Permanent ability damage

[Pinkcrusade]

Greetings everyone.


So, an idea I had for a campaign that I am running soon is that eventually, a character (random) will find a book: the book's contents are completely blank, but penetrates your mind with the horrors of the Far Realm -- I was thinking about representing this in a visual way (hallucinations, paranoia, nightmares etc..) and I also want it to be present in a mechanical way, such as their Wisdom ability score decreasing.

So, if I was lower their Wisdom by, let's say four, and I wanted them not to be able to just go to the friendly neighborhood Cleric and get it removed, what spell/ability would I have to use to ensure that the player will be stuck with it for a decent quantity of time?


Thanks!

[bekeleven]

Ability drain can be healed by a restoration spell, which costs 100GP per casting.

[Morcleon]

Ability burn is a special type of ability damage that cannot be magically or psionically healed. I'm not aware of an ability that allows you to deal this do a target though.

[Tar Palantir]

You're looking at custom content territory. Nothing printed works quite like what you're looking for. I've brewed something similar for an ancient ur-vampire in one of my games. It permanently reduced Con with its blood drain unless you'd normally be immune to ability drain, in which case it did ability drain (so that protective spells basically knocked it down to the same strength as regular vamps without protection).

[HunterOfJello]

Restoration is a spell that clerics don't get until level 9. All you'd have to do is simply put your characters in a setting where the gods are generally weak and there are very few clerics above level 8 anywhere in the world.

Unearthed Arcana has some cool rules for Sanity and psychological ramifications of losing it. You can start off from there for ideas.

You could also present the curse (or whatever it ends up being) as a double-edged sword. They take those penalties, but they gain a great deal in return or they are able to continue their quest only as long as one of the party members is being influenced by it. We're going a bit Lord of the Rings style here, but that could be a fun way for things to go. If you combine it with the suggestions in Unearthed Arcana, you could also give them new psychological afflictions each time they possess the influence of the book.

[Nettlekid]

Unless the target has Iron Heart Surge, I don't think a permanent penalty could be removed. If you gave them a cumulative -1 Wisdom penalty for each stage that you want their Wisdom to drop, I don't know what they'd do to get rid of it.

[bekeleven]

Unless the target has Iron Heart Surge, I don't think a permanent penalty could be removed. If you gave them a cumulative -1 Wisdom penalty for each stage that you want their Wisdom to drop, I don't know what they'd do to get rid of it.

Dispel Magic, Greater Dispel Magic, Remove Curse, Break Enchantment, Limited Wish, Disjunction, Wish, Miracle?

I mean, you could make it custom immune to all of those, in which case it amounts to the same thing as just reducing the ability score any other fiat method.

[Ravens_cry]

OK, here's a question . . . why?
Unless you are playing a Call of Cthulhu-esque game where knowledge only seems to have the power to hurt you, permanently hindering a character like that with absolutely no chance of getting better? That's just cold.

[Particle_Man]

Two effects from the book hit the PC; one is obvious, the other is subtle:

a) Ability Drain X to Y.

b) Contingency Spell - trigger: Ability Drain is removed. Effect: Ability Drain X to Y.

If b happens fast enough it will seem to the character that the restoration spell failed, and they would be unlikely to try it again after a failure the first time.

[Urpriest]

This sounds like a run of the mill cursed item. A curse that gives you a -4 penalty to Wisdom and makes you unwilling to admit that you are cursed (and thus seek help) seems perfectly reasonable for a cursed item. You could still remove it with Remove Curse if the other PCs force the cursed one to get help, but I assume you were going to let players get rid of it with Remove Curse anyway since no sensible DM would curse a character without recourse.