History Main / LevelDrain

* In ''[[Main/Munchkin Munchkin]]'', there are various cards and monsters that cause players to lose levels, most notably the dreaded "Cursed!" card.

* This is Xykon's favorite form of attack in ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick''. He's used it on multiple occasions to take down other epic spellcasters.

[[AC:Anime and Manga]]
* In ''LightNovel/AccelWorld'', Seiryu, [[TheFourGods one of the four guardians]] of the Imperial Palace, can do this to the players it fights, and considering that leveling up takes a lot of time and effort in Brain Burst, this is a ''very'' bad thing. [[spoiler:When Nega Nebulus tried to take down the guardians, Aqua Current was assigned to deal with Seiryu, but ended up being reduced to a very low level]].

* In the early days of ''VideoGame/EverQuest'', you could fall into a "death loop"--If your spawn point was near a group of monsters, they'd keep killing you repeatedly. What made it even worse was that you'd spawn ''without your equipment'', making you even easier to kill. You could easily lose a level or more this way.

* The VideoGame/{{Wizardry}} games had monsters that caused it on your party, which was part of what made the series so infamously difficult, as the player then had to get the characters out of the area they were now too low levelled to survive in, and then grind back up before they could return, and then pray that their levels weren't lost again. The series' fourth game played around with this trope, since the first game's BigBad was now the VillainProtagonist, the player could summon monsters with level drain abilities to their side, and using such monsters was usually the best way to weaken up the do-gooders who were trying to put Werdna back into his tomb.

* {{Subverted}} in some ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' games. The Juna Fruit (only available through live download events) in ''Sacred Stones'' lowers a unit's level, which seems like a bad thing at first... but it ''doesn't'' affect the unit's actual stats, and since stat increases are randomly determined whenever you level up, the Juma Fruit's real purpose is to give a unit a few more chances to gain stats before they hit the relatively low level cap of 20. The reclassing system in ''Awakening'' also works similarly, it resets a character's level to 1 and, if "demoting" from a high-tier class to a base one, will reduce their stats accordingly... but all stats they've gained through leveling up are retained internally, and repeated use of this level reset enables characters to effectively level endlessly until all their stats are maxed out. ''Fates'' changed reclassing to ''not'' reset levels.

!!Non-video game examples:
[[AC:Literature]]
* In ''Literature/{{Erebos}}'', players can battle other players for levels, with the winner directly taking them from the loser.

* The original PC88/MSX version of ''VideoGame/{{Valis}}: The Phantasm Soldier'' uses the same mechanic as ''Cave Story'', where getting injured by anything will lower your weapon level.

* In ''DemonsSouls'', there is the Soulsucker spell, which is used by one of the bosses in the game and can also be learned by the player. It has an incredibly slow casting time and very short range, but a hit from this will drain a player's Soul Level.

* Games in ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series will generally lower a random skill when you're put in prison. There are also various magical effects that temporarily drain the gains and means of increasing in level (health, magicka, fatigue and skills).

* In hentai game ''Monster Girl Quest'', several of the [[HornyDevils succubus]] enemies do this to you. Fortunately you get all your levels back after defeating them.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' enabled one GF to learn a LV Down ability for the player to use, which could be used repeatedly to make any non-boss enemy stupidly easy. It had a LV Up ability, too, for those who think scaled leveling of enemies just isn't hardcore enough.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'', one status ailment actually deleveled your character. It was only temporary, similar to ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV''.

** On the path to OneHundredPercentCompletion, a full reset happens twice: "You feel a black wind blow through you. All weapons dropped to Level 1!" Though you're almost guaranteed to have at least one weapon — the Spur, the Nemesis, or the Blade — that still deals out good damage at Level 1. Arguably, the de-leveling in Sacred Grounds is an equalizer, so that your chance of success isn't affected by how well you fared in the preceding boss fight.

* Every single one of the early Moraff [=RPGs=] for DOS had enemies that could drain your levels if they hit you. Thankfully, this was usually not so horrible due to the fact that your stats increase over time due to finding items, and level draining doesn't drain these. In fact, it is actually advantageous to let yourself be drained back to a low level so that you can get much better max HP gains when leveling back up with your newly inflated stats. The worst enemies were the ones that could drain your ''stats''. If you happen to be a fighter, you better hope you've collected at least one or more of those TooAwesomeToUse [[HolyHandGrenade Holy Hand Grenades]] (which, by the way, is an [[LuckBasedMission extremely tedious process]] thanks to how the [[RandomNumberGod [=RNG=]]] manipulates the system of randomly dropped items when defeating an enemy in these games) when facing Level Draining Enemies or you're screwed.

