Drained condition

[The Total Package]

Looking for some opinions on the Drained condition when playing a PC and casting a spell which inflicts it. I know it works very well for NPCs when used against PCs, but how about the other way around. I've had a fee people say the Drained condition doesn't really do much, most other conditions are much worse. So please, sell me on the benefits of inflicting the Drained condition, or is it true that it just isn't very good and I should be trying to inflict a stronger condition.

[Deriven Firelion]

Drained isn't too bad and can be built around.

Drained lowers Fort saves. If you use more fort damage spells, would help them. Good against poisons, petrification, slow, and any other good fort save spells.

Could help grapplers going against Fort save as well or any maneuver against fort saves.

Lower hit points by drained x level, so sort of does extra damage above the base damage of a spell.

Frightened or sickened are more generally effective. Clumsy lowers AC which a helps every martials or attack roll. I think with the right builds or parties Drained could be pretty effective.

[Lia Wynn]

To piggyback a little on Deriven's excellent post, there are some other things to remember about Drained.

It also lowers *max* HP by the monsters (or PCs') level. This impacts how much they can heal if they run away.

Also, unlike things like Clumsy or Enfeebled, it lasts a long time. After every Daily Prep you lose one rank of Drained, so if your campaign has monsters that run away, in many cases, they will still be drained when you find them again.

The best way to look at Drained, IMO, is this: You do something, you get the effect that you normally would, and you also remove bonus HP from it equal to its level and make it more vulnerable to some of the nasty Fort save things out there - and given that many monsters best saves are Fort, debuffing Fort can help your casters a lot.

[Tactical Drongo]

stupid question but:
what happens if you recover from drained outside of resting? Do you get the hitpoints (current and max) back?
because I just yesterday read about the bloodrager and it feels...dangerous to play (i know, the temp hp are probably supposed to be a buffer before the drained 'Damage')

[NorrKnekten]

Tactical Drongo wrote:

stupid question but:

what happens if you recover from drained outside of resting? Do you get the hitpoints (current and max) back?
because I just yesterday read about the bloodrager and it feels...dangerous to play (i know, the temp hp are probably supposed to be a buffer before the drained 'Damage')

You do not gain any current HP back. The text about drained tells you two different things. How you reduce it naturally, and what happens whenever the conditions value is reduced regardless of the means it was reduced.

Important to note regarding the Blood Rager, It's Raging Resistance is against slash, bleed and All-damage resistance towards the creature you last harvested from. Its quite a sturdy thing capable of self-heal if you selected divine.

[Finoan]

Lia Wynn wrote:

It also lowers *max* HP by the monsters (or PCs') level. This impacts how much they can heal if they run away.

Drained also reduces current HP. Which is pretty equivalent to dealing damage. It is explicitly not the same as taking damage, but the differences are hard to notice in most cases.

It isn't all that much - weapons probably will do more damage than the HP loss from Drained. But it does reduce HP in addition to reducing max HP and affecting Constitution proficiencies and saves.

[Lia Wynn]

Finoan wrote:

Lia Wynn wrote:

It also lowers *max* HP by the monsters (or PCs') level. This impacts how much they can heal if they run away.

Drained also reduces current HP. Which is pretty equivalent to dealing damage. It is explicitly not the same as taking damage, but the differences are hard to notice in most cases.

It isn't all that much - weapons probably will do more damage than the HP loss from Drained. But it does reduce HP in addition to reducing max HP and affecting Constitution proficiencies and saves.

Yes, it does.

But Deriven had already mentioned that, and I was attempting to add additional things Drained does that he had not mentioned.