Disclaimer: I'm talking more in the context of AD&D, and not 3e or 4e since I really don't play those versions.
In the playtest packet, one thing I noticed were changes to the undead's draining ability. In AD&D, if you got hit by a wight or vampire, you lost levels. In Next, if you get hit, you take necrotic damage (a wight's is 1d8+2, or not very much in the context of D&D next damage) and the wight gains 1/2 of that back to hit points lost.
Undead have always been the "oh shit!" monster in D&D for our group. Losing levels was major. Now, it seems like they are just minor inconveniences. After all, a wight is a level 3 elite creature. A level 1 warlock does 3d8 eldritch damage each round, and a level 1 fighter could do 1d8+6 damage each round. Those are level 1 characters going against a level 3 elite.
Maybe it's just me, but I think they've been neutered too much. I don't mind the loss of losing levels, but the energy drain power should be more fearsome.
How are they treating necrotic damage? Especially difficult to heal damage can be every bit as "oh shit RUN" worthy in the short term as level drain can be in the long term.
If it's no harder to heal that's sort of disappointing.
Level loss in the true old school sense opened up a bit of a can of worms in terms of reverse-engineering your character sheet, right? (I mean, I was young enough and careless enough with the rules at the time that I'm not sure I was doing it "right".) Hence the "fix" in 3rd ed D&D where it became "level loss lite" as it were. Don't know anything about 4e, can't comment.
IMHO reasonable ways of getting the same spirit with less red tape could include ability score damage and virtually unhealable damage. I mean why not just say any time an undead creature hits you with a natural roll of 15 or less on d20 then one tenth of the damage it does, rounding up, is simply permanent. OK, OK, Constitution-save to resist.
That would soon see people treating even the lowliest skeleton with newfound respect :-)
I always thought that level drain on a hit was a cheap sucker punch - in any halfway serious combat situation you can't really do anything to avoid getting hit, and so a permanent and serious loss becomes a matter of dumb luck and statistical inevitability rather than the result of player skill.
I've adopted Melan's solution, where formerly level-draining undead simply do ability damage, typically Constitution or Strength: getting drained to zero kills you, normal healing spells won't restore your loss, but you regain them at a rate of 1 point a day. This stll keeps them dangerous (especially incorporeal undead which ignore armour) and your handicap (lower attack modifier or total HP) is bound to linger around for a significant period of time, but removes the "Ha-ha, FUCK YOU FOREVER!" unfairness of level loss.
Can't / don't really want to comment on 5th edition's solution.
As a DM I always hated old-school level drain as written. Not because it's harsh (God knows, my players will tell you I have no problem with harsh) but because of the XP and HP book-keeping hassle.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;579775In Next, if you get hit, you take necrotic damage (a wight's is 1d8+2, or not very much in the context of D&D next damage) and the wight gains 1/2 of that back to hit points lost.
Lame.
You can have my level-draining undead when you pry them from my cold, dead, fingers. Or something like that...
Quote from: beejazz;579779How are they treating necrotic damage? Especially difficult to heal damage can be every bit as "oh shit RUN" worthy in the short term as level drain can be in the long term.
If it's no harder to heal that's sort of disappointing.
It doesn't say. Not where I could find anyway. If it is just regular damage, that's going to get houseruled. I'm thinking "damage that cannot be healed other than 1 hp per day".
Quote from: beejazz;579779How are they treating necrotic damage? Especially difficult to heal damage can be every bit as "oh shit RUN" worthy in the short term as level drain can be in the long term.
I like this, its thematically fitting.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;579775Maybe it's just me, but I think they've been neutered too much. I don't mind the loss of losing levels, but the energy drain power should be more fearsome.
In my games, undead either drain levels or constitution -- depending on the game world. If I end up liking 5e enough to run it, my worlds would still work that way as setting always trumps rules in my book. If I were to create a new world, I doubt I would use the current 5e system because, as you say, it neuters undead too much.
I do like the level loss from undead, because nothing terrified me more as a player than level loss. Definitely makes undead frightening. As a gm I at least like having variants that do other things like drain con so I have an alternative to the big gun level drain vampire or wight.
I am all for powerful undead doing permanent physical stat loss.
Sadly with D&D as the mechanism for improving at combat is more Hit points and not you get harder to hit it means that there is almost no way to avoid being hit.
Therefore attacks of this type don't really work.
