Maybe something like a yellow musk zombie, but as far as a normal zombie, I don't think AD&D had them have any special abilities

I know zomboies don't level drain and you don't come back as a zombie in 5n5 though I will be changing that

The point was if you want to create that hit and run approach you see in zombie films you don't need level drain you just need to make them scary.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580957I know zomboies don't level drain and you don't come back as a zombie in 5n5 though I will be changing that

The point was if you want to create that hit and run approach you see in zombie films you don't need level drain you just need to make them scary.

I ran a game where the undead were the major adversaries and I used fast/contagious zombies.  The players were ready to lynch me when I broke out the zombie squirrel nest and the little beasties were dropping out of the trees on them.  I think they burned the entire forest down.

Quote from: StormBringer;580557Mechanically, it does exactly what it intends, which is to make the undead more than just another bag of experience points.

I think this is really the crux of the whole level draining issue, and I think the crux is built on a false assumption. The underlying thought seems to be:

- Everything else is just another bag of experience points.
- Fluff-wise, these undead are significantly more terrifying the the bags of experience points.
- Therefore, they need a screw-you mechanism that's different from the stuff the bags of experience points have.

But that's wrong on multiple points. For one, everything else is NOT just another bag of experience points. Consider some of the iconic D&D monsters in fluff terms ("What would it be like if it existed for real?"):

- Dragon. It's a fucking dragon. It flies, it's huge (assuming an adult one), it burninates you and your city. Fire is coming out of its mouth. FIRE. If you met one in real life, you'd either run away in abject terror or soil yourself and rock back and forth in catatonic shock.

- Beholder. It's a giant floating ball of living things, violating all that's fair and holy in he laws of nature and evolution by its floating about and its weird shape that just shouldn't exist. Also, it shoots beams that cause people to drop dead. If you met one in real life, you'd either run away in abject terror or soil yourself and rock back and forth in catatonic shock.

- Iron golem. It's a statue that moves. And it's not like a robot, you could cope with that; it's, like, made of living iron. It's walking around surrounded by the unspeakable mangled, limbless bodies of human beings who have been torn apart like scrap paper. The Nation Guard's bullets are just bouncing off of it. If you met one in real life, you'd either run away in abject terror or soil yourself and rock back and forth in catatonic shock.

- Skeleton, the lowly 1HD non-level draining monster. It's a living skeleton. A dead body that walks and runs and just tore off your girlfriend's face. A dead body that moves. If you met one in real life, you'd either run away in abject terror or soil yourself and rock back and forth in catatonic shock.

- Some generic giant spider or centipede or whatnot. If anyone here has ever had the experience of waking up to find one of those giant-ass Australian spiders climbing on his face, please share the experience with us. Now, multiply that by a hundred. If you met one in real life, you'd either run away in abject terror or soil yourself and rock back and forth in catatonic shock.

- Level-draining undead. Either a decaying body or a translucent ghost thing. I won't come up with a vivid description, but let's assume that if you met one in real life, you'd either run away in abject terror or soil yourself and rock back and forth in catatonic shock.

See what I'm coming at? In terms of fluff (or "in-game description" or "if you met one in real life"), a whole metric fuckton of monsters are exactly as terrifying as wights and wraiths. So why distinguish the latter from the rest by saying "Oh, we really have to give these ones something extra special"?

Quote from: Premier;580973See what I'm coming at? In terms of fluff (or "in-game description" or "if you met one in real life"), a whole metric fuckton of monsters are exactly as terrifying as wights and wraiths. So why distinguish the latter from the rest by saying "Oh, we really have to give these ones something extra special"?

Why not? Just because you do not like the "extra special" these monsters have but have no objection to the "extra special" the monsters you listed have?

Quote from: RandallS;580976Why not? Just because you do not like the "extra special" these monsters have but have no objection to the "extra special" the monsters you listed have?

I dislike it because there's a difference between the "extra specialness" or level drainers (and, to an extent, poisonous creatures) and that of others.

Level drain is, for lack of a better word, unfair, because:

- Very often, player skill does nothing to mitigate its chance of happening (i.e. it's a matter of dumb luck), and
- It's permanent harm.*

To collate the two point, it causes permanent harm as a matter of dumb luck.

In contrast, a dragon or an iron golem is extra dangerous due to high damage output, high HP total, low AC and a few other things. These factors of danger

- Might or might not be mitigated by player skill (i.e. it might or might not be dumb luck), and
- The harm is not permanent, since HP can be regained pretty quickly and easily.

