Make Drain Scale With WIL

General Suggestions
#1

The amount of damage and healing from Drain is completely overshadowed by the Light Side healing abilities. People in the Discord are actively telling newbies not to pick Drain because it’s just that much of a setback. The only characters who have it, have it for flavor.

I think Drain should have better scaling than Force Heal for both healing and damage. Yes, that makes it the better mechanical choice, but there are other factors to consider.

Force Heal can be justified for Light, Gray, and Dark Force users, while Drain is pure evil. Taking Drain locks you out of Benevolence, which ALSO scales with WIL. Therefore, the extra damage and healing can be seen as a balance for giving up a second, even stronger healing ability.

I would also reiterate my suggestion from last year that Drain be earned through RP, since the lore says the only way to learn it is to have it used on you by someone else.

#2

I am all for Force Drain being perhaps on par with force healing, though I will say force healing is canonically a “light side” ability. To my knowledge a dark sider cannot actively take healing unless that has changed?

#3

I agree with everything but the last part there. If drain has to be learned through RP then it means every dark-sider would need to use heal until they can get their hands on drain. I will also add that drain is further nerfed compared to heal due to not working on mechanical targets.

If drain can just be the default way a dark sider is able to heal then it should be put on par with the other 2 heals and then be available for them the same way heal is.

UNLESS every force self-heal ability has to be learned through RP, which if you ask me just opens the door for certain players being favored to learn and/or accusations of that happening which is a headache. Training for me should be reserved for non-mechanical and non-essential skills.

#4

Drain actually ain’t that bad because its both 30 Damage and 30 Healing, which outshadows the 44 Healing provided by a max WIL scaled Force Heal.

Benevolence vs Creeping Terror is the actual problem. Drain does NOT lock you out of Benevolence, only Force Heal!

EDIT: I will say that Force Drain is mostly a pick for high WIL characters since it needs to beat the Force Resistance calculation before applying, that makes it much less valid for general melee builds with lower VIL. If it still did /some/ drain but lessened by a % value that’d be different.

#5

Force drain not scaling with WIL is a mixed bag, because it does give a dark-side offensive option for lower WIL characters.

I will say that for a light-sider, benevolence often completely overshadows force heal. It’s far more FP efficient and has a short enough cooldown where it can be effectively spammed, removing the need for it almost entirely.

Drain on the other hand is effective consistent damage even against a much higher WIL target, and it heals the user as well. I would say that mechanically, drain is much better than heal, especially because benevolence makes heal mostly irrelevant.

#6

Drain doesn’t work like you think it does. If you fail the WIL check against the target (Your WIL * 10 + 1d100 vs Enemy WIL *10 + 50) then it just flat out fails and isn’t applied. As such it is /not/ an offensive option for lower WIL characters. It is, in fact, the opposite. This balances it because it means Melee Low-WIL builds don’t get access to a +30 Heal, -30 Damage option.

By extention the “scaling” of Force Drain is who you can apply it on in the first place.