rant on level drain (not too long)

[Mort]

Looking at the Effigy in the upcoming Monster Manual II reminded me of something: I absolutely detest level drain. The mechanic makes little sense to me, it’s a truly mean thing to do you your players (IMO worse than attribute drain) and the paperwork is a huge headache.
When 3e was just about to come out I was sure that would be one of the things dumped. I even remember a few playtesters chiming in that undead had been “fixed”, getting my hopes up even higher.
Well, 3e came out and there it still was. Sure, there is a save, but you get it 24 hours later and the saves tend to be pretty high. It’s actually worse than ever now because the paperwork involved is even worse (who wants to readjust all of their skills, saves, to-hit etc).
Further, level draining is one of the few attacks that gets worse at higher levels because you have so much more to lose (sure you have more access to restoration magic at those levels, but what if the party cleric is the one level drained?)

Anyone else have an opinion on this?

 

[Grazzt]

I personally like the way they handle level drain and negative levels in 3e. Much better than 1e/2e where it just happened and that was it.

Although way back during my 1e days, we changed the undead so rather than draining levels, they dealt ability damage (like the 1e shadow). You could always change the energy drain attacks of undead so they mimicked the 3e shadow or 3e allip.

 

[Chroma]

Level drain... the thing *players* dread most.

My players always hated 2nd Ed level drains, and I too went the ability drain route. Now, in 3rd Ed, I think the idea of negative levels actually gives a workable solution.

IMC, if someone is ever given a negative level and fails their saving throw (it's only happened once so far), they don't actually lose a level, but their xp goes down and they suffer the penalties of a negative level (-1 per level to attacks, skills, and checks) until they've earned enough xp to "regain" the level. The bookkeeping is quite simple and there's none of the silliness of losing levels just to change Feats or re-roll hit points. In some ways it's a little more harsh, but my players have gladly accepted it as a better alternative than actually losing a level. We tend to call it a "shadow on your soul" as an ingame explanation.

Any thoughts?

 

[Mort]

The ability drain option is what I already do.
It's not that level drain is a problem in my campaign, it's that I hate the mechanic and hope they officially change it (so that when I'm a player instead of a DM I don't have to put up with it).

I'm not sure I agree that the resolution in 3e is that much better. It's still "you've been level drained and that's it." They've just added "good luck with the savings throw", which I don't think is nearly enough.

 

[Grazzt]

Re: Level drain... the thing *players* dread most.

IMC, if someone is ever given a negative level and fails their saving throw (it's only happened once so far), they don't actually lose a level...

If the save fails, the level loss is real. Check page 76 in the MDg, left column, near the top of the page. Here is the relevant passage.

"If the save fails, the negative level goes away, but the creature's level is also reduced by 1."

The next sections detail what is reduced if you fail your save (and thus lose a level).

 

[Chroma]

Re: Re: Level drain... the thing *players* dread most.

If the save fails, the level loss is real. Check page 76 in the MDg, left column, near the top of the page. Here is the relevant passage.

Yes, I've got that. That's why I said "In My Campaign".

We just maintain the "negative level penalties", but don't actually subtract a level from the character.

 

[Hejdun]

And then there's hte issue of if you get level drained, you still lose a LOT of experience, even if you save.

I'm thinking of changing it so that instead of actually losing levels, you gain an experience debt, which must be made up before you actually gain experience. Not only do I hate how the mechanics of level drain work, It sucks rocks to actually lose a level. I'm thinking of doing this for getting raised too, but I'm still working on the mechanics of it.

 

[GuardianLurker]

The problem I've had with experience points in all version of D&D is that it's used to model two separate things.

1) The level of skill/profession of a character,
2) and the measure of how much "life energy" a character possess.

Level-Drains are actually intending to attack the second, but as an unavoidable side effect they attack the first as well. I've never liked that, and back in 2e, a gentleman of rec.games.frp.dnd proposed a solution I've adopted.

He completely divorced the two. So have I. Now, when a character gains experience he gains an equal amount of "Life Energy Points". Expereience gain is always permanent (you don't suddenly forget your skills/feats/spells/etc), but LEP gain is not, and anything that drains XP under the standard rules (level drains, magic item creation, etc.) drains LEP instead. Reach 0 LEP and the character dies (to rise as an undead later).

It's worked well, and simplifies the bookkeeping too.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hmm...intriguing solutions...

The biggest problem I've had with level drains are the bookkeeping. It's *arduous* to have to recalculate your level after one battle with a Wight.

Recently, I implemented the "Keep the negative level, loose the XP, and try to gain it back, but don't actually loose a level" house rule.

The Life Energy Points is interesting...but a bit of a pad, as far as I can see. They don't really suffer anything for loosing LEP until they get to 0, so most of my players would probably charge in until they're low, and then run away screaming.

Interesting, but I prefer the above.

A level drain drains experience points, but not actual levels. The negative levels stay until you've made up the experience point drain.

 

[RyanL]

I think level drain is retarded, and I say that not just because it recently happened to my character. Not only does the paperwork really suck (I don't remember what I spent my skill points on last time I leveled), but it simply doesn't make sense in-game. "Hmm, I could do ability X yesterday, but I seem to have forgotten how."

I was thinking about this the other day, actually. If I were DM-ing, I would probably change level drain such that it drains hit dice with a chance of draining physical ability scores.

Some thing like this:
A character hit with level drain would lose x/l points from both their max and current hit point totals, where x is the number of levels drained and l is the character level. Then roll a D10:

1 = Lose 1 CON, DEX, STR
2 = Lose 1 CON, STR
3 = Lose 1 DEX, CON
4 = Lose 1 STR, DEX
5 = Lose 1 CON
6 = Lose 1 STR
7 = Lose 1 DEX
8,9,10 = No effect.

Very nasty, but I would use this under the assumption that characters up against monsters with Level Drain also have access to restoration. I haven't really analyzed if this would be balanced, so please give feedback.

-Ryan

Edited to abide by "higher is better" 3E paradigm.