Level Drain

Level drain, or “energy drain”, is when a level of experience is removed from a character.

Effect on hit points

The hit points rolled for the drained level are temporarily removed from the character's hit points.1) Players who followed the instructions during character creation will know how many hit points they rolled for each class level. If the campaign did not follow the instructions on that page for character creation and the player failed to record their rolls, the DM will need to decide whether to charge them a max roll or give them the benefit of the low or high average roll. The player should not destroy the record of the lost hit die roll however, since it will be used when the level is regained. Hit dice are never re-rolled in cases of level drain.2) PHB 53 *restoration* reads, “restoring additional hit dice (or hit points)”, it does not say re-rolling. This ruling also prevents gaming the system to re-roll bad rolls via level drain, though admittedly doing so would be a gambit since *restoration* ages the caster 2 years and therefore checks system shock.

Effect on multi-class characters

The highest class level is drained. If there is a tie, the class with the most XP will be drained. Further ties are resolved by a die roll.

Effect on dual-class characters

The most recently gained level is drained.

Training costs

Training costs must be paid to recover restored levels.

However, this the cost is proportionate to the XP loss.Ex For example, if only one level is drained and therefore the character is halfway to their previous level, only half the training cost is required. If two levels are drained and therefore the character has lost all of the XP for their highest level and half the XP of the previous level, the cost to gain back the lowest level is halved (since only half the XP was lost), but the cost to gain back the highest level (the first one that was drained) is full.

Example A: A 5th level character is drained to 4th level. The training cost is 4*1500/2 = 3000 gp.

Example B: A 5th level character is drained to 3rd level. The training cost is (3*1500/2)+(4*1500) = 8250 gp.