3.5 Energy Drain, Negative Level, Level Drain Resource

[Saintheart]

3.5 Energy Drain, Negative Level, and Level Drain Resource

Life sucks. Suck it back.

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG RIGHT

Introduction
You’re likely here because that Wight, Spectre, or Vampire you ran into did something that made you sweat more about your level progression than your hitpoints. You’ve looked up Energy Drain and/or the consequences of level loss, and you think it sounds like a nice way to debuff or kill opponents. In which case, welcome. This resource attempts to gather together as many practical ways of accessing Energy Drain, negative levels, or level drain as seem to exist under 3.5, covering everything from feats to classes to monsters.

But let's get a few things straight:

Energy Drain =/= Negative Levels =/= Permanent Level Loss.

• Energy Drain (Su) is a monster special ability. It has its own callout for creatures immune to it. Being a (Su) ability, Spell Resistance does not apply to it. When you're hit with a melee attack from a monster with Energy Drain, you receive one or more negative levels, a debuff hitting several character stats. There's no saving throw against the negative levels going on. Finally, Energy Drain gives the monster that hit you with it 5 temporary hitpoints per negative level imposed - these come from the ability, not the negative levels.
  
  
• Negative levels are a temporary debuff. In most cases they're a negative energy effect, which immunities can apply to (and are separate from Energy Drain in that respect). Negative levels impose penalties, not damage. 1 negative level = -1 penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, ability checks, and effective level where it matters (e.g. Smite Evil, Caster Level); -5 penalty to hitpoints; and lose your highest level spell. Sooner or later, as set by the ability or spell that imposes them, negative levels go away. But if they last 24 hours, they force you to save (Fort) against each negative level. Fail a save, you permanently drop a character level (or hit dice) for that negative level. Lastly, if you've got as many negative levels as you have hit dice, you die, no save, and usually come back as a wight 1d4 rounds later.
  
  
• Level loss is permanent level loss. You lose a hit dice, or a character level (RAI being the one most recently acquired.) And your XP total is reset to halfway between your new low level and the one you came from. Which has implications for Thought Bottle ab/use, as we'll see later.

There's a lot of variation in how spells and other abilities impose negative levels. It's not all copies of Energy Drain (Su). Even the 9th level spell Energy Drain doesn't duplicate it: it imposes more negative levels (2d4), well above what the supernatural ability does, but Spell Resistance applies. Other options reduce negative level duration; some can't cause permanent level loss; some add a Fort save to see if you get negative levels; some force a negative level on you so long as you're holding an object. In other words - don't assume something in a spell, class ability or whatever is Energy Drain (Su) just because it says it imposes negative levels.

As for level loss: since you roll against each negative level, the odds you’ll actually be smacked down 4 levels permanently out of 4 negative levels are not as big as they first seem. And this mechanics also gives you 24 hours to come up with something boosting your Fort save, such as spells or temporary Con increases during the time of the roll.(Which is to say: notwithstanding middlebrow commentary I've seen that “THiRd EDiTiON HaD PERMANENT LEVEL LOSS aNd WaS BaD!!!1!!!!,” statistically it's not as common as some make out.)



Limitations of Negative Levels
Energy Drain was meant as a DM tool to scare the hell out of players. Negative levels are a bit more useful for 5 purposes:
- Killing opponents
- Debuffing opponents
- Getting some temporary hp or healing hp
- Ab/using permanent level loss via Thought Bottles and the like
- Creating wights

We’ll talk about permanent level loss later, and creating wights is for builds that can effectively control undead (and outside the scope of this thread), so what about killing, debuffing, and hitpoints?

• You only kill an opponent when you hit it with negative levels equal to its Hit Dice. Unfortunately, negative levels tend to come in batches of 1d4 - at best. Since monsters pick up lots of hit dice at higher levels, killing via negative levels fades in effectiveness in the teens -- absent a really dedicated build using a lot of metamagic. And this strategy doesn’t have a baked-in answer to flat-out immune (Constructs) or antifragile opposition (Undead, who are healed by negative energy effects). And that’s ignoring the consequences of killing things, which is the generation of a Wight (or worse).
  
  
• As a debuff strategy negative levels aren't bad, just not especially potent unless heavily optimised. Even when imposed, a negative level is a set of small penalties: -1 to attack rolls, saves, and effective level; -5 to hitpoints; and lose your top spell if you’re a caster. By contrast, even puny old Bane at level 1 imposes a -1 to attack rolls and saves against fear. If you can spam a lot of negative levels it becomes a lot more effective (and very brutal on casters when it comes off), but again, it requires a specialized build – one that can be shut down by undead or Death Ward type spells.
  
  
• Some negative level effects also give you some temporary hitpoints (or outright healing) to go along with the negative levels (e.g. Life Drain, a feat below). Energy Drain, as said, does give you temporary hitpoints, but this is only applicable to the (Su) ability, not the spell. Whether healing or temporary, though, these tend to be doled out at 5 hitpoints per negative level, which isn't very significant unless pumped hard with metamagic. If so, temporary hitpoints can be a nice buffer before the enemy starts dropping your real hitpoints.

You gotta fight, for your wight, to parrrrttyyyy
As said, if you’re going to use negative levels as a kill mechanism you’re going to end up fighting a lot of wights. Of course, if you’re a cleric with a solid Turn Undead (or Destroy Undead) capacity you may not care, as an cleric with Rebuke (or Command) Undead you might enjoy bossing corpses around, and as a necromancer you might just enjoy the company. Certain creatures come back as other than wights if killed with negative levels, but these are pretty rare. All that said, it’s easy to build RAW combinations that bring on the end of the world via mass generation of wights through level draining commoners, so, plzdontbreakthecampaignkthxbai.


Also, a very big thanks and acknowledgment to ShurikVch, who filled out this resource with a lot of material I'd missed. Credit is given and owed. :)

[Saintheart]

Spells, Psionics, Invocations, Truenaming, Maneuvers


Hence why you don't heal in combat.

Spells:
I think the best way of effectively judging spells is to compare them against the Core method of imposing negative levels on an enemy: Enervation. Pretty much all spells imposing negative levels are built off Enervation or come with a comparable effect. I also haven’t focused heavily on whether these spells impose permanent level loss, since that doesn’t tend to be a tactical consideration. And lastly, these are rated for the base spell, not with metamagic that vastly changes the equation.

Enervation (SRD, Death Delver 4, Death Master 4, Dread Necromancer 4, Duskblade 4, Hunger 4, Nightbringer Initiate 4, Sha'ir 4, Sor/Wiz 4, Suffering 4, Thayan Slaver 4): Imposes 1d4 negative levels on a ranged touch attack, and it’s specifically a ray. No save, but Spell Resistance applies. Since it’s also explicitly a ray it benefits from Ocular Spell, possibly Split Ray, and even Weapon Focus; and that’s before you get to piling on the metamagic via Twinned/Repeat/etc. Lastly, note that – unlike monsters’ Energy Drain – Enervation never results in permanent level loss, because they go away after CL number of hours.

With that as our benchmark, let’s turn to the rest:

Blackwater Taint (Strmwrk, Sor/Wiz6, Blackwater 6): 20 foot radius area of water becomes blackwater, i.e. enter the area and you make a Fort save or get a negative level. Only affects you once though, this is not a patch on Enervation, especially at this level.

Blackwater Tentacle (Storwrk, Drd 5, Sor/Wiz 5, Blackwater 5): Create a tentacle that has a set location, hits once per round for decent melee damage (attack bonus of CL+your casting ability mod, damage 2d6+CL), and forces the target to Fort save or take a negative level. Negative levels stack, but they only last to the end of the spell (round/level). Maybe if you had a way to cast lots of these it'd be worth considering, but that spell duration is annoying.

Circlet of Enervation (SSouth, Sor/Wiz 5): Creates a negative energy ranged touch attack that does 2d6 damage and imposes a negative level (Fort save), the weapon lasting for rounds/CL. The RAI and even the RAW strongly suggests you can only do this once per round, but look at the entry along with your DM to see if it can be used in iteratives. Basically this is a Enervation at +1 in spell level for 2d6 additional damage, strictly speaking if you Maximised Enervation with some metamagic reduction you’d get better debuff than this.

Cocoon (MoF, Drd 8): Horrible effect that drains one level at a time off a helpless target in, y’know, a cocoon, and then grants you some nice benefits from the negative levels accrued from doing so. Unfortunately the SpC version rewrote it completely to become a way of producing either no-level-loss Raise Dead, or automatic reincarnation. Which admittedly could be handy for some TO shenanigans, but it does nothing for negative levels anyway.

Create Greater Undead (SRD, Clr 8, Death 8, Sor/Wiz 8): At CL 18, you can outright create a Spectre which has Energy Drain (Su) as one of its abilities, but a CR 7 creature dealing with Cleric 17s or 18s isn't going to last long.

Energy Drain (SRD, Clr 9, Dread Necromancer 9, Sor/Wiz 9): The other enervation spell in Core. It’s explicitly as Enervation, but doing 2d4 negative levels that last longer. However, given the HD of the creatures you’re facing by the time you’re casting 9^th level spells, 2-8 in negative HD won’t kill anything, and that number in negative attack bonus, saves, and so on is only going to be marginally useful. And the spell’s capacity to rip a high-level spell off a caster is situational. That said, unlike Enervation, this spell’s explicitly on the cleric list, which means Divine Metamagic might make this more of an option.

Energy Ebb (LoM, Clr 7, Sor/Wiz 7): ranged touch attack functions like Enervation, but instead you bestow 1 negative level per round for the duration of the spell or until someone makes a DC 23 Heal check. It’s therefore arguably stronger than Enervation, and can actually kill something at high(er) levels, but it would be most usable for lengthy fights and ideally just kiting your way to victory.

Enervating Breath (SpC, Sor/Wiz 9): Your breath weapon does its normal thing plus imposing 2d4 negative levels. Which is to say: it’s adding insult to injury. You’d hope a creature casting 9^th level spells while still using breath weapons is doing enough damage to outright crisp, crackle, freeze, or dissolve what the breath’s aimed at without then level draining it. It would have been much nicer if the penalties from the negative levels kicked in before the target saves against the breath weapon, but only creatures that fail saves against the breath take the enervating effects. So this is actually adding a saving throw to an effect that normally comes with none. Worse, it’s not clear whether Spell Resistance applies to the enervating effect.

Graymantle (SpC, Sor/Wiz 5): Only mentioned here because a target you hit with this can’t remove negative levels while it’s under the spell.

Kiss of the Vampire (SpC, Sor/Wiz 7): Basically pick up most of a vampire’s characteristics and get enervation as a melee touch attack.

Kyristan’s Black Tentacles (SSouth, Sor/Wiz 6): This is an overlooked little gem which basically takes (Evard’s) Black Tentacles and has them impose negative levels (1 per round while the subject/s are grappled, Fort save negates). Black Tentacles is solid battlefield control, this adds nice insult to injury on top.

Laeral’s Crowning Touch (Wtrdeep, Clr 9, Sor/Wiz 9): Sort of trolling for high-level casters. Basically if the target fails a Will save, they take a curse: for one year, every time they cast a spell, they take as many negative levels as the level of the spell. Fort save after 24 hours to see whether the level loss is permanent. Oh, and it turns your hair white too, hurrah for Witcher or anime fans. I’d guess this would be more of interest for the Thought Bottle abuse types, but just in case you really want to annoy the BBEG, here it is.

Master's Lament (HoH, Corrupt 6) - For the duration of the spell, any damage or magical effect (charm, energy drain, etc.) taken by the master is also taken by the familiar, and vice versa. Most familiars by definition have a much weaker Con save than their masters, but the spell takes a Will save to get on and familiars get to use whichever's the better of their save or their master's. It's a pretty tough way to try and get a negative level to stick to a caster when your alternative is just to Split Ray your negative-levelling effect.

Necrotic Skull Bomb (CoR, Clr 5, Sor/Wiz 5): 1d4 negative levels to each target in a 20 foot radius spread. Unfortunately, they put a Fort save on it. However, it’s an AoE, it’s on the cleric spell list, and it’s a swift action spell, which is nice. Comparing the sort of metamagic you’d have to waste to get an Enervation spell operating the same way, this is worth considering.

Orb of Dancing Death (MoE, Clr 5, Sor/Wiz 5) You've had Fiery Sphere and Numbing Sphere, as bouncing ball spells, now have the negative level bouncing ball that hits on a ranged touch attack. Doesn't last long (1 round/3 levels) but also has no saving throw (partly because the levels never have the chance to become permanent.) Debatable whether you'd have this over a more regular Orb spell with Fell Drain attached to it.

Planar Bubble (SpC, Clr 7, Sor/Wiz 7) - This spell creates an area around the subject creature that emulates its native planar environment. Used with creature from any Major Negative-Dominant plane, that means the anything in that area takes DC 25 Fort checks each round against a negative level. Also note that Fort saves to remove negative levels are nuked by -10 there too. (The most natural choice of Major Negative-Dominant Plane is the Negative Energy Plane itself, which doesn't have a lot of life or creatures that can be pulled from there to form an anchor for Planar Bubble. However, Xeg-Yi energons (Planar Handbook) are legally summonable (Summon Monster V). Wights and Vampire Spawn are said to be native to and present on the plane and can be (legally, arguably) pulled in by Summon Undead V. Wraiths in particular are generated when someone is negative-levelled to death on the Negative Energy Plane, too, but good luck actually bringing one back. Frankly the Planar Shepherd might be better for self-saucing negative energy plane shenanigans.

Programmed Amnesia (SpC, Sor/Wiz 9): Bestow negative levels equal to half the target’s character level. Will save, can’t restore the negative levels. Tactically more potent than Energy Drain which is also 9^th level, but even though the negative levels explicitly by RAW reflect loss of class knowledge and training, the lost levels are never permanent, instead returning at one per day.

