Another post, finally...Level Drain!

Sorry for the long overdue post.  I have been dealing with things, both in game and out of game.  I haven't really wanted to come back here and write anything for awhile.  Yet, that has gone now and I am back.

In the game I am DMing on Mondays, just last night we had an issue.  The characters I have are still neophyte, 2-5 in levels.  They ran into a spectre.  I was running it a particular way and everyone but the monk in the party got out of the way.  He lost two levels, bringing him down to level 1.  Not as bad as you would think, he is playing a dual class, and already had a few other levels under his belt.  Yet, losing levels sucks regardless of how many you have.

Then, there was a unanimous vote from the party that this was a bad call.  I give my players one such call a session.  They happened to use it at the end of the session.  I gave the monk back his levels and xp.

Before I go any further, though I don't want to tell a gaming story, the basics of what happened should be set up.  The spectre was demanding a book from the thief PC, they were in a tight corridor where the five adventurers, four PCs and one NPC and one NPC non-com.  The thief rushed past everyone to throw the book down a pit instead of give the book back.  The rest of the PCs, and the two NPCs, made a Dex. check to get out of the way.  The monk did not.  The spectre, furious that he had to chase the book, was able to expand his essence and shot down after the thief.  Everyone got out of the way, except the monk.  There was no "to hit" roll on the monk, yet I said he took damage and lost two levels.  This was then amended by the vote later.

So, I am getting ready for bed and I start looking through my fellow bloggers out of habit and I find Raggi over at LotFP has come up with an interesting idea on level drain.

While it is not something I would take whole cloth, I do find it an interesting idea.  I might start to implement a system like Raggi's instead of the somewhat cumbersome level drain idea.  And, another thing I was thinking about and toying with is, since this is something that is a soul attack, the idea of the -10 hp that most of players are familiar with might not exist when it comes to energy drain.  That -10 is for physical damage, not for something that attacks the soul.

This is something I will be tinkering with and I want to try and get a podcast going about it.  Speaking of which, sorry for those fans who like the podcast.  We took a short hiatus.  We should be returning to it next week.

Until next time...