Level Drain, Or is it wraith’s touch? Options

[Stuart]

We’ve come a really long way with the system and updating things to make it more immediately playable and fun. One stark area which remains a real pain is level drain.

If you’re unfortunate enough to get jumped by a wraith early in a dungeon, you’re crippled for the rest of the day by loss of life, casting and resistance levels. To be frank, it’s really really dull. The miracle to cure it is niche and expensive, and hardly ever cast.

Can we change level drain so it suppresses your life energy instead, has exactly the same effect but wears off after 5 minutes of not being level drained again. If it takes you to zero then rather than killing you it knocks you out for 5 minutes?

Or do people love level drain and want to see more of it?

Stuart

[Ferro]

I hate it affecting level of life. I never know my levels of life...

Resistance levels and casting levels is how I usually see it used, and it usually lasts an hour or the section. I can't say I've seen it last an entire day.

[BBB]

Playing Argoth's Advocate: Contrast the effects Of Level Drain with Disease for which the relevant Immunity to is also 100pts.

After 5 minutes you can't do anything useful and after an hour you're dead.

Perhaps one answer is to make the miracle (Restore Hope?) closer / easier to cast to be more comparable to Cure Disease.

Or maybe unless you're willing you cannot suffer the dis-benefits of Level Drain more than once every 5 minutes

This then makes it closer to the once you've been hit by a disease you pretty don't care how many more you take in the 5 minutes before being healed and means less "bang! 4 Double-Level Drains you're dead"

I think its generally given as having a duration of an hour nowadays.

With all such things its one of those things a ref just needs to be wary setting it (at lower levels) as it can either be an inconvenience or ruin a party.

BBB

[Ryan]

I would simplify it by just making it.

Loses a Level of Resistance for 1 hour. if you take 8 you Die

[Dave]

99% I’ve never seen a ref lose level of life.

Just too much effort, it’s always nice watching people die to 8 level drains, power creep is too much, let’s not remove something that kills people early!

[atem55]

I've not seen any ref's calculate a loss of life (let alone recalculate neuronic innates ).

As BBB is saying, if the view is level drain and disease are a similar level of inconvenience , as the immunity is the same cost for remedy should be similar aswell?

Restoration is 6sp (+1 spirit per additional level to restore!) and major healing, dismissal, or benediction, outside the toolkit of alot of goodly priests. Should the casting cost be lower and the miracle be easier to access? a standard goodly miracle or minor sphere access?

[dhurrell]

Or we do a 'Steal Life Essence' style revamp and continue doing away with level based calculations...

I agree the ambiguity is tough. Although a ref hasn't questioned me on what I've done I've previously assumed loss of levels of life, resistance levels, power, what skills I got at what level... Really messy for scouts!

Clear ruling on what's actually lost would be great. Or better yet Wraiths touch becomes something interesting rather than an OOC / admin inconvenience. My imagination hasn't woken up yet though to suggest a better idea though, sorry

[TheFury]

Making it lose a level of resistance only would definately make life easier. Otherwise I really don't have an issue with it.

[Stuart]

My point about being screwed for the day was meant to refer to taking 6 level drains and so being 2nd level, 3rd an hour later, 4th after 2 hrs, etc.

I had a look in the priest book but can’t find the definition of what you lose to a level drain. It could do with being clarified really, and levels of resistance make sense.

Being 2nd level on a max 1500 sucks, but taking 6 hrs to get back to full sucks more.

Stuart

[fatteacher]

I would simplify it by just making it.

Loses a Level of Resistance for 1 hour. if you take 8 you Die

I agree with Ryan

[BBB]

As an aside from a ref's view point the "effect" I rule for Level Drain is one of those one's where I treat differently depending on the level of the dungeon.

A Max 750 I'll generally say a level of resistance for some time

A Max 7,500 if you've not got Immunity then its quite literally one level off your base class on everything that is calculated by level: Life, Power, Class / Racial Innates, Resistance Level.

Remember originally mumble-mumble decades ago it took a whole dungeon to recover a single lost level and level drains to zero was perm death. So it has been made less lethal over time.

I'm guessing the crux of what Stuart is asking is "can we move away from effects that screw you for the rest of the day and are a problem for maybe just an encounter or two"

Which is where we sort of are with things with the genius addition that is fleeting, or refs just saying 5 minutes of baneful effects are up once an encounter has clearly ended so that the game can keep flowing and move on to the next encounter.

BBB

[Abel]

In my experience, a level drain has never lasted more than an hour or section change.

It has always been reffed as a level of life and resistance levels, levels of life are never an issue (6/2, 5/2, 1/1, etc) and for those it is, you should probably play the 1st to 8th level system again and learn it. Most monsters that can use it at will only can do it 6 times and lets be honest if more than one monsters gets you with it, you are being targeted

It a very cool/scary ability, that gives a sense of mortality to players, that is often lacking. My only gripe with it, is that it is really hard to talk about it in character. To quote Duncan "I've been level... my life esse... I got nothing!"

[Stevelouch]

In my experience, a level drain has never lasted more than an hour or section change.

It has always been reffed as a level of life and resistance levels, levels of life are never an issue (6/2, 5/2, 1/1, etc) and for those it is, you should probably play the 1st to 8th level system again and learn it. Most monsters that can use it at will only can do it 6 times and lets be honest if more than one monsters gets you with it, you are being targeted

It a very cool/scary ability, that gives a sense of mortality to players, that is often lacking. My only gripe with it, is that it is really hard to talk about it in character. To quote Duncan "I've been level... my life esse... I got nothing!"

Easy to talk about in character.

My soul, Essence or life force has been stolen, drained, ripped away. Or maybe even I have been weaken by dark powers.

As BBB says it has been weakened over the years as not perm death now and easier to get levels back.

It was always a loss of level of main class and relevant spirts etc. It was always good to have a life scale from a multi class to avoid loss of life and a second class to 8th to avoid loss of resistance levels

[Will]

I would simplify it by just making it.

Loses a Level of Resistance for 1 hour. if you take 8 you Die

This is largely how I see it being reffed currently

Well... 5 months ago...

[Stevelouch]

I would simplify it by just making it.

Loses a Level of Resistance for 1 hour. if you take 8 you Die

Seems fair, there is also the miracle to take 8 level drains of course so still a need to buy the immunity

[DanM]

It's still 5sp so cast though. Needs to be worth the cost

[Stevelouch]

It's still 5sp so cast though. Needs to be worth the cost

The main use for evil is to lower resistance levels for a further attack generally I always found

[isbiraven]

I think it works well as is... as many have said it gets reffed mainly as resistance levels for an hour per level taken and it is meant to be scary imo...

plus lets be honest... 100pts makes it worthless...

T.