#necropraxis

[gilgalahad]

Humanity Restored

Dark Souls Remastered (source: Polygon) On Twitter (!) recently, @BrianBloodaxe brought up level drain, which reminded me how I ran it in OD

A good way to treat level drain for old school rules.

[tenleaguesbeneath]

On Twitter (!) recently, @BrianBloodaxe brought up level drain, which reminded me how I ran it in OD&D for Vaults of Pahvelorn. What follows is a slight refinement of my previous approach

A system for handling level drain that keeps it in its OD&D-style glory as a danger, while making it less punishing and more a driver of gameplay and game decisions.

The short version is that you lose levels but not EXP, and regain them by either killing the thing that level drained you, or gaining a level (if you’re level 4, drained to 2, you can then level up directly to 5 as though you were never level drained at all).

I’m particularly interested in the Abyssal Disturbances section (minor random effects, mostly bad but all of which are a little bit leverageable), though I personally would play them, like, a Disturbance sets in at the end of an encounter where you are level drained, and may become permanent when you overcome the drain (maybe with a saving throw to remove it, maybe removing it by defeating the violating spirit removes the disturbance while it lingers if you work past it), because I’m a fan of characters carrying their adventures on their backs