
Balkoth |
So "Sound Body" appears to be replacing "Restoration."
It's a quicker cast time with no daily use limit but now requires a counteract check.
This leads me to two questions:
1, say someone in a level 13 party gets drained by a level 16 Warsworn. The drain is DC 35. It looks like the only way for the party to remove that drain with Sound Body is to use a rank 7 Sound Body spell and get a success or use a rank 5-7 Sound Body and get a critical success. Is that correct?
2, say someone in a level 13 party gets Drained 2 by a Warsworn and Drained 2 by an elite Bodak. Are the drained sources now tracked differently? Does the caster using Sound Body have to specify which drained source they're trying to counteract? And which drained would go away first when resting?

Finoan |
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1, say someone in a level 13 party gets drained by a level 16 Warsworn. The drain is DC 35. It looks like the only way for the party to remove that drain with Sound Body is to use a rank 7 Sound Body spell and get a success or use a rank 5-7 Sound Body and get a critical success. Is that correct?
That looks correct to me.
Or wait a day or two for Drained to recover on its own. I don't see anything in the Warsworn stat block that overrides Drained being reduced by a full night's rest.
2, say someone in a level 13 party gets Drained 2 by a Warsworn and Drained 2 by an elite Bodak. Are the drained sources now tracked differently? Does the caster using Sound Body have to specify which drained source they're trying to counteract? And which drained would go away first when resting?
No, Redundant Conditions says that if you remove a condition, you remove all instances and values of that condition.
You may need to track conditions separately if they have a different natural removal time or something like that. But not for removing them with a counteract check.

Balkoth |
Or wait a day or two for Drained to recover on its own. I don't see anything in the Warsworn stat block that overrides Drained being reduced by a full night's rest.
Yeah, I meant in the immediate sense.
No, Redundant Conditions says that if you remove a condition, you remove all instances and values of that condition.
Huh. So that's completely different to how Restoration used to explicitly reduce the severity of the condition by 1-2 at a time, depending on the condition.
You may need to track conditions separately if they have a different natural removal time or something like that. But not for removing them with a counteract check.
So it uses the higher of the DCs? I had assumed the PC would be drained 4 at that point, but it sounds like you're saying they'd just be drained 2 twice, which mechanically is the same as just drained 2. But you'd still need to track both because in theory the Bodak's could go up to drained 4 (while the Warsworn applies drained 2 and that's it).

Finoan |

Finoan wrote:You may need to track conditions separately if they have a different natural removal time or something like that. But not for removing them with a counteract check.So it uses the higher of the DCs? I had assumed the PC would be drained 4 at that point, but it sounds like you're saying they'd just be drained 2 twice, which mechanically is the same as just drained 2.
Not sure what you mean by DC here. I'm suspecting typo.
Yes, right under the Redundant Conditions is Redundant Conditions with Values, which says that Drained 2 + Drained 2 = Drained 2.
Same with Frightened 1 + Frightened 1. You will still only be Frightened 1.
Also even if they have different values, they still don't add together. Clumsy 1 + Clumsy 3 = Clumsy 3.
Amusingly - and a bit more of a problem - is Persistent Damage. Because those also have a value and would fall under the Redundant Conditions with Values rule as long as the type of damage that they do is the same. But it is harder to determine which is higher: Persistent Fire Damage 5 or Persistent Fire Damage 2d4?
Fortunately, the 4th printing clarifications have this to say about it:
How can I tell which multiple persistent damage value is higher when it's not obvious?
Multiple Persistent Damage Conditions notes that you keep only the highest amount of persistent damage. How do you choose between 3 persistent fire damage and 1d6 persistent fire damage (which is usually, but not always higher)? In these cases, the GM should quickly use their best guess to decide which applies. Don’t worry about doing all the math of average damage, just follow your heart to which seems most severe.
And similar language has been brought forward into Player Core as well.
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A bit more of a question is if the wording of the Bodak's ability would increase an existing Drained condition from a different source (such as that of the Warsworn that the character fought earlier that day).
If the Bodak is increasing the existing Drained condition, then it would only be one instance of the condition instead of two redundant conditions.
Personally, I wouldn't rule it that way. The Bodak has to create its own instance of Drained and then increase that one.

