Energy Drain in BECMI - keeping the Undead scary
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- Is Energy Drain a great mechanic for instilling fear of the undead? Or does it just ruin games? I give my opinion, what's yours?
If you like this video and want to support me further, please consider buying me a coffee at: www.buymeacoff... Your support is greatly appreciated.
BECMI Playlist: • BECMI Dungeon and Dragons
Berserker image: www.pngall.com... (used under Creative Commons)
Many thanks to ITS A TRAPP for cleaning up the Berserker image for me. It’s a lot cleaner and sharper now.
Contact:
Instagram: D&D RPG fRe&k
Email: orcwart@gmail.com
This is what I love about the undead in D&D. They're not just supposed to scare your character because spooky skelly man or whatever. They're supposed to make you, the player, clench up at the thought of losing precious character progress. A simple death followed by a raise dead is a mercy by comparison.
This is why I lament efforts to "fix" or otherwise soften these rules in the various OSR discussion spheres. It ain't broke, folks. Don't try to fix it. Undead are fucking horrifying by design.
The same is what I hate about them. But that's the difference between "modern" players (like me) focusing on the characters over players, whereas the old school systems are focused on the players.
I don't want much of player skills to be a bigger factor than the character ones and the same works for bleed - I would very much prefer the emotional states of my players and their characters separate.
This works in old school because xp was gained by treasure. You weren't there to kill a vampire. You were there to pinch his loot. So running was a viable strategy.
Additionally, they were still weak to daylight and slept in coffins. So it was usually a fight with his minions so you could stake the guy in the coffin.
Untying XP from treasure was a travesty. My kids started a shipping business and showed up every month or so to collect their gold and XP. I couldn't have been more proud.
I love the image of the fighter/lord returning to his castle as a husk of their former self after encountering the undead. Wandering the empty halls with a pale faced while all but their most loyal subjects and friends leaving the castle and their service.
Ha. Yeah, that's the kind of leader who commanded fear and bullying, not respect, if everyone bails the moment he no longer has anything to offer. Kind of a nice helping of the bitter soup of karma.
That's fine for a story line, but would that be fun to play?
I don't know, I was just thinking of the story resulting from the mechanics. @@level9drow856
@@level9drow856Would it be fun if there were no consequences or risks? Where death was impossoble for PC's and adventures were theme park train rides?
Sometimes unfun things are critical to creating fun. Especially when the cost of failure isn't permanent. Just look at dark souls.
In earlier editions, Undead were a serious challenge. With the current edition, just take a nap after an encounter and you are good to go again.
The current edition is just a super hero game set in a fantasy setting. No real danger of loss, let alone death.
I miss the old school energy drain. My fellow players ran hysterically when confronted by a wight or shadow. Losing levels was the hardest hit to take, especially in BECMI when you're trying so hard to make it to the I in BECMI. Suddenly, reaching I became a struggle. Heck, very, very few characters in games I played or DMed made it further than 16.
This is a great reason why villages and mayors and kings want adventurers. It is scary out there.
And most players will let the village, mayors and kings perish if they're facing undead with energy drain. What a head ache, better them than my character. At least a non-living NPC doesn't have any time invested in progress gained.
Player: "Vampires you say?"
Mayor: Indeed.
Players:....
Mayor: "Where are you going brave adventurers?"
Player: "We're gonna go look for goblins or orcs, hell even dragons. Good luck to you and your town."
@@level9drow856Yeah, this is what I hate the most with some players. They are here live an adventure and they will do anything to just ruin the game with some pseudo-realistic roleplay like "I'm not risking my life for those peasants." These kind of players generally come with the "my character needs money so I'm gonna rob the entire town" behavior. I hate it because when you have prepared a campaign for days you want your player to actually play it. I ended up in those situation and either I let them do their shit and we lost a lot of time and the game start becoming boring as shit or (generally when I'm pissed off) I chose to let the guy be arrested by the guard for exemple and executed, and that's not fun either cause you already lost 1 PC before the adventure even start and the guy will certainly reroll and be a huge asshole again.
A neat mechanic I came across and have implemented in my ACKS (retroclone based on B/X) game: when fighting energy draining undead, the character that scores the killing blow may regain all levels drained by that undead upon making a successful save vs Death. It keeps energy drain scary but creates interesting choices during battle as characters manoeuvre to be the one to get that last hit in and potentially regain what was lost.
That could be cool, and make good storytelling and strategic thinking, at a table where players cooperate and collaborate to collectively choose who gets to make that closing shot.
ABSOLUTELY!
The entire tone of the "modern" game has changed to something I don't recognize as D&D.
I don't fault players who like the current edition. There is room in our hobby for two D&D game systems both labeled D&D. It's just confusing when system editions are not specifically identified.
Cheers!
THIS! I'm one of the modern-style players (and DMs). It certainly is a different game than old school, one I prefer.
The key difference for me is the focus on characters (modern) versus players (old school). I just don't want to play "myself in a fantasy situation" in a TTRPG, I want to play a character who is decidedly *not* me and solves situation differently than I would. Yes, this also creates a strong connection towards to PCs and works better with modern-style games. But there is no reason to yuck someone else's yum (goes both ways and this is the internet, so of course there are such assholes on both sides) and there *obviously* is a reason oldschool is popular again. A good game - just for different players and different expectations.
My only problem with energy drain is the record keeping.
When we started keeping character sheets as PDF's about 20 years ago, we'd print a new sheet every level. We always kept the old ones, for various reasons, but Energy Drains were one of the main reasons. Being able to just pull an older version of the character out at any level was very handy.
@@Z1gguratVert1go Thanks for sharing this. Still it sounds like a bit of a hassle to keep all of the former sheets.
@@SilverDragoon7395 3E has a simple formula they call negative levels. It's a nice quick hand way to do it
I tell my players to always keep their old character sheets.
@@solomani5959 We use a fillable PDF for our character sheets, printing them out and keeping notes on them. Then when they level we just "save as" to make a new one, call it "character name 11" if level 11, update the character and then print it out. Rinse and repeat. A printed and digital sheet for each level. We originally did this for tidiness, so each sheet didn't become an unreadable mess, but it makes for excellent record keeping.
A few theories why Negative Levels 'had to go':
- Character focus increased, and character creation got more involved. This creates a three-fold problem. 1. Killing characters took more time to undo. 2. Delevelling required more bookkeeping than its worth (spell selections especially) 3. New characters took more to make and were discouraging (as you can't just put a level 1 dude, you now have 10 levels to fill)
- Game Design. Negative Levels are good design. They're also bad design. In AD&D, the over-arching game was freeform and it was fine. But around 3e, adventures, modules, pre-written campaigns took off, and having brutally hard monsters in 'you gotta fight them' encounters just was a no-go. Yes, that's dumb video game logic, but that's where the thinking probably went.
- Jerks. Around 3e the idea that you can be anything grew, and you can summon vampires and control them and having a mechanic this strong needed to go. That, and potentially jerkish GMs, see the above.
- The PCs are the protagonists/heroes. A mixture of the above, but reiterated because it is, again, a shift in the game's focus that makes level drain a no-go.
tl;dr: the culture changed, PCs and 'the game' grew more important, and level drain become an increasingly annoying pain.
Played D&D for 30 years, didn't like energy drain back in the 90's and don't wish it came back either.
Admittedly, character focus is also what draws me (I'm a modern-style player) in. I don't want to play "myself in a fantasy situation", I have other events (like escape rooms, some larps, adult summer camps) for that. In a TTRPG, I'm there to embody my character, someone decidedly *not* me. Which is facilitated by modern games and systems (not just DnD-adjacent either) better than by the old school ones.
