Negative levels and death

[Hypersmurf]

So yes, Restoration is cheaper (even than Raise Dead, which I was referring to with "lose one level for sure") but it removes only one negative level.

It removes all negative levels. It only restores one level that's been permanently lost.

(Know your terminology, man )

I must admit, I missed the "lose one level for sure" - I was thinking True Resurrection to avoid the level loss completely.

But Restoration is still cheaper, better, and just more conceivable (I mean, really - volunteering to be killed? That's not normal behaviour ) than Raise Dead, for your wizard with his 6 negative levels. If you hit him with one Restoration spell within 24 hours, his poor Fort save doesn't matter.

-Hyp.

 

[Quickbeam]

Cheiromancer & UofMDude:

I understand that a 6th level character who receives a negative level is not truly 5th level, unless they fail their save 24 hours later and the effects become permanent. And perhaps my answer was worded poorly, but Hypersmurf makes my case more clearly. In the case described above, at the time of death the PC in question IS actually 5th level (even if only due to a negative level effect), and is not permitted a save to restore the lost level -- they're dead . I did not realize Monte had discussed this previously, but that would have been my ruling as stated above. Thus, the raise/rez reduces the PC to 4th level upon their return from the grave.

As for being not worth the effort without a True Rez, I'm not arguing, especially if more than one negative energy level were in place at the time of death. Nonetheless, them's the rules...unless you see fit to minimize the penalty since dying in general is bad enough.

 

[UofMDude]

Two things

1) regardless of what Monte says it's not official until it's offical.

2) but furthermore, I think it's cheap and mean to do that to a player (making them automatically fail all their saves and lose the levels when they die). That's a really good way to have the player leave the campaign if they can't get all those levels restored really quick.

UofMDude

 

[nsruf]

It removes all negative levels. It only restores one level that's been permanently lost.

(Know your terminology, man )

You are right. Sorry about the confusion! I just wonder why Greater Restoration states:

"As lesser restoration, except the spell dispels all negative energy levels afflicting the healed creature..."

if Restoration already does the trick. Seems like the designers were unsure about the difference between negative levels and levels lost (due to previous negative levels) as well.

Or does anybody know about errata for this?

 

[Hypersmurf]

You are right. Sorry about the confusion! I just wonder why Greater Restoration states:

"As lesser restoration, except the spell dispels all negative energy levels afflicting the healed creature..."

if Restoration already does the trick.

Because Lesser Restoration and Restoration are two different spells.

Restoration dispels all negative levels and restores one permanently lost level, in addition to all the benefits of Lesser Restoration. It costs 100gp in components.

Greater Restoration dispels all negative levels and restores all permanently lost levels, in addition to all the benefits of Lesser Restoration. It costs 500XP to cast.

It's like how all the cure spells reference Cure Light Wounds.

-Hyp.

 

[Altalazar]

Personally, I think level loss is too damn harsh - you spend months and months building up a character only to have it sucked away to nothing.

Personally, I'd almost eliminate level drain from the game entirely - but with restoration spells now far easier to come by, it is (barely) acceptable.

Losing a level for dying also kind of bothers me. I'd rather have a quest from a church than lose a level.

 

[nsruf]

Because Lesser Restoration and Restoration are two different spells.

Oops, my bad again!

I demand that spells be listed by "theme" instead of alphabetically, for easier comparison

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As for the original topic of this post (which was, IIRC NOT correcting my faulty understanding of Restoration spells):

I think that converting negative levels to actual level loss upon death is really too harsh. Saying "they are dead, they fail all saves" seems metaphysically wrong, so to speak: levels are a "trait" of the soul, IMO, and the soul still exists somewhere, according to standard D&D cosmology.

I feel that it would be fairer to "tie up loose ends" once a character dies, i.e. immediately resolve all effects that would still be relevant after revival. This includes saves for negative levels, calculating XP earned up to that point (which may raise character lvl and take the sting out of losing one after Raise Dead), etc.

 

[Hypersmurf]

For anyone who's interested, here is Monte Cook's original comment on the topic.

-Hyp.

 

[Gromm]

I believe that generally when a character dies because of negative levels they rise as a wight or something, don't they?

You are correct.

Since the character is basically a wight (or wraith or whatever) at this point ressurection is probably impossible.

You could allow for a ressurection with the negative levels at whatever stage they were when the character finally succumbed to them. That is to say if a 5th level character got a neg level and then 2 more 5 hours later and then 2 more 5 hours after that the "timer" on them would be 11 hours, ten hours and 5 hours respectively. Or you could make them save at the moment of ressurection, or they become lost levels (ala Monte).

Its a DM call. Many would probably say your character is forever lost and that undead suck, don't mess with them. Or if you do bring a cleric or some scrolls of restoration.

I would be one of these.