Balkoth |
Not sure what you mean by DC here. I'm suspecting typo.
Counteracting goes against a DC:
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=371
A bit more of a question is if the wording of the Bodak's ability would increase an existing Drained condition from a different source (such as that of the Warsworn that the character fought earlier that day).
If the Bodak is increasing the existing Drained condition, then it would only be one instance of the condition instead of two redundant conditions.
Personally, I wouldn't rule it that way. The Bodak has to create its own instance of Drained and then increase that one.
I had been saying Drained was Drained and creatures that can increase Drained repeatedly just all stacked (again, only if the ability said the Drained value kept increasing with repeated failures).
But yes, I think the correct way is the Bodak has a separate type of Drained than the Warsworn.
...though if there's multiple Bodaks I'd argue that's all in the same Drained pool, because it's the same ability (just from different sources).

Squiggit |
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There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained. The redundant conditions rule is very clear, imo. You can only have a condition once (at a specific value), and removing that condition removes it entirely no matter how many different times you've been hit with it. That's the single most explicitly clear thing in the redundant conditions rules.
You'd only track them separately if they were different values, but even that wouldn't really matter since they reduce together.
... The problem is the rule for priority only references duration, not DC:
If an effect would impose a condition you already have, you now have that condition for the longer of the two durations. The shorter-duration condition effectively ends, though other conditions caused by the original, shorter-duration effect might continue.
But neither of those Drained conditions has a duration.
You could make a decent argument since the rules talk about longer conditions superseding shorter ones, that two conditions with the same value and duration means the older one never gets superseded (in a logical sense "if x > y" is false if x = y)... but that's not really cleanly stated by the rules either and would allow for some odd corner cases.
Not RAW, but it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to simply say you always go against the highest DC, since that's what you would have to deal with outside this specific scenario anyways.
... To be honest, the rules don't feel like they've been updated properly for the Remaster. Restoration didn't use counteract checks, and the rules for redundant conditions were clearly written with that in mind and not updated to account for Sound Body, because DCs aren't mentioned anywhere.

Balkoth |
There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained.
So you're saying that if the Warsworn applies Drained 2 first and then the Bodak increased Drained twice, the result is Drained 4 on the PC (because you either have the condition or you don't and thus the Bodak increases the existing Drained)?
But if the Bodak Drains twice (so at Drained 2) and then the Warsworn hits the result is Drained 2 (because the Warsworn applies a flat Drained 2 rather than increasing)?
I'm completely fine with that interpretation, it's what I had been running, but I wanted to verify.

thenobledrake |
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So you're saying that if the Warsworn applies Drained 2 first and then the Bodak increased Drained twice, the result is Drained 4 on the PC (because you either have the condition or you don't and thus the Bodak increases the existing Drained)?
The Bodak's drain says "multiple exposures to this ability..." so it doesn't increase drain on the first exposure if there's already drained from some other source.
So drained 2 from a warsworn plus 2 uses of the draining thing from a bodak would add up to drained 3.

Ravingdork |

It seems to me that, in a few corner cases, you would still need to track multiple instances of the same condition if they had different end conditions.
Let's say, for example, that a curse made you sickened 1, and until the curse was lifted, you could not reduce the sickened condition below 1. Then you critically failed against a xulgath's stench (the very same shaman that cursed you!) and became Sickened 2.
The two redundant conditions would not stack, and you would effectively just have Sickened 2. You could wretch away the Sickened 2 from the stench after getting some distance from the xulgath, but you could do nothing for the Sickened 1 until the curse was lifted.
If the first condition didnt involve a persistent curse, wretching would help remove all of your Sickened as normal, making it effectively a single condition in practice (which is how you would normally treat redundant conditions most of the time).