This culture shift might also be the reason there is far more love towards non-human humanoid species in the modern games than the often outright hatred towards demihumans in oldschool.
I prefer negative levels. Fits the character's experience better, and is easier to handle the paperwork.
First, it doesn't make sense for the character to forget what they learned. Also, thematically, it is a feeling of weakness. Imagine when you are sick, emptying your stomach, and you feel physically weak, like you couldn't do your best acrobatic work even though you remember how. Likewise, keeping your levels but gaining a negative level maintains this. It shows what your character has learned and knows, while still weakening them as much as losing a level.
Also, instead of remembering how many HP were gained each level, you can roll how many HP to lose with each negative level. This actually adds an interesting point about death. I remember that some creatures have a chance to be more or less powerful. This is an excellent way of achieving that as a character can die when their negative level equals their regular levels, or they can die when their max HP becomes 0. This allows them to return as more powerful when they die of max HP hitting 0, as they can still keep their positive levels in addition to becoming a monster, thus are more powerful.
I haven’t talked about inserting Level Drain in my current large group campaign, however we did agree on a twist to healing, there can be no 100% HP recovery in the field, max would be 80% even with magic. Not until a rest in a fortified area can they fully recover HP. So, even with a 5e wight, their HP max drain would be pretty rough in the moment. But I do love the idea of being able to retcon a monster in a particular situation with Life Drain.
I think it was Bob Meyer (of the original blackmoor group) who told me of energy drain "don't try to sword fight dracula."
I love this, the one thing I have problem with is no saving throws. I always give my players a chance on negative effects (it might be nat 20 with disadvantage but least something) I feel it adds a level of tension and drama. Also I like the idea of my player thinking about their feats or skills or armor "this one gives me more damage, oh but this one gives me +1 will power"
In our session tonight, the party had a furious fight with three wights. The cleric lost a level with the very last attack, before the fighter took the wight out. Very exciting and memorable
Energy draining and drainers are fine. You just make sure the PCs have some warning the critter is out there. If they keep going anyway, that's on them.
I switched to Castles & Crusades from 5e and I have let everyone know coming over that several undead retain the older style of attacks. Including permanent stat and level drain. I use it for the same reason, the fear factor.
I must play with high anxiety people. They’re plenty scared of things that can drain their abilities temporarily.
@@Newnodrogbob I play in a Pathfinder group where a player insisted on spending half our funds on removing a -1 penalty to hit that only lasts 24 hours.
@@Ixnatifual well ok. That seems extreme. It is a power fantasy game. (Even the old school version grognards, unless you can actually cast magic missile.) No one likes being told they will be worse at things now…
I have surveyed a facebook group of d&d players and received over 110 responses. All of them said no to energy drain. All of them. Many of them suggested ability damage (Like Strength or Con) or reduction of maximum HP as a suitable replacement. I think they sound pretty good.
I have Level Drain Undead just to their damage directly to Constitution. Much the same way Shadows drain Strength. It keeps them scary to all levels.
But if you get it back, it's nothing to fear. If you're talking permanent CON loss that's more significant.
We've used permanent con loss since 1983. More PC deaths and retirements have been caused by our group taking on Undead than any other monster group by far.
@@ehb1022
Sounds "fun"
@@sunsin1592 I allow it to return from resting, but only if it's complete rest with no adventuring, and in a bed with somebody administering Healing rolls. It heals 1 pt per day.
The real threat is that it only takes 3-4 hits to snuff out somebody's CON completely.
I like Energy Drain as is, as both a player and a DM.
In the AD&D 1e game I'm in (same rules of energy drain as BECMI more or less), I play a fighter and a cleric. When my fighter saw evidence that undead were present, you bet that our group fell back to our base and wait till my cleric was finished with some downtime stuff before we went back!
When I DM BECMI, I also have players reroll HP at every level. So at 1st level a fighter has 1d8 HP, but at 2nd level they roll 2d8 and that's their new HP (unless the result is lower, in which case it's just previous level +1). So when energy draining happens in that game, we just note how much damage you've taken, reroll the level (say you were level 3 and get reduced to level 2, you now roll 2d8 and that's your new total, unless it's higher than your 3rd level HP in which case its 3rd level HP -1), and then apply the damage taken to that new HP.
It means we don't have to keep track of HP rolled at each level. It does also reduce the chance of a fighter having 3 HP at third level, which has happened before!
I agree: I prefer old school energy draining. I actually don’t fear it much - perhaps because I never encountered energy-draining creatures in table top D&D (only in D&D computer games where I was min-maxing and power gaming).
This video inspires me to prep my character(s) very well for undead encounters, and to use tactics that minimise the risk of melee with undead. E.g. burn some oil in a tomb entrance and then use magic or silver arrows and spells and turning to harm the undead in the tomb. (And make pools of oil in a series to fall back to and set alight when undead get through the first pool of burning oil.)
Also the tactic of: slide tomb lid open just enough to pour in some holy water, but not enough to let a corporeal undead to escape.
Unsurprisingly, my character(s) will have garlic in every meal and wear it and a holy symbol around their necks at all times. 😎
That's classic old school D&D play. You had to be prepared for anything... Especially in a Gygaxian dungeon. Wolfsbane, garlic, silver daggers and arrows, hand mirrors, 10' poles, chalk, string, rope... Etc etc etc...
And curse me... I forgot the ever important and handy Iron spike.
Yes, Yes, Yes. Love the truly awesome effect of Level Drain in D&D... But I am an "Old Timer". My younger players (who have been raised on the mothers milk of 5e) think it too severe.
It has 2 other problems: Fighters tend to suffer it more than spell casters; and some Players can get grumpy if they think they're being targeted. So I use an algorithm d6:
1-2) Attack the character with the highest HD (within 30 feet) that the Undead can reach.
3-4) Attack the creature who damaged it the most last round (ignore option if not damaged last round);
5-6) Attack the closest Cleric (ignore option if no cleric present).
I think 3rd Ed did it very well. The possibility existed, but it was less common. If you got a Level Drain, it was a "temporary" debuff. After 24 hours, you made a save (with the penalty) to see if ot became permanent.
This made it a risk, and kept the scary factor, but also left some room to have a chance to fix it. A lot more Undead also drained your Ability Scores, too. While usually not permanent, it could last a while, and had the potential to make you lose other things like Feats, Class Abilities, or whatever you no longer qualified for.
3E Level Drain also specified things like how much HP was lost, which was nice.
We just figured out the average PC's hit points per level for energy drain . Side Note: The third Book of Lairs accessory ( REF-5 ) promoted for Forgotten Realms - a book of many undead scenarios= Ed Greenwood ( and company ) have multiple Alternatives to Permanent level drain >
Alternatives to
Energy Draining
Many DMs are reluctant to use undead
as much as the vivid descriptions of
these monsters tempt them to; it seems
unfair to DMs and players alike to lose
10 years of life (in a campaign where
time is largely ignored, the loss is meaningless; in a roleplaying campaign, the
loss seems horribly steep) at the mere
sight of a ghost, or have a single undead
attack drain one or even two levels of
hard-won experience, robbing a player
of the game benefits of what might be
literally years of AD&D®
game play.