I think the best compromise is damage that can't be healed except by 'x' although that gets a little book-keeping intense. I would make X magical healing becuase then you are saying its an unnatural wound that can only be cured by divine providence, but in D&D magical healing by divine providence is actually more common that natural healing so its a pretty daft option.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;579798It doesn't say. Not where I could find anyway. If it is just regular damage, that's going to get houseruled. I'm thinking "damage that cannot be healed other than 1 hp per day".
Quote from: The Traveller;579800I like this, its thematically fitting.
If you guys are in the playtest, be sure and include it in the feedback. Not enough time to participate myself.
But yeah, in 3x BoVD there was "vile damage" that was harder to heal. I think there might've been tougher restorative magic called for rather than a slower rate, but I'm not sure. IIRC it worked out pretty well.
I'm more or less on the same page with those who want level drain's scariness without it's book keeping. Undead shouldn't feel like humanoids. They should have something appropriately horrific for each variety.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;579775Maybe it's just me, but I think they've been neutered too much. I don't mind the loss of losing levels, but the energy drain power should be more fearsome.
I'm happy with AD&D.
Quote from: jibbajibba;579805I think the best compromise is damage that can't be healed except by 'x' although that gets a little book-keeping intense. I would make X magical healing becuase then you are saying its an unnatural wound that can only be cured by divine providence, but in D&D magical healing by divine providence is actually more common that natural healing so its a pretty daft option.
On book keeping, the best way to track something like this is to have a thing deal normal damage and separately track the "vile damage" total. Then you can't heal past the vile stuff.
As for magic, at minimum I'd say something that takes a long time to cast should be required. It means you have to flee the fight before you can properly heal.
If it takes a long time it becomes a cue to leave the dungeon entirely (rather than just the fight) and if there are a lot of undead, you may not survive the trip to the surface either. How you handle it really depends on how horrific you want it to play more than book keeping I think.
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;579797Lame.
You can have my level-draining undead when you pry them from my cold, dead, fingers. Or something like that...
Seconded.
Level drain puts the fear of undead into players, plus it's not that terrible. Restoration has been a thing since 1st Edition.
"BAWWWWW! I don't wanna lose my precious levels!"
Then run away from undead opponents like the smart players do, and set up an ambush. Sounds like more Whiny Entitlement Player™ bullshit to me.
I've never been a fan of level draining because "Oh no, I've forgotten how to use my sword the way I used to" due to losing a proficiency due to level drain just seemed incredibly...meta-gamey to me.
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;579863I've never been a fan of level draining because "Oh no, I've forgotten how to use my sword the way I used to" due to losing a proficiency due to level drain just seemed incredibly...meta-gamey to me.
That is my main problem with it as well. Its why I prefer loosing stats.
The idea that unearthly negative energy can atrophy muscle, cause illness or kill nerve endings thus reducing Str, Con or Dex just sits better.
However like I said doesn't work well in D&D where a hit that lost you HP might not be a hit and its certainly not as bad a hit as it was 6 levels ago.
So I think damage that is hard to heal or maybe that just reduces your max Hit points ...... hmmm simple to book-keep, scary as fuck similar to level drain but not as metagamey.... My new Undead Solution is Born!
Quote from: jibbajibba;579869So I think damage that is hard to heal or maybe that just reduces your max Hit points ...... hmmm simple to book-keep, scary as fuck similar to level drain but not as metagamey.... My new Undead Solution is Born!
Damage that reduces your max hit points
but can be healed with difficulty can work, but if it can
never be healed, that's a problem.
A 10th level character that (over the course of many adventures) loses 40 maximum hit points (reducing them from 65 to 25) probably won't be adventure worthy. Replacing them with a new character, even a level lower, that isn't 'organic', would be a 'sensible' option. To encourage people to keep with a character with some 'battle scars', it's better if they're never 'permanently disabled' without good reason - and a few encounters with vampires probably doesn't qualify.
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;579863I've never been a fan of level draining because "Oh no, I've forgotten how to use my sword the way I used to" due to losing a proficiency due to level drain just seemed incredibly...meta-gamey to me.
From what I understand the original justification for Level Drain and the Rust Monster was so that the DM could scale back the power of his players so that he could railroad them into the kind of adventures he was more comfortable with.
So yes, it is an entirely metagame mechanic, and generally plays into the "Playing my PC is like playing the Thimble in Monopoly" mode of play at Gygax's table than the way most people actually wound up playing the game. That undead took on a mystique of danger seems rather coincidental. The Rust Monster is likewise dreaded, but only for metagame reasons and not for ones appropriate to the fluff like undead.