To collate, extra dangerous creatures of the draconic and similar types do NOT cause permanent harm as a matter of dumb luck.


And at the end of the day, one thing I accept axiomatically (for D&D, at least), is that permanent harm should not come to the PC as a matter of sheer dumb luck. Permanent harm as a result of poor player skill is okay, temporary harm (HP loss) as a result of dumb luck is okay, permanent harm out of dumb luck is NOT.


* Yes, you can get more XP by continuing the adventure, but once you lose, say, 10,000 XP to that level drain, you'll ALWAYS be 10,000 XP behind the rest of the party, so it IS permanent.

Quote from: Premier;580988I dislike it because there's a difference between the "extra specialness" or level drainers (and, to an extent, poisonous creatures) and that of others.

Level drain is, for lack of a better word, unfair, because:

- Very often, player skill does nothing to mitigate its chance of happening (i.e. it's a matter of dumb luck), and
- It's permanent harm.*

To collate the two point, it causes permanent harm as a matter of dumb luck.

By these definitions, so does a beholder with its death ray eye -- and many other powerful creatures who randomly get surprise: they are "unfair" because they can kill or maim by dumb luck.  On the other hand, level drains are no more permanent than death in D&D. Just as their is a raise dead spell, there is a restoration spell.

I don't consider poison, death rays, energy drains, death, or the like to be unfair. However, I run and play in old school sandbox campaigns with rules that allow creating a new character in 5 or 10 minutes. If I was playing some scripted campaign (like the original Dragonlance modules) where character survive unmaimed was somehow required by the plot rails (and I enjoyed that style of play) or a system that told an hour or more to create a character, I guess I might feel differently.  

In my own games (e.g. Microlite74) I recognize that some groups many not want standard energy drains and the like and try to provide optional rules with other ways of handling them.

For whatever reason, I've found Level Drain to be a special kind of frustrating for players.

I have a few people I play with who enjoy running around dungeons and dodging death by the skin of their teeth until a death ray, particularly vicious trap, or mob of snarling beastmen prematurely ends their existence, and they seem fine with all manner of sudden, violent, even HP-ignoring deaths.

Many of them overlap with another group of players who are eager to see critical hit charts that result in lost limbs, destroyed eyes, permanent disfigurements.

And yet neither group enjoys even the prospect of level drain in the slightest. I think part of it is a dissonance thing; they're OK with the idea of losing lifeforce, but how does that make them forget how to attack with their sword?

And another part of it is, even without easily accessible raise dead, they feel punished for showing up to a session in a way that even losing a character permanently doesn't seem to match. For some reason, losing progression rather than the entire character seems to make my players enjoy the game a whole lot less.

In any event, when I run BD&D I tend to replace level drain with various strange forms of undead malady; ability drains, strange wasting diseases, and being a walking source of unluck and blight have proven to work pretty well for keeping encounters with wights and the like generally scary.

I think that Next's hit point drain is even less impressive than even some of 4e's level drain replacements (stealing healing surges, effects that last outside of a single combat, etc), so I expect to see it changed at some point. I may run a little undead focused dungeon with the Next rules and then send in a playtest report, though, once I see how they work in actual play.

I see your point about death rays and the like, I just don't agree. I mean, if you consider the various old-school forums of recent years as well as personal experience (at least this is the case for me), level draining DOES cause players and DMs to buckle a lot more than death rays and other things. There's got to be a reason why so many more people feel it somehow unfair or unsuitable, whatever that may be.

My personal opinion, to elaborate on what I said by permanent harm, is that rather than simply killing your PC and letting you roll up a new one, it cripples him. Unless you play in a group where simply discarding characters you no longer want is par (and I'm not familiar with such a group), there's this feeling that you have to continue playing with someone who is, objectively, a handicapped second fiddler in a way. From now on, you'll always be "the guy who is weaker than the rest". And I think that's what really feels unfair about it. Kill the character, sure, player gets a new one. Give him an impediment he has to struggle to remove, fine, it gives him motivation, something to fight for. But give him an impediment he will never, ever remove, it just gives you dissatisfaction without giving you the motivation to solve the problem, and that just doesn't feel right.

Quote from: Premier;581023I see your point about death rays and the like, I just don't agree. I mean, if you consider the various old-school forums of recent years as well as personal experience (at least this is the case for me), level draining DOES cause players and DMs to buckle a lot more than death rays and other things. There's got to be a reason why so many more people feel it somehow unfair or unsuitable, whatever that may be.