The horror and might of undead
must be preserved: to merely turn a
level-draining ability into so many dice
of physical damage seems a poor solution. DMs may well devise their own
solutions, but here are some alternatives to an attack that would normally
result in a loss of character experience.
l Temporary paralysis with no saving throw, either complete or partial,
thereby preventing spell-casting, climbing, picking locks, and giving a -2 penalty to AC and attacks, for 1d12 + 10
rounds; curable.
l Loss of all experience gained back
to the minimum required for the characters current level.
l Immediate loss of consciousness,
loss of 2d6 hit points, plus a permanent
loss of 1 hit point per drain attack, plus
possible loss of currently memorized
spells.
l Loss of ability points at random;
character must save vs. poison to see if
each loss is permanent.
l Permanent withering of touched
limb (limited wish or wish notwithstanding), or bestowal of a disease of
severe, chronic nature.
l Bestowal of minor permanent
curse (see Curses!, DRAGON®
Magazine #77
l Character stricken with insanity
(refer to DMG for types), or, if the character is a spell-caster, the PC permanently loses knowledge of how to cast a
certain spell at random or perform a
type of a magic.
l Alignment shift of character, one
step per attack, toward that of the
attacking undead. Note that this could
cause back-and-forth alignment shifts
as a character with a long career
encounters undead of different alignments.
l Immediate feeblemindedness plus
a permanent loss of 1 ability point trandom choice, save vs. poison to avoid).
The above section was from the 1988 book Lords of Darkness for 1st ed. AD&D ( very late into its run - right before 2nd ed came out )
The house rule I like is that with complete bed rest of as many days as the level lost you recover the level. The 4th level fighter in your example would get back to 5 th level after 5 days of rest, then back to level 6 after an additional 6 days of complete bed rest, etc. This is kind of represented by the time Frodo spent recovering in Rivendell after encountering the Nazgul at Weathertop.
In order to take the Sting out of Energy Drain in my old games, when re-leveling after, the player would normally wind up slightly stronger. I did that, by allowing Re-Rolls when recovering levels for previously failed learning checks for spells or Weapon-Mastery, and if a Hit Die was re-rolled, they could take their previous roll, or the new roll whichever was better. Between that, the magic/items and/or treasure from the adventure, and the fact that we were used to higher level characters 'babysitting' low level characters... it made the mechanic tolerable at the table.
Despite this house rule, I've never had a player try to 'Game' the system by level draining for intentional Re-rolls as regaining the levels was often arduous.
This is a nifty idea. 👍
I remember playing in Ravenloft and our party encountering a shadow dragon. The shadow dragons breath weapon was a black cloud that caused blindness for one round (one minute because this was 2nd edition) and drained 3/4 (round up) of the victims levels or HD (1/2 the character's levels if they saved v breath weapon). A few of the characters in the party were hit and one of the players, who's character went from 10th level to 2nd level in on go, got so angry that he got up from the table, grabbed his stuff, and proceeded to stomp out of the room with the intention of going home. The DM was forced to let him know that the energy drain in the case of a shadow dragon's breath weapon is only temporary, lasting a random number of rounds.
The 3rd Ed./Pathfinder mechanic of application of energy levels was a clever way to manage the bookkeeping of energy drain while in combat and allowed the chance of avoiding permanent level loss later. If you had plenty of restoration spells available, you may no longer fear the energy drain, but the DM would have no compunction about the party encountering lots of energy draining undead either.
One decision our DM's made was to not keep track of hp's at each level. Instead, you rolled for the loss of HP drain. If levels were restored, you rolled again. If you rolled higher, then you were better for the experience but if you rolled lower then the experience took its toll on you.
I have personally seen it happen both ways and the look on the players face was just what you would have expected from the "good or bad" experience of being drained by the undead.
I believe it was the Caves of Chaos module that had a Wight in the big battle. What a surprise when arrows bounced off it and we all realized that this was one tough thing that we would have to fight with our best magic items and spells. And we had very little in the way of magic items at 2nd and 3rd level. The fear in the room could be smelled by all of us!
Energy drain encounters are amongst the most memorable encounters you can have. Highly recommend playing with it.
Let's go! I both like and dislike energy drain. I like that it keeps the undead scary but don't like narratively how it explains loss of being able to memorize spells or weapon mastery. In my game undead drain ability scores permanently. This keeps them scary and have the drain make sense.
Interesting. I'm planning an AD&D game and was thinking of converting level drain to Con drain. I was thinking I'd allow 1 week of bed rest to restore one point of Con and no magic short of a wish able to shorten the time. Have I gone soft since the 90s?
@@jwkrayer 😄 I think that's a good idea. Allows the player to recover but over a long period.
@@jwkrayer I was thinking along the same lines. I might up the drain factor somewhat, though. Losing 2 CON sucks, but not nearly as much as losing 2 levels. Maybe make it - STR and -CON, both? Or make it -2 CON per what would have been a drained level. Now the spectre is draining 4 CON per hit, and once your CON hits 0, you are dead. No matter your HP, so I think it would be quite terrifying for even a higher level PCs.
A friend of mine has just started playing OSE with us. He's only ever played 5e and, mostly, Pathfinder. His knight character (still a squire at that moment) had just attained 2nd level. While exploring a library in an abandoned elvish city, they ran afoul of a wight. He'd taken on skeletons earlier in that session, and had see the sleep spell work on a target with no save. One hit ... no damage ... DRAIN ONE LEVEL, NO SAVE! He was immediately back to first level and, like the rest of the party, thinking fast, crearively, and while running!
The day after the session, I asked him how he felt about old-school gaming, in comparison to the Pathfinder campaign he'd been in for a year. He did not say, "It's ... different." He said, "I love it! I was really worried, and shocked; it feels like there's stakes to the game, and it's not like the game is a story about the characters so much as the story is going on, and if you want to stay a part of it, you need to survive!"
I still remember the fear of encountering a howling group of Wights.
I've been pondering this as I've started running a 5e game recently, and find I need a mechanic that resembles level drain for worldbuilding reasons.
What I've come up with instead is a numeric condition that reduces Proficiency bonus, Con bonus to hp, "fills in" a slot of exhaustion from the "top" down, and removes that many spell slots from each level of spell slots the character has.
I call this condition "waning."
I run it in conjunction with a gritty combat rule variant that gives exhaustion to characters who take a critical hit or drop to 0 hp; that can be found on another channel here @ youtube.
And the way I specify a character can be "cured" of a level of waning is to willingly accept a geas or curse being bestowed upon them--so characters must embrace either an epic, heroic doom being placed upon them, or the doom of their heroism.
We'll see how it goes
I remember playing Ravenloft and the idea of being trapped in a realm with a vampire scared all 5 of us … despite the fact we were level 8 so relatively high level for your average campaign. I recall we ended up fleeing and only having a skirmish with Strahd before finding a way out.
I agree with the concept of level loss as a consequence of energy drain. It may not be a perfect analogy, but I like to compare it to the physical and spiritual sufferings inflicted on Frodo after being wounded by the Ringwraiths on Weathertop. Rather than a simple hit point reduction (or a loss in Str/Con as some have proposed as an alternative), he began a dark metamorphosis as his entire perception of the world became like that of the Nazgul. In time he would have become a lesser wraith under the dominion of Sauron until he was healed at Rivendell.
Keep it as it is. Just foreshadow the hell out of it.
Players should run in fear of level drainers, and then prepare for the return to kill them thoroughly.
NOTHING scares players like level drain. It’s a great mechanic.
We still use level drain in our hybrid campaign, though it's quite modified.
Lost levels can be regained at 1 level per week gametime.
