Energy Drain: Softening The Blow

Energy draining monsters ("life draining", for those of a certain age!) are traditionally the most horrible thing in an RPG. Other maladies, even death itself, can be cured by some kind of divine magic. Losing experience points and levels is equivalent to losing the real-world time that you, as a player, invested in gaining them. It doesn't just injure your character, it injures you. As an added insult, it requires a huge amount of awful bookkeeping in the middle of an adventure to figure out how many of your abilities you just lost along with your stolen levels.

How did you offend the GM enough to deserve this?

But at the same time, it's hard to represent the existential horror of confronting a Nazgul wraith in any other way. Creating a monster that does something so horrible that you want to run away from it on sight is thematically an important element of getting player-emotions to match the character-emotions of dread and terror that should be associated with a crypt of full of the living dead.

Reading through ACKS makes it clear that its designed as the classic, "fate worse than death" combat result. It really drains levels, and everything that comes with them: spells, proficiencies, max health, attack bonuses, and all special class abilities. And there are no standard restoration-like spells that restore it either. Here's a quote from the rules: "The effect can only be reversed with ritual magic, such as the 9th level mage ritual wish."

A variety of methods have been used over multiple editions of D&D to reduce the horrible effects of life draining attacks:

• providing a spell to cure it (AD&D and all later editions)
• allowing an initial saving throw (3rd edition)
• allowing multiple saving throws (3.5 and Pathfinder)
• letting it wear off over a period of time (4th edition and Next)
• replacing it with stat drain effects (also 4th edition)

All of these can cumulatively result in life drains being reduced from a source of absolute dread and fear into a fairly minor inconvenience.

At the moment, I'm leaning toward two changes that reduce the bookkeeping and permanency of an energy drain, but maintain its overall status as a worse-than-death fate:

1. Limiting the effect to a "permanent negative level" that only affects max health (-1 HD per negative level) and any 1d20 throws for attacks/saves/abilities (-1 per negative level). No loss of knowledge or experience, only of vigor. A character will still die (and possibly become undead) if negative levels exceed positive levels, or if max health becomes negative.
2. Adding an aging effect that increases age by a number of years equal to 10% of the current age, rounding up. (A 25 year old character will age by 3 years.) This can potentially cause stat reductions or even death, as listed in the table for age brackets by race.
3. Providing a standard 6th level divine ritual that reverses the "negative level" effect (not the aging effect!), as an alternative the 9th level of a wish spell. This restoration ritual requires a material component taken from the particular caster or undead creature that inflicted the energy drain.

The first effect simplifies the level drain mechanically in a familiar 3rd edition way, and avoids the oddness of mages "unlearning" spells. The second effect provides something that can't easily be removed by anything short of a wish, which maintains the idea of it being a uniquely horrible effect, as in 1st edition. The final change provides a way to act on the frustration of level-draining attacks with revenge on the monster that did it!

That's more nasty than the current rule in some ways (aging is a very permanent way to die!), but less nasty in other ways (no excessive bookkeeping work, and a plot-driving path to reverse it). It also makes anti-aging magic (like the fabled Philosopher's Stone) fiercely coveted, which feels authentic from a literary standpoint.