My own house rule was to brew up Curse-like mechanics (like the Curse spell) that various undead inflicted on struck victims that were essentially permanent until the curse was lifted. Which isn't much different than Level Drain + Restoration but that avoided the wonky character sheet/xp/proficiency nonsense, as well as the in-game silliness of getting punched by Vampires making you forget stuff.
Mechanically, the initial Curse was harsher than the Level Drain, but I didn't make it stack with itself, so once the Vampire smacked you once, you could feel relatively free to tangle with it (excepting it's otherwise fearsome combat statistics). Although there isn't any reason that it couldn't stack, if you scaled back the penalty (or even just cooked up a bunch of different curses that were randomly applied).
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;579863I've never been a fan of level draining because "Oh no, I've forgotten how to use my sword the way I used to" due to losing a proficiency due to level drain just seemed incredibly...meta-gamey to me.
Yes, this was my issue
SO with us, ther was a save, but if missed, damage from an undead like this was permanent without the proper spell. So undead like this still scare the living (pun meant) shit out of my PCs.
I like a lot of these ideas that make undead still terrifying without the level drain.
It's bad. But compared to eradication or zeroed-out CON it's scary yet OK. Trying undead inducing rapid aging (like how seeing a ghost left some people looking aged or with shock white hair?) just ended up retiring characters faster (used a % not actual years - yes even dwarves and elves were afraid). And, though I liked that aging effect, I only liked it once in a while.
What I think the issue is is earliest D&D didn't have a CoC SAN mechanic (which in retrospect doesn't do what I always want either) -- though it did get personality disadvantages later. Level drain seems like a sloppy mechanic at first, but considering other solutions have other side effects, it's not wholly objectionable. Again I just throw it into the grab bag of nasty effects during monster design.
I do like other solutions here, though. Stat attacks were nice, if they were recoverable. Recovering a point of stat a day is faster than I experienced, dunno if I like that but whatever. And curses are nice. Those are easy to vary from temporary to permanent, and from immediate to delayed threat. I think it really depends how lethal you want your monster.
I kinda wish they hadn't wussed out. Just grey box it as a monster build option and talk about how it can affect your games. Now it's damage with a keyword, which could usher in that initially convenient but later eye-roll inducing trend from 4e, that does monster heal. Fine health drain, something familiar from video games, but could've been more... dunno, scary?
The idea that CON loss represents accelerated aging is pretty cool. "That squire went off to the Devil's Basement a strapping young lad... and came back a shell of a man, with cloudy, haunted eyes and hair as white as mine!".
Quote from: Premier;579786I always thought that level drain on a hit was a cheap sucker punch - in any halfway serious combat situation you can't really do anything to avoid getting hit, and so a permanent and serious loss becomes a matter of dumb luck and statistical inevitability rather than the result of player skill.
I've adopted Melan's solution, where formerly level-draining undead simply do ability damage, typically Constitution or Strength: getting drained to zero kills you, normal healing spells won't restore your loss, but you regain them at a rate of 1 point a day. This stll keeps them dangerous (especially incorporeal undead which ignore armour) and your handicap (lower attack modifier or total HP) is bound to linger around for a significant period of time, but removes the "Ha-ha, FUCK YOU FOREVER!" unfairness of level loss.
This was my logic behind making that change, yeah. And Constitution loss (1d6 for wights and wraiths, 2d4 for spectres and vampires) is plenty scary, especially when the undead come in packs.
Quote from: deadDMwalking;579889Damage that reduces your max hit points but can be healed with difficulty can work, but if it can never be healed, that's a problem.
A 10th level character that (over the course of many adventures) loses 40 maximum hit points (reducing them from 65 to 25) probably won't be adventure worthy. Replacing them with a new character, even a level lower, that isn't 'organic', would be a 'sensible' option. To encourage people to keep with a character with some 'battle scars', it's better if they're never 'permanently disabled' without good reason - and a few encounters with vampires probably doesn't qualify.
I wouldn't be so concerned with the meta gamey level myself. But the usual spells, like restoration etc should be able to fix it.
If you make some undead this powerful it means you use them as a heavy spice and a pinch goes a long way.
The challenge for the 10th level party is now a single vampire who will try to split the part and hit and run and use their magic and other powers.
