D&D 4E Remove level drain from 4e!!

[Minicol]

Level draining is a clunky, broken and utterly unfun metagame mechanic from a bygone era. It needs to be removed from the game for a plethora of reasons.
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OK, but it has an advantage : undead are scary because of it. what will you give them instead to keep the scare effect ? because just seeing a dead body walk will not be enough to scare in a world where dragons are rampaging on a daily basis.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm going to go old-school and say "I like my darned level drain." Heck, I wish they would bring the AD&D level drain back. As a player, and a DM, nothing scare ME, not my character, ME, more when playing the game than rumors of a wraith or vampire being in the location of my next adventure. Kind of like a Jenga pull in Dread, that risk of doing the wrong thing and having an undead smack you for level loss (that could be restored, with spells) was just mean, and ultimately led to some great stories where our groups went through all sorts of contortions to avoid the undead beastie and trying to douse it with holy water/ bury it in sunlight / release it from its curse / whatever, because NO ONE wanted to face the damn thing in direct combat.

That was just my experience with it. It may have been "unfun", but it was because of that why we actively sought to avoid it.

Ditto!

When we tried to play D&D for the first time years and years ago (a boxed set re-edition of OD&D I think), we were peeking into the monsters list together. There were a couple of 1-level draining monsters and one 2-level draining monsters... just the idea that such things may be lurking in the dungeon was plain exciting!

Anyway, the biggest fun of the game is PLAYING it. If the party gets drained of 1 level, it only makes the adventure longer And harder of course, but we are not having so much fun cutting into monsters like butter. If it ain't challenging, it ain't as fun as it could be.

 

[pogre]

After reading a series of books...I want to say the ColdFire Trilogy...but I can't be sure...I instituted a change that caused any level drain / negative level to be restored upon the death of the creature that caused it.

This allowed a energy drain to be potentially dangerous within the course of a combat and enabled a story driving aspect to any such monster...
DC

Great rule - yoink!

 

[Quartz]

Level drain should go. It's not much fun because usually you're a fighter-type being level-drained - or stat drained - keeping the monster away from the spellcasters. And more powerful monsters can drain multiple levels at ago, so you could easily gain 10 negative levels in one combat. As for CON drain, this too negatively impacts fighter types more than spellcasters because the former depend on good Con for high hit points.

It's simply not fun.

Out of combat is a different matter: the vampire feeding at night might well be modelled by loss of Con, though I'd prefer a Fatigued / Exhausted / Dead condition sequence or similar.

 

[Shadeydm]

I'm going to go old-school and say "I like my darned level drain." Heck, I wish they would bring the AD&D level drain back. As a player, and a DM, nothing scare ME, not my character, ME, more when playing the game than rumors of a wraith or vampire being in the location of my next adventure. Kind of like a Jenga pull in Dread, that risk of doing the wrong thing and having an undead smack you for level loss (that could be restored, with spells) was just mean, and ultimately led to some great stories where our groups went through all sorts of contortions to avoid the undead beastie and trying to douse it with holy water/ bury it in sunlight / release it from its curse / whatever, because NO ONE wanted to face the damn thing in direct combat.

That was just my experience with it. It may have been "unfun", but it was because of that why we actively sought to avoid it.

I remember well the day when using wraiths, wights, vampires, and specters in my game got some serious dirty looks from the players.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Level drain should go; it's metagamey, mechanically difficult (do you remember the HP you rolled when you leveled last time?), and generally unfun.

It's particularly antiquated, since 3.* has the ability damage and drain system, which works wonderfully.

 

[Lanefan]

When you get down to it losing HP is "punishment".

Particularly if the loss is permanent. Come to think of it, that'd be a nasty potential replacement for level-drain in some rare creatures: any damage they inflict comes off your h.p. total and cannot be put back by anything short of a full wish. If you fare so badly as to die from losing *all* your h.p. this way (very unlikely but it could happen), you're gone for good...if you are raised or revived you will immediately die again due to being at or below -10 h.p.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Level drain should go; it's metagamey, mechanically difficult (do you remember the HP you rolled when you leveled last time?), and generally unfun.

I'd like to think you'd be recording what you rolled for *each* level. That said, 3e skills etc. do make it much more difficult to accurately rewind a level or two; I'd rather see the level-up system simplified so it's more obvious what each level gave you than see the end of level-draining.

Lanefan

 

[Mephistopheles]

One thing to remember is that the 1E geometric XP chart made it somewhat easier to recover from level drains.

Good point, and possibly why they added saves in 3E.

I guess I'm in the old school camp when it comes to level drain. Coming from older editions of the game level draining monsters were a tactical red alert where the stakes were high. I'm not one for punishing players but that doesn't mean you can't have encounters where there is a lot to lose if the situation is not approached carefully. Whether or not that kind of risk is fun or not is up to individual players and groups. Nobody is forced to use it.

 

[Philip]

All this talk of getting rid of level drain, getting rid of death, etc. is really starting to make me wonder if there's some who'd like to sugar-coat the game beyond reasonability...

Lanefan

Want to play this game with us? Just remember that you might have to sit out and not participate in the game for 30 minutes to several hours when you are killed, petrified, paralyzed etc.

Really, D&D is the only game I know where people are even willing to accept one or more hours of non-participation due to an in-game effect. If a player has to sit out one hour of a four hour game, I think that's more than enough penalty already.

Try playing monopoly with the rule that if you land in prison you cannot participate for 30 minutes if you are against 'sugar-coating'.