Low magic ways of curing ability drain

[Crake]

Ok, so I have an upcoming campaign that is fairly low magic, as such there isn't a local cleric you can approach for a casting of restoration to cure ability drain. What low magic (preferably as mundane as possible) ways are there to cure ability drain?

Pretty much everything else is is curable with time except this. Note that this is from a DM perspective, I'm looking for a solution to this problem. I have contemplated allowing ability drain to heal naturally over a longer period of time, say 1 point per 15-20 days (double that if you've been tended to the whole time, quadruple that if you've been bed-resting 24 hours a day for the entire duration), but I'd prefer that to not be the case, since it diminishes the severity of ability drain somewhat, especially since time isn't much of an issue (at least for now) in this game.

[Deaxsa]

How easy is it to acquire ability drain? In other words, why not leave it the way it is? very few things actually use ability drain, and those that do can be looked at by you, maybe nerfed to ability damage. Then, when certain, very horrendous, irreperable things happen, you deal ability drain (such as aging, losing brain cells, lowering the white blood cell count.. HIV/AIDS is basically a high DC con drain disease).

[Crake]

How easy is it to acquire ability drain? In other words, why not leave it the way it is? very few things actually use ability drain, and those that do can be looked at by you, maybe nerfed to ability damage. Then, when certain, very horrendous, irreperable things happen, you deal ability drain (such as aging, losing brain cells, lowering the white blood cell count.. HIV/AIDS is basically a high DC con drain disease).

Edit: I changed my mind, I don't trust my players enough for them to not click that spoiler tag lol.

But sufficed to say, ability drain will definitely occur, hopefully not too often, but it's there, and I'd like a way for players to cure themselves of it without magic, although it doesn't have to be instantnaeous healing.

Another idea I just had was perhaps they need to continuously consume some kind of drug or herb over an extended period of time, which will eventually cure the drain, but if they're denied the drug/herb for an extended period, they need to start over, and in the case of a drug, they might suffer side effects/addictions

[Kelb_Panthera]

Question: How have you achieved low-magic?

Anyway, restoration appears on the healer's list as a third level spell. It's available in potion form. Why not just let them get potions of restoration through a specialized vendor or in a major city?

[Crake]

Question: How have you achieved low-magic?

Anyway, restoration appears on the healer's list as a third level spell. It's available in potion form. Why not just let them get potions of restoration through a specialized vendor or in a major city?

I've achieved low magic through having a magical dark age (the source of magic almost shut off, making the whole world mundane, but luckily it was saved in the events of my previous game in the same setting), magic is being rediscovered slowly, and there's an elitist magical society that regulates those capable of casting magic and imposing artifical limits on the magical population. Thats for arcane magic, for divine magic, the "gods" are just super stingy, and only grant spells to a small portion of worshippers. As such there are many "priests" but only a few "clerics".

Potion form works great though, i have a deus ex machina crazy potion maker that fits the bill quite nicely for that.

[Slipperychicken]

In keeping with the low-magic setting, why not just convert ability drain into ability damage? Then it can be healed normally. And it's not like there's any real narrative difference between them: The latter just requires a spellcasting class which won't be available in your game.

As for severity, even regular ability damage takes you out of commission for a few days, at the very least. Do you really want to cripple your PCs for months while they recover?

[TuggyNE]

Potion form works great though, i have a deus ex machina crazy potion maker that fits the bill quite nicely for that.

If that didn't work out, I'd have recommended having some alchemical brewer who sells potions of similar price that either a) act like regular restoration, but alchemical instead of magical, or b) merely convert all ability drain to ability damage right then and there.