In Microlite74, I give the following optional rule to replace level drain for groups that do not like it. It's still nasty as it reduces your effectiveness in most D20 rolls for a time (quite a long time in the case of more powerful undead).
QuoteEnergy Drain: If the standard energy drain rule seems too harsh, try the following instead. Each energy level drained subtracts one from any roll to which the character would add his level (or his level/2). 1 point of energy drained is recovered every L days where L is equal to the hit dice of the monster that drained the energy level.
Quote from: jibbajibba;579869That is my main problem with it as well. Its why I prefer loosing stats.
The idea that unearthly negative energy can atrophy muscle, cause illness or kill nerve endings thus reducing Str, Con or Dex just sits better.
However like I said doesn't work well in D&D where a hit that lost you HP might not be a hit and its certainly not as bad a hit as it was 6 levels ago.
So I think damage that is hard to heal or maybe that just reduces your max Hit points ...... hmmm simple to book-keep, scary as fuck similar to level drain but not as metagamey.... My new Undead Solution is Born!
I changed the level drain to permanent hp loss years ago. It has worked wonderfully
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;579863I've never been a fan of level draining because "Oh no, I've forgotten how to use my sword the way I used to" due to losing a proficiency due to level drain just seemed incredibly...meta-gamey to me.
This is why I'm not a fan of proficiency slots to begin with. They act too much like skills IMHO in an abstract level based system. I much prefer the OD&D, and B/X solution: are you a fighting man? Why yes. You are hereby considered competent in wielding weapons of war.
AD&D really took a dump on the poor fighter by saying, 'here pick 4 weapons that you don't suck with."
Quote from: RandallS;579972In Microlite74, I give the following optional rule to replace level drain for groups that do not like it. It's still nasty as it reduces your effectiveness in most D20 rolls for a time (quite a long time in the case of more powerful undead).
This seems hellish as far as bookkeeping goes. There are multiple pieces of information to keep track of/remember on a regular basis during game time. (What -ve level came from what creature, how many HD the creature has, how many days since recovering a -ve level, how many -ve levels the character has any time they make a die roll...)
Semi-permanent HP or Ability damage is my solution. Vile damage from the book of vile darkness was pretty nasty in 3ed, and was pretty simple to keep track of.
I envision Necrotic Damage to be similar. Requires special spells, etc in order to heal from it, but not only that, Necrotic Damage should do as it's namesake suggests, and cause necrosis in the flesh around the wound, perhaps causing continuous ability damage as well as HP damage. Give the characters a reason to fear it, without it being an immediate death sentence, or it being just simply unfair.
(I see level loss as unfair. Players work hard to gain experience. Throwing them against an undead opponent that can strip away that hard work with a single hit is... unfair. If a DM is so worried about how powerful the PC's are getting, find another way to bring balance to the game using something more creative.)
Quote from: taknight;580080This seems hellish as far as bookkeeping goes. There are multiple pieces of information to keep track of/remember on a regular basis during game time. (What -ve level came from what creature, how many HD the creature has, how many days since recovering a -ve level, how many -ve levels the character has any time they make a die roll...)
In practice, it's apparently not bad. I use plain old level drains (or CON drains depending on the setting) and always will. But a number of M74 groups I know of use these alternative rules and seem to like them. They provide the main effect of a level drain (you do everything more poorly) without having to modify the character sheet. However, it recovers naturally -- if slowly -- without the need for the high level restoration spell.
Microlite74 is an old school game and as such encourages GM to ignore or rewrirte any rules they don't want to use in their campaigns, so I'm sure that there are groups ignoring level drains completely or handling them in their own houseruled manner.
Quote from: jibbajibba;579805Sadly with D&D as the mechanism for improving at combat is more Hit points and not you get harder to hit it means that there is almost no way to avoid being hit.
Therefore attacks of this type don't really work.
Very good point. I like the concept of level draining critters as really does spook even the most the players like nothing else. Powerful stuff. But what you say makes a lot of sense.
Or to put it another way, if Hit Points are represent not just wounds but a more abstract measure of the characters luck, fatigue and such would it not make more sense if the risk level drain only kicked in once the character had lost a certain percentage of his hit points (luck runs out, the character is more tired and vulnerable)? And from a gameplay point of view, wouldn't that give the player a fair warning regarding when it might be a good time to start running (which is one of the things Hit Points do already?).