The PC must remain at 'home' unable to join any adventures during this time.
Training in their class specifics and missing out on all XP, loot etc..
I do something similiar, the rule I like is that with complete bed rest of as many days as the level lost you recover the level. The 4th level fighter in your example would get back to 5 th level after 5 days of rest, then back to level 6 after an additional 6 days of complete bed rest, etc. This is kind of represented by the time Frodo spent recovering in Rivendell after encountering the Nazgul at Weathertop.
I've used Energy Drains as a plot point in the past. I had a player in my game who was running a grumpy magic user who was low level (the whole party started at level 3). I decided to talk with the player and suggested to her that her character had actually been a much higher level, but suffered many energy drains and was reduced down to level 3 and escaped without most of his gear. This meant that while her wizard was "low level" he actually knew a lot about things, and had a reason to be resentful. She liked this idea and so I would feed information to the party through her character, making it a mystery to the others how this guy knew so much.
It was really fun when they encountered one of his rivals that he used to just humiliate and drive off instead of kill in the past, only now this rival is a higher level than he is... oh oh.
Undead are truly one of the most terrifying encounters you can have in the real versions of Dungeons and Dragons. Honestly all combat in the real versions Dungeons and Dragons is terrifying. While playing 5e society play I never saw the players ever fear for their characters lives. The combats were all boring and largely predictable. So glad channels like this are bringing attention to the real versions of the game and hopefully more young people will leave wotc dungeons and superheroes and come over to the old school versions. I keep energy drain as its written. I prefer to make my games feel lethal and tense. Keeping such things like energy drain is a perfect example of how to keep the combat tense.
As I miss the level drain (or analogous) effect and the sense of danger and rising tension in vanilla 5E games, how the classic games handle it is too much work and bogs the game down. For 5E I suggest to add a level of exhaustion as bonus effect to a vampires bite for example, that simulates the energy drain effect pretty well. Having only 6 levels of that particular kind (exhaustion) regardless of Character Level it remains a threat throughout higher Tier gameplay. For more devastating Negative Energy Plane effects roll a die (d2-d6) and add an appropiate Save DC.
Rolls on the wandering monster table, 12 Wraiths, nice!
Been playing with a house rule where the energy drain works as intended but if the players can make it to a large city and find a high level cleric they can pay to get their level restored currently pegged at 1600GP per level they also need a weeks rest. Helps soak up some of that excess gold.
I'm all for more Energy Drain, here here! May I suggest something though? This prevailing henny penny anxiety over Energy Drain that is common on the internet is largely a product NOT of DMs actually using Energy Drain and getting practical experience with it, but rather a product of a whole lot of "armchair expertise" by DMs who have never even used Energy Drain and think they know better than the game's designers. Yes, Energy Drain is scary, and yes-you are right that this very fear mitigates a lot of the danger of Energy Drain since players will naturally avoid such creatures. But there is a DM's secret that only DM's who actually use Energy Drain will know: it's not as bad as it looks. Let me explain: take an 8th level fighter. He gets hit by the Spectre three times and loses 6 levels (given that the 8th Level Fighter likely has AC 0, this means he was in combat with the Spectre for 4 to 5 turns, which seems like a bad decision on his part, but ok let's just work with it). He drops down to level 2… that's like starting all over, right? He probably took the better part of a year playing in the campaign to get from 2nd to 8th level! Disaster, right? Ok, now the party wins the fight or flees or whatever. If the rest of the party is still somewhere around 8th level, they should be earning something like 24,000 XP per session on average according to the Rules Cyclopedia. The fighter has 3,000 XP now. How long will it take him to get back to level 8? About six sessions after the one where he lost his levels on average. At the end of this session, he will be level 3 with 7,999 XP, next session he will rise to level 4 with 15,999 XP, after the third session he should be level 5 with 31,999 XP, after the fourth session he will rise to level 6 with 55,999 XP, after the fifth session he will be level 7 with 79,999 XP, after the sixth session he will rise to 103,999 XP and after the seventh session he will be 8th level again with 127,999 XP. Energy drain is actually much worse at higher levels when the XP progression levels out (above name level basically), although high level parties are also much better protected (and have Clerics that automatically turn or destroy almost all Undead types), and in any case most people in my experience play campaigns in the the single digit level ranges where the exponential XP tables actually make energy drain a lot less dramatic. Incidentally, I sometimes hear DMs scoff at the rule in Classic D&D that prevents you from gaining more than 1 level per session (it stops you 1 XP shy of the second level)… they say "What is this for? Probably for Month Haul campaigns, who even plays like that??" Those same DMs tend to be the kind of DM that will also not use Energy Drain on principle and thus they have literally never run into the kind of situation described above that the Level Advancement cap was designed for. They're the kind of guys that will rip a part out of a car engine and say "I don't need this!" and then wonder "Huh, what is this other part for? Why did they put that in the engine?" Furthermore, the nice thing about Energy Drain us that it allows different characters to shine, as drained characters will take the backstage for a few sessions and allow other characters to take the lead. Generally speaking, I don't worry about tracking hit dice rolls… when you get drained, you just lose a hit dice roll of hit points and when you gain the level back, you get a hit dice roll of hit points. The hp totals will not be the same when your levels are finally returned and that is just fine.
What if you only have one player?
I mean, everything you just described sucks. The entire point of the game is to increase your character’s power. So you now have a character who is useless for the next 5 or 6 sessions. Sounds like great fun. Meanwhile, all the DMs are squawking about how ridiculous it is for characters to get xp when they didn’t do anything.
@@Newnodrogbob "The entire point of the game is to increase your character's power?"
Only if you play the table top game like its a Video Game simulator.
Try looking at level increases as irrelevant, beyond allowing the characters to contend with greater challenges in their quests... you'll probably get a better feel for what the old school (BECMI included) versions of the game was all about.
I've been running my current campaign for coming up on a year now, most of the group is 7th level. At no point has any player asked if they have enough XP to go up a level. I let them know when they do, and for most its of absolute no relevance whatsoever.
I sometimes need to remind them to roll for Hit Points, and add new spells.
We've been playing since the early eighties though, so tend to care about other things than increasing a characters power.
And sure, for some 2 dimensional characters "More Power" is absolutely a legitimate motivation... but "The entire point of the game.."?
Not by a LONG way...
@@Newnodrogbob A _whole lot of things_ have to be changed in general if you have only one player… the game was literally designed around multiple roles (thief, cleric etc.). The situation you are asking about is not what the game was designed to do and requires a host of accommodations, not just for Energy Drain, but for many other things as well. "Didn't do anything"? The interesting thing about Energy Drain is that it forces you to rethink your character. If your 8th level fighter is knocked down a few levels relative to the rest of the group, you won't be able to use him like you had been for the last year of gameplay… he no longer can be the man standing out in front, taking all challenges head on. But maybe he can be played more as a sneaky character? Maybe the party gives him the ring of invisibility and he now scouts ahead? Maybe he becomes a tactical planner where he used to just charge in…. Maybe now he is commanded some hirelings or setting up ambushes? You get to see your character through fresh eyes for the next few weeks of gameplay.
@@Newnodrogbob @andrewtomlinson5237 From the player's perspective, it _is_ the players goal to progress through the campaign and reach the later stages and perhaps retire the character in all his glory. The structure of the game itself however is a military situation, with a number of such scenarios linked together to make up the campaign. You can win at these military situations or you can lose. Does it suck to lose? It depends on your temperament how you take that. D&D has become overcome by a feeble generation of purple-haired college theater majors who do not play wargames and thus cannot understand Original D&D, a.k.a. "The Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns." I'm not sure what else I can say about that…
As for the two levels less 1 xp point rule ...
