"That would be nice to know," Aria nodded; she kept the kukri in hands and drew a sap in the other, twirling it around once on her way to the less-obliterated looking goblin. "I'll knock it back out if it tries overmuch to resist but we still need information, and if we have time in a bit I can probably tie it up for good measure." She didn't seek to do the latter yet, as that would take longer and present more risk of it bleeding out.<br/><br/>She crouched near the goblin, one foot upon its chest both to keep it from getting up and as a threat to agonize the great guisarme chest wound if it dared wrath or wriggle. The kukri she pointed closer, tip hovering quite still near the thing's throat.<br/><br/>Once the positive energy flowed from wand into goblin, Aria slapped it lightly across its mottled-orange cheek. The sharp-featured little monster spasmed once as if awaking from a nightmare. It shouted and cursed for a split second. Then its eyes focused on the kukri, and moved up its blade and the arm holding it, to the two women hovering above and beyond. It grew recalcitrant and quiet, growling and simpering in Goblin under its breath.<br/><br/><br/>That reminds me, although I find people who use a lot of variant rules usually wade deep into loophole land, one I'm fond of (should've mentioned when RP started) is Slower Dying (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/variantdyingrule.html). Dying rules don't interact much with most of the rest, and I don't really like PC death (which I think is highly unlikely here either way).  The variant helps deal with the fact that at higher levels, attacks usually deal >10 damage and so the core 'dying' state can be skipped over easily.<br/><br/>That's from the site of one the former manual writers (mostly 3.0 Forgotten Realms manuals).<br/><br/>Another variant (not to much a variant rule as a set of alternations to certain monsters and spells) is that if I use monsters with level/ability drain abilities, they won't have a chance to induce permanent level or ability score loss.<br/><br/>A negative level, rather than becoming level drain  (after the relevant Fort saves were failed) would become a 'semipermanent' negative level in the sense that it has no time expiration (infinite duration),  but still removeable by Restoration type magics, analogous to Blindness/Deafness. Similarly with ability drain being unexpiring ability damage.<br/><br/>