tedric wrote:Yeah, and actually "drains your vigor" to me has always implied some kind of stamina bar or action points that need to be recharged, rather than slowness. Which would be more in line with what the Exhausted status actually does...
The fact that "drain" is also a status effect in DCSS makes this doubly ambiguous. I think a general policy of "flavor messages shouldn't include the name of a status effect if they don't cause that status effect" is a good one to take. "Draining your vigor" or "leaving you exhausted" may imply being slowed down in normal English, but in DCSS "drain" and "exhaust" mean specific things and shouldn't be used if that's not what's happening.
"Drain" also often has a connotation of "stealing" something in video games (i.e. if an RPG has a spell called "drain life," someone who's played a lot of RPGs probably expects it t not only damage an enemy, but heal the caster as well). This isn't particularly a concern with a god wrath message, since you certain don't expect a god to get more vigorous as a result of draining yours like you might if the message came from a normal enemy, but I think it's still worth taking into consideration.
Overall, "drain" is a world loaded with a lot of connotations in DCSS and RPGs in general that don't apply to that message, and there are other words with similar issues. Even a native English speaker could get confused about it, let alone someone who doesn't speak English as their first language, especially if video games are the main place they've heard a word (which I imagine is the case for many words for non-native English speakers who play a lot of video games in English).