It cost how much?

[kleinfehn]

Alright, first edition guy is back again to tell of a story. We recently had another game again and luckily we did not trap ourselves and starve to death. It involved vampires, kidnapped kids, and a killer chest that accidentally ended up with more HP then a dragon. Overall it was good and my level four fighter is only a couple thousand XP from level five.

Well sadly, one of our tougher guys(level eight fighter, 19 strength) got hit by a vampire draining him two levels. We were ok, he barely hit any lower and he managed to get one of his levels back by the end of the game and ended up with more HP then when he began. Well before the adventure ended we wanted to do a restoration spell since he was 92% of his way to level nine so it would be a great loss.

From what we found it a first edition restoration spell cost 10k gold per level you are currently at and an additional 10k gold. So to get this level six fighter back to level eight it would cost around 150k gold. A wish spell cost 50k gold.

Problem is, I am currently one of the richest guys in the game with around 20k gold. Ya, we don't gain a lot of money nor magic. We have one great magical item(bag of holding) and a lot of +1 dragon shields and maybe a magical +1 item if you get lucky but that is it. To also reflect the high price of the restoration spell our raise dead spell and ressurection spell is going to jump up in price. Good bye coming back to life, better not die.

This is one reason why I hate little gold campains. Before a person might be able to get a raise dead a few times in their life but with this price jump(which we are not sure what it is yet, but I think it will be somewhere around 30k or so) we might be able to come back once after we die ever five levels or so. Problem is, we play a low level game also. The highest level player character is level 10, and the highest level NPC(short of liches, gods, and demons) is a level 12 insane wizard.

Well, hopefully we start to get more gold to compansaite for this change. Dang you first edition, why can't your simplicity fix this?

[Chronos]

I've never played first edition... Is that cost inherent to the spell itself, or is that just the cost guideline of convincing an NPC cleric to cast it for you? If the latter, see if he'd be willing to cast it in exchange for you going on some sort of quest for him, instead... Temples are always full of plot hooks.

[Icewalker]

Well I only played first edition for a long time, a guy who runs adventures as his job. The campaign is basically very high xp and magic item, he creates almost all of his own stuff, and the groups levels can range from 1-20. In the same group.

Basically, from what I can tell, a low gold/low magic item setting for first edition doesn't work well. We have something like two characters with restoration at will :smallbiggrin:

[Kurald Galain]

Dang you first edition, why can't your simplicity fix this?

The fix is really really simple. Lower the prices, or give the party more gold.

[Totally Guy]

Something I've always wanted to do:

You enter the town after adventuring for so long. You see children playing with blocks and tiddlywinks in the gardens. On closer inspection you notice they aren't blocks or tiddlywinks, they are wads of money and piles of coins.

Why are they playing wth money?

Because they can't afford toys.

[Somebloke]

The easiest method would be to do away with level drain or provide some story rich, utterly free yet probably perilous means to regain your lost level. The DM should be able to come up with something suitably narrative/cruel.