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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 6106513" data-attributes="member: 1210">So I ran a playtest game last night, and one of the monsters the pcs fought was a wraith.The current version of the energy drain mechanic (found in the wraith, wight, vampire and a few others) involves reducing your maximum hps for a set duration. This absolutely terrified the pcs last night. Before I used it, I thought, "Hmm, this looks kind of lame." I really didn't appreciate how nasty it would be!After using it, I thought, "That certainly plays better than it reads!" Has anyone else tried out an energy drainer in their playtest games? If so, how did it go? It ended up producing an extra day's rest for the pcs in my game- they simply holed up until 24 hours had passed and the drained pc could recover (almost half!! of) her hit point total. I really like the level of scary it brought to the table- in the old days, energy draining monsters almost universally led to screaming, "RUN!!" and headlong flight; losing a level was a brutal result, and back in the day, you couldn't fix it without a 7th level cleric spell, and there simply weren't many clerics of high enough level to do anything about it in most games that I played in or ran (and I'm including both pc and npc clerics in this assessment). I feel like this mechanic, while not half as brutal as the old 1e way, captures that same "OH CRAP!!" feeling quite well.Anyone else got any feedback on it?</blockquote>