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Message: <blockquote data-quote="marcelvdpol" data-source="post: 6954569" data-attributes="member: 6837387">There are a number of Undead that "drain" something. This could be Maximum hit points or an Ability. Maximum hit point drain is quite scary, especially on lower levels when characters still don't have a lot of hit points. Usually, an attack that hits by a monster is followed by a Constitution save; if failed the damage also drains maximum hit points. This is quite scary; i once had a Bladesinger killed in one blow by a Critical hit from a Wight that drained 30+ maximum hit points, instakilling the Bladesinger with one hit.Ability drain is also quite bad as it impacts your effectiveness in combat. Strength drain for a Barbarian is scary as his to hit rolls and damage are reduced, reducing his effectiveness. Strength drain against a character that doesn't use Strength is less scary but usually the Ability score is low and when the character is reduced to zero Strength he dies. You could drain other things as well; Wisdom drain could result in the character being very poor at some quite important skills and if he uses Widsom for his Magic he could be in a lot of trouble.All in all i find the 5th edition drains to be quite scary. If you want to increase the scaryness, make the characters recover from the drain more slowly (standard 5th edition drains are recovered from a single long rest) by increasing the number of long rests required to heal. Other way would be that the drain remains until the character reaches the next level or until some quest item that cures it is found. One other way to drain is by giving the character Exhaustion, impacting his effectiveness and Exhaustion is cumulative. One level of exhaustion can still be handled but by the time your level of exhaustion is up to 3 your effectiveness is greatly reduced. In any case, in Curse of Strahd there are some encounters with these types of undead and the environment severly limits the amount of long rests available, thus making drain abilities very scary.</blockquote>

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