Baldur's Gate II (5e campaign log)

[J-H]

I thoroughly enjoyed LotR: War in the North (video game) because of how it handled this. You still had big fights with big names, but at different times and for different reasons, even big names that the main characters heard of or discussed but never encountered themselves.

I'm also interested in this. Haven't read a good campaign log in quite some time.

Thanks! Check out the following:
SilverClawShift here on GITP (author)
Kaveman26 here on GITP (author)
Peldor.org has a 20-year novelized 2e campaign log. The campaign ended, but some characters continued on.
Sagiro's Story Hour is pretty long and epic as well.

I am terrible at remembering conversations and all the details of exactly what happened in what order.

Looking forward to this one. Also going to be stealing your level/energy drain stuff. Have you given any thought to protections against the effect? I know Death Ward got used in later editions, and at a 4th level spell slot for one person it seems fair for "proactive" protection instead of just reactive curing.

I do think adding the Raise Dead "death penalty" to Revivify might help; due to its action+lower material cost I expect you'll still see it the most (though raise dead does fix poisons/mundane diseases) but it's at least still got a very real downside to dying.

Death Ward would block it. No need for a separate "Negative Plane Protection." Here's the article with different ideas on how to do Level Drain that I drew from:
https://www.flutesloot.com/level-dra...mebrew-dnd-5e/

Revivify does still come with the exhaustion penalty of having gone to 0. I don't want too much of a death spiral.

If knocking to 0 gives you a level of exhaustion, and lesser restoration removes one negative level I would also have it remove one level of exhaustion to match. And greater all levels.
Unless you're talking about the playtest version of exhaustion? Then itd be fine.

Energy Drain and Exhaustion are different effects with different sources. Exhaustion comes from the players making mistakes and going to 0, which is (usually) avoidable. Energy drain comes from enemy action and is sometimes unavoidable, so it needs to be easier to cure or mitigate.

I will probably let vampires inflict some energy drain without biting, or beef up their ability to hit with bites vs. the 5e default. Grapple (no damage) then bite ends up being relatively weak, and fails if a simple +9 doesn't hit. Vampires' big threat comes from Charm and I don't want a series of vampire battles to be one big contest of Charm stuff, as that would get old fast and hurts player agency more.
I have a while to decide, and might end up just test-running the mechanics in a quick one-shot here if I am not sure I've made the right choice.