Finoan |
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So you're disagreeing with Squiggit, then, just to be clear?
I'm not entirely sure that Squiggit was saying that the Bodak would add to the Warsworn-created Drained condition or not. That post was mostly discussing how the Drained condition would decrease - not how it increased in the first place.
But anyway, yes this is going to be more of a question. I expect that different GMs are going to interpret this particular rare set of circumstances differently.
Again, my personal opinions on it: the combination of different creatures shouldn't make the total more dangerous in a synergistic manner. PF2 tries to avoid synergistic combinations as a way to increase power. For both player characters and monsters.

thenobledrake |
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So you're disagreeing with Squiggit, then, just to be clear?
Per his post:
"There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained."
No.
Drained is drained, just as Squiggit said.
What I am saying is that the stacking feature of the ability the bodak uses is not keying off of "if you're already drained", it's keying off of "if you've already been affected by this ability."

Balkoth |
What I am saying is that the stacking feature of the ability the bodak uses is not keying off of "if you're already drained", it's keying off of "if you've already been affected by this ability."
So are you of the opinion that...
1, there are two independent Drain counters (e.g., Warsworn drains, then Bodak drains, so you're at Drained 2 from Warsworn and Drained 1 from Bodak and the Bodak can increase that to Drained 4)
or
2, it's impossible for the Bodak to stack up Drained on a target that's already drained from any other source?

Balkoth |
Understand them without changing them or accept that you lack understanding.
Walk me through the scenario.
1. Warsworn smacks a PC. PC fails save and is now Drained 2.
2. Bodak uses Death Gaze. PC succeeds. What's the Drained situation?
3. Bodak uses Death Gaze a second time. PC succeeds. What's the Drained situation?
4. Bodak uses Death Gaze a third time. PC succeeds. What's the Drained situation?
5. Healer casts a rank 4 Sound Body against Drained and gets a counteract check of 30 (Bodak effective spell rank is 4 with DC 26 and Warsworn effective spell rank is 8 with DC 35). What's the Drained situation?

Baarogue |
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Where are people getting the idea the bodak's Death Gaze stacks drained with itself? It says, "Multiple exposures to this ability can increase a creature's drained condition to a maximum of 4," but it doesn't say it breaks the rule of redundant conditions with values to stack it. That's just the drained value its crit failure gives. The only way a bodak will cause drained 4 is if the victim crit fails, which does become increasingly likely even if the victim succeeds or regular fails a couple times and their Fort save bonus lowers by 1 or 2
So drained 2 via warsworn and then drained 2 via bodak = drained 2. Drained 2 via bodak and then drained 2 again via bodak = drained 2

Balkoth |
I don't see why it would include the word "increase" if it didn't stack. Otherwise it would overwrite it instead.
But let's say you're correct.
Same question for a Warsworn and a Dread Wraith which does explicitly say
"When the dread wraith damages a living creature with its spectral hand Strike, the wraith gains 10 temporary Hit Points and the target must succeed at a DC 28 Fortitude save or become drained 1. Further damage dealt by the wraith increases the drained condition value by 1 on a failed save, to a maximum of drained 4."
So if a PC was already drained 2 from a Warsworn, what happens if they fail a save vs a Dread Wraith?

Finoan |

If the Wraith ability simply stopped at the first sentence:
"When the dread wraith damages a living creature with its spectral hand Strike, the wraith gains 10 temporary Hit Points and the target must succeed at a DC 28 Fortitude save or become drained 1."
Then when a victim gets hit by the Wraith seven times and fails their save each time, they will have seven instances of Drained 1. Which is still Drained 1.
Adding that second sentence:
"Further damage dealt by the wraith increases the drained condition value by 1 on a failed save, to a maximum of drained 4."
Means that those same seven hits and seven failed saves means that the Wraith has only applied one instance of Drained and that the Drained condition that the Wraith has applied would be increased up to Drained 4.
In the scenario where a character is fighting a Wraith while already at Drained 2, then the first sentence says that when they get hit by the Wraith and fail their save that the Wraith will apply a new Drained 1 condition. And the second sentence says that further damage dealt by the Wraith can - on a failed save - increase the Drained condition that the Wraith has applied.
I do not read that second sentence as meaning that the Wraith should increase the Drained condition that the creature already had before the first sentence applies and the Wraith creates its own Drained condition. Because one comes before two. For both condition values and sentences.
Which is similar to what thenobledrake is pointing out about the Bodak ability. The Bodak ability will increase its own Drained condition because it increases Drained caused by 'this' (the Bodak's) ability. It doesn't increase any arbitrary Drained condition that the target already happens to have.