Quote from: Soylent Green;580110Very good point. I like the concept of level draining critters as really does spook even the most the players like nothing else. Powerful stuff. But what you say makes a lot of sense.
Or to put it another way, if Hit Points are represent not just wounds but a more abstract measure of the characters luck, fatigue and such would it not make more sense if the risk level drain only kicked in once the character had lost a certain percentage of his hit points (luck runs out, the character is more tired and vulnerable)? And from a gameplay point of view, wouldn't that give the player a fair warning regarding when it might be a good time to start running (which is one of the things Hit Points do already?).
If you have an underlying wound system that woudl work.
We kicked around some ideas for that that ranged from the one I ahve been using for years where HP are ablative and recover fast but after a hit of a certain size you take 'wound' damge which is injury, to the much simpler idea that the HP you roll at 1st level are your physical damage and HP add to that total but again are ablative and heal fast representing your abstract stuff.
If such a system is in use then a wound from an undead drains a level would work except ..... it would probably kill you anyway....but it might not
I've never had the admiration for level-drain mechanics some other old-school gamers seem to have. I agree, it makes undead "more scary", but in a way for the wrong (mechanical, rather than emulative) reasons. And I do agree that it often means you're looking at a situation where how badly you get fucked up is as much a question of lucky shots as anything else.
That said, I've certainly used level-draining in any of my old school games (including my present Albion campaigns). However, in Arrows of Indra I've avoided it for the monsters, though there were a few that could certainly have used that mechanic, I ended up choosing alternative ways of fucking you up.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;580476I agree, it makes undead "more scary", but in a way for the wrong (mechanical, rather than emulative) reasons.
But that is about the only way to get to the emulative result. Otherwise, you need buy in from all your players that they agree to run away when the wights jump out of the bushes. Or some other mechanic that forces them to flee, or cower in fear, or whatever.
I agree it isn't necessarily the best solution, but it is fairly elegant. If the players avoid combat with the undead, they don't have to worry about losing levels. Or a run 'n gun guerilla attack, like people in zombie movies. No one there just stands around and blasts away, either.
Quote from: StormBringer;580499But that is about the only way to get to the emulative result. Otherwise, you need buy in from all your players that they agree to run away when the wights jump out of the bushes. Or some other mechanic that forces them to flee, or cower in fear, or whatever.
I agree it isn't necessarily the best solution, but it is fairly elegant. If the players avoid combat with the undead, they don't have to worry about losing levels. Or a run 'n gun guerilla attack, like people in zombie movies. No one there just stands around and blasts away, either.
But zombies in movies don't level drain they just kill you eat your brians and you turn into a zombie. People in Armies of Orcs in Downtown Manhattan movies woudl act the same way.
If you just need to make 'draining' undead scary then I think there are more elegant methods that don't jar with versimitude (people forgetting how to cook, ride a horse, track, swing a sword etc ...)
Never used level draining. Not once. I usually used custom undead, which had their own nasty powers and weaknesses
Example: "Could not be killed without X strange but folklore inspired thing being done" Like the one which you had to nail its shoes on with silver nails. Of course the thing could wipe out villages before people figured out what it was and what it was doing
Of course it could walk through walls, but was otherwise corporeal, most weapons simply stuck in its body so it could drag you to its chilling lethal hands or maw...
Quote from: jibbajibba;580512But zombies in movies don't level drain they just kill you eat your brians and you turn into a zombie.
Of course, but it is the same result. Movie characters don't just stand around blasting away at the zombies because they will get infected if they are bitten or scratched or whatever the director thinks is dramatic. That is what makes them scary. Take that away, and they are just rotting corpses that wander around. Sure, getting eaten alive is pretty horrible, but getting infected and turning into a zombie is what keeps everyone on the run.
Purely from a mechanical standpoint, I recommend looking at the 3.5 negative level system. Essentially, undead hand out "negative levels" instead of direct level loss. Each negative level carries specific penalties (-1 to nearly everything; -5hp). A day later, you make saves to make them go away instead of be permanent level loss.
Why is that better? Two reasons: 1) you get simpler combats because you don't level down in the middle of combat, and have simple penalties instead of calculated ones; and 2) you get to buff up to have the best possible chance to avoid actual level loss.
I had a Gm who gave his zombies a paralytic touch ability (quite like a ghoul). I dont know if he took them from a supplement or if they were a varient i hadnt noticed, but pretty scary. Something about been stuck there while this slow moving monster tries to eat you was pretty effective.
