Level Drain - little known effects

[polytope]

As most people know, level drain causes a creature to be destroyed (with all their items) by the "petrified + shattered" death type if drained to zero or negative levels.

 

The same effect also occurs if the hp loss due to level drain (which is 1d8 per level drained, I think) would have reduced the creature to negative hp.

 

Example, an 8th level creature is reduced to 9hp by a hit from a vamp (or Blackrazor) and drained of 4 levels, the 4d8 hp lost causes them to crumble to dust even though they still had 4 levels remaining.

 

I know there are various hacks to work around the destruction of items by level drain but it was still annoying me.

 

This only applies to creatures with character classes, as the game doesn't appear to apply the hp penalty from level drain to creatures without.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Actually this is caused by the bonus HPs you gain from the Constitution bonuses, not from your hit dies. The non party members won't have those bonuses so, nor do they actually have a hit dies, but bulk HPs and bulk Thac0 and so on and so forth, so lowering their level actually does nothing at all; Unless of course it goes to zero or less.

K, yeah, I was wrog... anyways thy won't gain the hpxxx.2da(well except the hpconbon.2da files) changes cause they are pre-generated characters.

[polytope]

This only applies to creatures with character classes, as the game doesn't appear to apply the hp penalty from level drain to creatures without.

 

Actually I was wrong about this.

 

Creatures of level 9 (10 for thieves/mages) or less lose a hit die, those above this level lose a fixed number of hp i.e. 2 for thieves, 3 for fighters.

 

It looks like the game engine treats creatures without a class (i.e. elementals) as fighters for hp loss.

 

Actually this is caused by the bonus HPs you gain from the Constitution bonuses, not from your hit dies. The non party members won't have those bonuses so, nor do they actually have a hit dies, but bulk HPs and bulk Thac0 and so on and so forth, so lowering their level actually does nothing at all; Unless of course it goes to zero or less.

 

They would lose the con bonuses certainly, but will also lose a random "die" of hp if low level.

 

And (infuriatingly) this level drain "damage" disintegrates creatures who haven't actually run out of levels.

 

It kicks in fairly rarely, but (imo) ruins weapons with level drain proc.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Or you could just turn the gore off and never dis... anything. Or use a tweak that automatically does it for you, like the pro5's tweaks do.

Hmm, about the random "die"... with what do you deploy the level drain effect ? It's very likely that that has a part in this...

[polytope]

use a tweak that automatically does it for you, like the pro5's tweaks do.

 

Those tweaks only apply to items/spells that actually inflict the disintegrate and petrification opcodes - not level drain - it could also fail if a creature is immune to the "Drop Weapons (264)" opcode.

 

Also the "frozen death" component involves regexp patching of all creatures and scripts, which I don't want.

 

Hmm, about the random "die"... with what do you deploy the level drain effect ? It's very likely that that has a part in this...

 

Nope. Same behaviour regardless of level drain from .spl or .itm file.

[Ardanis]

Actually this is caused by the bonus HPs you gain from the Constitution bonuses, not from your hit dies. The non party members won't have those bonuses

 

They do