Raise Dead (SRD, Clr 5): We all try to avoid being here, but like it or not, "the subject of the spell loses one level (or 1 Hit Die) when it is raised, just as if it had lost a level or a Hit Die to an energy-draining creature."

Ravenous Darkness (CChamp, Clr 7): Darkness spell, but anything in its radius that's already got negative levels takes 2d6 damage per round. On its own, not up to much, but one potent enhancement for it is Black Lore of Moil, which pumps that damage up to 6d6 per round and turns it into a save-and-suck spell, since regardless of the save, it takes 4d6/2 negative energy damage.

Retributive Enervation (CMage, Sor/Wiz 7): If something hits you in melee, it gets a negative level. Lasts round/level, maximum 10 negative levels. If you’re casting 7^th level spells and you’ve given something an opportunity to hit you enough times to make this debuff significant, you have been doing something wrong – unless your whole build is gish and you’re centred around tanking, which you’re not, so stop it already.

Return to Nature (ECS, Drd 7): For once the druid got something silly. Monstrous Humanoids and arcane spellcaster Humanoids get hit with 1d4 negative levels. It has a bunch of other effects depending on the target monster type, but it’s not a ray and it’s a single-target; you don’t appear to get a save on the negative levels.

Soul Charge (Web, Clr 3, Sor/Wiz 3): This is a touch spell that puts a negative level on whoever is touched and uses the energy from the negative level as a replacement for a charge from a spell trigger item. However, it's limited to use on 3rd level spells - so staves of Enervation are out -- and the wand's spell has to be on the list for your class. That said: outside Sticks and Stones, this is about the only spell that imposes negative levels before level 4. However, it takes 10 minutes to cast -- so it's tricky to get tactical use out of it without shenanigans (the simplest of which is Ocular Spell). Maybe an Artificer could abuse this with Sanctum Spell to make this useable with Enervation, but it's a very narrow application.

Spectral Dragon (DoF, Sor/Wiz 6): Sort-of a Spiritual Weapon, but creates a dragon-shaped force that, on its bite, does 1d6 Str damage and imposes a negative level. Attack bonus is your CL+casting stat modifier. Much better than Sword of Darkness (below).

Spectral Touch (SpC, Sor/Wiz 6): Every melee touch attack you make during the spell’s duration bestows a negative level on a hit and 5 temporary hitpoints to you. TWF gishes rejoice? Well, no, because you can explicitly only slap someone with a negative level once per round. Might be cheeseable with some way of channelling touch spells, but absent a lenient DM, good luck with that.

Spiritwall (CArc, Sor/Wiz 5): Basically, if you get through the fear effect and you’re dumb enough to push through this wall of moaning, screaming faces, you make a Fort save or take a negative level.

Sticks and Stones (SSouth, Clr 3, Sor/Wiz 3): This is the lowest spell level at which you can get something that natively imposes negative levels: the animated thing created by the spell looks like a skeleton but drains levels like a wight.

Summon Undead V (HoH): Only the highest level of this spell can pull something with Energy Drain abilities -- specifically, the Vampire Spawn and Wight.

Sword of Darkness (CArc, Sor/Wiz 7, Wu Jen7): Basically Spiritual Weapon, but hitting for a negative level on each successful attack, and 2 negative levels on a critical hit. But the negative levels only last as long as the spell does. They should’ve just called it Sword of Annoying Gadfly.

Touch of the Graveborn (CMage, Sor/Wiz 8): You get a melee touch attack that, if the target is already under negative levels, adds 1d6 Str damage on top of the 10d6 damage.



Psionics:

Fate Link (SRD, Seer 3): Lock the fates of two individuals together. If one dies, the other must immediately succeed on a Fortitude save against this power’s save DC or gain two negative levels. (Not to mention if, at least arguably, one takes a negative level, the other does too.)

Fission (SRD, Egoist 7): Split yourself in half. If your duplicate dies before the duration expires, no rejoining occurs, and you gain one negative level. If you die, your duplicate remains in existence, and is for all intents you, but with two negative levels. (Once the duration expires, one of the negative levels immediately converts to one lost level; the other negative level can be removed by standard means.)

Mind Seed (SRD, Telepath 8): The subject in effect receives eight negative levels - but these are negative levels that can’t be removed.

Mindwipe (SRD, Psion/Wilder 4): bestow 2 negative levels on the subject. Fort save and Power Resistance applies. For every 3 additional power points, add 1 negative level. This is kind-of comparable to Enervate in effect.

Stygian Bolt (SRD, Psion/Wilder 6): hit everyone in a 120 foot line with 1d4 negative levels. Get another +1d4 in negative levels for every additional 4 power points you spend. Reflex save applies, as does Power Resistance.

Stygian Conflagration (SRD, Psion/Wilder 9): 15 foot radius cylinder, everyone takes 1d4 negative levels with no save, but Fort save in 24 hours to stop the loss becoming permanent. Put another negative level on for every 2 additional power points spent.

Stygian Ray (SRD, Psion/Wilder 2): bestow a negative level on a foe! … for 1 round.

Stygian Touch (SRD, Psychic Warrior 6): Basically it’s as Spectral Touch above, but at least a Psychic Warrior is using it and not some squishy gish.


Maneuvers:
Enervating Shadow Strike (Swordsage 8 Shadow Hand) Fort save (DC 18+your Wis) or take 1d4 negative levels. No other maneuvers in ToB do energy drain, and it’s a hell of a long wait before picking up an Enervation effect that the mages have likely forgot about by now. Being explicitly a supernatural ability, Spell Resistance does not apply to it … the issue of course being that it still draws a Fort save.


Invocations:
Utterdark Blast (CArc) (Dark, 8): Your eldritch blast deals negative energy damage, and any creature hit by the attack makes a Fort save or takes 2 negative levels. You’re still getting this effect pretty late, but it could be useful I guess for people who can load a lot of eldritch blasts into multiple attacks…


Truenaming:
Essence of Lifespark (ToM, Utterance 5) If you’re really into the masochism inherent in playing a Truenamer, there’s 1 negative level available on this utterance. No saving throw.

[Saintheart]

Feats

And please avoid taking levels in Monk.

Assume Supernatural Ability (SavSpec): On most monsters that have it, Energy Drain usually shows up as a (Su) ability, making it valid for picking up under this feat. That said, most monsters holding this score are undead or high-ish-end outsiders, meaning you still have to do some work to pick up the ability.

Black Lore of Moil (CArc): Black Lore of Moil applies to all Necromancy spells, and with very few exceptions negative level, level drain, or energy draining spells are of the Necromancy school. Because damage =/= penalties, you won't get this to add +2d6 negative levels, but it still has some use. You could still pull some shenanigans out of it by applying Fell Drain to Enervate (since BLoM adds “extra damage” to a Necromancy spell, therefore qualifying it for Fell Drain at least by RAW - the same rationale creates the Locate City bomb since Flash Frost provides "extra damage" to a spell in the same way).

Death Devotion (CCHamp): For 1 minute, 1/day, your melee weapon imposes negative levels on a hit. The number of negative levels you can impose on a target increases by character level, topping out at 5 at level 20. It’s … not bad, I guess, but you get best value out of making lots of attacks and shredding one target.

Empower Supernatural Ability (SavSpec): Worth noting if your (Su) ability drains 1d4 negative levels at a time, since this makes it a x1.5, i.e. an added negative level or two. Doesn't work on Wight Energy Drain, though, since that gives a fixed negative level on each hit.

Enervating Touch (Ghostwalk): Yes, it allows you to bestow a negative level on a touch attack. And it also might be applicable in iterative attacks. However, it requires that you're using the Ghost rules from Ghostwalk, which are a bit different to standard and fairly distinctive to the Ghostwalk setting.

Enervative Healing (RoF): You have to be a fey’ri, and you have to have Enervation as a spell-like ability. That might be an either-or since fey’ri naturally get it. Anyway, you can use your enervation as a melee touch attack rather than a ranged attack roll. I have no idea why you’d do this unless your Dex sucked … or unless you could convince your DM that this feat allowed you to use your ability as part of an iterative attack rather than a standard action. Also allows you to heal 5 points per negative level drained (as opposed to temp hp).

Enervate Spell (LibMort): Sadly, it doesn’t drain any levels at all.

Fell Drain (LibMort): This is the one feat that makes it possible to have level draining fun before around Caster Level 9. It’s as solid as if not arguably superior to Enervation. Fell Drain basically says “if your spell does damage to a living creature, it gets a negative level, no save.” The question then, immediately, is “What happens in the case of spells that administer damage in volleys, such as Ye Olde Magic Missile.” Widespread practice by DMs on this feat seems to be “you do one negative level per spell, no matter how much damage the spell does in separate packets”, but the RAW can be read to suggest that each hit in a volley draws a negative level, particularly when applied to an Orb spell. And it’s still potent if you have a method of drilling out a lot of attacks in short order (read/pass runes on ioun stones, for example, or Repeat Spell, or Twin Spell, etc). The main control on the feat is that it takes up a +2 in spell level, but you could take another feat like Metamagic School Focus or Arcane Thesis, reducing the metamagic cost, and it’d still be a pretty good deal – at least while you’re still firing spells that do damage. (And to ask the obvious: can you Fell Drain Enervation? Well, by RAW … no. Because negative levels are penalties on hitpoints, not damage technically speaking.)

Generous Sacrifice (EoE): pass your negative levels to somebody else; works only on willing creatures. Handy for the necromancer with undead friends!

Glyph Scriber (DragComp): Allows you to scribe certain glyphs. One of these includes the Or glyph, which bestows a negative level.

Greater Aberrant Dragonmark (Dragonmarked):grants you Enervation 2/day.

Improved Energy Drain (LibMort): requires energy drain as a supernatural ability, but each negative level bestowed adds +1 to your skills, attack rolls, saves, and ability checks. By RAW this would apply to not only your (Su) ability but any spells or other abilities that impose negative levels on the enemy, since the benefit applies "whenever you bestow a negative level". Soul Eaters notably pick this one up easily.

Life Drain (LibMort): Your negative levels pull (5+CHA x number of levels drained) hitpoints off a creature, and you get that amount of temporary hitpoints. Again it requires a supernatural energy drain ability, but again by RAW applies "whenever you impose a negative level", i.e. not necessarily by the (Su) ability. This is significant since normally only Energy Drain as a (Su) ability gives temporary hp - no other forms of negative level imposition normally do. Worth thinking about for high-CHA builds in particular.

Necrotic Reserve (LibMort): Basically a 1/day Die Hard for undead allowing you to act as disabled if your hitpoints go below zero. You get the reserve by energy draining something that day. Very limited use as a last minute "you idiot, you play undead and you let your hitpoints get to 0" sort of feat.

Negative Energy Burst [Epic]: Expend a rebuke undead, and everything within a 60 foot radius makes a check. If they’d be rebuked, they wear a negative level. If they’d be commanded, they lose 2 negative levels. This is lousy for an epic level ability.

Nightbringer Initiate (Faiths of Eberron): adds Enervation as 4th-level spell. This is also a prerequisite for Planar Shepherd, which has its own applications described under the Planar Bubble spell above.

Ocular Spell (LoM): Most people have heard of how Ocular Spell facilitates persisting a vast array of spells. However, it's worth calling out here as a means of adding force multipliers to Enervation since it allows you to store spells wth metamagic applied to them in your eyes. It also has really good application in ray-ifiying negative level spells that otherwise wouldn't be so, e.g. Energy Ebb and Soul Charge. And as said, because it turns spells into rays, it then allows things like Split Ray and similar to be applied, thus raising the negative level output much more than would otherwise be the case. It takes some metamagic reduction to really work, but two instances of Ocular Spell + Split Ray + Twin Spell alone turns Enervation into a 8d4 negative levels monster.

Quicken Spell-Like Ability (SavSpec): If your negative level draining is a (Sp) ability, this gets it down below a standard action to use it.

Ray Burst (Dragon Annual #5): +3 metamagic. Your ray replaced with 30' burst (centered on the caster); creatures which are farther than 10' (but, obviously, no farther than 30') are allowed a Reflex save. That metamagic cost is very, very high for what this does. Maybe if you were Planar Bubbling things and wanted to add more pain to the blow, this might be worth considering, but you could just Incantatrix your way to destruction in a similar manner with Chain Spell or similar. Also might be worth consideration if you're planning on gishing and mixing it up in melee with opponents a lot, or if your Dex is low and therefore your ranged touch attack roll is terrible. Or if you're planning on cheesing Arcane Archer (yes, Arcane Archer. We'll get to that.)

Ray Coning (Dragon Annual #5): +2 metamagic. Your ray is replaced with 30' cone; creatures in the area allowed Reflex save. If it's all big beefy targets with low Dex in range, this might be worth considering, and with the right other spells it could match or better Energy Drain's output as a 9th level spell. Again, best considered if you have a lot of targets in range and you have some sort of feature that allows you to pull negative levels bestowed onto you as temporary hp or bonuses to attack rolls (Improved Energy Drain, Life Drain).

Spectacular Death Throes (DCS): More of a DM Raised Middle Finger than a player option; if you are a Sivak Draconian, when you die your slayer takes negative levels of 1/2 your HD (Fort negates).

Spell Drain (LibMort): Really a rider on a negative level. If you do manage to rip a spell out of a caster’s head by negative level imposition, you can cast that spell once yourself. And like Improved Energy Drain which is its prerequisite, you need a supernatural energy drain ability. And it doesn’t work on spontaneous casters.

Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus, Metamagic School Focus, feats directed to a given school: Just observing here that level-draining, negative level, or energy drain spells are, with few exceptions, all Necromancy school. If you’re going to focus on spells smashing out this form of debuff, school specializations may be worth considering, especially for those spells which introduce saving throws into Enervate’s no-save space.