I had a character find a piece of jewellery and rolled it up at the end of the session. It turned out to be worth 40,000gp so 40,000 xp to the third level character. Next session she turned 5th level cleric. How does finding a rare and valuable treasure get role played in as years worth of experience if you play next day in the game still?
Thief skills jump, your priest is suddenly more favored by their God, wizard gains new spell slots and spells , fighters learn better fighting ways from finding a valuable rock?
I told her the PC had been gaining xp over the past adventures and this treasure found was a turning point in her PCs life. The small church exchanged it for whatever she wanted. She asked for a room. Such a simple request. The church was very cramped and they intended to make a larger church soon. She was away adventuring often. So they made her room the Recovery room of the sick and injured with two beds. When she came back she demurred from taking either bed from an ill person.
Wonderful recap - if the players and DM agree to a dangerous and world where energy drain exists, and players agree to deal with the power imbalance of a party combined of level 4 and level 10 characters (where the high level face weaker challenges and protect the lower level until balance is restored), then it can be a great game. (Back in 2e, I regularly DMed a party of PCs that ranged from the level 3 ranger to the level 14 magic-user, and it was challenging, but everyone embraced that challenge, especially after the magic-user got knocked to level 8 after a series of bad rolls fighting a specter).
Here's an idea - Consider Level Loss to be connected to the undead creature that caused it. If that creature is destroyed, lost Levels CAN eventually be recovered (at the rate of 1 level per full weeks' rest). (Theatrical effect - while the creature that stole the levels remains, the victim is tormented by continual nightmares and visions of that undead creature..)
Those slain by undead (but not yet turned into undead), simply remain slain after the original creature is destroyed. Those slain that have converted to undead have one cycle of the full moon (4 weeks) to become a fully independent undead creature themselves. If the creature that turned them is destroyed before then, the newly-converted undead is also destroyed.
The biggest problem with old school energy drain is that it's literally worse than death. If you die and get raised, you _maybe_ lose a level and some Con. I'd take that over losing four levels any day of the week and twice on Sunday, and past the early levels, it takes _more_ hits to kill a PC than to drain four levels. That's just _absurd._
_A priori,_ the consequences for just getting hit by an enemy shouldn't be worse than for _committing suicide._
Just to say, I’m enjoying reading your comments across all the videos. Liking the difference in opinion. 🙂
@@becmiberserker Heh, yeah, I'm kind of binging your stuff at the moment. Really making me want to see how some players who started with 5e handle the lethality and freedom of a sandbox BECMI game.
I still remember my early dealings with a bbeg undead... it was a Velya. It made the party careful. It got our melee dwarf, but we prepared to took it out on the first few rounds with range attacks. 😂
Great! Thnx 🤓👍I also miss it in modern games as well.
1. As character sheets and abilities have become more complex, level drains aren't practical to port to modern versions of the game.
2. Monster damage, crowd control, and/ or high AC, and hit points can be scary.
3. Some monsters cause players to age d100 years, which is a decent alternative.
4. Some monsters reduce max hp or strength (0 = dead).
5. Other things like a save or become a zombie, save or become a vampire spawn, etc. could be good alternatives to the level drain mechanic.
The game is trying to attack players in a resource other than traditional damage. I think other alternatives can be similarly scary, without requiring the same complexity of accounting for a reduced level in the middle of a combat encounter.
As far as known canon Potions of Heroism if taken before gaining a new level after losing a level through draining would also restore the lost level. Any later it works as normal if able (ie. giving a temporary level extra to fighters only).
Energy draining was as impactful as becoming KO, asleep , and similar, as you lose all stored spells and have to rememorize these as normal.
Instead of redoing your character sheet on the fly, the 3rd edition of -1 on all D20 rolls until the level drain is permanent makes the game move smoother. Those adjustments can be done post game to the character sheet.
As for the energy drain itself, I would make sure to telegraph that these monsters are nearby, giving the party time to exit if they feel they are not ready. Its always better when they come back with a plan.
We made energy drain reduce your max HP. Damage based on the character's hit dice. You died if you hit zero Hp, and you become an undead. Recovery was slow 1 Hp for each day of full bed rest, 2 per day if you were on holy ground. A cleric could tend to you and pray for you. This added 1 bonus HP per week of rest for every 3 levels of cleric. So getting back up to normal could take weeks.
Energy Drain was very scary back in the 1e/2e days for my gaming group. Nothing struck more fear in the hearts of veteran adventurers then facing one or more of these nightmares ! In the end the paper work and the way it slowed the game down caused me to house rule it some point during the 2nd edition of the AD&D game. I made it in to a constitution drain (1 lvl of energy drain =1 pnt loss of CON) . This was worked for our gaming needs at the time. I dont miss energy drain in 5e but I do feel the game is now "easy mode". Which is one of the reasons that I have begun to look at OSR games again !
That's very nice, consider it stolen!
I'm all for hardcore consequences and mechanics facilitating fear, but level drain just forces repetition and eventual retreading of the same water with the same character. I'd take character death and having to roll a new low level character over that any day.
I wonder if mechanics for crippling wounds could facilitate the proper level of fear and trepidation. Like if these monsters could just rip your arm off or induce rapid onset necrosis that removes your ability to use a limb for anything along with a strength dex or con penalty, or remove your eyesight and rot part of your brain dealing intelligence damage, disfigure your face dealing charisma damage and forever altering how people react to you, maybe even scar you with a spiritual mark etched to flesh by claw meant to bind you to another's will by damaging your wisdom. These all sound immensely more engaging to grapple with than the prospect of having to work toward the exact same incentives I already earned quite some time ago.
It has the same issue as 3rd edition's magic item creation. Sure you get something nice for it and maybe it could even save your party's ass more than the levels ever would, but why would you ever sign up to chase after the same rewards again?
For me level drain is a _beautifully_ terrifying threat, but when it actually happens, the immense boredom sets in at realizing what comes next, making you want to just toss the character into the arms of the undead for a fresh start or retire them immediately even if neither makes any in-character sense for them at all.
The fear of the threat is gripping and immersive, but when it happens it's the exact opposite and pulls me more out of the character than anything. Especially because class and character levels are such a strange and absurdly abstract concept to begin with.
Everything I watch your videos I miss the old days. As with most game mechanics I just assumed it's standard. Energy drain included. Keep up the great work. Can't wait to watch the next video.
'Actually, everything in 5e can be healed by going to bed for the night.' As cogent and pithy a summary of why 5e is a terrible system as has ever been said.
My players would HATE Energy Drain RAW, I'm certain they'd mutiny. I run it as: Damage x 100 XP. So a Wraith attacking with a roll of 3 would deal 3 damage and 300XP would be lost, recoverable only by further adventuring. If the monster normally doesn't deal damage and only drains energy, I roll 1d4. It's not as punishing as the books dictates it should be, but it at least has lasting consequences that can't just be healed.
So good! Instead of "Frightful Presence" as in 5e.......it's built in by the mechanic! As long as the players know. It would almost be a good idea to explain to the players before they go and encounter an undead like a Vampire...that, "Hey guys, just letting you know that if you are hit by the vampire.....he will drain your levels. Ready to hunt a vampire?" No need for them to save vs the "frightful presence" the players are already frightened and cautious. The effect of fear is built in instead of contrived. Brilliant!!!
