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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rolflyn" data-source="post: 4850896" data-attributes="member: 48146">But there is a fundamental difference between a wis-drain and wis-damage creature at 3rd level: How you approach combat with it.True if the DM just slaps it down as a random encounter, you are hosed with the wis-drain version.  But if it is the wis-drain version is known ahead of time the party will approach it differently than the wis-damage one.The wis-damage one is basically attack it and then cast some spells to heal up.  Same as a hit point damage foe, minus the option to heal in combat and some chance of losing wisdom based powers.The wis-drain one will be approached very carefully.  The PCs will strategize far more.  I've seen this in 1E where level drain was basically no save, permanent drain.Replacing the CR3 allip with something of CR version doesn't address this because the higher CR version will have better defenses and better attacks.  It will mop the floor with the party rather than present an interesting end challenge.And house ruling it back to wisdom drain doesn't work too well either, because the players know that allips now aren't all that dangerous, and will charge in and get wisdom drained and be extra annoyed.  Having an NPC say "well, this allip is different he has wisdom drain you cannot normally heal" is the only choice to get slightly back to the original situation.Basically, the game has slowly gone from dangerous to inconvenient.  1E had (nearly) permanent level drain, item-melting rust monsters, and werewolves that couldn't be hurt without magic weapons.  3.0 moved away from a lot of this, where level drain had a save and lower-level solutions, where werewolves could be harmed if you just power attack for enough.  3.5 made werewolves even softer as DRs were reduced even more.And now Pathfinder is removing some of the remaining danger in the system.  I'm a bit disappointed.  I was going to buy the book sight unseen, but now I'm a PDF, maybe-buy the book guy.</blockquote>

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