Split Ray, Empower, Repeat, Twin, etc etc: Mainly of use on Enervate, these increase its power significantly because they create more iterations of the spell. Incantatrix does very well with metamagic in general and if you'd like to see the sort of death-wave one can put out with Enervation subjected to a lot of metamagic, check the builds section below.

Stygian Archon (SRD): If you use psionics to “utilize, disrupt, or detect” a negative energy effect, add +1 to your ML. This would include all of the stygian powers mentioned above.

Stygian Power (SRD): Metapsionic feat. Add a shaken effect to anything that you hit with a negative level using your psionics.

Touch of Taint (HoH): Basically force a target to take taint as well as negative levels, but taint rules are stupid and only exist to tell you when someone is trying to take Tainted Scholar.

Wightblade (Dragon #348) - On a successful melee hit against a living opponent, you may use your energy drain ability in addition to dealing normal damage for your weapon. The prerequisite is an "Energy drain ability", and it's really meant for Wight PCs, but creatures such as Vampires might be able to take advantage of this by picking up Improved Unarmed Strike and then hitting with their natural, Energy-draining slam attacks on top of their full iterative attacks from IUS. Indeed a Soul Eater could capitalise on this by being able to use its weapons for its energy draining rather than go with touch attacks. Is the energy drain ability usable in iterative attacks? I'd say yes. The "in addition" wording suggests it was RAI as well as RAW, since Wights' Energy Drain has no "once per round" limit on it.

[Saintheart]

Items

Did you really think we'd get through this thread without a Princess Bride reference?

Baneblades of Demron (Player's Guide to Faerûn) - Keryvian: on a Critical Hit, drain a level.

Blackrazor (AEG): bestows negative levels on its wielder if you hit an undead target with it.

Chained Enervation Trap (DMG II) This is a particularly nasty version which Chains, as you'd guess, an Enervation spell. There's also Enervation and Energy Drain traps on the same page.

Consumptive Burst (Planar Handbook): Weapon Quality. +3. On a critical hit, impose a negative level. Subpar, just get an Enervating weapon.

Energy Drain (Ghostwalk p. 62): Armor/shield quality. +2 bonus and you get an Enervation effect as a touch attack if your armor has this quality, or as a shield bash attack if it’s on your shield. This is ridiculously cheap for what it does by RAW, and this version was specifically updated from Defenders of the Faith. And no, the MIC never updated it any further, so this stands as written. If you want to spam enervation under iterative attacks, forget Soul Eater, this is the way to do it.

Enervating (MIC): Weapon Quality. +2 bonus and anytime you score a critical hit you bestow a negative level on the target, which disappears after 1 hour. The short timeframe is a pain, but for tactical purposes it probably doesn't matter. The trick is then getting a high chance of a critical hit.

Enervating Arm graft (Libris Mortis): It's 40,000 gp, and really the main thing it grants is a +4 inherent bonus to Str. But it also allows you to impose a negative level on a touch attack twice per day.

Enervating Stylus (Dungeon #147, p. 39): unlike the many many other items which bestow negative levels on the user, this one can result in actual level loss. However, it does it by you writing an experience down in such vivid detail it hits you with a negative level and the possibility of permanent level loss, so really the best use for this one is to cut out the need for a Wight's touch in the whole Thought Bottle abuse thing. (Indeed it's rather thematic and appropriate to imagine a Thought Bottle filled with ink, into which one dips the Enervating Stylus; as you draw ink from the bottle to write your experience down, so your XP is placed in the bottle with every dip of the Stylus.)

Homeland Champion (CoV): +1 Weapon Quality. Braveheart, the sword. A weapon with this quality bestows 1 negative level per hit on any enemy of the weapon's homeland, which lasts as long as the weapon's being wielded. Seems to work just fine on iterative attacks, and has extra benefits if you have a particular feat, so it's definitely one to think about for patriotic campaigns.

Life-Drinker (SRD): In the SRD as a specific weapon, but not a unique weapon, i.e. this is more of a weapon quality than a specific weapon. +1 greataxe that bestows 2 negative levels per melee hit (but also puts 1 negative level on the wielder). Relatively cheap at the price, especially if you have Death Ward or a magic item that provides always-on immunity to level drain (and there are a few).

Lifequencher (CPsi): Also a specific weapon, but not unique. It's a +1 sundering bastard sword, and you can imbue it with the psionic power Stygian Weapon 3/day. If this is activated in conjunction with a successful hit, the opponent takes 1d4 negative levels ... that last 1 round. And unlike every other instance where negative levels matching an opponent's HD kill, this weapon instead stuns the opponent for 1 round. Avoid.

Necrotic Focus (MiC): Weapon Quality. +3 bonus which allows you to channel your (Su) energy drain ability into a melee strike with it. (And add the weapon’s enhancement bonus to the ability’s DC, which is nice.) This doesn’t mean you’re getting iterative energy drains necessarily, because this doesn’t change how many times per day you can access that ability. This will have greater or lesser effects depending on the creature, then: vampires can only Energy Drain 1/day, wights don’t have that restriction – but wights at least natively don’t have a lot of BAB either.

Ors Glyph (DragComp): See Glyph Scriber in the feats section above.

Greater/Lesser Death Spear (DoTU): 10-charge longspear that can deliver an enervation (Lesser) or energy drain (Greater) effect on a melee hit.

Sacrificial Smiting (CoV): Weapon Quality, +1. Interesting idea! If you've burned up all your Smite Evils for the day, this weapon allows you to take one negative level on yourself and get another use of Smite Evil. Would be interesting to see how this would interact with a permanent Death Ward effect (I expect a DM to say it doesn't function at all) but if you're desperate and you've got a massive CHA bonus this might be palatable (the negative levels are never permanent).

Soulbreaker (MIC): +1 weapon quality, but it doesn't stack with Enervating weapons ... indeed it overrides it, because this is a quality coming under MIC's stupid [Burst] weapon rules, i.e. "you have to have an Enervating weapon first, and all this does is make the negative level last 24 hours and create the chance of permanency." Meaning you're paying for a +3 weapon to do what - in substance - Enervating already does.

Souldrinking (BoVD): +4 weapon quality, but explicitly bestows 1 negative level on a normal melee hit, and 2 negative levels on a critical hit. Expensive but then very potent if you are into attack spam. Unfortunately, the MIC rewrote this quality to a +1, but also to just give some temporary hitpoints and a +2 morale bonus to damage on a critical hit.

Spectral Arrow (BoVD): looks like a +1 arrow but bestows 2 negative levels on a hit rather than doing any actual damage. It's also a brilliant energy weapon, meaning it's basically a touch AC roll since it ignores armor bonuses. And it also ignores nonliving matter, thus, cover bonuses don't apply either. 2,560 gp per arrow though.

Stygian (MIC): +1 weapon quality, and only works 3/day. At least you don’t have to impose a critical hit to impose a level drain here, but the negative level only lasts 10 minutes.

Sword of Life Stealing (SRD): Specific weapon, but not unique. Black Iron +2 longsword bestows a negative level on a crit, and gives you 1d6 temp hp which - nicely - last for 24 hours. Life-Drinker from the same book bestows more negative levels, but might be worth considering.

Wight Hide Shield (MIC): imposes a negative level with a shield bash, DC 16 Fort to avoid - but it can't impose more than 3 negative levels per day. There's also a 'Wight Shield' in Libris Mortis which doesn't have the limit on uses and is a DC 14 Fort save to avoid, but given the images used for both are the same, it's very likely the MIC version was an update of the Libris Mortis one.

White Resin drug (Dragon #305): OD with it (more than one dose in 24 hours) would cause 1 negative level (Fort DC 18 to remove)

[Saintheart]

Classes and Prestige Classes

The class sucks and blows.

Bereft 5 (ToM): the Bereft is a Truenaming prestige class, so immediately be warned. Technically you only need skill ranks in Truespeak to qualify for it, although absent shenanigans you’re not getting in before level 10. Anyway, if you make a truespeak check, the target takes 2 negative levels, no save (Fort save in 24 hours to avoid it becoming permanent.)

Bone Collector 6 (Ghostwalk): Indirectly. The Bone Collector can basically suck up an energy drain imposed on himself and use it as a touch attack within the next 24 hours. Limited use.

Dread Necromancer 12 (HoH): Imposes negative levels via her charnel touch attack. Each day, she can bestow a total number of negative levels equal to one-half her class level, but no more than two negative levels with a single touch. And since it’s via the charnel touch attack, this is also hard-limited to once per round.

Emancipated Spawn 1, 2 (SavSpec): This is a weird monster class but very potent if 2 levels are taken in it. You do need DM cooperation because basically you have to be able to play a Wight or Vampire Spawn whose creator has been destroyed, and be able to specify what level and class you were before you died. But if you do, 2 levels gives you back your class abilities and feats from a class you had before you were turned undead. So if, say, you managed to convince your DM that you were a 20th level Fighter before being turned into a Wight, that's 11 feats for the price of 4 HD, and better yet, usable as if you were a 20th level Fighter. Another, slightly more delicious possibility, is to pick up prestige class features without having any prerequisites. "But why shouldn't I just take a Wight or Vampire Spawn template and suck up its ruinous +4 LA?" Because, as said, for the 4 HD of a Wight or Vampire Spawn, and 2 levels in this class, you pick up potentially a whole 20 levels in class abilities and feats. Anway: what does this have to do with negative levels? Well, it's really that because you're a Wight or Vampire Spawn, you have Energy Drain (Su).

Harbinger (Variant Bard) 18 (Dragon #337): The Harbinger basically switches Inspire Courage-ish stuff for inspiring fear, incompetence, etc. At level 18, this takes the form of sucking 2 negative levels off up to 4 targets so long as those targets can still hear him, and these are never permanent level losses.

Lifedrinker 4, 7 (BoVD) – You have to be a vampire to take this class at all, but otherwise you’re in at character level 3. Anyway, at 4 and 7 you can Empower and Maximise the numeric effects of a special attack you’ve got. Unfortunately, this doesn’t much improve vampires' Energy Drain, which is a fixed 2 negative levels on its slam attack - Empower raises that to 3, and Maximise doesn’t affect it. The Lifedrinker does grant Empower, Maximise, and Quicken effects to a spell the vampire casts, but Lifedrinker doesn’t advance casting progression at all.

Life Eater (Web) - Interesting obscure PrC, which offers two forms of imposing negative levels: the standard Enervation 1/day (as a (Sp) ability) at 7th level ... and at 8th level, bestow a negative level every time you hit with a sneak attack. The class is rogue-ish and has entry at Level 5 possible, so while you won't get as much sneak attack dice as you might with a default rogue build, it's got a fair number of nice toys attached to it.

Lurk 14 (CPsi) – impose 1d4 negative levels for 1 round.

Lurking Terror 1 (LibMort): Undead only, but 1 level in this adds a +1 to the DC of (Su) or (Ex) special attacks including level drain.

Hierophant 1 (SRD): Not here because it directly buffs Enervation, but because of the Blast Infidel (Su) ability: Any spell with a description that involves inflicting or channeling negative energy (inflict spells, mass inflict light wounds, harm) cast on a creature of the opposed alignment works as if under the effect of a Maximize Spell feat (without using a higher-level spell slot). Enervation speaks of hurling negative energy at an opponent, and indeed the spell descriptions of many enervation-style effects are worth considering for this. A guaranteed 4 negative levels beats 1-4 negative levels any day of the week.

Pale Master 8 (LibMort): The Pale Master’s touch imposes 1 negative level (no save, only a Fort save 24 hours later to avoid making it permanent.) These forms of touch are all (Su) abilities, and as such there’s no Spell Resistance either. Probably this is mainly of use with Spectral Hand which would seem to work fine with it, and it seems to work okay with iterative attacks in the same way the Soul Eater’s attack does, at least by RAW. But it’s very limited in uses – maximum 3/day.

Planar Shepherd 5 (FoE): Planar Shepherds are already Druid On Steroids, but for negative level imposition there's a couple of features they have worth calling out. First, they can Wild Shape into elementals or outsiders native to a given other plane, and assume all their (Ex), (Su), and (Sp) abilities. This has immediate application for certain nasty places that have creatures with Energy Drain, which is usually a (Su) ability. However, the fifth level ability is most interesting since it basically allows the P.Shepherd to Planar Bubble a Major Negative Dominant plane in a 20 foot radius around himself. This means everything in that radius takes negative levels, and negative energy spells (like Enervate, or Necrotic Skull Bomb) are Maximised. "But Enervate isn't a druid spell!" Well, it is if you took the feat Nightbringer Initiate, which is a qualifying feat for the whole prestige class. "But can't I just bubble Dal Quor and get myself always-on Celerity?" Yeah, good luck with a DM granting that, come to the Negative Side, we have levels. And cake.

Silverhair Knight 5 (Dragon #315): Capstone ability of the prestige class, which is about redeeming evil creatures. On a failed attempt to consume a target's sins, (i. e. target's successful Will save), the Knight gets a number of negative levels equal to the target's HD + target's Cha mod, and which have the normal chance of permanency after 24 hours. Really more for the Thought Bottle gambit.

Shadow Sun Ninja 10 (ToB): Impose a negative level with each unarmed attack, but at the cost of 1 Con with each hit. If you hit Con 0, you become a vampire (and, explicitly, a NPC). Wand of Lesser Restoration doesn't quite help with this since the Con comes off you in one big hit at the end of your shadowy state, but generally the suggestion is to get polymorphed or shapeshifted into a high-Con monster's form to give you more uses of the ability.

