.

 

[kerbarian]

The propoerties of bracers of armor are why my fighters tend to beg for hand-me-downs from other armorless characters upgrading their bracers so that it increases his AC against incorporeal touch attacks. This assumes, of course, that you don't have a better use for that body slot.

Any good fighter should be wearing armbands of might (CAv) .

 

[Azalnubizar]

hmmm... here are a few ideas for this from myself...

if I understand the concept of "being a ghost" correctly, I think that they are undeads on the ethereal plane and have the power to manifest themselves on the material plane as incorporeal undeads...
...since everything they do on the material plane they logically must do as well on the ethereal plane, they cannot do things that are physically impossible on the ethereal plane (as two bodies standing in one place) since I do not think they are incorporal on the ethereal plane. Even if they where I doubt that two incorporal creatures can inhabit the same square and still attack both.
Therefore I wouldn't use all of your 12 undeads at the same moment.
Now - if your Characters are clever, they will fight with their backs towards each other - preventing too many foes to surround each target.
This leads to a maximum of 4 ghosts per person, I would believe (One front, One from one side - the other attacks the char on the other side -, one from below and one from above).

As others mentioned before it is possible to heighten your Armor Class vs incorporeal attacks by use of force effects, heightening your dexterity or using deflection.

Last, but not least, I believe, that an 18th level cleric should be able to turn at least half of the ghosts with one turning attempt.

Now we come to a bit more stuff that can work if you are prepared.
It might be easier to handle the ghosts on their ethereal plane - where other effects / weapons than force can damage them normally.
There are a bunch of spells that can effect them - things like undeath to death but even simpler a hold undead f.e.

I also remember a spell, where the wizard can assume undead-traits... making him immune to ability-drain (like the one mentioned above to get construct-traits).

just a few thoughts...

 

[smootrk]

The book is often not allowed by groups but the Book of Exalted Deeds has an armor quality called 'Soulfire' which protects quite well against any 'death' magic or drains. I am not near my books to quote specifics, but it may be worth a look, or someone else may verify the usefulness. It is a +4 effective enhancement, so it is quite costly, but it is very good at what it does.