Ability drain

[Majestic7]

Hello there.

A character in my campaign messed up with a vampire and ended up to get drained. In short, he seduced the vampire without realizing what kind of creature it was and got more than he bargained for. Thanks to dominate, he has no idea what happened, only that he was pretty damn exhausted the next morning and part of the weariness seems to never rub out.

In short, I houseruled that the ability drain in Conan is too tough. Losing 1d4 CON permanentally is pretty tough when the Golden Wine of Xuthal is practically the only way to recover it. Thus I've houseruled that one point of drain damage is permanent, while other points are only ability damage, not drain. This applies to other creatures with stat drain as well.

What do you think of such ruling? Does it make messing with ability drain creatures too easy? After all, they can still cause high amounts of permanent drain with their attacks, if they hit multiple times.

 

[argo]

In short, I houseruled that the ability drain in Conan is too tough. Losing 1d4 CON permanentally is pretty tough when the Golden Wine of Xuthal is practically the only way to recover it. Thus I've houseruled that one point of drain damage is permanent, while other points are only ability damage, not drain. This applies to other creatures with stat drain as well.

Thats more than fine. Heck even that houserule may be too tough if your players face vampires more than once in a campaign. IMC I just went ahead and dropped ability drain/level drain alltogether in favor of ability damage.

Ability drain is balanced on the assumption that cures are available for it. Even if the rest of the party has to drag the poor sucker who got hit back to town and go into debt to afford it the cure is available. If you want to keep drain you should consider adding new alchemical items besides Golden Wine that can serve this need.

Another option is to use an entierly different mechanic. The concept behind ability/level drain is that monsters are more terrifying if the affects of their attacks linger and/or are difficult to deal with. So one alternative would be to house-rule something based on the mechanic for Diseases where the afflicted character will have to make multiple saves over a period of time to throw off the effects. He may even wind up bedridden and require the services of someone with the Heal skill to help him beat the Fort saves. This should satisify the requirment for "lingering effects" and make the players think twice about screwing with such creatures.

OTOH - ability drain could work for a singularly important villian. If the players want to face down Akishiva herself they are going to have risk permanent injury to do it. The key here is you should actually let the players know what they face ahead of time. By raising the stakes in this way it makes the encounter that much more dangerous and thus makes them cooler heroes for risking it. I would only do this once in a while though.

Hope that helps.

 

[Axerules]

IMC I just went ahead and dropped ability drain/level drain alltogether in favor of ability damage.

Ability drain is balanced on the assumption that cures are available for it. Even if the rest of the party has to drag the poor sucker who got hit back to town and go into debt to afford it the cure is available. If you want to keep drain you should consider adding new alchemical items besides Golden Wine that can serve this need.

Another option is to use an entierly different mechanic. The concept behind ability/level drain is that monsters are more terrifying if the affects of their attacks linger and/or are difficult to deal with. So one alternative would be to house-rule something based on the mechanic for Diseases where the afflicted character will have to make multiple saves over a period of time to throw off the effects. He may even wind up bedridden and require the services of someone with the Heal skill to help him beat the Fort saves. This should satisify the requirment for "lingering effects" and make the players think twice about screwing with such creatures.

OTOH - ability drain could work for a singularly important villian. If the players want to face down Akishiva herself they are going to have risk permanent injury to do it. The key here is you should actually let the players know what they face ahead of time. By raising the stakes in this way it makes the encounter that much more dangerous and thus makes them cooler heroes for risking it. I would only do this once in a while though.

Hope that helps.

I also dropped ability/level drain to ability damage. To keep things not to complicated, I just changed recovery time to show some "lingering effects", but the idea is the same : you're NOT playing D&D so there's no Healing cleric and permanent drain should generally ( perhaps with the exception of Akivasha or a really powerful opponent like Argo said ) not be used against your players .

 

[Majestic7]

Thanks to both for your comments,

OTOH - ability drain could work for a singularly important villian. If the players want to face down Akishiva herself they are going to have risk permanent injury to do it. The key here is you should actually let the players know what they face ahead of time. By raising the stakes in this way it makes the encounter that much more dangerous and thus makes them cooler heroes for risking it. I would only do this once in a while though.