Soul Eater 1 (BoVD): This commonly gets wheeled out whenever someone asks for an Energy-draining build, and it’s at least more arguable than some that you can make iterative draining attacks with it. The touch of a Soul Eater bestows one negative level on its target. And therefore arguably operates on iterative attacks. The immediate objection is the general rule that, absent something specific, a (Su) ability takes a standard action to activate. There's any number of arguments in response, but the first is most obvious: a Wight's Energy Drain (Su) happens whenever it hits with a slam attack, and it can use slam attacks as part of its full attack routine. Therefore that Energy Drain (Su) does not take a standard action. And therefore neither should the Soul Eater's. On top of that, pretty well all of the Soul Eater’s abilities depend on it draining energy, for one. Also, absent a lot of natural attacks, TWF, or similar, it likely wasn’t foreseen that a Soul Eater would be able to hit a target more than 4 times per round – i.e. the maximum amount of levels an Enervation spell could rip off a person. (cf. the Souldrinking weapon quality in the same book – admittedly overwritten by MIC – granted negative level imposition on a normal melee hit as a +4 weapon quality). And compared against metamagic or Fell Drain shenanigans alone, this is not a terribly unbalanced class. If you do get the judgment that the ability is just a Energy Drain (Su) ability, then the next stop is to find other methods for imposing negative levels and using the feats Improved Energy Drain and/or Life Drain. (Final bonus note: Soul Eater 9 allows you to take command of any wight you create by killing people to death with negative levels.)

Siren (Savage Species): Interesting bard PrC that, at 7th level, gives you an Enervate effect 1/day/level. At least it's an AoE because it hits anything that can hear the Siren...

Sybil (Savage Species): The capstone of this PrC is the ability to basically throw out a riddle with energy-draining consequences. An incorrect answer bestows 2d6 negative levels on the questioner. Fffffairly limited in application even if it's powerful.

Thrall of Malcanthet 5 (Dragon #353): This PrC basically is a case of "I wanna be a succubus one day", and takes a full 10 levels to get there. Halfway through, though, the Thrall gets a the Draining Kiss: 3/day at 5th level, for a negative level on the target. There is no indication how long this level lasts, and might well be permanent. At the 10th level, the Thrall gets to enter Succubus Form for 1 hour, during which the Draining Kiss can be used at will. Loses 3 casting levels, although entry at level 6 is possible.

True Necromancer 13 (LibMort): At this level, Energy Drain as the spell 1/day, which is about 1 level before you'd get it normally under Cleric or Sor/Wiz progression. True Necromancer’s also generally pretty solid for improving Necromancy spells, at least in terms of CL if not save DC.

Unholy Abomination 2 (Dragon #313): This prestige class was meant for Beholders, but it’s accessible with the Aberration type (easy sources for the type are the Pseudonatural or Spellwarped templates, or the Halfblood Daelkyr from Eberron). 3/day, you can fire a ray (ranged touch attack) that imposes 2 negative levels on Good creatures, and poor writing means it’s not certain whether those negative levels go away automatically or are outright permanent.

Void Disciple 13 (CDiv): Capstone ability of the prestige class is to 1/day bestow 1d4 negative levels. No save. Also a (Su) ability, so Spell Resistance doesn’t apply either.

[Saintheart]

Races, Monsters, Templates, Other Interesting Stuff

But they get nice ability bonuses for the 5 foot movement speed.

Races with Energy Drain or similar via spell-like abilities:
Fey’ri - LA +2 (RoF)
Vampiric Ixitxachitl - small aquatic aberration, 2 HD, LA +3 (MM 2)
Succubus - evil outsider, 6 HD, LA +6
*Shadow Dragon, wyrmling - 4 HD, LA +3
*Shadow Dragon, very young - 7 HD, LA +3
*Shadow Dragon, young - 10 HD, LA +3
*Shadow Dragon, juvenile - 13 HD, LA +4
Shadar-Kai (FF)- a Shadar-Kai with a damaged soul gains one negative level that cannot be removed until she restores her soul completely.
Thorciasid - medium aberration, 29 HD, LA +0
Atropal - undead abomination, 66 HD, LA minus 22 (ECL 44)



Templates:
Demilich (Epic) - Trap the Soul: 4 negative levels (on the successful save!)
Gravewight (The Standing Stone
Half-Dragon, Shadow
Hoarder Dragon
Husk Vermin (Drow of the Underdark)
Kr'y'izoth (Dungeon #100) - Blackflame Touch
Monstrous Vampire (Ghostwal
Restless Prey Creature
Savage Vampire - LA +6
Shadow Vampire - LA +10
Spectral Creature - LA +7
Spectral Savant – LA +4 (CPsi)
T'liz (Dragon #315) - LA +4 (but under the DM's control )
Trap Haunt (Dragon Compendium)
Vampire Spawn - LA +4
Vampiric Dragon - LA +5
Vampire - LA +8
Wight - LA +4






Monsters with Energy Drain:
Abomination, Atropal (ELH)
Astral Kraken (Planar Handbook)
Blackfire Elemental (Dungeon #100)
Deathshrieker (MM 3) - Death Rattle (Will save or 1d4 negative levels)
Demogorgon (Prince of Demons) (FC1)
Demon, Blood Fiend (FF)
Devourer (SRD)
Dragon Wight
Dread Linnorm (MM 2)
Drider Vampire (CotSQ)
Effigy (MM 2)
Fetch (DCS)
Ghostly Dragon (Draconomicon)
Golem, Black Ice (Dragon #324)
Gravewyrm (Web)
Grimweird (MM3)
Hullathoin (FF) - Exudes Bloodfiend Swarm
Ixitxachitl, Vampiric (MM2)
Linnorm, Corpse Tearer (MM2)
Linnorm, Dread (MM2)
Mind Flayer, Vampire (LoM)
Mindstealer, Drone (Web)
Mindstealer, Master (Web)
Nabassu demon (Fiendish Codex I) - their Death-Stealing Gaze inflicts 1 negative level in case of Juvenile Nabassu (or 1d4 - for Mature Nabassu)
Necromental (LibMort)
Nightshade, Nightcrawler (MM1)
Nightshade, Nighthaunt (LeoF)
Nightshade, Nightswimmer (Dungeon #92) - variant of Nightcrawler (add Swim 60' speed), Energy Drain is still there
Orb Wraith (City of the Spider Queen) - Enervation Ray
Ooze, Void (Planar Handbook)
Phiuhl (Fiend Folio) - Desiccate
Shadow Dragon (Draconomicon)
Shadowen (Dragon #286)
Slaughter Wight (LibMort)
Spectral Steed (incorporeal) (Ghostwalk)
Spectral Steed (manifested fully)(Ghostwalk)
Spectre (MM1)
Sporebat (FF) - notable because it's a Plant, not a Bat, and gets an enervation ray once per round as a 12th level Sorcerer. Mostly relevant b/c it is a Summon Nature's Ally VIII option and Druids don't get many good enervation options.
Succubus (MM1)
Swarm, Locust, Bloodfiend (FF)
The Focus (Aspect of Atropus) (Elder Evils)
Thorciasid (Epic Level Handbook)
Vampire (SRD)
Vampire Dire Wolf
Vampire Spawn (MM1)
Vilewight (BoVD)
Vour (MoE)
Wight (MM1)
Wraith Spider, Huge (CotSQ)
Wraith Spider, Gargantuan (CotSQ)
Wraith Spider, Colossal (CotSQ)
Yugoloth, Yagnaloth (MM2)

More generally, the "Creatures That Cannot Be" article series gave us "Vampiric Plants" and "The Demon Vampire" (also, Ooze Vampire was mentioned).



Stuff that puts negative levels on yourself:
Unholy Weapon, Holy Weapon, Axiomatic Weapon, Anarchic Weapon, Canaith Mandolin, Anstruth Harp. (At epic levels, similar goes for Unholy Power, Holy Power, Anarchic Power, Axiomatic Power...) If you’re of an opposed alignment or suck at playing stringed instruments, you take a negative level while you’re holding these – but these negative levels never become permanent level loss. So they won’t be useful for Thought Bottle ab/use. What’s that? Glad you asked …



The Thought Bottle Trick:
This is worth recapping just so new groovers don’t have to go searching for how it works. It's a trick that uses level drain to fuel your XP requirements for item creation or spells (e.g. Wish).

The Thought Bottle is a magic item from Complete Arcane (p. 150). You pay 500 XP, and then your experience at that moment of time is locked in the bottle. At any later point, you can retrieve the stored value to reset your experience to that value. The standard trick is to store your XP in the Thought Bottle, and then get hit with Energy Drain, intentionally fail the saving throw against the Negative Level, and take the permanent level loss.

Why would one do this? Because your XP drops to halfway between levels when you permanently lose a level. You have that much (halfway between levels) xp to spend on things like crafting, since the Thought Bottle is there to restore your XP.

As one long-ago poster described the trick:

The Thought Bottle (CA) for 20K gold allows you to spend 500 XP and store your current XP total, and then later reset your XP to that value (i.e. 500 below before you originally used it). Losing 500 XP hurts, but there’s a lot you can do to make it worth it. For example, casting Wish usually takes 5000 XP, however with a Thought Bottle it only costs 500. With more XP available, cast Wish twice or more in a row before restoring with the Thought Bottle.

How does one get lots of XP to use for this? Intentionally gain a negative level, intentionally fail your save in order to actually lose a level, then restore the XP with Restoration. Then instead of leveling up right away, use the XP as above. If you’re level 20, this tactic will give 19000 XP, which can be used for 3 wishes. If you delevel twice to level 18, this will give 37000 XP or 7 wishes. If you delevel three times to level 17 (no longer possible with most Sorcerers who don’t get 9th level spells until level 18, but a Wizard can still do it) this will give 54000 XP or 10 wishes. Of course, if you don’t mind spending 500 XP again, you can get another 3/7/10 wishes, and repeat the process until you really don’t have any XP left in the levels.

Thought Bottles can even be used to redress the loss of XP caused by the ritual to become a Necropolitan, at least by RAW. When you take the template, you undergo a ritual that makes you lose a level and then lose another 1,000 XP on top. Libris Mortis says "no spell, not even Restoration, can restore this XP." Just as well the Thought Bottle isn't a spell.



More Level Loss Fun:
Depending on your table, intentional level loss may be one way to get rid of Racial Hit Dice. Many monsters come with RHD, which are commonly seen as taxes to play something interesting - RHD inflate your Effective Character Level for limited benefit, when compared to having levels in actual classes. A Wight's 4 HD are nowhere near as valuable as 4 levels in Rogue, for example. And that's before you take Level Adjustment into account.

Anyway: level loss by RAW ‘removes one hit dice’. This generally doesn’t affect the abilities or physical scores that come with the race, since traits and special qualities usually aren't affected by a creature's HD count. (That said, (Su) ability DCs key off a monster's HD.) When you get level drained, one hit dice vanishes by RAW, leaving you free to pick some other class to replace that lost HD as you level back up.

"But my character classes were acquired after my HD, don't they get drained first?" That's the common interpretation, but it's not RAW. And if it is RAW, there's at least one prestige class in Dragon #302 which explicitly sidelines this rule: the Tainted Spellcaster (credit to Anthrowhale for digging this one up). Tainted Spellcasters are able to explicitly pick which class a drained level comes off, in short. There is more discussion about this prestige class here.

Level loss like this can make for interesting character building options regarding prestige classes. As Anthrowhale puts it in that discussion about Tainted Spellcasters:

...while you lose class features [on disqualification from a class] you retain BAB, Skills, and HD. Hence, even in a situation where prerequisites are checked always and class features are not allowed to qualify for a class, this creates an explicitly legal and reasonably-feasible way to bypass BAB and skill requirements.

For example, a gish could be created via:
Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 3/Tainted Spellcaster 4/Abjurant Champion 3
-> (using raise dead or other means of level loss)
Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 3/Abjurant Champion 3
->
Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 3/Abjurant Champion 5/Sacred Exorcist 1/Prestige Paladin 3/Spellsword 1/Sacred Exorcist 7

You end up with Sorcerer 19 spellcasting and BAB+17, modestly better than the standard Sorcadin with Sorcerer 18 Spellcasting and BAB+16.

In fact, if you are willing to give up on Divine Grace, you can even end up with:
Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 4/Abjurant Champion 5/Sacred Exorcist 8/Ruathar 3
For Sorcerer 20 spellcasting with BAB+16

And then there's what happens in the case of lycanthropes.

If a character becomes a were-creature, his character level explicitly increases by the number of Racial Hit Dice the base animal has. For an exaggerated example, suppose a Fighter 1 gets lycanthropy from a Dire Tiger (it’s a Large animal and therefore qualifies for the template and to impose lycanthropy). That Fighter 1 now is explicitly level 17 by reason of the Dire Tiger’s 16 HD (and which is pretty brutal since that Fighter 1 then has to collect the XP of an 18th level character before he can even get to Fighter 2). There seems to be little argument that the HD came after the Fighter picked up his class level, so the HD are likely drained first. Therefore, if the Fighter takes level after level of drain from an overly amorous wight, he can replace those lost HD with levels in another class, especially if some kind stranger has bought him a Thought Bottle ahead of time. And arguably the character loses not one of the useful abilities the lycanthropy gives him - most notably, the capacity to have an alternate form. Remember, even if it loses some hit dice, it's still a lycanthrope.

(And indeed the more efficient use of Thought Bottles and lycanthropy is to contract the disease, use the Thought Bottle to store your XP at that point, and then cure the lycanthropy, thus leaving the Thought Bottle to be used to give yourself a massive whack of XP.)

That said, Thought Bottle and lycanthrope ab/use are often perceived as cheesy as a New York pizza. So be warned.



How to End the World:
On reflection, no thread on Energy Drain would be complete without a short instruction guide on how to cause an undead apocalypse.