A fun way to give the players knowledge the PCs might not have is to hand out 0-level human character sheets at the start of the session, and have them killed by the undead in question. "You are hit for three HP, and drained of two character levels. If those levels lost reduce you below zero, you're dead. If they reduce you exactly to zero, you lose all class abilities. Oh, your 0-level human instantly dies as the life is drained."
Though currently using 5e in my game, I have preferred 1e. I do appreciate BECMI though. As I mentioned to you in an earlier comment to another video of yours, I find myself retrofitting 5e to be more old school. I see the value of the fear factor in making players track stats by level. If one hasn’t however, a simple solution is dropping hit points per level using the average and then restoration being the same. And as I mentioned the exhaustion mechanic in 5e in that previous post, I use it for my level drain. And depending on the type of undead, the drain may or may not allow for a saving throw and the level drain of exhaustion may be, again depending on the creature inflicting damage, may be a random roll of possibly 2-5 levels of exhaustion let’s say. So for 5e life drain can be just as deadly if one is willing to home brew.
I have been playing since the mid-70's, agree 100%
I haven't thought about this in a long time (since my homebrew split off of D&D entirely in the 90's and doesn't resemble it at all by this point), but now that I think about how I'd handle it in BECMI if I were to do it today, I think I'd combine temporary loss of levels with some negative experience points, and a permanent loss of max HP.
Effective levels would be lost per the rules as written, in the short term. Those levels could be recovered at a rate of a week of complete rest (per level lost) in a safe location (if they want to continue to adventure while recovering, each level could recover in a month, instead). I don't think I'd give them negative experience to the same degree as the level loss, maybe half or so of the equivalent.
As far as HP goes, I'd have them roll a level's worth of dice for each level lost, and permanently subtract that from their max HP, with no possibility of recovery. I'd probably cap minimum possible max HP at the character's level, so you could have a 10th level fighter with only 10 max HP. I'd be interested to see how something like that might play out. The HP reduction makes sense to me, since HP is abstract, and the drain of the character's vital energy simply brings them closer to meeting their fate on some cosmic level, it doesn't actually make them less resilient to injury from a physical standpoint.
I honestly believe that the biggest reason why ED was poorly designed was the grim death spiral it creates,
for each level you lose, and it rapidly increases the speed and which you continue to lose even more.
I implemented a "version" of energy drain in the 5e campaign I was running. Not every undead would energy drain but some could and it was somewhat random.
Basically the closer to death an undead got the higher chance it would activate energy drain. I would make a d100 roll at 75% hp, 50% hp and 25% hp.
Once active I would make some sort of RP call out like "the eyes of the undead creature burn with a baleful unnatural evil and it's claws drip with an ebony hued secretion."
Higher CR undead would have bonuses to activate but once they were online they could drain anywhere from 1-4 levels per hit no save. It was way less painful compared to BECMI.
Your ability scores wouldn't change and your max hp wouldn't change but you couldn't use abilities from your drained levels.
This would apply to things like proficiency bonus, spell slots, extra attack, active or passive class features, you could lose even level 1 abilities but never your proficiency in equipment.
Any features lost if they were resource use abilities were treated as expended and couldn't be regained until the levels were restored.
Greater restoration was how you could uncap the drain, it would remove 2d8 drained levels, however to restore them you needed 1 full days bed rest per level restored.
I made it uncommon enough that it added a level of tension and challenge without being an annoyance, while still being a potential fear when facing off against the undead.
Then again we also used a home brew "very large monster injury" chart, if you were hit with a critical from a creature who was 2 sizes larger than you, you could be injured.
The rolls were random but it could be range from a small penalty to instant death, your head was crushed or you were completely impaled straight through your heart.
I think it added a great amount of dread when facing off against giants. The party didn't want to get their chest caved in when facing off against a hill giant so they were skirmishing.
They moved around a lot, disengaged and drew focus back and forth, it was actually very refreshing to see a heavy plate sword and board fighter reluctant to go into melee range.
I think I would adjust how many times it could be used, kinda like dragon breath.
I might also allow vampires to have 2 different kinds of energy drain:
1- a fast drain for combat
2- a slow bite to turn the victim into a vamp or make them a controlled servant, ( which would make the victim a slave for all practical purposes). As a player I do not recall ever fighting energy draining undead.
I personally really enjoy the intent of the mechanic. Level loss 100% sounds like a pain to track so my players and I have agreed to do something similar to a shadows STR drain. Energy Drain instead decreases all stats by 2 and the damage of the attack lowers your max HP by that much.
These effects are only reversed by the Remove Curse spell (which the party nearly never has immediate access to). This makes it so that its a decent threat and one that can be remedied whenever they're in a decently built city with temples and what not. Excellent tool to bring that fear factor back to the undead!
My Whitebox group ran into an energy drainer last october. Absolutely brutal.
Im lazy with the hp reduction. Usually just half the hit dice as if theyd rolled that. Bad? Maybe. But it make book keeping easy.
Multi-level parties were more common back then, especially if PCs joined at lower levels than main party
The thing with this kind of mechanism, including any "save or die", is that they are only fun if the players decide to take the risk in the first place. If they are caught by surprise, then it's just frustrating. And so, it hinges on the GM doing a good job telegraphing the danger and being generous with information, to enable the players to make preparations accordingly and decide the level of risk they take. Do, it's just hard to pull off in a fun way.
At last of what i think...
Agreed. Transparency is key and everyone at the table must understand what’s on the table. After that, it’s all about having fun in the agreed manner.
Thank you for your comment.
@@becmiberserker Thank you for the continued great content! You're awesome.
I love using energy drain , always have.
I appreciate the harsh consequences that the early rules provided
Cheers from Canada
Bob
To be honest I haven’t run BECMI since high school (though I do miss the setting, which is why I watch your videos), but even when I did I always gave a save for energy drain.
Awesome vid! This made me think about how to deal with Energy Drain for my homebrew games!
Glad I could help!
An absolute BECMI nightmare
Energy drain in a fight is great, it's a great way to increase the tension during combat. The problem comes with the aftermath. A tweak to how you can recover from the drain is what's needed. But, then you have the problem of how to do that without removing the fear the loss could cause. Maybe, give the PC a saving throw each night to recover 1 lost level, and each failed save makes the lost level permanently lost. I don't know, that's just one possibility. It doesn't need to be something recovered from quickly, but something that's somewhat recoverable without needing to just suck it up and regain it the slow way.
So, while in theory Energy Drain is a very fun and interesting mechanic, I do have some thoughts of my own on it. I run long-form (typically we aim for level 20) story and character-centric campaigns that generally fall into high fantasy with horror/eldritch elements. Energy drain falls into the category of mechanics I *wish* I could use, but almost never actually deploy as a DM.
While I do agree with the idea that if players are going up against undead, they should know that might have far-reaching consequences for them, I also believe that with such debilitating effects, players should be able to find information on the effect (and I do mean in-game), and have a way to prevent it or at least diminish it. Because that's the problem with Energy Drain - no book that mentions it gives guidelines on how to *prepare* for it. You can either avoid it completely or suffer the consequences.
With, for example, dragons, characters in 5e can anticipate, prepare and gain a benefit or upper hand (for example, by obtaining the Absorb Elements spell or by getting resistance potions).
I'm not someone who when running my games takes pride or joy in debilitating or killing PCs. Like, if they die they die, but with how PC-centric my games are I try to avoid purposefully putting them in situations like that without giving them a chance to mitigate it first.