Balkoth |
So basically the PC walks in with Drained 2 from a Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 1 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 2 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 3 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
That unfortunately directly goes against Squiggit's earlier assertion of
"There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained."
Both interpretations can't be correct in this instance.

Finoan |

Where are people getting the idea the bodak's Death Gaze stacks drained with itself? It says, "Multiple exposures to this ability can increase a creature's drained condition to a maximum of 4," but it doesn't say it breaks the rule of redundant conditions with values to stack it. That's just the drained value its crit failure gives. The only way a bodak will cause drained 4 is if the victim crit fails, which does become increasingly likely even if the victim succeeds or regular fails a couple times and their Fort save bonus lowers by 1 or 2
While that is very true, it is also not likely RAI. Because if that was what was intended, there would be no need to write the sentence into the creature's stat block and effect description.
Why waste the word count and page space? Abolish, stamp out, eradicate, purge, and excise redundancy.

Finoan |

So basically the PC walks in with Drained 2 from a Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 1 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 2 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 3 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
That unfortunately directly goes against Squiggit's earlier assertion of
"There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained."
Both interpretations can't be correct in this instance.
Drained doesn't have subtypes. That doesn't mean that it can't have multiple instances applied.
Frightened also doesn't have subtypes. You can also have multiple instances of Frightened 1 affecting you. And will sometimes have to track them separately if they have different durations.
Persistent Damage does have subtypes. You can be affected by both Persistent Fire Damage 5 and Persistent Bleed Damage 5 at the same time and take both damages at the end of your turn.

Balkoth |
Frightened also doesn't have subtypes. You can also have multiple instances of Frightened 1 affecting you. And will sometimes have to track them separately if they have different durations.
In other words, they're in separate containers where one can end or be removed without necessarily removing the other.

Squiggit |

So basically the PC walks in with Drained 2 from a Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 1 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 2 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
Then gets Drained 3 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.
That unfortunately directly goes against Squiggit's earlier assertion of
"There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained."
Both interpretations can't be correct in this instance.
The bolded steps are incorrect. You can have Drained 1 and Drained 2 at the same time, but you can't be Drained 2 and Drained 2. You are simply Drained 2, which then may later advance to Drained 3.
Finoan wrote:Frightened also doesn't have subtypes. You can also have multiple instances of Frightened 1 affecting you. And will sometimes have to track them separately if they have different durations.In other words, they're in separate containers where one can end or be removed without necessarily removing the other.
This is also incorrect, the rules for redundant conditions are pretty explicit here:
Any ability that removes a condition removes it entirely, no matter what its condition value is or how many times you’ve been affected by it.
and here:
If something reduces the condition value, it reduces it for all conditions of that name affecting you. For instance, in this example above, if something reduced your slowed value by 1, it would reduce the first condition from the example to slowed 1 and reduce the second to slowed 0, removing it.
If you are hit by 700 abilities that cause you to become Frightened, then one ability that removes the Frightened condition, you are not frightened.
For the record, tracking multiple instances of Frightened 1 is also incorrect:
You can have a given condition only once at a time. If an effect would impose a condition you already have, you now have that condition for the longer of the two durations. The shorter-duration condition effectively ends, though other conditions caused by the original, shorter-duration effect might continue