The idea of the Wightpocalypse comes from the fact that a wight is automatically generated anytime you apply X negative levels to someone whose total HD is X. Commoners (those poor sods who exist only to staff magic item shops and provide local colour to your adventuring reign of terror) only have 1 HD each, and there tend to be a lot of them. Basic mathematics tells us that one wight can end the world by a simple geometric doubling effect (absent a mildly interested cleric or two): 1 wight successful at killing a commoner now results in 2 wights being active, 2 wights quickly result in 4 wights, 4 wights make 8 wights, and on we go. There is some fluff that basically says wights tend to be solitary and don't cooperate, but you can see how this is a major threat.

As said, clerics presumably keep this from happening. But if you'd like to give your personal playthrough of The Walking Dead a bit of a boost to start up, look no further than the poorly-written spell Locate City from Races of Destiny. As a long-ago poster set it out:

1: Take Locate City, a spell with a range of ten miles per level
2: Apply Snowcasting (Frostburn) - the spell now has the cold descriptor
3: Apply the Flash Frost feat (PHB2) - the spell now deals 2 points of cold damage to all in area
4: Apply Fell Drain. Any creature that takes cold damage (from Flash Frost) also gains a negative level. Humanoids with only 1 HD are instantly slain, and will rise as Wights.
5: When cast in the middle of a crowded population centre, where 99% of the people are level 1 NPCs, you effectively convert 99% of them into Wights.
6: What follows is carnage as the 99% attack the remaining 1% and turn them into Wights. The army of Wights can then move to the next city, and turn the entire populace there to wights. And the next city, and the one after that. This chain-reaction is also known as the Wightpocalypse.

(There are other attempts to apply Explosive Spell to Locate City thus creating a nuke, but these are debatable due to how Locate City works with that metamagic. Not so the Wightpocalypse as above, which works by RAW).

Also, if you don't want to generate the Wightpocalypse, there is a spell that stops a corpse becoming undead: Burial Blessing, a Clr 1 spell from Defenders of the Faith. However, it takes 10 minutes to cast, so you'll need something like the Ordained Champion's spell channelling ability, or maybe an Imbued Arrow from the Arcane Archer, to make this a practical option since wights rise in 1d4 rounds.


Exploiting negative level mechanics, or, I had nothing better to do with this section but to engage in a RAW debate:
I know I said way up in the 'Introduction' section (which I know you didn't read) that negative levels are 'generally' a negative energy effect, but the reality is ... a lot more nuanced. Which is to say, a grey area.

See, nowhere does WOTC ever outright say that the bestowing of a negative level is a negative energy effect. And that causes problems when you're trying to work out what an ability does to undead.

Let's acknowledge the obvious, though: it's very heavily implied by WOTC that negative levels are a negative energy effect. For a start, the Negative Energy Plane slaps you with negative levels every round you're in there without protection. The overwhelming majority of spells that bestow negative levels are from the Necromancy school (but not all of them, which is where the problem starts.) Most spells that bestow negative levels have some sort of rider in them that says how they affect undead, typically giving them some healing or temporary hitpoints as opposed to penalising the undead with anything. And the Undead type says 'negative energy (such as inflict spells) can heal undead' (but doesn't say it always does - even Energy Drain (Su) explicitly says that negative levels outside the ability do not give the bestower any temporary hitpoints.

I suspect the reasons for the grey area are twofold: one, negative energy was meant originally as a damage type, and two, WOTC didn't lock negative levels to Energy Drain (Su), but instead allowed casters to throw them via Enervation and Energy Drain. Most of WOTC's work around immunities tended to pertain to immunity to given types of damage, which negative levels are not because they impose penalties, not healable loss of hitpoints or ability scores. In the case of Undead, they gave them an immunity to Energy Drain and an immunity to any effect that required a Fort save, and thought that'd be enough to deal with Wights destroying themselves by eating with their hands: you can't hit me with Energy Drain, and you can't permanently pull a HD off me even if you could, so, job done.

But as said, negative levels are not specifically a negative energy effect. (Not to mention that even if they are a negative energy effect, the Undead type on its own does not say what happens to a creature that gets them. It's not immunity, it's sometimes healing, and it's even arguable that you take the negative level anyway.) So that leaves open a couple of the intriguing builds and combinations below, one of which is giving a Necropolitan Paladin a Sacrificial Smiting weapon. Because either way there's a question left about whether (a) the Paladin can take a negative level, and (b) what happens when it does. Because that weapon doesn't say whether its effect is a negative energy effect either.

As some elsewhere have said, this even has theoretical applications even if you don't want to permanently level drain Undead, say just cutting their notional effective level to make them more controllable under Rebuke Undead, e.g. by getting the high level undead to carry Holy weapons and an Anstruth Harp around with them.



Special Bonus Third Party Section:
(Courtesy of ShurikVch who cracked open some dusty texts from the Ravenloft setting. And let me here throw a bit of an editorial: third party is not synonymous with bad. That's the perception, but I've seen much more that's eminently breakable even in Core than in most third party products. If anything it's that a lot of third party stuff held strongly to WOTC's early dicta to the effect of 'nothing more powerful than a +2 bonus'. If anything the problem with third party is not its power, its the availability. I recommend if you get a request for inclusion of a third party product, at least have a look at what's proposed.

Anyway, the stuff that's from Ravenloft and which is at least on theme:

Cloaker, Undead (Denizens of Dread)
Figurine, Porcelain (Denizens of Dread) - Enervation Ray
Golem, Dread (Ravenloft Campaign Setting) - "Salient Powers" rules: among those powers is Energy Drain
Spectral Hag (Denizens of Dread) - not just their Chilling Touch bestows negative levels, but those who die from it would become a Spectre, and all Spectral Hags have Summon Spectre SA

Energy Drain feat (Champions of Darkness) - by spending Rebuke/Command attempt, you can try to inflict Cha mod negative levels as melee touch attack (Fort save DC 10 + divine CL)

Undead Batteries (Dragonlance Age of Mortals) - drain HD off your undead to power metamagic. Because if you're already an Incantatrix negative-levelling people with masses of metamagic'd Enervation spells, why not use some of those wights you create for something useful? This one almost feels like it should have been a feature for Necromancers, and it is pretty powerful as said.

[Saintheart]

Combinations and Builds

Dysons get better BAB.

Combinations:

• Versatile Spellcaster + Sonic Snap + Fell Drain. Start dealing no-save negative levels as early as L1.
  
  
• Twinned Repeating Fell Drain Magic Missile + Quickened Twinned Repeating Fell Drain Magic Missile. 8 negative levels for 5 targets each.
  
  
• Slashing Dispel (PHB 2) + Fell Drain. Dispel opponent’s spells, do a little damage, and drain a level off them all at once.
  
  
• Black Lore of Moil + a damageless Necromancy Spell + Fell Drain: BLoM adds damage to a spell, making it eligible for Fell Drain to be applied to it.
  
  
• Thunderhead + Twinned, Extended, Chained, Fell Drain. Use Energy Substitution for lightning immune/resistant enemies and Heighten to prepare it on any spell level. Arcane Thesis and Easy Metamagic for a +0 lvl adjustment. Sure, it is a Reflex safe, but it is on every round, failure does not end the spell, and most targets have a low reflex. Enter a room, cast it then run away, and wait for their death (this assumes it’s 1 negative level per instance of damage, not 1 negative level for the whole spell.)
  
  
• Get Enervating weapons. Be a Ranger with the Two-Weapon fighting style. Dual-wield Enervating kukri. Take Improved Critical, Power Critical and Murderous Intent. Against a favored enemy, critical threat range is 15-20: this is a 35% critical threat rate with every hit, and Murderous Intent auto-confirms critical hits on one favored enemy. Bestows a negative level on a crit.
  
  
• Chill Touch (PHB) + Fell Drain. Very simple way to imitate Energy Drain from low levels. Worth considering on unarmed gish builds in particular since the number of uses is fixed by Caster Level, thereby keeping it relevant. However, it does require clearance from the DM that the negative level effect applies to each successful touch, not just 1 per spell.
  
  
• Soul Eater 1 + Improved Energy Drain + Stormguard Warrior: Assuming Soul Eater can apply its effects to iterative attacks: the Combat Rhythm maneuver from Stormguard Warrior allows you to take a full round of touch attacks that 'do no damage'. Negative levels by definition penalise, they don't damage, which is why you can't Fell Drain an Enervate spell. Let's say you hit the target with 3 touch attacks. Each of these impose a negative level on the target. The target takes -15 hitpoints, -3 to attack rolls and saves. You pick up a +3 to attacks and saves under Improved Energy Drain and a +15 to damage on each attack next round under Combat Rhythm.
  
  
• Sorcerer X + Soul Eater 1 dip + Improved Energy Drain + Life Drain + Necrotic Skull Bomb: If you're up against big mobs this can make you tank significantly as an opening gambit. Say its 6 x 3-HD opponents in the radius of the spell, and assume half of them save against the effect. Also for simplicity's sake, assume 2 negative levels on each 1d4 roll. This is a total of 3 x 2 = 6 negative levels imposed. As a Sorcerer your CHA is probably significant, let's say +5. That results in 6 x 5+5[CHA] = 60 temporary hitpoints to then fuel your survivability from Life Drain, as well as +6 bonus on attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks from Improved Energy Drain. Only item needing clearance with your DM is whether Soul Eater's negative level ability is Energy Drain - which shouldn't be hard to negotiate if you kindly agree that the (Su) ability can only be fired once per round. And by the way, sinceNecrotic Skull Bomb is a swift action, that leaves you both a move and standard action to charge in and swat something.
  
  
• Necropolitan template + Paladin + Sacrificial Smiting Weapon. Expect a flying DMG if you try this on. Necropolitans are not automatically evil under the game rules, even if they have to request the terrible rite that makes them undead. At worst, they can start taking Paladin levels after they're raised. The undead type does not prevent a creature accepting a negative level by RAW -- rather, if it's a negative energy effect, that effect heals undead (albeit it is not specific.) Therefore: a Necropolitan Paladin can have infinite Smite uses and indeed be healed by his weapon, because the negative level imposed has a different effect on him than it would on a living creature. As said, expect a DMG to the head on this.
  
  
• Paladin + Lasting Life + Enduring Life + Sacrificial Smiting Weapon. Less chance of a flying DMG here, and comes to much the same conclusion if your Will save is solid.
  
  
• Necrotic Skull Bomb + Ranger 1 + Sorcerer/Wizard X + Arcane Archer 2 + Wand of Arrowsplit. Place your Wand of Arrowsplit in a Wand Chamber (DScape) on your bow. Nock an arrow and cast Arrowsplit on it (swift action). Now use Arcane Archer's Imbue Arrow ability to drop the Necrotic Skull Bomb spell into the arrow and fire it. Per Arrowsplit, the imbued arrow turns into 1d4+1 "identical" arrows in flight, therefore all imbued with the same spell, all hitting the same target. Each target within a 20' radius takes 1d4 x (1d4+1) negative levels, because that's how many arrows and how many times Necrotic Skull Bomb hits. Subject to Fort saves for each and every negative level, that's between 2 and 20 negative levels on anything living.
  
  
• Soul Charge + Ocular Spell + Burst Ray + Ranger 1 + Sorcerer/Wizard X + Arcane Archer 2 (Imbue Arrow) + Wand of Arrowsplit. (CoR). Place your Wand of Arrowsplit in a Wand Chamber (DScape) on your bow. Nock an arrow and cast Arrowsplit on it (swift action). Ocular Spell renders Soul Charge a ray spell, and Burst Ray turns it into a 30' burst effect, i.e. the spell now has an area. Now use Arcane Archer's Imbue Arrow ability to drop the Soul Charge spell into the arrow, with all its metamagic attached, and fire it. Per Arrowsplit, the imbued arrow turns into 1d4+1 "identical" arrows in flight, therefore all imbued with the same spell, all hitting the same target. Although a Fort save applies, everything in 30' takes 1d4+1 negative levels, because that's how many arrows and how many times Soul Charge hits. And as a bonus point, the energy from the negative level recharges your Wand of Arrowsplit, since Arrowsplit is a third-level spell (Ranger 3, Assassin 3, etc.) And you can repeat this trick as long as you've got a Soul Charge spell available. And if you're short on feat slots, Soul Charge is a third level spell and therefore lesser metamagic rods can apply to it.

Builds:
(Drawn from various threads all over the place, i.e. none of these are original to me and I'm not claiming them as such. Some of them are very old.)

Spoiler: Martial Level Drainer

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Necropolitan Human Rogue 2/Fighter 2/Lion Totem Barbarian 1/Swashbuckler 1/Warblade X

Feats: TWF, ITWF, GTWF, Lightning Mace, Roundabout Kick, Snap Kick, Eviscerator, Improved Critical, plus prerequisites.

Weapons: Two Aptitude Enfeebling Lifedrinker Abyssal Bloodiron Kukris

Maneuvers: Blood in the Water, Dancing/Raging Mongoose/White Raven Tactics/Iron Heart Surge, etc. Eventually, Time Stands Still.

Basic tactic: You crit on a 15-20 and have a large bonus to confirm (Int + 1, IIRC), and every critical threat gives a new attack. Every successful critical generates another new attack, in addition to a stacking +1 bonus to hit and to damage and causing 1d6+2 strength damage (even if they're immune to crits). And every hit deals two negative levels. As such, you charge up with every attack but your enemy gets weaker and weaker. The Blood in the Water bonuses expire if you don't crit for a minute, so you'll do best if you keep charging in and try to keep momentum going. Try getting someone to use Black Sand to kill someone and using the resultant black sand to keep you slow healing (1d6 per round) so you can keep up the pressure without draining your party resources on healing you. Getting someone to raise a Necrosis Carnex to support you can help too.

