Shattered Kingdoms

energy drain could be changed to temporary level loss. You are immediately hit with a negative level, reducing your effectiveness but after a certain period of time, you return to your original status.

If you want to go a little more evil, you could make it a fortitude save to remove the negative levels, like they do in DnD.

Temporary Level Loss would be nothing to be worried about. It's not going to affect anything major with your character at all. The only point why real level loss impact was so great and feared is because it was an impact you FELT. You had to grind for hours to get back what was lost.

A temporary level loss has no real impact - Your character is still able to do everything it was before, just wait it out and the level would come back.

I like that idea the most. Temporary level loss.

Temporary level loss would just make Energy Drain even weaker then it's current form....

I don't get it.

How? Currently, it does maybe a tick of xp dmg. I heard it does less than that. So, in one casting of edrain (proposed) equals 6+ castings of edrain (now). If the person is stuck with the lvl loss for an IC day, that is significant. They can't grind it, they can't have extra lvls to soak it up. They lose a level, period.

What bothers me about temporary level loss is that noone would actually bother to cast energy drain that way.

How about this, though. Instead of one or two levels, energy drain temporarily draws 2d4. This means you could potentially end up 8 levels lower.

This should not count towards saving items if you should log out, but should last a while just to be felt.

Well I'm not looking at the code, but from my experience one level really doesn't make that much of a difference in game mechanics.

The part about energy drain that made it feared was that it was an affect that had an IMPACT - You had to grind those hours back.

Right now it still does - at least a little bit.

Temporary Level loss? What is that going to do really? As far as I know temporarily being put down a level will affect game mechanics minimally.

That is why I proposed a stat drain. Or leaving it as it is.

I just laugh at the idea of temporary level loss. That's certainly not anything I would be afraid of? I don't understand why anyone else would. Or why they would bother to cast it.

Nearly all calculations include a level-based aspect. When there used to be heroes, they would be elevated to level 51, which was considered a benefit.

Here are some things that could be effected by level: miss chance, resists, stats, parry/dodge etc.

Depending on how long the temporary loss is, it can make a huge impact. A paladin with level loss cannot call his GM armor. A necromancer with level loss cannot raise wraiths. Scouts can't tame the highest level pets, tribunal members can't command their highest level units.

Adding to this, removing the timer on edrain would further the effect. Make it work like fatigue-- every hit costs another level and resets the timer. You might lose 4 levels in a fight with a necro and be down for 4 hours perhaps.

Even if level loss is only for 1 hour per hit, if you log out, you're subject to level thieves. And I wouldn't let the timer run down while you're logged out.

Additonally, there's no reason that the temporary loss could not be added to the already existing effects of energy drain.
I don't know what game you are playing, but levels in SK are definitely important in every aspect.

The difference between 50 and 51 is not comparable to the benefits gained from any other level increase.

Temporary level loss and level thieves, if these two are combined, will make edrain a VERY annoying spell.