Can someone explain level draining?

[Tobrian]

(snip) You can encounter poisones enemy before you can deal with poison, meet petrifying monster before you can deal with that (the lovely cockatrice is CR 3), (snip)

As much as I love the cockatrice as a concept, it and the basilisk are among those monsters taken from mythology where people didn't bother with concepts like "game balance" . The cockatrice is especially unbalanced as a CR3, because if the group is low-level, say level 2, a single cockatrice (which has 5 HD) might petrify half the party if it surprises them, with no chance to de-petrify the victims unless you find powerful NPC help. I mean, the damn thing looks like a mangy chicken from afar, at first glance they might think it's a chicken with some lizardy template, especially if none of the characters has any arcane knowledge to identify the critter and the players don't use player knowledge as character knowledge. On the other hand, if the group is forewarned, they can simply slaughter the cockatrice from afar with ranged attacks.

The problem with the CR system is that the game designers seem to have put too much importance on strength and HD and on the quantityof special abilities a critter has, instead of paying attention to WHAT KIND of powers a critter has. Thus big dumb giants often have a high CR, despite the fact that even a relatively low-level group can surround a giant and slaughter it quickly, as the giant has no regeneration or Damage resistance or magical attacks. On the other hand, monsters with stun powers (shocker lizard CR2), petrification (cockatrice CR3) petrifying gaze (basilisk CR5, medusa CR7) or paralysis (ghoul CR1, ghast CR3, grell CR3), or natural invisibility (imp CR2 with invisibility as a spell like ability at will, invisible stalker CR7 with improved invisibility) can overwhelm a low-level or even mid-level party. Put two or more of those small shocker lizards together and they can deliver lethal shocks as a ranged area attack! (Note: Shocker lizards are gregarious and usually if you see one there's a colony nearby.) Constructs and other creatures with damage resistance or spell resistance can also be much nastier than a big monster that simply stomps around and does 10d8 smashing damage... why care, if the smasher never manages to hit you?
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/monsters

That is why in my group I introduced a cockatrice-chicken crossbreed that only did short-term paralysis instead of petrification when it pecked a 1st level character. And it wasn't a meat eater. It was still a nasty shock to the characters who thought they could steal a chicken for lunch. ;-)

Because I had once been one of those low-level characters who, at level 2, ran into a cockatrice, and afterwards had to spend money we couldn't afford on a spell scroll with Break Enchantment (which our wizard technically couldn't cast) to de-petrify the paladin statue. *cough*

Worse, the Stone to Flesh arcane spell that is supposed to be used to de-petrify characters is of a higher level (Wiz/Sorc 6) than Break Enchantment (Brd 4, Clr 5, Luck 5, Pal 4, Sor/Wiz 5), and with Stone to Flesh, the creature must make a DC 15 Fortitude save to survive the process!! Therefore, no-one in his right mind uses Stone to Flesh, not even as a counter to Flesh to Stone.

The weird thing is, Break Enchantment has always been the number 1 spell used to de-petrify people. After all, it is specifically designed to (quote) "free victims from enchantments, transmutations, and curses. Break enchantment can reverse even an instantaneous effect" (which the level 3 Dispel Magic cannot). Previous editions even specifically mentioned de-petrification! But in edition 3.5, for some reason the game designers saw fit to add the sentence: "If the spell is one that cannot be dispelled by dispel magic, break enchantment works only if that spell is 5th level or lower." Which technically would make Break Enchantment unable to break Flesh to Stone, because Flesh to Stone is an instantaneous effect spell and is a level 6 spell. What the hell? With that sentence, they basically contradicted their own declaration that "Break enchantment can reverse even an instantaneous effect", which is where several rules collide. Oh well. Anyone I know basically ignores the implications and still uses Break Enchantment to undo petrifications.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not whining that encounters in D&D are too hard... in some ways I think the system mollycoddles players and their characters, esp in 4th edition. (Heck, I play Cthulhu and KULT RPG.) But if the game designers put such emphasis on the concept of "level-appropriate encounters" they need to check their CR system. Otherwise players are being trained to expect that they have a good chance to win every fight, which means many players will simply not retreat from a fight even if the tiny kobold turns out to be a high-level sorcerer or a polymorphed dragon.