Spoiler: Basic Incantatrix

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Sorcerer 6/Incantatrix 10/Halruaan Elder 4:

Human: Scribe Scroll
1: Halruaan Adept
3: Spell Thematics
Otyugh Hole: Iron Will
6: Empower Spell
Incantatrix 1: Split Ray
9: Arcane Thesis[Enervation]
Incantatrix 4: Maximize Spell
12: Arcane Thesis[Arcane Fusion]
Incantatrix 7: Twin Spell
15: Easy Metamagic[Twin Spell] // Twin is now +2 metamagic or +0 metamagic with Arcane Thesis since Easy is also metamagic.
Incantatrix 10: Chain Spell
Halruaan Elder 1: Adroit[Chain] // Chain is now +1 metamagic or +0 with Arcane Thesis
18: Arcane Thesis[Greater Arcane Fusion]
Halruaan Elder 4: Adroit[Maximize] //Maximize is now +1 metamagic or +0 with Arcane Thesis

Spells
L8 Greater Arcane Fusion
L7 Arcane Spellsurge
L6 Greater Dispel Magic
L5 Arcane Fusion
L4 Ray of Deanimation
L3 Greater Disrupt Undead

Thus:
- vs unprotected living opponent: Easy Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Easy Twin Split Ray Chain Empower Maximize Enervation, Easy Twin Arcane Fusion[Easy Twin Split Ray Chain Empower Maximize Enervation, <any L1>]] for ~126 negative levels on 21 foes in a 30' radius or ~42 and ~84 negative levels on 42 foes in two distinct 30' radii.
- vs protected living you have: Easy Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Chain Greater Dispel Magic, Easy Twin Split Ray Chain Empower Maximize Enervation] for "only" ~42 negative levels on 21 foes in a 30' radius.
- vs Undead you have Easy Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Split Ray Greater Disrupt Undead, Easy Twin Arcane Fusion[Split Ray Greater Disrupt Undead, <any L1>]] which does an expected 540 damage spread across 1 to 4 undead.
- vs Constructs you have Easy Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Ray of Deanimation, Easy Twin Arcane Fusion[Ray of Deanimation, <any L1>]] which deals "only" 315 damage to 1 or 2 constructs.

It's off theme, but this build could also afford Devastate Undead (L8 Fort-or-destroy in 15' radius) or Chain Amber Sarcophagus from an L8 slot to no-save shutdown encounters with any 21 foes in a 30' radius.


Anthrowhale built this and credit is due to him. :)

Spoiler: Wizard Incantatrix

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Wizard 5/Incantatrix 10 with the following feats:
Arcane Thesis (Enervation)
Maximize Spell
Empower Spell
Twin Spell
Split Ray
Invisible Spell
City Spell

Deals 16 + 4d2 negative levels to a single target, but can be divided as you wish, as a 4th-level spell (Enervation 4 + Maximize 1 + Empower 0 + Twin 1 + Split Ray 0 - Invisible 1 - City 1 = 4).

Chain Spell can be applied to mass-effect the entire enemy brigade, as a 5th-level spell.

Also, you can do this a second time in the same turn as a 6th-level spell (7th with Chain) by using Quicken.

Wizard 5/Incantatrix 10 also gives you five bonus Metamagic feats (at 5, 6, 9, 12, and 15), which pays almost all the feat tax of this combo. You will have enough feats to do everything here, plus grab Fell Drain (which is now a +0 adjustment when on Enervation), and grab Fell Animate with Easy Metamagic (Fell Animate), which turns it into a net +0 adjustment on Enervation (+1 otherwise), and turns everything your energy draining spells successfully kill into zombies under your command.

TL;DR you can, at level 15, kill an entire room full of CR-appropriate enemies with a single Enervation, cast at its original level, who then rise to fight as your companions next turn.

(Saintheart note: This is not completely RAW-legal since you can't put Split Ray and Chain Spell together, but the approach is basically right.)

Spoiler: Soul Eater Polymorpher

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Old Daelkyr Halfblood Spellthief 1/Wu Jen 3/Crusader 1/Shaper of Form 2/Master Transmogrifist 10/Warshaper 1/Souleater 1/Wu Jen 1
Assume Supernatural Ability: Energy Drain from the Vampiric Ixitxachitl from Monster Manual 2. Your skills don’t matter all that much, meet your prerequisites. It's not really a spellcaster except to polymorph. You Polymorph very well. You can alter self into some really fun aberration forms.

Spoiler: Jack B. Negative

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I claim blame and responsibility for this one. Here, the intent is was to take the oldie but goodie Jack B. Quick build which trips and AoOs everything in sight, and then have him level drain everything with his weapons.

Ranger 2/Barbarian 2/Martial Rogue 2/Fighter 10/Warblade 4.

Human, no flaws.
Wield 2 Aptitude, Enervating kukris made of Abyssal Bloodiron and with the Pitspawned template (DMG 2, it's like Feycraft).

Rough build outline:

1 HD (BAB 1) Ranger 1 (HD feat - Combat Reflexes) (Human feat - Weapon Focus – Light Mace)
2 HD (BAB 2) Ranger 2 – (TWF)
3 HD (BAB 3) Lion Totem Barbarian 1 (Pounce) (Whirling Frenzy) (HD feat - Lightning Mace)
4 HD (BAB 4) Wolf Totem Barbarian 2 – (Improved Trip)
5 HD (BAB 4) Martial Rogue 1 – (Deft Opportunist)
6 HD (BAB 5) Martial Rogue 2 – (Weapon Focus (handaxe)) (HD feat – Weapon Focus (longsword))
7 HD (BAB 6) Fighter 1 – (Improved TWF)
8 HD (BAB 7) Fighter 2 – (Double Hit)
9 HD (BAB 8) Fighter 3 (HD feat – High Sword, Low Axe)
10 HD (BAB 9) Fighter 4 – (Improved Critical)
11 HD (BAB 10) Fighter 5
12 HD (BAB 11) Fighter 6 -- (Power Attack) (HD feat - Murderous Intent)
13 HD (BAB 12) Fighter 7
14 HD (BAB 13) Fighter 8 -- (Robilar’s Gambit)
15 HD (BAB 14) Fighter 9 -- (HD feat - Improved Unarmed Strike)
16 HD (BAB 15) Fighter 10 -- (Roundabout Kick)
17 HD (BAB 16) Warblade 1
18 HD (BAB 17) Warblade 2 (HD feat – Overwhelming Assault)
19 HD (BAB 18) Warblade 3
20 HD (BAB 19) Warblade 4

Take Blood in the Water as a Warblade, giving you a +1 to attack and damage with each critical hit, and random other maneuvers to add some gloss on the end of this. Your critical threat range is 15-20. Any critical threat results in another attack under Lightning Mace. Any critical hit results in another attack using Roundabout Kick and a negative level on the target. On top of your attack bonuses, you have a bonus to confirm the crit of +6+INT: +4 from Abyssal Bloodiron, +2 from the Pitspawned Template, and INT from the Warblade's class features ... but against your favored enemy, you automatically confirm, via Murderous Intent. Your Aptitude weapons allow you to apply the benefits of Roundabout Kick, Lightning Mace, and High Sword, Low Axe simultaneously (the only question being whether an unarmed strike is a weapon that an Aptitude weapon can act on. It seems a common assumption in builds that you can.) All it takes is a critical threat on an AoO to start these sequences off.

If you want a little more BAB, take 2 flaw feats and replace the levels in Martial Rogue with something else, probably 2 more Ranger levels, possibly trading out your Ranger spellcasting ability for Champion of the Wild ACF which gives you one more feat on top at Ranger 4.

[Saintheart]

Avoiding Energy Drain, Negative Levels, Level Loss

Artificers OP, Archers still l@me

Fine, fine, fine. You're not impressed by all this glorious vampiric, wightiffic, wraithsome lifesucking and you want to stop it happening to you. Maybe you're in Ravenloft, maybe you're after good old Strahd himself, maybe you're just feeling like walking into Ye Olde Urban Graveyard looking for trouble. Okay. Here's some options to mitigate if not eliminate vulnerability to Energy Drain, Negative Levels, and/or Level Loss.

- Be undead. The simplest, low-cost PC option for becoming Undead is the Necropolitan template. Anything with the Undead type is immune to Energy Drain specifically. They might not have explicit immunity to negative levels, but they're also immune to any effect that requires a Fort save - and as you'd have seen from the above, many effects imposing negative levels have such saves. Those that don't often have a callout saying that the spell or whatever heals undead rather than taking levels off them.

- Be a Warforged. Not quite as strong as being undead. Warforged are immune to energy drain specifically -- but not to effects that draw Fort saves, since they have a Con score. And yes, they are explicitly subject to Necromancy effects.


- Avoid Planar Effects (SpC, Clr 2, Drd 2, Sor/Wiz 3) - against negative levels on Negative-dominant planes.

- Death Ward (SRD, Clr 4, Death 4, Drd 5, Pal 4): Simplest spell-based answer. The subject is immune to all death spells, magical death effects, energy drain, and any negative energy effects. This includes negative level imposition, which is pretty well always a negative energy effect.

- Feign Death (Tome and Blood, Sor/Wiz 3): Look comatose, be immune to Energy Drain. If you're under negative levels, the save against them is delayed until the effect of this spell ends.

- Greater Shield of Lathander (PGtF, Initiate of Lathander 7): Immunity to negative energy and energy drain (doesn't say whether this specifically includes immunity to negative levels.)

- Kiss of the Vampire (SpC, Sor/Wiz 7) already mentioned above also gives you full undead immunities, albeit a much shorter time period (but can be Persisted).

- Life's Grace (SpC, Clr 5): Basically, immune to all death spells, magical death effects, energy drain, and any negative energy effects. Doesn't mention negative level immunity specifically, but if you've got any, this explicitly doesn't stave off the saving throw against level drain.

- Undead Mask (SavSpec, Clr 7): Basically gives the salient features of the undead type: immune Energy Drain, negative energy effects heal you, and you're immune to anything that takes a Fort save. Lasts much longer than Kiss of the Vampire, but it's on the cleric list and so for divine casters is superior to Veil of Undeath at least.

- Undying Aura (MoE, Clr 5): immunity to death effects, "energy drain effects", and any negative energy effects (such as from chill touch or an inflict spell). Possibly that unique wording - "energy drain effects" - can be stretched to include negative levels of all types, but it's in 'ask your DM' territory.

- Veil of Undeath (SpC, Clr 8, Sor/Wiz 8): Get all the undead immunities without having the type for 10 mins/level. It's even of the Necromancy school too.

- Death Ward armor quality. The Death Ward property in the MIC is a +1 equiv that allows you to use an immediate action 1/day to negate a source of negative energy attack, be with Energy Drain, or Ability Damage (caused by negative energy such as a Wraith touch, but not a poison), or a [Death] effect. Basically, immediate action Death Ward for 1 attack. If you got it on your armor, animated shield, and bracers (per A&EG guidelines), you'd be protected from 3 attacks per day, although not all in the same round (due to the fact that you can't take more than 1 immediate action in a round).

- Soulfire armor quality from BoED. This is a +4 eqiuvalent that gives you permanent Death Ward. That's probably the best bang for your buck, but BoED is a commonly banned book, so YMMV.

- Absorbing Armor Enhancement (DotF). +3 armor enhancement. Weird enhancement that allows partial protection against ability drain and "level drain". I'd hold out for Soulfire, but this is cheaper.

- Choker of Life Protection (MIC) - 14K - Immed Action can negate up to 3 negative levels per day and offers a +2 Dodge bonus to AC vs undead attacks

- Ring of Negative Protection (MIC) - 36K - continuous ignore 1d6 of damage from negative plane effects...Cannot gain negative levels

- Bone Ring (MIC) - 20K - continuous can negate up to three negative levels per day.

- Talisman of Undying Fortitude (MIC)- 8K - Swift action, 2/day, gain undead traits for 3 rounds

- Sacred Vitality (LibMort): Feat, blow a turn undead and get immunity to 'all' Energy Drain for 1 minute. Again, note the distinction between Energy Drain and negative level imposition.

- Font of Life (HoH): Anytime you're hit by 'an attack' that does energy drain or bestows negative levels, get an immediate save against it, on top of any other saves that apply.

- Heart of the Nabassu [Abyssal Heritor]: (FC 1): You can absorb harmlessly a number of negative levels per day equal to the number of Abyssal heritor feats you possess.

- Tomb-Tainted Soul (LibMort): Cheesy reading, because all this feat does is allow you to be healed by negative energy, and doesn't give you any other characteristic of the undead type, but negative level impositions can be easily argue as the impact of negative energy. As said, cheesy, so beware.

- Lightbringer Paladin ACF (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft): In addition to the standard qualities of a special mount, a lightbringer paladin's mount is immune to all death spells, magical death effects, energy drain, and any negative energy effects (such as from inflict spells or chill touch). Mr Ed thanks you.

- Feign Death ACF (EoE): Monk ACF, trade Evasion and you pick up the ability as an immediate action to go into a catatonic state (this is also known as playing a Monk). Seriously - in this state you're immune to (amongst other things) "negative levels."

- Iron! Heart! SURGE! (ToB): Now, before we start the de rigeur debate about whether the Sun is a condition that can be IHS'ed away, let's mention up front that it's always going to be a grey area about whether this maneuver applies to Energy Drain or negative levels. An Energy Drain effect isn't measured in rounds, but negative levels (in some cases) are, and hours = many rounds added together, at least in some books :) It's worth clearing with your DM anyway.

- Stygian Veil and Stygian Ward psionic powers (Complete Psionic)

- Lasting Life feat (LibMort): allows you to remove a negative level with a Will save every round (and failed saves causing no extra complications - can just attempt one more time)

- Enduring Life feat (LibMort): prerequisite for Lasting Life - allow to act like you don't get negative level for a number of rounds (equal to Con bonus, if any) and +4 on Fort saves to remove negative levels.





That's it, folks, take it away - always happy to receive contributions, corrections, etc!

[Biggus]

Cool resource, thank you.