Hope that helps.

Yeah, it's not like I was planning on it to happen. They just met Niccolo from the Messantia book and one of the characters decided to try to seduce him. Well, he was happy to accept and use the opportunity to have a drink. He could have just drained the character dry and it would have been fitting in to the personality of the said vampire, but I thought loss of one CON would be bad enough. Besides, the player troupe is useful to him alive at the moment.

The characters are on their way to Stygia now, I think I can arrange for them to have a single dose of the Golden Wine available to them at some point. At a ridicilously high price, of course. It will solve the problem of them having too much money I haven't felt like just grabbing away unfairly.

On a general level, when it comes to stat drain, I think I'll try keeping it on this level. One points permanent, other points just damage. That way, the most dangerous supernatural beings will scare not only the characters but as well the players!

Hmm, perhaps some sort of fort save would be in question - like having the drain to be possible to shrug off like a disease, by making a certain number of succesfull fort saves in a row?

 

[Ichabod]

One possibility that comes to mind for transient-permanence is to have the ability loss only last until the character gains a new level.

It seems less arbitrary than presenting the cure (unless you want the quest for the cure to be an adventure). Yet, true permanent ability loss is one of those uberharsh things to do to characters. Would much rather have a permanent hit point loss (for characters around 6+ level) or whatever.

 

[Netherek]

I would swap ability drain for damage on the vampires, it just doesn't seem appropriate. All a vamp is doing is drinking your blood, and blood does return, so it shouldn't be permanent. Perhaps because in lore it does debilitate over time that you have to make a save for each point of drain to see what is permanent.

 

[samagee]

Yea, let's nancy it. That's the spirit. No side campaigns needed to get that ability problem fixed.

 

[Majestic7]

I think I'll go with treating the ability drain from a vampiric bite as a disease, which DC is set by the magic attack roll of the vampire. Thus, it is possible to heal from the drain by succeeding in two fort saves in a row (say, one per week), but if the vampire is powerful and a sorcerer as well, it might well be easier to get some Golden Wine.

 

[slaughterj]

Yea, let's nancy it. That's the spirit. No side campaigns needed to get that ability problem fixed.

Conan is not a quest-like setting like LotR, so why should there be some massive campaign to fix an ability score problem? Further, in Conan, healing rates are amped up, both to reflect the more heroic setting and to counterbalance the lack of magical healing. So to make it a campaign to overcome some ability drain seems inappropriate for Conan. Maybe an extended adventure to get rid of something more esoteric like a curse, maybe, but not just ability drain.

 

[samagee]

Yea, let's nancy it. That's the spirit. No side campaigns needed to get that ability problem fixed.

Conan is not a quest-like setting like LotR, so why should there be some massive campaign to fix an ability score problem? Further, in Conan, healing rates are amped up, both to reflect the more heroic setting and to counterbalance the lack of magical healing. So to make it a campaign to overcome some ability drain seems inappropriate for Conan. Maybe an extended adventure to get rid of something more esoteric like a curse, maybe, but not just ability drain.

Yet, in the first Conan movie itself they had to divert time in order to deal with Conan being crucified. I guess we are just going to have to disagree on this.

 

[slaughterj]

Yea, let's nancy it. That's the spirit. No side campaigns needed to get that ability problem fixed.

Conan is not a quest-like setting like LotR, so why should there be some massive campaign to fix an ability score problem? Further, in Conan, healing rates are amped up, both to reflect the more heroic setting and to counterbalance the lack of magical healing. So to make it a campaign to overcome some ability drain seems inappropriate for Conan. Maybe an extended adventure to get rid of something more esoteric like a curse, maybe, but not just ability drain.

Yet, in the first Conan movie itself they had to divert time in order to deal with Conan being crucified. I guess we are just going to have to disagree on this.

LOL @ citing the Conan movie as source material :lol: