use of Dragon Magic, seen it drain hit points, Constitution points or levels from the Champion of Rajaat template. What does everyone think about the verity of options.
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Have you seen the example of dragon magic in practice from The Crimson Legion?
No, what the Crimson legion?
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Its book 2 of the Prism Pentad. This series of 5 novels is pretty much essential reading.
Oh man, your going to make me read a novel??? So cruel…
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Aren’t most people here to write a novel? Or at least some short story additions? And that book is only a few hundred pages, a light snack. ^^
Though I’m here to write some rpg sourcebooks, myself personally.
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In the books, when dragon magic is used it draws out humanoid life force. For a strong individual. The sensation is like a severe pain in the stomach/torso. Once the victim’s body can’t take any more flesh darkens and begins to drop away as ash. If killed they are left as a pile of acrid defiled ash. No bones, no fluids.
In my games it’s represented by loss of hit points. Those recover faster and I think it matches the tone of the novels more.
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That’s a cool description of what Dragon Magic does, thank you
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Depending on what edition, you have a couple of options. But it’ll basically be hit point damage or CON damage/Maximum Hit Point Reduction. IMHO, Con Damage/Maximum Hit Point reduction is much nastier, and better for use on restrained victims drained during spell preparation for the day, while straight hit point damage is better for defiling on the fly, when the spell is cast. How much damage would be based on the level of the spell - maybe 1d4 per spell level, spread around to each creature in the caster’s defiling radius.
IIRC, defilers can also drain life energy from animal life if they use obsidian spheres, so this can be used with high-level defilers who’ve discovered the secret.
I’m just going off memory here, but iirc back in 2e Dragon magic did damage equal to the spell level and gave everyone harmed by it a -2 penalty due to the agony of being drained. Extrapolating that to other editions would be really easy.
For 2e I would have the PCs make a save vs spell to reduce or even negate the damage depending on their level and if they succeed they also ignore the pain penalty. For later editions I would just fiddle around how much damage is done from being drained and make it a fortitude save.
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Your memory is a little off, but very understandably, as there really was no real rules on dragon magic in 2e. There were some rules for defiling creatures when casting 10th level spells only, which didn’t jive with how it works in lore. The closest thing to an official version otherwise would be a sage advice question in an old magazine, which offered a ludicrously powerful version, but that was before Dragon Kings had even come out, and was explicitly unofficial.
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Thanks for clarifying, consider what I said a suggested house rule then 