Why do Restoration & Greater Restoration have GP/XP costs?

[rferries]

Just a quick question - what's the basis for giving those spells GP/XP costs? It just makes ability drain and negative levels a pain to deal with; why should they be that much harder to remove than diseases/poisons etc, especially since they already need specialised spells to cure? Or is that the point - that negative energy is SO destructive that you need specialised, costly spells to counter it?

I can sort of understand giving identify a cost - it takes some of the fun out of experimenting with the item yourself (and risking a curse).

[Fizban]

Yup, that's the point: ability drain and negative levels are normally permanent, and just like coming back from the dead is expensive so you still fear it, restoring those were made expensive so you wouldn't take them lightly either. Life draining undead aren't terrifying when curing ability drain, level drain, or instant death, are just as easy as damage from normal weapons.

I don't know exactly how they used to work in older editions, but I think Energy Drain used to just immediately make you lose whole levels- rather than the "negative level" system in 3.x that gives you 24 hours to find a standard Restoration effect. And the prices aren't prohibitive at all, just enough to make it clear that trying to cure it the same way you would hp (by spamming low level Cures) isn't going to work long-term. The way you're supposed to fight negative energy powers is with Death Ward, plain and simple.

[Crake]

Just a quick question - what's the basis for giving those spells GP/XP costs? It just makes ability drain and negative levels a pain to deal with; why should they be that much harder to remove than diseases/poisons etc, especially since they already need specialised spells to cure? Or is that the point - that negative energy is SO destructive that you need specialised, costly spells to counter it?

I can sort of understand giving identify a cost - it takes some of the fun out of experimenting with the item yourself (and risking a curse).

Identify only has a 1% chance per CL to find any curses on an item, so there's a good chance that you're not going to discover a curse until you use the item, even with identify. That's what analyze dweomer is for, if you ask me, a highly underrated spell.

[ericgrau]

Identify only has a 1% chance per CL to find any curses on an item, so there's a good chance that you're not going to discover a curse until you use the item, even with identify. That's what analyze dweomer is for, if you ask me, a highly underrated spell.

I didn't know that. It would be nice if they wrote it in the identify spell or the top of the cursed item rules or anywhere within the general information instead of the next section. Well that can make cursed items a lot more fun as a DM...

But yeah resto and greater resto go after major effects you shouldn't take lightly. I don't like DMs babying people who die either, let's people get too careless. And these are not big costs. Relax, you get extra xp whenever you are behind. Even if you are a level behind it'll be back soon. As for gp, costly spell component and charged item costs tend to be way better bang for the buck than infinite use items that you won't use that many times. It's not really like you're burning gp/xp and have nothing to show for it; you have more to show for it than anything else you might spend your gp on. And xp comes right back. Resto and greater resto costs are a drop in the bucket.

In fact it's a common house-rule for DMs to limit the price of a single item to 25% WBL, but it's only a house rule. The real rule that's in the DMG is that expendables can't be more than 25% of your WBL. I'd extend that to gp/xp spell components. For example if the player wanted to start with an army of undead, a bunch of spell traps, or other such effects. Single items have their cost go up roughly as a square of power. It's a waste of your WBL to pile a bunch of gold into one major item. Littler things are way scarier and abusable.

[rferries]

Thanks for the input, everyone! Very salient points.

[King of Nowhere]

personally, the most scary thing about those negative energy effects for me is all the paperwork required to keep track of them. I'm never going to use such monsters :smallwink:

[Lapak]

I don't know exactly how they used to work in older editions, but I think Energy Drain used to just immediately make you lose whole levels- rather than the "negative level" system in 3.x that gives you 24 hours to find a standard Restoration effect. And the prices aren't prohibitive at all, just enough to make it clear that trying to cure it the same way you would hp (by spamming low level Cures) isn't going to work long-term. The way you're supposed to fight negative energy powers is with Death Ward, plain and simple.
Yup. Pre-3e, level drain was the scariest effect in D&D bar none: it was a no-save effect on every hit, with some monsters draining multiple levels per hit, and even if you had access to Restoration (which was not easy, and less to easy to have after running into a level-draining monster) it only brought you back up to the minimum XP required for the level you were at before the drain. It was literally worse than death in many cases.

[Elkad]

I don't know exactly how they used to work in older editions, but I think Energy Drain used to just immediately make you lose whole levels- rather than the "negative level" system in 3.x that gives you 24 hours to find a standard Restoration effect.

That was it exactly. Save all your old character sheets, because if you fight a vampire, you'll be going back a few pairs of levels. It wasn't even a special slam attack, a regular claw/claw/bite routine would drain you repeatedly.
Really hurts when you go back so far you can't memorize Restoration because you are too low level.