In article <au7u13dn1tra6hi77f7lp9je6a4q8amqt0@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Erol K. Bayburt <ErolB1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:40:33 +0000 (UTC),
>mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>>Touch-attack level drain and stat drain (no saves!). This could
>>either be ungodly touch AC, or death magic immunity.
>The "defenses" I've seen to this one have been along the lines of "the
>GM uses these attacks sparingly, and only against parties with quick
>and easy access to Restoration."
That's my recollection of our 1st ed. and variant games in the 80's
and 90's, but lately the big problem with level/stat drain is not
"Will we be able to undo this?" it's "Is the target character going
to be irrecoverably dead in another round?" My PCs recently lost
7 levels in 2 rounds--and it's a spectacular death spiral after that
point! (Luckily the damage was spread out.) Negative levels are in many
ways worse for your survival than old-style level loss; in particular,
they are -1 to saves per negative level, which real level loss never is.
Jon's PCs met an adult black dragon of significant plot im****tance,
drained 8 levels from it, charmed it, feebleminded it, and turned
it into a lizard. The level drain has no save (Enervation) and
everything else was a cinch with a target at -8 to all saves.
(He then selectively unpicked the spells so that he could question
it. Module authors seldom allow for events like this....)
>In the read-only literature, high level types seem to be naturally
>immune to charm & fear effects, or at least highly resistant. In the
>worst case, a high level type will attack friends at a much lower
>effective level if charmed to do so.
One thing that writing a novel set in a high-magic setting really
did was spoil RPG charm spells for me. You can be *so* much more
subtle and work with so many more gradations if you don't have to be
able to represent everything mechanically....
It's interesting that charm spells remain one of the most obvious
inconsistencies not fixed in v3.5. The authors cannot seem to make
up their mind whether Charm Person is Dominate or not--look at the
suggested combat tactics for the mind flayer for a really blatant
example. Charm Person not only allows you to order someone to kill
his friends, it keeps him still while you *eat his brain*? Not
clear what you'd need Dominate for in that case.... I'm not sure
why this point is not addressed, but it's suggestive of a basic
issue somewhere.
>Part of the problem, IMO, is that D&D really doesn't have "high level"
>in the sense of "no longer can be treated as a mook." The concept of
>"there's always a bigger fish" has been exaggerated into "there's
>always someone who can treat you as a speed bump."
There may be a level where this is no longer true, but it's past
my personal Singularity limit (Wish and Mordenkainen's Disjunction)
and I no longer have any idea what's going on in the game at those
levels.
Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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