My personal opinion, to elaborate on what I said by permanent harm, is that rather than simply killing your PC and letting you roll up a new one, it cripples him. Unless you play in a group where simply discarding characters you no longer want is par (and I'm not familiar with such a group), there's this feeling that you have to continue playing with someone who is, objectively, a handicapped second fiddler in a way. From now on, you'll always be "the guy who is weaker than the rest". And I think that's what really feels unfair about it. Kill the character, sure, player gets a new one. Give him an impediment he has to struggle to remove, fine, it gives him motivation, something to fight for. But give him an impediment he will never, ever remove, it just gives you dissatisfaction without giving you the motivation to solve the problem, and that just doesn't feel right.

Hmm. I almost agree, but I know players who will flat out refuse to play in a game with level drain (or, more often, to go into an adventure/dungeon that seems to indicate level draining undead) who relish a crit system which will cut off limbs with startling frequency. I think there's something about the particular mechanic alongside the permanent disadvantage that does it.

Quote from: Premier;580988Level drain is, for lack of a better word, unfair, because:

- Very often, player skill does nothing to mitigate its chance of happening (i.e. it's a matter of dumb luck), and

Wait. Players not getting in contact with a wight, stepping back, closing a door shut, nailing that thing to its frame, and then later coming back armed and prepared with holy water, silver and magic... these things do not happen in your games at all? And if they do, how does that not constitute player skill? Color me confused.

Just cut the second part of Premier's point from my previous post because I just thought about this some more:

Quote from: Premier;580988- It's permanent harm.*

* Yes, you can get more XP by continuing the adventure, but once you lose, say, 10,000 XP to that level drain, you'll ALWAYS be 10,000 XP behind the rest of the party, so it IS permanent.

I don't think that's necessarily how it would play out in an AD&D campaign.

First, nothing's to say that all characters are the same level. If you have several groups at several different level brackets (especially if you are using the rules of Experience awards in the DMG, including differences in XP bonuses, awards for resurrection and regeneration, performance ratings determining weeks of training to gain levels which themselves emphasize discrepencies, and the like), that characters move from one group to the next and adventure regularly with different characters of different levels and level brackets, there is no such thing as a neat party with everyone neatly at the same level, let alone the exact same amount of XP.

Second, it takes more and more XP to reach higher levels. What it does in practice is that this 10,000 XP difference with the rest of this theoretical party where everyone has exactly the same amount of XP matters less and less in terms of actual level and capacities.

Still, if you are not playing games that way, that you are not playing on the scale of a whole campaign, that you are not having different XP counts for the characters in the campaign, I can see how that could be troubling. An alternate way to deal with it, instead of taking level drain off the table, would be to give specific XP awards, similar to the death and resurrection awards suggested in the DMG, that would basically bring back the character up to speed with a chance to recover the XP lost via the level drain over time (maybe linked to specific events in the game that would make the character awake to his potential, remember the swiftness and endurance that were lost, and so on). Some specific quests along with specific XP awards to cleanse yourself from the taint may also be in order, all of which are extrapolations based on the sample XP guidelines of the DMG, and none of which modify the game's level drain mechanic to its core.

Quote from: Benoist;581180First, nothing's to say that all characters are the same level.

I've discovered that most of the players I encounter who really objection to energy drains are used to all members of the party all being the same level. If you play in a campaign where party members are normally at various different levels and the players are used to this, energy drains seem less of a concern.

Also, in the TSR type XP system it was often possible to for a player with a lower level character to go up 5 or 6 levels in the time it took a higher level character to go up 1 level, so the effects of losing a level were not as permanent looking. Finally, in earlier TSR XP systems, the XP you got from an encounter varied by comparing your level to the "level" of the opposition, so lower level characters got more XP out of encounters than higher level characters -- meaning you were less likely to be permanently behind in XP.

Quote from: RandallS;580907A quick check of the zombie in OD&D, Holmes Basic, Moldvay Basic, 1e, and BECMI/RC does not turn up such an ability for the zombie. Perhaps 2e or a non-standard variety?

Hmm, I thought it was mentioned in the RC, but its not (I looked it up now), so you may well be right.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RandallS;581183I've discovered that most of the players I encounter who really objection to energy drains are used to all members of the party all being the same level. If you play in a campaign where party members are normally at various different levels and the players are used to this, energy drains seem less of a concern.

Yes, I think I've noticed this with some players who are unused to the type of games I run, where often there's a significant level disparity between characters.

RPGPundit