Finoan |

Finoan wrote:Frightened also doesn't have subtypes. You can also have multiple instances of Frightened 1 affecting you. And will sometimes have to track them separately if they have different durations.In other words, they're in separate containers where one can end or be removed without necessarily removing the other.
One condition can end itself without affecting any of the others, yes. Removing a condition by name removes all of them.
For the record, tracking multiple instances of Frightened 1 is also incorrect:
Quote:You can have a given condition only once at a time. If an effect would impose a condition you already have, you now have that condition for the longer of the two durations. The shorter-duration condition effectively ends, though other conditions caused by the original, shorter-duration effect might continue
Fair enough. Technically the two instances of Frightened 1 would still exist, but it would be pointless to track them both.
Usually. There is probably some edge case somewhere. Likely involving a creature able to increase its own instance - such as the Wraith mentioned above. You don't get to 'effectively end' the condition that the Wraith applied so that you can say that you aren't already affected by it and therefore it has to start back at Drained 1 instead of increasing the Drained condition it applied the previous round.

Balkoth |
The bolded steps are incorrect. You can have Drained 1 and Drained 2 at the same time, but you can't be Drained 2 and Drained 2. You are simply Drained 2, which then may later advance to Drained 3.
And what happens if a level 4 Sound Body is cast with a counteract result of 30?
This would succeed against a Dread Wraith/Bodak.
It would fail vs a Warsworn.
If you remove Drained 3 entirely because it removes the weaker DC, you've actually made getting to Drained 3 by a weaker creature a way to remove a higher rank/DC Drained.
If you keep Drained 3 because you count the whole thing as the Warsworn's DC, you've now substituted the higher DC on a Drained value the Warsworn can't actually reach.
And if you drop to Drained 2, then you separately tracked the Bodak's Drained 3 and Warsworn's Drained 2 in order to remove only the Bodak's drained, which meant you were Drained 2 twice a moment before in terms paperwork/tracking, which goes against your logic above.

Finoan |

If you remove Drained 3 entirely because it removes the weaker DC, you've actually made getting to Drained 3 by a weaker creature a way to remove a higher rank/DC Drained.
That one.
Well, mostly. You aren't actually removing Drained 3, you are removing Drained. All of them. Of all values.
Any ability that removes a condition removes it entirely, no matter what its condition value is or how many times you’ve been affected by it.
I don't write the rules, I just do my best to interpret them and explain them.
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I also expect that GMs will use the Too Good to be True rule to shut down players doing things like applying Drained 1 to themselves and then removing that in order to bypass a higher DC Drained condition from an enemy. But to each table their own...

Squiggit |

And what happens if a level 4 Sound Body is cast with a counteract result of 30?This would succeed against a Dread Wraith/Bodak.
It would fail vs a Warsworn.
Yep. Unfortunately, the rules say literally nothing on this topic. DC isn't mentioned anywhere in the rules for condition stacking or redundant effects.
The RAW tells you nothing about which DC to use when you are hit with two redundant conditions (outside some vague inferences about not replacing the older condition).
Per the book, yeah, you can pass a weaker DC to help reduce or remove a harder condition and yeah, that's pretty goofy and weird.
which goes against your logic above.
I mean, it's not "my logic" it's just quoting the rulebook, which I've already mentioned has clear gaps here. But it makes sense to establish what the rules actually say, since this is rules discussion, while also considering how to adjudicate things practically.

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My takeaway here is that the rules surrounding this issue aren't coherent yet with the Remaster changes. So I'll adjudicate as I see fit for now and check back down the line to see if things have been clarified.
I appreciate the discussion.
Way I read it, it is pretty coherent.
You get Drained 2 from a source.
Another source gives you another Drained value.
You apply only the highest Drained value (they do not stack).
When you remove the Drained condition, you have no Drained value remaining, whatever the sources.

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The Raven Black wrote:When you remove the Drained condition, you have no Drained value remaining, whatever the sources.What determines the counteract level and DC to remove the Drained condition when you have multiple sources?
I would go with the highest.
With the idea that a counteract strong enough to get rid of the stronger source will get rid of all the others too.