* There's at least one already difficult boss in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' (The Grand Jewel) that can take away levels from your current attack, and they will stay that way until you gain them back the hard way. In a part of the game with several boss fights in a short period of time, no less. There are also several bosses (including, again, the Grand Jewel) that make your dragoon abilities useless, which can be seen as leveling them down for the battle.
* While they don't affect the characters' levels, several endgame bosses in ''VideoGame/GoldenSun: The Lost Age'' and ''[[VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn Dark Dawn]]'' have moves that shut down a character's Djinni, and a couple of them can shut down ''all'' of the Djinni in the active party. Doing so reverts the characters into their significantly weaker base classes. Fortunately, Djinni do return in battle, but only one of each character's 9 Djinni comes back each turn - especially problematic because most Revive spells and all group healing spells require classes with four or more Djinni of a particular element.

** Another game by TSR, ''TabletopGame/GammaWorld'' (1st Edition), had the "De-Evolution" mutant ability. A "Sage Advice" article in Dragon Magazine confirmed that if a mutant with that ability showed up in a Dungeons And Dragons campaign, it would cause Level Drain like an undead monster.

* This is a major game mechanic in ''VideoGame/CaveStory''. You level up your weapons by collecting powerups that enemies drop, and getting injured by anything will lower your weapon level: this also serves as an unique weapon balance factor since different weapons have varying amounts of "spare" experience that you can lose without weakening your weapon once you reach the max level.

** It should be mentioned that one of these guns ([[MeaningfulName Nemesis]]) is much BETTER when it's unleveled, so anyone wielding it has to either actively dodge experience drops or invoke this trope.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' makes this the [[StandardStatusEffects "standard" debuff against monsters]] and thus features numerous items, equipment, player skills and familiars that can do this. On the other side, there are also items and equipment that can ''add'' levels to the enemy, in order to boost their power (and the ExperiencePoints paid out for defeating them). A few rare items can do this to your own statistics, too.

* In the early days of ''VideoGame/EverQuest'', you could fall into a "death loop"--If your spawn point was near a group of monsters, they'd keep killing you repeatedly. What made it even worse was that you'd spawn ''without your equipment'', making you even easier to kill. You could easily lose a level or more this way. As you can guess, this was a ScrappyMechanic.

** The original ''VideoGame/{{Rogue}}'' had one of these too, the Wraith. It drained a level but left you at the maximum experience of the previous level, so the experience from killing the wraith would make you go up a level again (though with minimal experience for it). Too bad if you got drained twice before killing one, though.
** ''VideoGame/{{Angband}}'' has not only various levels of EXP drains, but also melee attacks that lower any or all of your stats.
** ''[[VideoGame/RagnarokRoguelike Ragnarok]]'' has monsters that can drain your levels, as well as reduce other stats.

* ''ChocobosDungeon 2'' not only has level down seeds your big yellow bird can eat, but level down traps and a whole family of monsters (Vampire/Lich/Demi-Lich) that can drain levels as an attack. For some strange reason, this is partly balanced out by having level up seeds and traps.

* ''IzunaLegendOfTheUnemployedNinja'' features an enemy that can drain one level from you. When you defeat it, you level up, bringing you back to your original level.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' had several enemies and powers that cause level drain, though thankfully it's all temporary.
** Not to mention; you can actually do it on the ''enemies'', too. Often you can use abilities such as Darkshock (Which halves the target's level and rounds if necessary) or Level 2 old (Which gradually delevels them). This makes abilities that attack the opponents via levels (Level 5 Death, Level 3 Flare) much more feasible.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' had this as a handicap in the arena fights in the Golden Saucer. It reduced your level by five for the remainder of the duel. This was actually one of the less nasty penalties, at least it didn't shrink you or worse, turn you into a frog.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' enabled one GF to learn a LV Down ability for the player to use, which could be used repeatedly to make any non-boss enemy stupidly easy. It had a LV Up ability, too, for those who think scaled leveling of enemies just isn't hardcore enough.
** It's also yet another GameBreaker in a sea of many that the game lets you use at your leisure. Level the monsters up, draw their now-updated magic, level them down again so that you can either kill them in one hit or raise the effectiveness of [[LowLevelRun Break]].
* ''{{Persona 2}}'' has the "Prophecy" spell, which resets a Persona's rank to 1. Given that a Persona's spells and stats come mostly from gaining ranks, and going from rank 1 to [[{{Cap}} rank 8]] often takes several hours of LevelGrinding, this can be aggravating.

* In the ''[[Franchise/DotHack .hack//]]'' series, the power of Data Drain can result in an NPC character losing character levels and distorting into a very weak monster. Player characters hit with Data Drain can have their human player be digitized, imprisoning their mind in the game and placing their body into a coma.
** In ''VideoGame/DotHackGU'' and ''.hack//ROOTS'', the entity [[spoiler:Azure Kite]] Tri-Edge Data Drains the characters Shino and Haseo, sending the former into a coma and transforming the latter from a[[spoiler:n artificially]] high level character to first level with no inventory or member address list.

