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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9724012" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Interestingly, I think (TSR-era) D&D is 'about' easy-come/easy-go advancement and setbacks, and keeping PCs in a goldilocks zone of playability while still handing out demarcation of accomplishment is laudable and all that; yet I dislike energy drain. That despite enjoying rust monsters and ghost-aging and attribute damage and any number of other things as well.The granularity/book-keeping of modifying xp totals is part of it. Differences in perspective on how much warning/opportunity to avoid draining enemies is another (rolled up with save-or-dies and killer traps and killer DMs and all that). I think the biggest problem that energy drain has came in 1975 with the addition of the Restoration spell. Now any time one is drained, but fail to get the effects reversed (before a time limit, or by the point where the xp recovered are immaterial) can be seen as a failure. Mind you, you can say the same thing about raise dead and any character you don't bring back, but the alternative there is a new character around the next corner. Get an item rusted/slimed -- easy come, easy go (learn and move on). Lose a character -- 3d6 down the line or 4d6b3, etc. Get level drained -- clock is started now stress out and rush to a name-level cleric. All of which would be fine if level drain was a consistent and rare thing like curses and mummy rot -- the game is half quest for more loot and half quest to undo messes you've made. However, those show up rarely enough to be plot hooks/memorable plot points. Energy drain is a quality held by like half of undead.It's all completely beholden to D&D and the norms it sets out around advancement, permanence, and consequence. Once you move out of D&D it's a wide open field with all sorts of possibilities. Call of Cthulhu and Symbaroum and Blade in the Dark have permanent ability damage as a normal character lifespan elements. Warhammer Fantasy has a non-linear level of slow accumulation of injuries. Moving over to computer games Ultima I had no concept of max hp. And so on.</blockquote>

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