Like, the PCs in my games are the main characters of the campaign. I don't want them to continually rely on outside forces to deal with things like energy drain (which is what you'll have to do if you don't want its effects gone after a long rest and want to deploy this for lower/mid-level parties in 5e.) I also don't think that limiting PC's abilities long-term/permanently is a good idea without some very purposeful reasoning. I've deployed Shadows in a oneshot recently, which took the level 9 paladin from 18 to 14 in strength. The fight slowed to a crawl due to party composition and while the player was fine, she did express that it sucked being unable to do what she designed her character to do.
Overall, I do have a couple of ideas for adapting energy drain for 5e (can't really speak for other editions as those aren't the ones I play in). Energy drain can be worked into a more short-term but severe effect with the additional maxHP deduction based on class hit die (if you loose features like higher-level spells of extra attack, even for a few rounds, you're gonna feel it.) Another way would be to make it save reliant, or provide a way to avoid it or lessen the impact.
Because of these level drains, I heard some DM demanding their players to keep track of the hp rolled for each level in a corner of the character sheet, so when that happened, the math would go fast.
BB - Awesome subject. I play a moderately home brewed 1/2e campaign. I fully support use of Energy Drain. I do provide for a saving throw vs Death Magic at the point of attack to see if the drain isn’t permanent. I also allow for a Heal (6th level) and a Lesser Restoration (5th level) to restore up to 2 and 1 levels, respectively. For lesser Undead I apply an Enervation attack rather than full Energy Drain. It softens the attacks slightly without removing all of the danger. These work for our campaign as it is lower Magic and the availability of upper level spell casters is limited to only wealthy and powerful city-states and kingdoms.
old school energy drain was and is epic.
Here is how I do it as a old D&D hobbyist in 5e. When it comes to energy drain and ability score drain there is no short rest for it and you can only gain them back with a long rest and each long rest only restores 1 point at a time of your maximum hit dice drain or ability score drain.
And keep in mind that there maybe times in the campaign that you will not have enough time for more then one long rest to get back to where your Charater was before all these drains. Being if your Character has been drained multiple times.
I had 4th kevel Cleric leading a party of 2nd level clerics. A wraith appeared and attacked. I fudged the numbers and gave a saving throw but still that cleric got hit which would likely mean TPK as none could realistically turn it. So i had the continual light cast on her necklace drained of its power completely and her pc not able to speak for a while. She turned the wraith but it followed them to the dungeon entrance and halted due to the sunlight. So no bei drain for me or mine..
Plus rust monsters seem overpowering too. Magic sword shield and armour unmagicked and your horde of coins melted like porridge for it to eat. No thanks.
I have found that players who dont respect the role that clerics have in the game, change considerably in their attitude when they need a restore and there is only one or two 18th level clerics in the country.
Also for high level PCs a scroll of restore can be offered as a prize to the most powerful of PCs as a prize and can be used to explain why clerics are not avaialbe for weeks at a time (recovering from making said scrolls).
We had a home rule that you could recover 1 level a month of rest and payer, but I always had the characters active so the player Character had to play an alternate Character
Used a pretty similar house rule, except it was a week. It made the immediate danger real and could cause the party to abandon and regroup if the level drainer was just an encounter in a dungeon and not the boss.
I think it strikes the balance between terror and consequences and not disincentivizing including them (or player morale when they loose half a year worth of progress in one encounter).
Also, I forgot Restoration was that high of a level in BECMI. Level 7 should be epic. Raise Dead Fully. Earthquake. Wish.
3.5, either in a book or in a FAQ can't remember, had a system where temporary penalties could be used in place of retrofitting a character mid encounter. The permanent retrofit would take place when the players had the downtime to sort it out. Just porting that one mechanic over to BECMI could alleviate the retrofit issue even if players don't have a progression chart. The only other issue I could see with the mechanic is the fact that a character who survives several lost levels is effectively dead as at that point the player is arguably just better off rolling up a new character with a level on par with the rest of the party. Considering this edition is known for having save or die and even no save, you just die, effects. That's actually not a huge deal.
Here is my house rule for energy drain: "Characters struck by an energy drain attack are allowed a saving throw vs. death ray to avoid the long-term effects of the drain. If the attacking creature has a double energy drain attack, the character has a penalty of -4 to the saving throw. If the saving throw is successful, the energy drain still occurs, but the character will be able to regain the lost level(s) with natural healing (one level restored for each full week of rest)." I also apply the full week of rest to a cleric that casts the Restore spell (instead of the range of days listed in spell description).
Edit: After some self reflection, and re-watching this video, I have removed the above rule. That said, I did add the ruling that HP are reduced by a Hit Die roll (just like advancing a level) and spellcasters lose a random spell from a memorized spell slot.
Honestly, tge best way to make undead scary in 5e is to have them inflict exhaustion. There is nothing players fear more in 5e than being exhausted. And it'll kill you right dead too.
I like energy drain, and still use it as is. Players run from these creatures unless they have a plan.
Run! While singing, "we got to get out of this place, even if it's that last thing we ever do"...🤣🤣🤣
Level drain is terrifying, but so is petrification. That's the other pillar of the twin horrors of old school D&D. But yes, old school D&D was a hack and slash style of gaming, coming as it did from the world of miniatures, so you weren't really expected to get invested in your character, deaths of characters were supposed to be common.
That's why you had henchmen, you could either use those as a substitute character for an adventure where you didn't want to risk your main character, or if your main character died you could elevate a henchman into your main PC instead of starting over a new character completely from scratch. But having a character survive to high level would have been a genuine accomplishment, most of your character would die early and often.
If you want a genuine role-playing experience instead of roll-playing, there are other systems out there that better support that than D&D.
It's also worth noting in BECMI especially, but even in 1st & 2nd editions of AD&D, experience points from killing monsters was typically pitiful, whereas you'd get a lot more XP from treasure, with gems, jewelry, and magic items being the most rewarding as far as the ratio of encumbrance to XP value goes. Because monsters didn't get you much XP, but often came with extreme dangers, such as energy drain, the more thoughtful players figured out quickly enough that any way you could bypass a fight and get at the loot by other means was always preferable.
And running away from a fight should have been a thing that happened at least some times, if not often. In the D&D cartoon back in the 1980s, the kids were constantly running away from fights despite having artifact-level weapons, because that's how the game was supposed to be, you didn't stand and fight every monster every time until one side or the other was dead, there was a lot of running away and figuring out how to bypass the fight.
No one runs away in 5E as every one will jump up after the fight, have a nap an keep going.
You’re right about petrification. Medusa were bloody scary too.
I think 3E hit a good balance with making Energy Drain just as dangerous in the short term, but more easily fixable in the long term.
"Extremely demoralizing" is an understatement. An important factor of design for 3e and later was recognition that the bulk of the player base was much more casual than before, and the disruption to play progression of energy drain easily knocked players out of the hobby entirely. It's one thing to grind at a computer game where level acquisition is comparatively quick (hours or days instead of weeks) and under the player's control, and another to grind with friends for weeks to become level 10, then suddenly get sidelined by dropping to level 4, when it was hard enough to get the players together twice a month.
So, yeah, I'm Old, and sometimes I miss the fear and drama of the old days, but considering I've played D&D exactly twice in the last six months due to schedule conflict issues, I don't really miss the sheer frustration and disappointment.