* There's at least [[ThatOneBoss one]] already difficult boss in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' (The Grand Jewel) that can take away levels from your current attack, and they will stay that way until you gain them back the hard way. In a part of the game with several boss fights in a short period of time, no less. There are also several bosses (including, again, the Grand Jewel) that make your dragoon abilities useless, which can be seen as leveling them down for the battle.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' has a "level down" trap that you can use to abuse the leveling system for ungodly powerful stats (though most players generally don't bother).
** How this works is that you gain stats based on what class you are when you level up, and you lose them the same way when you level down, so you take a mage into a class that has no magic growth (such as a dragoon) and level them down, losing strength and HP, and then level back up as a mage, gaining more points to Magic and MP

* {{Subverted}} in some ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' games. The Juna Fruit (only available through live download events) in ''Sacred Stones'' lowers a unit's level, which seems like a bad thing at first... but it ''doesn't'' affect the unit's actual stats, and since stat increases are randomly determined whenever you level up, the Juma Fruit's real purpose is to give a unit a few more chances to gain stats before they hit the relatively low level cap of 20. The reclassing system in ''Awakening'' also works similarly, it resets a character's level to 1 and, if "demoting" from a high-tier class to a base one, will reduce their stats accordingly... but all stats they've gained through leveling up are retained internally, and repeated use of this level reset enables characters to effectively level endlessly until all their stats are maxed out. Because this could become a total GameBreaker, ''Fates'' changed reclassing to ''not'' reset levels.

* [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/4/ Tycho instructs Gabe on how to make his monsters more deadly.]]

* In hentai game Monster Girl Quest, several of the [[HornyDevils succubus]] enemies do this to you. Fortunately you get all your levels back after defeating them.

* {{Subverted}} in some ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' games. The Juma Fruit item lowers a unit's level, which seems like a bad thing at first... but it ''doesn't'' affect the unit's actual stats, and since stat increases are randomly determined whenever you level up, the Juma Fruit's real purpose is to give a unit a few more chances to gain stats before they hit the [[AbsurdlyLowLevelCap relatively low level cap of 20]].

* The original ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' had yellow zombies, which ''permanently'' reduced your max HP every time they landed a successful hit.

* In ''VideoGame/WildARMS3'', there's an enemy in [[BonusDungeon The Abyss]] called the [[DemonicSpiders Vampire]]. While it doesn't lower levels, their [[ThatOneAttack Kirlian Buster]] attack lowers MAX HP. This can be very bad, considering they appear around the middle floors and can hit with it often. On the other hand, they only use it as a counter to [[FunctionalMagic Arcana]], but they counter physically attacks with nastily high-powered hits...
** The Kirlian Buster returns in ''VideoGame/WildARMsXF'' as one of the earliest enemy Arts one can encounter. However, since the game is an SRPG and the spell's effect isn't permanent, the Kirlian Buster hardly poses any threat to the player. And the pathetic success rate of the spell itself doesn't really help.

* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireIII'' has event-based max HP drains that can be reset:
** The first is simple: If a character gets knocked out and revived by camping, or using a certain item, or something of the sort, their max HP goes down some. Staying at an inn is the only way to reset it.
** The second is similar to the above, but as a plot-relevant part: You need to cross a desert, and you're allotted a particular amount of water to drink while you're doing so. Making sure you're heading in the right direction, using your time efficiently (setting out at nighttime, and not during the day, when the sun makes you thirsty faster), and consuming your water efficiently are all key in ensuring that you make the trek unscathed. Should you run out of water and go thirsty long enough, your max HP gradually begins dropping every few steps or so. It can also be reset by sleeping at an inn.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' makes this the [[StandardStatusEffects:"standard" debuff against monsters]] and thus features numerous items, equipment, player skills and familiars that can do this. On the other side, there are also items and equipment that can ''add'' levels to the enemy, in order to boost their power (and the ExperiencePoints paid out for defeating them). A few rare items can do this to your own statistics, too.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' features items, equipment, and familiars that can do this to monsters. On the other side, there are also items and equipment that can ''add'' levels to the enemy, in order to boost their power (and the ExperiencePoints paid out for defeating them). A few rare items can do this to your own statistics, too.

* Every single one of the early Moraff [=RPGs=] for DOS had enemies that could drain your levels if they hit you. Thankfully, this was usually not so horrible due to the fact that your stats increase over time due to finding items, and level draining doesn't drain these. In fact, it is actually advantageous to let yourself be drained back to a low level so that you can get much better max HP gains when leveling back up with your newly inflated stats. The worst enemies were the ones that could drain your ''stats''. If you happen to be a fighter, you better hope you've collected at least one or more of those TooAwesomeToUse [[HolyHandGrenade Holy Hand Grenades]] when facing Level Draining Enemies or you're screwed.