D&D Wights

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Gumby Bush

"Level" Drain [52]:

With a touch you can reduce the capacity of another being. Roll Brawling or DX to hit, and roll Will versus your opponent's HT. If you win, you remove 25 points in the way of removing abilities or skills, adding disadvantages, or reducing attributes. As a special effect, these reductions are chosen by the GM rather than yourself, but you do not need to carefully select abilities to remove which you know your adversary actually has.

Statistics: Affliction 1 (Variable Enhancement, +25% enhancement, limited to disads/removed skills/etc. (-20%) +200%; Extended Duration, dispelled by Remove Curse, +150%; Melee Attack, C, -30%; Malediction 1 +100%) [52]

That's ingenious, and I don't see anything outstandingly bad about it. Though I would prefer a version that couldn't be dispelled, but had to be compensated for by earning back the lost points. "I am not the man I was before I faced that creature."

[Gumby Bush]

Thanks Bill!

Making it so it can't be dispelled is pretty simple. Just raise the cost to [67].

Or, you know, it's originally for a monster, so maybe we don't care too much about the cost :).

[LokRobster]

Great point about the fun being in the eye of the beholder (or heart of the player).
I was remembering 12 year-old me running into a Wight as a player and hating it; but truly, it does represent a risk or effect that is significant! It definitely gets a consequence that you get suspense/disappointment from by truly taking away something the player treasures.
Horror and Fear are primal reactions, and can be fun :)

[ericthered]

Does level drain have to permanent in order to be its characteristic self? I avoided it like the plauge when I was GMing D&D, but I read order of the stick and its mostly treated there as an exotic HP bar/ debuff method. If getting the level back just takes the right spell, wouldn't it loose a lot of its "unfun"?

[Kromm]

Many gamers can accept "this is me at my best" and "I'm dead – time to make a new character," but dislike lasting states in between (crippled, drained, etc.) because these imply going over old ground just to get back to where they were, rather than breaking new ground. I'd compare it to people who would rather be fired than demoted, and who quit to look for a new job if demoted: Having to "redo" the work of getting to where they were seems more tedious than doing the work of finding a new job where nobody will know about their little setback. Similarly, a lot of gamers would sooner retire a character, and do the work of creating and introducing a new one, than slog back to where they were from a lasting setback. Even if the new PC is weaker, they'll be doing something new and interesting. And if the GM lets new PCs start at the average character level of the group, well, there's no reason not to do that!

So . . . know your players. If they see their PCs as collections of numbers and abilities and gear, and nothing more, they're going to hate level drain. They won't be motivated by love of their alter-ego, revenge, showing strength, or whatever; they'll just see it as the GM stealing from them, or even as something akin to a corrupted saved game, and get irritated. If you let them create a new PC, they're very likely to do that because at least they'll be exploring something new, not retracing steps.

In real life, I've known not one but several people who've quit their job, left a relationship, and changed cities because their "old life" handed them a defeat. Rather than fight their way back from that defeat, they decided to get a new everything, figuring, "Well, I have nothing left to lose." This translates into gaming, and isn't a particularly rare mentality.