Balkoth |
I would go with the highest.
With the idea that a counteract strong enough to get rid of the stronger source will get rid of all the others too.
That does mean you could have a situation like this:
A level 8 PC gets Drained 1 from a level 11 creature (so high DC and rank 6 counteract).
Then they get Drained 4 later that day from some level 6 Wraiths or something.
In order to remove the Drained 4 from the lower level Wraiths they need to be able to beat the much harder to remove Drained 1 from the level 11 creature.
In fact, a level 8 caster would need a natural 20 on their Counteract to be able to remove the Drained 4 at their level (despite the fact only Drained 1 came from the level 11 enemy).
Does that seem like a reasonable outcome to you?

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The Raven Black wrote:I would go with the highest.
With the idea that a counteract strong enough to get rid of the stronger source will get rid of all the others too.
That does mean you could have a situation like this:
A level 8 PC gets Drained 1 from a level 11 creature (so high DC and rank 6 counteract).
Then they get Drained 4 later that day from some level 6 Wraiths or something.
In order to remove the Drained 4 from the lower level Wraiths they need to be able to beat the much harder to remove Drained 1 from the level 11 creature.
In fact, a level 8 caster would need a natural 20 on their Counteract to be able to remove the Drained 4 at their level (despite the fact only Drained 1 came from the level 11 enemy).
Does that seem like a reasonable outcome to you?
Good point. And the reverse could be odd too (successfully Counteract a level 6 Drained 1 and get rid of a level 11 Drained 4).
So, go with what feels best for your group. I would however stick with the idea that losing the condition means you do not have it anymore, whatever the sources.

Sibelius Eos Owm |
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The Raven Black wrote:I would go with the highest.
With the idea that a counteract strong enough to get rid of the stronger source will get rid of all the others too.
That does mean you could have a situation like this:
A level 8 PC gets Drained 1 from a level 11 creature (so high DC and rank 6 counteract).
Then they get Drained 4 later that day from some level 6 Wraiths or something.
In order to remove the Drained 4 from the lower level Wraiths they need to be able to beat the much harder to remove Drained 1 from the level 11 creature.
In fact, a level 8 caster would need a natural 20 on their Counteract to be able to remove the Drained 4 at their level (despite the fact only Drained 1 came from the level 11 enemy).
Does that seem like a reasonable outcome to you?
Considering this outcome requires me to suffer Drain 4 from a lower level encounter and then go directly into a much more difficult encounter without recovering, then survive that encounter with only getting Drained 1, I feel like this corner case is sufficiently out of my line of sight.
It's much more likely that a low level enemy's low amount of [Condition] will be completely subsumed in a much high level enemy's version of that condition, and even when it's not (say, high level enemy only has a passive, non-stacking condition vector), I'm already prepared to accept that the same condition can be more difficult to remove by magic if the monster applying it (whether by magic or mechanical force) is just higher level. It's just not that hard of a stretch for me to say "whatever makes the high level monster's Drain that much more resistant to curing also harms the condition application from the more severe but lower level condition because health is weird like that".
If it truly bothered my players, I would just go with the most obvious fix of saying that a curative spell which beat a lower level monster's condition DC could remove only the portion of the affect that isn't superseded by the higher level effect and call it a day. If it ever comes up anyway, and waiting 4 days for the drain to go away wouldn't work for the circumstances.

Balkoth |
Considering this outcome requires me to suffer Drain 4 from a lower level encounter and then go directly into a much more difficult encounter without recovering, then survive that encounter with only getting Drained 1, I feel like this corner case is sufficiently out of my line of sight.
Reverse the order. You'd get a relatively minor Drained 1 from the tough encounter, recover health (but not Drained, too difficult to remove), and then get Drained 4 from the next. That's why I put it in that order :)
If it ever comes up anyway, and waiting 4 days for the drain to go away wouldn't work for the circumstances.
Or waiting one day would definitely make it just Drained 3 from the weaker creature and thus much easier to remove.
I code for a living, though, so I'm mentally translating all this stuff into how a computer program would be instructed to handle this type of condition removal. Figuring out logic switches and all that.