First, I love your channel, and enjoy your perspective, I am an old school ganer5but from. 1st A D&D and often ported stuff back and forth
In the intervening years, I have moved from d20 systems to others and explored a lot about how the undead affected players
We did run a lot from undead, or made overly complex plans to defeat them
As the games evolved to weakening the undead, I felt was a way to simply appeal to more players
Mostly to make them feel like top dogs, and take away any threats
The two systems I normally run In Vampires are still a threat, draining stats, and the threat of transformation
Played BECMI on a 10 day camping trip last week. One 3rd grade group, one jr high and one high school group. Then all together in a free for all!! Kids had a blast. The campaign has been going for ten years and kids wait all year to play in summer. 😂
While I personally think AD&D1 is the "most complete" D&D or most archetypal D&D, unlike most grogs I see OSRIC as a natural evolution in the design. More D&D than D&D as it were. I respect BECMI as "the only other edition of D&D". IMHO OD&D is 2/3 of a game, Holmes Basic was a starter set before there were starter sets, B/X was merely an engine being turned over before finally revving up to full BECMI. AD&D2 was Zeb Cook's desparate attempt to rewrite AD&D, merge in how people actually played AD&D (which was actually B/X play with AD&D options bolted on) and not make any unnecessary decisions (there are SCADS of optional rules in AD&D2, including the likes of "encumbrance). And of course D&D3 was the beginning of Modern D&D (see below).
I too understand the player's fear of energy drain, and respect it. Having these creatures in the game system do something different than every single other creature is simply what makes undead special. Not even all undead, just certain ones. The game is IMHO no longer being written to be good. That is to say, it's not written from the mindset of wanting to develop a specific experience, it's now written from the mindset of pure player enjoyment, preferably without DM intervention. I'd go so far as to say modern D&D hates DMs and considers them a necessary evil rather than the orchestrator, architect, judge, and referee that they should be considered. Modern D&D doesn't trust DMs. That is not to say DMs are always completely trustworthy. As you' mentioned in the video, DMs since I presume the beginning have been avoiding using undead in encounters due to their volatility.
When it comes to OSRIC, this is not playing by the rules or even playing the game as intended. Random encounters are a thing, and wraiths, wights, vampires are all on the encounter tables for most locations including urban night time, forests, hills, etc. In most locations it's as small as a fraction of 1% that you'll run into an energy draining undead. Graveyards it's a fraction of 26%, Jungles a fraction of 5%, and lastly Wetlands it's a fraction of 3%. The encounter tables themselves explain a fascinating world where, by the numbers, Graveyards, Jungles and Wetlands are more dangerous regarding becoming undead because that's what's happened there in the past. A Graveyard has a very diverse undead population, while the jungle is mostly Juju Zombies, Monster Zombies, and Vine Zombies (which aren't actually undead, lol). Anyway, sorry for the tangent, back to energy drain:
I personally give PCs who suffer energy drain a consolation prize. No, it is not resistance to further energy drain. Energy drain is scary and should remain scary. An unspoken ability to detect creatures like those that energy drained the character. Justification: If a PC has been drained by a wight, their remaining life force attunes to the cause of the loss of energy and seeks to avoid it happening again. I represent this as a Death Save I make for the PC (completely unannounced and behind the screen). If they succeed the Death Save, I look at the player who's PC has been drained by (example: Wights) and say "You have a feeling of palpable dread telling you that a Wight is near". I'll even grant a bonus to this save if there are a lot of Wights and amend the statement to state "a few Wights are near" or "several Wights are near" or "many Wights are near".
This benefit is by creature, so a character who was drained by a Wight can't detect Spectres, Vampires, Wraiths, etc. This benefit is LOST if the levels are restored in any way, as the life force no longer feels threatened by these sorts of creatures. If only some levels are restored but multiple creature types afflicted level drain, the strongest (highest HD) monster remains the longest (an easy reference is looking at the Turn Undead Table, the further down that table, the more that monster takes precedence). Vampires, therefore, have the most "staying power" in this regard.
Haven't played in a while. Your channel is making me want to dust off my old BECMI books.
For Energy Drain we played with, we had one house rule we used to take the edge off just a little and allow us to drop the bookkeeping. For losing low levels (was 9 the last one you roll for hp?) we would have the player roll a die one smaller than the die you rolled on the way up and reduce the hp by that die roll plus con modifiers.
Also, these level drops aren't as punishing as it sounds. Don't get me wrong, it still hurts, but if you are level 4 with a party of level 10s. The XP gained quickly get you to level 8 or 9 by the time the group gets to 11. Natively, it worked well (at least for us) someone hit with energy drain needed to be cared for at protected until they could mostly catch up.
Oh and another house rule: If you were hit by energy drain, the 1 level per adventure limit was ignored. ...or was the level limit a house rule. My memory isn't great.
I agree with a lot of that. Thanks for watching the channel!
I think two things need to be present if the party faces level draining undead. First, as you mentioned they should be aware of the possibility the creature is in the area. Second, there should be the availability of some kind of tactical advantage that the party can make use of if they choose.
I think we used to play it as a lose of constitution points that could only be healed by a powerful cleric. This made the undead scary and lead to more adventures doing stuff for that cleric.
But it was a longtime ago that I played and was only 14 so there was a lot of our own rules added.
I had issues with level drain only because of the retrofitting and consequent bookkeeping needed. It was a logistic nightmare as a DM. Being not fun was OK, since level drain should be scary and definitely not fun. Also, having a hard time finding a remedy, and for a very high price, was also OK for me. But the retrofitting was a real pain.
In the current years, I think the better energy drain mechanics are the ones from Pathfinder 1st Edition, the ones in the Core Rulebook. If you follow the rules as written and do not add anything too annoying, every drain attack basically reduces by one every level-based value, such as attack bonus, base saves, daily uses of class abilities, spell parameters and so on. The character doesn't lose experience points or hit points, beyond the damage the draining does, nor he loses class features or abilities, feats, spells and other things, but all of them basically get nerfed. Heavily.
Another good thing is that the drain can be temporary (one save per day to remove one level of draining, multiple days necessary for multiple drains) or permanent (only magical treatment to remove those), but this is also the part that doesn't work that well: access to restoration magic is far too easy and it comes without any consequence.
If you fix the restoration spell line, though, I think this to be the perfect mechanic to keep that scary aura the draining creatures have (there are not just undead after all) while at the same time removing the major issues that came with it in the past.
I didn't remember the "you cure a drain, you get a drain" collateral effect of restoration in BECMI, since at the time I had no character survive long enough to get to cast 7th level clerical spells, but that could be the perfect fix for the modern spells. That, or something on that line.
We were talking about this a few weeks back. TO take on those energy draining undead you had to be prepared. They were scary.
We drain xp without the level loss. So it takes that much longer to go up the next level.
A simple and elegant solution.
energy drain in classic DND was extra ounishing considering how slow progression was.
I started with DnD and my memory is kinda hazy on it, but I don't tink I either used or encountered much level drain, but it was scary as hell.
Another creature that was always way scary was the carrion crawler with it's paralyse ability. being paralysed for 2-12 combat turns after a failed safe probably meant you weren't going to make it.
This is the best thing I ever saw.
Undead are always scary. First it starts pretty small. Skeletons and zombies cannot flee due to morale by virtue of the fact that.... they don't fear death.
Ghouls can hit and paralyze you. Taking you out the fight.
Then we get into the energy drain monsters, which will invoke real fear upon the players. And by the way, all undead don't make noise beyond doors. Truly horrifying
I always run ghouls extra deadly. Once they paralyze you they use their next action to start devouring you with no concern given to self preservation.