Brokenbone wrote:... or whether withdrawal and enough rest (or even just passage of time) should do it.
Well I do think whatever penalties they are shouldn't be permanent, so that when you come back the next week for a new session, you'd have rested up. (Though something like 1 point / rest or IG day offline, like how ability damage heals by our system, might be swell. But I'd bet we already would have a quite smart system for negative levels in place, like we do for ability damage, no?)
Reason being precisely to not beat on lowbies severly. Highbies can afford a shot of Restoration, anyway.
Brokenbone wrote:
Knock one level off a fighter, he loses 1 from AB, loses one hit die (though he's probably at 2hp whether it's 2 / 70 or 2 / 80, it's still 2). Is that enough?
One could tweak it to scale with current level, like give 1 + 1 more negative per every 5 (character level minus negatives). I suppose one could think this punishes hp too much compared to how it punishes AB. Still, as you say, it reduces
max hp, which isn't so much about surviving this encounter (you're far more worried about
current hp), but about getting back to full swing for the next one.
I suppose one can engineer the effects however complex, but tweaking details is details. Nwn2 negative levels seems about right.