The Tavern

I think drain is tuned to be too weak now. Even heavy drain doesn't reduce max HP by very much (like, 5-10%, maybe?) and clears up quite quickly. The effect is so minor and so temporary that I've stopped paying attention to it entirely. I'm wondering if others feel the same way, and if so, I'd suggest doubling the potency and halving the recovery rate.

I agree. Before the change, drain was for me one of the most-feared effects, one that could kill me because I ended up without the ability to win a non-trivial fight. I'm glad that we went away from that. But with the new drain, I don't even wear rN+ equipment any more, except as a preparation against torment. Like Nekoatl, I mostly ignore drain nowadays.

I never remember drain having a serious effect: I ignored old draining and old rN+ too.

One noticable change is with Ru's abilities: they can be spammed much less nowadays!

Old drain wasn't much of a threat when lightly drained, but could be quite dangerous in the rare cases of heavy drain (I recall a certain unique with a tendency to drain ALL of an unprepared character's skills). The new system is much less awkward (as there's no longer an incentive to over-invest in skills to insulate against skill reduction), so I think the change is good overall, but it just seems like the effect is too weak right now.

Yeah, there was a unique, but she could also bansih you if generated with a distortion dagger instead of the draining one, and she could be defeated quite easily with wands. She was a unique treat, the only single monster when heavy drain could be a problem if you had no idea how to fight her. Not worth to get rN+ or overinvest in skills just for her.

Aren't you all whitewashing the glorious past here? A pack of wights encountered in a tight corner could drain your skills in no time at all, and quite early in the game at that. For a spellcaster that would mean to not be able to cast any spells, or only level 1 spells without power. Usually, that was the end of the game for me.

I do recall avoiding melee combat with groups of wights when playing spell slingers, and luring them so I could fight them one-on-one while getting the first attack when playing melee. Yeah, if they cornered you, that was bad, but between their average speed and lack of ranged attacks, it was usually possible to choose the terms of engagement. Spellcasters that zapped drain bolts were harder to manage, though usually by then more sources of rN were available. Now, I don't even care if I fight packs of wights head-on or get hit by bolts of draining, though.

Or go back to having it drain skills, which had a real impact on what you could and could not do. In particular, the change to make evoking invisibility drain you reducing the odds of success was ingenious - and broken by the change to make drain into a funny kind of rot.