🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 08:29:41 -0800 (PST), Justisaur
<just...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I've tried replaying it, I think last year, but didn't get anywhere near
>the end.  I quit after running into the wights, I guess level drain 
>really does suck.
>
>- Justisaur

Heh. :)

 Level drain always means immediately reload to me. It did in Pool of
Radiance and it did this year when I played Wizardry 5. I hate level
drain. But your post reminded me of something. 

I am pretty sure the game was Might and Magic III: The Isles of Terra,
but don't hold me to that.  I remember some of my party members were
dying a lot. I didn't notice at first, but when I did, I took a closer
look at their stats and noticed that they had very few hit points! I
realized soon that it was due to having very little vitality. What
happened to their vitality?!? Oh.... ok..... that's what happened.....

**Casting Resurrection will permanently remove one point of vitality
with each use of this spell.**. Well, it would have been nice to know
that 40 resurrections ago!

So what was happening was I cast resurrection on my dead character.
They come back to life with fewer hit points as loss in vitality will
do that.  So they will die even faster now of course. When they do, I
resurrect them again. They come back to life with even fewer hit
points so now they die even faster. When they do die, I resurrect
again........

I have never ever once in my gaming career cast a resurrection spell
on a party member in an old school RPG ever again. Death of a single
party member is treated the same way level drain is to me... which is
to immediately reload the game.

Justisaur, at least you knew you were being level drained and could do
something about it immediately (in your case, quit the game). But
imagine slowly gimping your own characters through your own actions
and not realizing it until it was far too late to do anything about it
short of going to a much earlier save which I wasn't about to do.

Level drain sucks but permanent loss of stats on your characters sucks
worse.