This post on Dragonsfoot, in a long thread about the subject that was otherwise fairly boring (but long, as it's a subject people love to hate) got me thinking.
Energy Drain no longer drains a level of experience. You keep all your XP, your fighting potential and saves, your spells, your thief skills. You only lose that hit die.
You gain hit dice back only when you level, and for those over name level who have less than 9 hit dice, they continue to gain hit dice until they are at 9, then they get their standard hit points per level.
Makes Energy Drain a bit easier to figure out in the middle of play (no need to recalculate a bunch of stuff, decide which spell slots are lost, figure out how many XP are left, etc.). It also keeps energy drain scary, because every energy drain you take is lowering your total potential hit dice. And you don't want to be level 35 and only have 5 or 6 hit dice, assuming you can get that far...
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This is a decent idea. I've gone the route of draining points of CON or STR rather than levels, but I'm not sure I'm going to stick with that.
ReplyDeleteNot bad at all! A player character gradually becomes a "shadow of themselves;" very Tolkien-ish (which is, of course, the inspiration for Energy Drain).
ReplyDeleteIt also puts an absolute maximum on the creature's effect...a 12th level fighter that's been drained 9 times still has 6 hit points (three levels of +2 bonus hit points...in B/X anyway), but is still scarred by the experience that the slightest wound could spell infection/disaster as his body "gives up the ghost."
The only issue: how does a wight/wraith/etc. create NEW undead? Only by draining characters of less than 10th level? Or is there a maximum number of hit dice that can be drained (i.e. 9, regardless of level) before a character "goes over."
THAT would make energy drain even scarier! A 16th level fighter only needs to get hit nine times (or 5 times by a vampire) before forever drained rather than 16/8 as per the standard rules!
JB said: The only issue: how does a wight/wraith/etc. create NEW undead? Only by draining characters of less than 10th level? Or is there a maximum number of hit dice that can be drained (i.e. 9, regardless of level) before a character "goes over."
ReplyDeleteA cruel DM might say that any characters with over name level 'hit points per level' as the only thing left counts as a 0 level character. Quite a few monster leaders just have a given number of hit points and 'fight as a X hit die creature' to put them above the baseline monster. Such unfortunate characters might be the same. "Jurgunard the Wizard, drained of all 9 hit dice, now has 8 hit points and fights and casts spells as a level 17 Magic User."
And one more energy drain is the end.
ED definitely becomes a LOT scarier for high level players, while taking away some of the pain for low level ones.
The people that hate ED would likely hate it just as much once they figure this out, but by then...well, it might be too late.
Oh, I should say in my Jurgurnard example, that only one energy drain will end Jurgurnard's life and turn him into a wight or whatever if it happens before he gains level 18. He'd then have one more hit die. A specter could still finish him off in one hit, so he'd better hope he always gets initiative and the specter fails its save against whatever spell Jurgurnard throws at it (or be smart and use teleport to get the hell out of there)
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