Enervation (SRD, Death Delver 4, Death Master 4, Dread Necromancer 4, Duskblade 4, Hunger 4, Sha'ir 4, Sor/Wiz 4, Suffering 4, Thayan Slaver 4): Imposes 1d4 negative levels on a ranged touch attack, and it’s specifically a ray. No save, but Spell Resistance applies. Since it’s also explicitly a ray it benefits from Ocular Spell, possibly Split Ray, and even Weapon Focus; and that’s before you get to piling on the metamagic via Twinned/Repeat/etc. Lastly, note that – unlike monsters’ Energy Drain – Enervation never results in permanent level loss, because they go away after CL number of hours.

Why do you say "possibly" Split Ray? Is there some doubt about whether it works?

[Saintheart]

Why do you say "possibly" Split Ray? Is there some doubt about whether it works?

Because the split ray by RAW 'deals damage', which Enervation might not. :)

[Biggus]

Because the split ray by RAW 'deals damage', which Enervation might not. :)

OK thank you. Given that ability damage explicitly counts as damage for the purposes of all feats which enhance weaponlike spells (CArc p.85) it would be odd if it didn't for Split Ray. Are there people who argue that it doesn't?

[RSGA]

One small error I saw was that the Stygian line of powers is from CPsi and not the SRD. Fun resource, and I think it gave me an idea.

[ShurikVch]

If you’re not facing Energy Drain, there are really only four uses for it:
- Killing opponents
- Debuffing opponents
- Ab/using level loss via Thought Bottles and the like
- Creating wights

Some variants of Energy Drain also grant healing(/temporary hp) to the "drainer"

Spells:

Master's Lament (Heroes of Horror) - For the duration of the spell, any damage or magical effect (charm, energy drain, etc.) taken by the master is also taken by the familiar, and vice versa.
Orb of Dancing Death (Magic of Eberron)
Planar Bubble (Spell Compendium) - This spell creates an area around the subject creature that emulates its native planar environment. Used with creature from any Major Negative-Dominant plane...
Proper State (Ghostwalk) - Levels lost in this manner are handled as if the character had lost levels from an undead's energy drain attack.
Ravenous Darkness (Complete Champion) - Any creature under the influence of an ongoing negative energy effect (such as negative levels or necromantic-based ability damage) instead takes 2d6 points of damage per round.
Sticks and Stones (Shining South) - The creature's combat statistics are those of a 2 HD humanoid skeleton, except that it also has a wight's energy drain supernatural ability

Psionics:

Fate Link - If one dies, the other must immediately succeed on a Fortitude save against this power’s save DC or gain two negative levels.
Fission - If your duplicate dies before the duration expires, no rejoining occurs, and you gain one negative level. If you die, your duplicate remains in existence, and is for all intents you, but with two negative levels. (Once the duration expires, one of the negative levels immediately converts to one lost level; the other negative level can be removed by standard means.)
Mind Seed - (In effect, the subject has received eight negative levels - but these are negative levels that can’t be removed.)

Feats

Enervating Touch (Ghostwalk) - must be Ghostwalk's Ghost; bestow 1 negative level (or 2 levels - on Critical Hit)
Generous Sacrifice (Exemplars of Evil) - pass your negative levels to somebody else; works only on willing creatures
Glyph Scriber (Dragon Compendium) - Ors glyph bestows 1 negative level
Greater Aberrant Dragonmark (Dragonmarked) - Enervation 2/day
Nightbringer Initiate (Faiths of Eberron) - adds Enervation as 4th-level spell
Wightblade (Dragon #348) - On a successful melee hit against a living opponent, you may use your energy drain ability in addition to dealing normal damage for your weapon.

Items

Anarchic Power +8
Axiomatic Power +8
Baneblades of Demron (Player's Guide to Faerûn) - Keryvian: on a Critical Hit
Blackrazor (Arms and Equipment Guide) - bestows negative levels on living enemies; in case of Undead enemies - negative levels to the wielder
Chained Enervation Trap (Dungeon Master's Guide II)
Consumptive Burst (Planar Handbook) - on a Critical Hit; +3
Energy Drain Trap (Dungeon Master's Guide II)
Enervating Arm graft (Libris Mortis)
Enervating Stylus (Dungeon #147) - unlike the many many other items which bestowing negative levels on the user, this one can result in actual level loss
Enervation Trap (Dungeon Master's Guide II)
Holy Power +8
Homeland Champion (Champions of Valor) - to the enemy of homeland; +1
Lifequencher (Complete Psionic)
Ors glyph (Dragon Compendium) - see the Glyph Scriber feat
Sacrificial Smiting (Champions of Valor) - extra daily smiting for negative level(s); +1
Soulbreaker +3
Souldrinker
Spectral Arrow (Book of Vile Darkness)
Sword of Life Stealing
Unholy Power +8
Wight Hide Shield (Magic Item Compendium)- with a shield bash, DC 16 Fort to avoid
Wight Shield (Libris Mortis) - with a shield bash, DC 14 Fort to avoid

Classes and Prestige Classes

Harbinger - Bard variant (Dragon #337) - Bardic Music: Drain Prowess
Life Eater - Draining Sneak Attack, and 1/day Enervation (Sp)
Siren (Savage Species) - Song of Weakness
Sybil (Savage Species) - Apocrypha: An incorrect answer bestows 2d6 negative levels on the questioner
Thrall of Malcanthet (Dragon #353) - Draining Kiss: 3/day at 5th level, at will in Succubus Form (capstone - lasts for 1 hour)

Templates:

Half-Dragon, Shadow
Husk Vermin (Drow of the Underdark)
Necromental (Libris Mortis)
Trap Haunt (Dragon Compendium)

Prophet - the Unique NPC Ability (Dungeon Master's Guide II) - can use Divination SLA 1/week, but it would cause them 2 negative levels for 24 hours

Monsters

Blood Fiend (Fiend Folio)
Hullathoin (Fiend Folio) - Exude Bloodfiend Swarm
Phiuhl (Fiend Folio) - Desiccate


EDIT:

Why do you say "possibly" Split Ray? Is there some doubt about whether it works?

Because the split ray by RAW 'deals damage', which Enervation might not. :)

This:

The exception is spells that deal energy drain or ability damage, which deal negative energy damage on a sneak attack, not extra negative levels or ability damage.

Thus, Split Ray Sneak Attack with Enervation should work?
Also, Excised From the Web of Life feat (Dragon #336) adds damage to all spells (even such as Detect Magic) - but only against Animals, Fey, or Plants

[Saintheart]

Thanks again for the usual high-value contribution, Shurik, I really appreciate as always and will get it into the resource with usual credit. In particular the notations around healing/temp hp will go in.

On this subject ...

The exception is spells that deal energy drain or ability damage, which deal negative energy damage on a sneak attack, not extra negative levels or ability damage.

Thus, Split Ray Sneak Attack with Enervation should work?

This seems to be consistent with Rules Compendium's rulings that sneak attack on a weaponlike spell (i.e. anything needing a ranged touch attack) is just hitpoint damage of the negative energy type, not additional ability damage (I remember banging my head against the wall on that one with the Ability Damage resource.)

Soooooo based on those two, Enervation imposed during the same strike as a sneak attack would produce the 1d4 negative levels and +d6s in hitpoint damage from the sneak attack, said sneak attack bonus dice being of negative energy. (Which arguably implies that the best way to go healing the party's Necropolitans is to Enervate and sneak attack them, since negative energy heals undead. But that's another story, particularly since undead are not subject to sneak attack without additonal items or feats.)

But as to whether Split Ray works on Enervation itself: I think it comes down to whether a negative level qualifies as "damage". When you get to the definition of negative levels, it says ...

A creature takes the following penalties for each negative level it has gained:

-1 on all skill checks and ability checks.
-1 on attack rolls and saving throws.
-5 hit points.
-1 effective level (whenever the creature’s level is used in a die roll or calculation, reduce it by one for each negative level).
If the victim casts spells, she loses access to one spell as if she had cast her highest-level, currently available spell. (If she has more than one spell at her highest level, she chooses which she loses.) In addition, when she next prepares spells or regains spell slots, she gets one less spell slot at her highest spell level.

Penalty =/= damage, mainly because damage can be healed but penalties can't. For example, Bestow Curse imposes an ability penalty to an ability score, it doesn't (arguably, by RAW) impose damage.

But you could equally argue that Split Ray is not specifically qualified to only work on spells that damage - Ray of Enfeeblement is a ray that doesn't damage but rather penalises - and Split Ray therefore really just is meant to say the ray takes effect as normal.

I guess it's more a question about whether a DM allows Fell Drain to apply to Enervate. If so, then similar logic would imply Split Ray should apply to it as well.


Getting back to sneak attack on Enervate, though, one cheesy tactic occurred to me around Life Drain. That feat says "You then gain temporary hit points equal to the amount lost by the creature due to the negative level." If you can find some way to very closely link more hitpoint losses to the imposition of a negative level, you accordingly get more hitpoints as temp hp. e.g. Black Lore of Moil ties an additional +2d6 in negative energy damage to Enervate, therefore it's a 5 +2d6 loss of hitpoints "due" to the negative level, maybe.

[Saintheart]

OK thank you. Given that ability damage explicitly counts as damage for the purposes of all feats which enhance weaponlike spells (CArc p.85) it would be odd if it didn't for Split Ray. Are there people who argue that it doesn't?

Thing is that Enervate doesn't impose ability damage - it imposes negative levels, which don't touch ability scores at all. See the above post...

One small error I saw was that the Stygian line of powers is from CPsi and not the SRD. Fun resource, and I think it gave me an idea.

Thanks! I'll fix that up, and hope this has been helpful!

[ShurikVch]

Some more stuff:

Silverhair Knight PrC (Dragon #315) - Consume Sins: on the failed attempt (i. e. target's successful Will save), Silverhair Knight got number of negative levels equal to the target's HD + target's Cha mod

Templates:
Demilich - Trap the Soul: 4 negative levels (on the successful save!)
Kr'y'izoth (Dungeon #100) - Blackflame Touch
T'liz (Dragon #315) - got Energy Drain; LA +4 (but under the DM's control )

Monsters:
Blackfire Elemental (Dungeon #100) - got Energy Drain
Deathshrieker (Monster Manual III) - Death Rattle (Will save or 1d4 negative levels)
Nightshade, Nightswimmer (Dungeon #92) - variant of Nightcrawler (add Swim 60' speed), Energy Drain is still there

[Chronos]

Should you maybe have a section on how to protect against negative levels? One relevant one I've noticed is that the Binder's Soul Guardian feature actually protects against all negative levels, not just those from energy drain.

[Anthrowhale]

For your basic incantatrix, you might instead consider:

Sorcerer 6/Incantatrix 10/Halruaan Elder 4 with feats:
Human: Scribe Scroll
1: Halruaan Adept
3: Spell Thematics
Otyugh Hole: Iron Will
6: Empower Spell
Incantatrix 1: Split Ray
9: Arcane Thesis[Enervation]
Incantatrix 4: Maximize Spell
12: Arcane Thesis[Arcane Fusion]
Incantatrix 7: Twin Spell
15: Practical Metamagic[Twin Spell]
Incantatrix 10: <any MM>
Halruaan Elder 1: Adroit[Twin]
18: Arcane Thesis[Greater Arcane Fusion]
Halruaan Elder 4: Adroit[Maximize]

Then, you can cast Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Twin Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, Twin Arcane Fusion[Twin Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, <any L1>]].

That's 16+8=24 empowered+maximized effects, so 96+24d4/2 ~= 126 drained levels.

I'm not sure what to do with the Incantatrix 10 feat...

Incidentally, I believe using Practical Metamagic twice is disallowed by RAW being unable to take a feat twice unless the feat states otherwise.

[Saintheart]

Some more stuff:

Silverhair Knight PrC (Dragon #315) - Consume Sins: on the failed attempt (i. e. target's successful Will save), Silverhair Knight got number of negative levels equal to the target's HD + target's Cha mod

Templates:
Demilich - Trap the Soul: 4 negative levels (on the successful save!)
Kr'y'izoth (Dungeon #100) - Blackflame Touch
T'liz (Dragon #315) - got Energy Drain; LA +4 (but under the DM's control )

Monsters:
Blackfire Elemental (Dungeon #100) - got Energy Drain
Deathshrieker (Monster Manual III) - Death Rattle (Will save or 1d4 negative levels)
Nightshade, Nightswimmer (Dungeon #92) - variant of Nightcrawler (add Swim 60' speed), Energy Drain is still there

Appreciated and those are now all in the mix. I'm still working on the rest of your contributions :)

Should you maybe have a section on how to protect against negative levels? One relevant one I've noticed is that the Binder's Soul Guardian feature actually protects against all negative levels, not just those from energy drain.

I had tossed up whether or not to do something like that, but given the relative size of the guide I think I can justify one post to cover at least the more obvious stuff - that's a good catch and I'll include it. Anyone who has a list of stuff that protects vs. Energy Drain specifically, or negative levels, or level loss, would be very happy to include it.

For your basic incantatrix, you might instead consider:

Sorcerer 6/Incantatrix 10/Halruaan Elder 4 with feats:
Human: Scribe Scroll
1: Halruaan Adept
3: Spell Thematics
Otyugh Hole: Iron Will
6: Empower Spell
Incantatrix 1: Split Ray
9: Arcane Thesis[Enervation]
Incantatrix 4: Maximize Spell
12: Arcane Thesis[Arcane Fusion]
Incantatrix 7: Twin Spell
15: Practical Metamagic[Twin Spell]
Incantatrix 10: <any MM>
Halruaan Elder 1: Adroit[Twin]
18: Arcane Thesis[Greater Arcane Fusion]
Halruaan Elder 4: Adroit[Maximize]

Then, you can cast Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Twin Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, Twin Arcane Fusion[Twin Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, <any L1>]].

That's 16+8=24 empowered+maximized effects, so 96+24d4/2 ~= 126 drained levels.