Quote from: fectin;580552Purely from a mechanical standpoint, I recommend looking at the 3.5 negative level system. Essentially, undead hand out "negative levels" instead of direct level loss. Each negative level carries specific penalties (-1 to nearly everything; -5hp). A day later, you make saves to make them go away instead of be permanent level loss.
I don't have anything
against a less permanent version. I think a day is a bit short, but that is a preference quibble. I simply maintain that level-loss in Vintage Games isn't the game ending tragedy some make it out to be. Mechanically, it does exactly what it intends, which is to make the undead more than just another bag of experience points.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;580554I had a Gm who gave his zombies a paralytic touch ability (quite like a ghoul). I dont know if he took them from a supplement or if they were a varient i hadnt noticed, but pretty scary. Something about been stuck there while this slow moving monster tries to eat you was pretty effective.
That is a pretty good idea. Consider it stolen.
Quote from: jibbajibba;580512But zombies in movies don't level drain they just kill you eat your brians and you turn into a zombie.
Zombie in TSR D&D don't do energy drains.
Nor do they turn you into a zombie as zombie in D&D are caused by some weird disease or mutation but by a MU animating the dead -- although I suspect this might have been different if the "zombies eat your brains and turn you into a zombie" flicks had been popular in the late 1970s. :)
Quote from: RandallS;580562Zombie in TSR D&D don't do energy drains.
Nor do they turn you into a zombie as zombie in D&D are caused by some weird disease or mutation but by a MU animating the dead -- although I suspect this might have been different if the "zombies eat your brains and turn you into a zombie" flicks had been popular in the late 1970s. :)
I'm pretty sure there were versions of D&D where if a zombie killed you, you did in fact come back as a zombie...
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;580902I'm pretty sure there were versions of D&D where if a zombie killed you, you did in fact come back as a zombie...
A 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?
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
Quote from: Wolf, Richard;579900From what I understand the original justification for Level Drain and the Rust Monster was so that the DM could scale back the power of his players so that he could railroad them into the kind of adventures he was more comfortable with.
Source for this?
Quote from: Black Vulmea;581436Source for this?
Just past the Sigmoid Colon.
Yeah, I never actually heard that as the literal reason for these monsters' existence.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;581730Yeah, I never actually heard that as the literal reason for these monsters' existence.
RPGPundit
Nor I, but I have read it in Dragon Magazine. Well, not the railroading part, but the "if your PCs ever get too powerful and you gave them too many magic items than what you intended and want to bring the campaign back under control, use rust monsters and undead."
Quote from: Sacrosanct;581748Nor I, but I have read it in Dragon Magazine. Well, not the railroading part, but the "if your PCs ever get too powerful and you gave them too many magic items than what you intended and want to bring the campaign back under control, use rust monsters and undead."
Yes, I've seen that as a sort of bad GM advice. I think rust monsters and undead should be used whenever its suitable, not as a concerted effort to cut down the PCs' power level.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;582007Yes, I've seen that as a sort of bad GM advice. I think rust monsters and undead should be used whenever its suitable, not as a concerted effort to cut down the PCs' power level.
RPGPundit
Just my opinion mind you, but if you're a DM and you find your characters have gone way off the power train into Monty Haul? Perhaps it's time to wrap that campaign up instead of taking everything away.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;582014Just my opinion mind you, but if you're a DM and you find your characters have gone way off the power train into Monty Haul? Perhaps it's time to wrap that campaign up instead of taking everything away.
Agreed.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;579804I do like the level loss from undead, because nothing terrified me more as a player than level loss. Definitely makes undead frightening. As a gm I at least like having variants that do other things like drain con so I have an alternative to the big gun level drain vampire or wight.
The 'Fear Factor' of level draining undead is priceless.
Sometimes I would allow a character to recover a lost level through a quest of some sort, if it made sense in the setting.
Even a temporary level loss is brutal, so allowing the lost levels to return slowly would not be bad either.
Quote from: RPGPundit;581420Hmm, I thought it was mentioned in the RC, but its not (I looked it up now), so you may well be right.
RPGPundit
Wasn't it the AD&D JuJu Zombie that did that? Don't have my books handy...
Quote from: Bobloblah;582422Wasn't it the AD&D JuJu Zombie that did that? Don't have my books handy...
Could be, yes. That was from what, MMII?
RPGPundit