I'm not sure what to do with the Incantatrix 10 feat...

Incidentally, I believe using Practical Metamagic twice is disallowed by RAW being unable to take a feat twice unless the feat states otherwise.

Noted and thank you for the proofread and alternative. I will include it. Anything else you feel inclined to throw in, very happy to hear same!

[ShurikVch]

Templates:
Gravewight (The Standing Stone)
Hoarder Dragon
Restless Prey Creature

Monsters:
Dragon Wight
Orb Wraith (City of the Spider Queen) - Enervation Ray

[Anthrowhale]

Noted and thank you for the proofread and alternative. I will include it. Anything else you feel inclined to throw in, very happy to hear same!

Ok, I figured out how to use the extra feat.

Sorcerer 6/Incantatrix 10/Halruaan Elder 4 with feats:
Human: Scribe Scroll
1: Halruaan Adept
3: Spell Thematics
Otyugh Hole: Iron Will
6: Empower Spell
Incantatrix 1: Split Ray
9: Arcane Thesis[Enervation]
Incantatrix 4: Maximize Spell
12: Arcane Thesis[Arcane Fusion]
Incantatrix 7: Twin Spell
15: Easy Metamagic[Twin Spell]
Incantatrix 10: Chain Spell
Halruaan Elder 1: Adroit[Twin]
18: Arcane Thesis[Greater Arcane Fusion]
Halruaan Elder 4: Adroit[Maximize]

Then, you cast:
Easy[Twin] Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Easy[Twin] Twin Chained Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, Easy[Twin] Twin Arcane Fusion[Easy[Twin] Twin Chained Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, <any L1>]].

Since Enervation offers no save and does no damage secondary targets take full effect, so 96+24d4/2 ~= 126 drained levels deliver to 21 creatures in a 30' radius.

The "trick" here is that Easy Metamagic is a metamagic feat. Hence, you can use it to reduce the cost of Twin Spell by one and reduce the overall metamagic cost by in the context of Arcane Thesis.

The overkill here surprises me a bit--I had always ignored energy drain offense as to ineffective to be worthwhile. It's still iffy as there are many defenses, but if you penetrate defenses that's pretty shocking. A study of defenses against energy drain may be worthwhile to see how systematically they could be knocked down.

[Saintheart]

Then, you cast:
Easy[Twin] Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Easy[Twin] Twin Chained Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, Easy[Twin] Twin Arcane Fusion[Easy[Twin] Twin Chained Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, <any L1>]].

Only objection I have here is to Split Ray. As said above, my issue is that the RAW text of Split Ray says the split-off ray "deals damage" as normal. And the problem is that Enervate doesn't deal 'damage' - it imposes negative levels, and negative levels only impose penalties to hitpoints - not damage. Penalties =/= damage.

The overkill here surprises me a bit--I had always ignored energy drain offense as to ineffective to be worthwhile. It's still iffy as there are many defenses, but if you penetrate defenses that's pretty shocking. A study of defenses against energy drain may be worthwhile to see how systematically they could be knocked down.

The key distinction is that Energy Drain =/= imposition of negative levels.

Energy Drain is a specific (Su) monster ability. It's dished out via a melee attack, it has no Spell Resistance, and the only Fort save applying to it is 24 hours after you're hit. There's no block against taking negative levels as such, if you're hit with a melee attack, you're taking the negative levels at least. There's a fair array of creatures that have outright immunity to Energy Drain, undead most chiefly, but some random PrCs give it as well. And on top of that, as a (Su) ability, there's the default rule that you can only use it as a standard action. Energy Drain is ineffective as a PC strategy, because it's difficult to get iteratives on - hence why there's always arguments around Soul Eater - and whole types of creatures are just immune to it.

Imposition of negative levels is a different proposition, depending which spell you pick. And, as you've demonstrated, how much metamagic you can pile into it.

Enervation is a really good default standard to look at, because it's Energy Drain+. It imposes 1d4 negative levels. It takes a ranged touch attack roll to hit, which means AC outside DEX, deflection, and concealment chance is trivial. It imposes negative levels, which (at the risk of labouring the point) immunity to Energy Drain doesn't stop because Energy Drain =/= negative levels. It has no save, but Spell Resistance applies. And the negative levels last several hours, which from a tactical standpoint means they last as long as anyone could need.

So the hurdles to overcome on getting Enervate to apply:
- Touch AC
- Spell Resistance
- Immunity to negative energy effects (if any).

Of these, SR is probably the most significant impost - one that's shared with a large number of spells, and which has a suite of measures countering it, from steroiding Caster Level to feats that 'take 10' on a Caster Level check. Or Spell Penetration and whatnot.

Immunity to negative energy effects really comes from type, Death Ward spell, or relatively expensive items that confer immunity to it. Type immunity more or less has to be met with Spark of Life or Greater Humanoid Essence really. Death Ward as a spell takes Dispel Magic. Item immunity, well, we're down to generating AMF fields (or overloading items that absorb X number of negative levels by throwing X+1 negative levels.)

As said, I took Enervate as the benchmark because the other spells fiddle with this set of considerations in different ways. Necrotic Skull Bomb, for example, removes the ranged touch attack roll because it's an AoE, but it throws a Fort save in (and it's still subject to Spell Resistance). So there it's optimising Caster Level and casting stat to best get over the Fort and SR.

But as said, what they have in common is the fact negative levels are a negative energy effect (bar careful reading of the odd spell here and there). So again it comes back to having methods to defeat type immunity, spell protection, or item immunity.

[Anthrowhale]

Only objection I have here is to Split Ray. As said above, my issue is that the RAW text of Split Ray says the split-off ray "deals damage" as normal. And the problem is that Enervate doesn't deal 'damage' - it imposes negative levels, and negative levels only impose penalties to hitpoints - not damage. Penalties =/= damage.

I agree that it doesn't apply damage, but I don't think that keeps Split Ray from working here. The relevant text is:

You can cause any ray spell to fire one additional ray beyond the number normally allowed.

If a ray spell has an extra ray, it has the same effect as the original ray by default. That's all we're using and it clearly allowed by this sentence.

The next sentence:

The additional ray requires a separate ranged touch attack roll to hit and deals damage as normal.

Is a tad confusing because both clauses are irrelevant/explanatory. A touch attack is required for any ray, and dealing damage as normal is the default for an extra ray. The damage just happens to be zero in the case of Enervation.

Stated another way, it's completely legit to apply Split Ray to (looking through things) Antimagic Ray, Distracting Ray, Chromatic Ray, Platinum Ray, Ray of Clumsiness (penalty is not damage), Ray of Dizziness, Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Entropy, Ray of Exhaustion, Ray of Hope, Ray of Light, Ray of Resurgence, Ray of Sickness, Ray of Weakness, Sting Ray, Stun Ray, or Targeting Ray. (... and I'm sure that's not everything).

The key distinction is that Energy Drain =/= imposition of negative levels.

Agreed.

- Immunity to negative energy effects (if any).

This is the one that I'm worried about. Death Ward and Soulfire armor both grant it. These are reasonably common once you get into higher levels. Undead also benefit directly from Enervation, and they are a very common type.

Spark of Life

An undead's type is not changed by Spark of Life so the special wording of Enervation means they still benefit.

Death Ward as a spell takes Dispel Magic. Item immunity...

The problem is action economy---we really would prefer to not need to use two actions to get an attack through. Still, Arcane Fusion isn't bad for this---we could do:

Easy[Twin] Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Dispel Magic, Easy[Twin] Twin Arcane Fusion[Easy[Twin] Twin Chained Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation, <any L1>]].

That would reduce it to "only" 16 instances of Empowered Maximized Enervation (~=84 levels) but it drops a couple dispel magics to take out Death Ward and/or target a protective item. Alternatively, we could do: Easy[Twin] Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Greater Dispel Magic, Easy[Twin] Twin Chained Empowered Maximized Split Ray Enervation] which would provide only 8 instances for ~42 negative levels while allowing up to a +20 dispel check.

Overall, this seems ok (dispels are a tad shaky for getting through), but it still leaves a pretty big hole w.r.t. Undead (and Constructs but I'm less concerned about them).

[Saintheart]

Overall, this seems ok (dispels are a tad shaky for getting through), but it still leaves a pretty big hole w.r.t. Undead (and Constructs but I'm less concerned about them).

Well, having a look through your really good 'Piercing Immunities' thread, there might be one cheesy way to make it work on intelligent undead.

Song of the Dead: A mind-affecting spell modified by this feat works normally against intelligent undead creatures. Mindless undead (those without Intelligence scores) are still immune to its effect, and the altered spell has no effect against living creatures or constructs. A song of the dead spell takes up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level. Note that the use of this feat does not make mind-affecting spells affect undead if the spell's description specifies that the target must be living or of a particular creature type (other than undead).

Enervate's description doesn't specify that the target must be living; quite the opposite, it says merely that when an undead target is hit by it, it gets temporary hp.

How do we make it a mind-affecting spell? Well, if all [fear] effects are deemed mind-affecting (and yes, I know they're two separate descriptors), Dread Witch 3 allows you to add the [fear] descriptor to any spell. (For what it's worth, under Pathfinder all [fear] descriptors are explicitly [mind-affecting]. Also, the MM 309 comes close, saying all fear attacks are mind-affecting fear attacks.) Enervate is then a mind-affecting spell which Song of the Dead can work on, and accordingly it 'works normally' against intelligent undead.

Other way is to somehow get Enervate to count as an Enchantment school spell (whether [charm] or [compulsion]), since all Enchantment spells are mind-affecting by definition. But I'm having trouble finding an option in 3.5 that does that. (Programmed Amnesia comes frustratingly close since it is of the Enchantment school ... but its target is 'one living creature').

[Tohron]

No mention of Fell Drain (+ Snowcasting + Flash Frost) Locate City? It's the fastest way to start a Wightpocalypse.

[Saintheart]

No mention of Fell Drain (+ Snowcasting + Flash Frost) Locate City? It's the fastest way to start a Wightpocalypse.

Now included in the "other stuff" section :)

[ShurikVch]

How about 3rd-party stuff:
Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Legend of 5 Rings, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Warcraft the RPG?
Books from the Green Ronin or/and Necromancer Games publishers?

[Anthrowhale]

...Song of the Dead...

Extra feats seems like to much work---I think we already have the right feats.

I also detected a bug: you can't Chain a Split Ray. This just means we need to apply the metamagic in a different order.

Maybe alternate spells? Looking around, I see Greater Disrupt Undead.

Sorcerer 6/Incantatrix 10/Halruaan Elder 4 with feats:
Human: Scribe Scroll
1: Halruaan Adept
3: Spell Thematics
Otyugh Hole: Iron Will
6: Empower Spell
Incantatrix 1: Split Ray
9: Arcane Thesis[Enervation]
Incantatrix 4: Maximize Spell
12: Arcane Thesis[Arcane Fusion]
Incantatrix 7: Twin Spell
15: Easy Metamagic[Twin Spell] // Twin is now +2 metamagic or +0 metamagic with Arcane Thesis since Easy is also metamagic.
Incantatrix 10: Chain Spell
Halruaan Elder 1: Adroit[Chain] // Chain is now +1 metamagic or +0 with Arcane Thesis
18: Arcane Thesis[Greater Arcane Fusion]
Halruaan Elder 4: Adroit[Maximize] //Maximize is now +1 metamagic or +0 with Arcane Thesis

Spells
L8 Greater Arcane Fusion
L7 Arcane Spellsurge
L6 Greater Dispel Magic
L5 Arcane Fusion
L4 Ray of Deanimation
L3 Greater Disrupt Undead

Then,
vs unprotected living opponent: Easy Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Easy Twin Split Ray Chain Empower Maximize Enervation, Easy Twin Arcane Fusion[Easy Twin Split Ray Chain Empower Maximize Enervation, <any L1>]] for ~126 negative levels on 21 foes in a 30' radius or ~42 and ~84 negative levels on 42 foes in two distinct 30' radii.
vs protected living you have: Easy Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Chain Greater Dispel Magic, Easy Twin Split Ray Chain Empower Maximize Enervation] for "only" ~42 negative levels on 21 foes in a 30' radius.
vs Undead you have Easy Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Split Ray Greater Disrupt Undead, Easy Twin Arcane Fusion[Split Ray Greater Disrupt Undead, <any L1>]] which does an expected 540 damage spread across 1 to 4 undead.
vs Constructs you have Easy Twin Greater Arcane Fusion[Ray of Deanimation, Easy Twin Arcane Fusion[Ray of Deanimation, <any L1>]] which deals "only" 315 damage to 1 or 2 constructs.

It's off theme, but this build could also afford Devastate Undead (L8 Fort-or-destroy in 15' radius) or Chain Amber Sarcophagus from an L8 slot to no-save shutdown encounters with any 21 foes in a 30' radius.

The above addresses protected creatures reasonable well. It leaves an issue though with lower levels. That may not be fixable---perhaps negative levels is only really viable at higher levels.

[Saintheart]

How about 3rd-party stuff:
Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Legend of 5 Rings, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Warcraft the RPG?
Books from the Green Ronin or/and Necromancer Games publishers?

Ehhhh, you know me: I tend to draw a medium line in the sand with first party WOTC-authored, and Dragon/Dungeon. That said: if you feel inclined to throw the 3rd party stuff in here I'll take a look at it, of course, and I'll put a note in the thread to keep reading on for third party options either way. If there's something really solid in there I'll bring it up thread a bit. Ravenloft I think I can make the most persuasive case for since its bread and butter is undead, but third party's not easy to convince people to pick up at the best of times unless it's pretty outstanding. And because I haven't said it enough: thanks again.

[Saintheart]

Extra feats seems like to much work---I think we already have the right feats.

Fair enough, it was a bit of a reach anyway. I'll take a look over that and update the Incantatrix build accordingly. And thanks again for sticking around on this, too. :)