Hello!

Just imported my characters from Champions of Krynn and soon we (hopefully) kick some more evil ass.

The manual says that the HP bonus from CON does only apply up to charlevel 10 depending on the class. But there is no table to specify. Which class gets the bonus until which level?

If you look in the back of the manual, there are various tables, including, for each class, a table that shows the XP requirements and hit dice of each class.

Yes, but none about until which level does the bonus HP based on high CON apply.

Rule is that they only apply when you get rolled hit dice.

Once you stop rolling for HP and instead get a constant amount of HP per level (like 3 for fighters or 1 for mages), you no longer get the constitution bonus at later level ups.

Thank you, that's what I meant.

1. I understand the bank in the first outpost is the only one - but a magic shop is elsewhere. So when I want to buy something expensive I have to strip down the chars to be able to carry thousands of steel and with this go on an overland journey?

2. Does the +4 against reptiles also work against dragons?

3. Will there be need of non-magical weapons in this game? Then I better keep the broad swords from CoK.

4. Blunt weapons instead of half-damage dealing swords against all undead or just against skeletal ones? Do flails count as blunt?

2. It does in the standard AD&D rules, so it should unless it was not implemented properly.

4. Of the undead, only skeletons (including giant varieties) take half damage from non-blunt weapons. Flails count as blunt.

01kipper answered two of your questions. Regarding non-magical weapons, I can't think of a reason in gold box why you would want to retain non-magic weapons when magical alternatives are available. Just make sure there are weapons your whole party can use and, as you mentioned, retain some blunt weapons (magical or otherwise) for fighting skeletal warriors, who are pretty tough customers and highly magic resistant. And, yes, flails are slightly better for the job than maces or most other blunt weapons.

(Were you thinking of the magic golems in Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal? There are no equivalent monsters in gold box and even TOB was nice enough to stash nonmagic weapons close to where you would fight magic golems.)

It was regarding Baldur's Gate and regarding your tip "due to a decidedly tough fight that is the very first thing in Death Knights of Krynn, get all of your warrior-type characters a nonmagical flail in Champions before you transfer" - although at this time I could not really remember that hint and fought with magic stuff, maybe I could have had an easier victory.

Yes, that initial fight in Death Knights of Krynn is one of the game's tougher. Again, you will probably want to keep flails around for fighting skeletal warriors, but your cleric should be able to handle most other kinds of undead most of the time. Just a couple of things to keep in mind: as you've probably already discovered, you get no experience for undead who are turned, unless the undead are destroyed by the turning; also, there are a few particularly cursed places in Death Knights where your cleric's turning ability is reduced (I think usually by two levels).

How does level drain and healing work?

A character gets drained from 100 XP to 80 XP and slays the undead for 5 XP.

So the game saves 20 in memory, works with 80, then counts 80 + 5 = 85 after the battle and in the temple it takes the 20 from the memory and the character has 105. Likewise, the stats from leveling are also regained this way.

Right?

Is there a protection or do we have to go to a temple again and again?

This might be time-consuming, as walking between bank (the only one being nowhere central) and magic shop is, and all this with random encounters and the need to rest, all this drains the character age. Okay, I saw that in all of CoK they aged about one year? So I have should have time to wander around and camp. Otherwise roaming around and discovering the game world would be limited and this is necessary when not playing along a cluebook (which I try to minimize).

I am not sure how it works in these games (because that's what save game slots are for and I've never experimented with it), but I can explain how level-drain works in AD&D and most likely it works that way in the game:

When a character gets drained a level, their XP total drops to the mid-point of the previous level, and they lose the max HP they gained when they last levelled-up their class.

If they get the level restored later by a Restoration spell, their XP total goes to the minimum required to attain that level, and they regain the max HP they lost.

Multi-class characters lose their highest level if their different classes are of different levels, or they lose the level which requires the greatest amount of XP if the levels are the same (each class of a multi-class character has its own separate XP total).

For example, if a Fighter had 7,126XP they would be level 3. If they lost a level due to energy drain, they would be level 2 with 3,000XP. If they later were the recipient of a Restoration spell (while still level 2) they would increase to 4,001XP and become level 3 (and regain the max HP they lost when they were drained). Any extra XP gained while level 2 in this scenario would be lost.

The rules don't specifically state what happens if the level 2 fighter earns enough XP to regain level 3 naturally, but I would think that they would re-roll their HP gain for level 3 and have to live with the result whatever it may be, and the Restoration spell would then become ineffective for them for that particular level loss.

In AD&D there is no protection against level-drain other than the magical item "scarab of protection".

Yes, level drain is a particularly difficult part of gold box (and 1st and 2nd edition) to deal with.

To begin with, there is no magical protection in gold box for level drain in gold box (and maybe not in 1st edition at all). In Ravenloft: Stahd's Possession, whose rules are based on 2nd edition, there is a spell, Negative Plane Protection, that blocks level drain. Unfortunately, even there, as you may have discovered playing Baldur's Gate 2, it can only be cast on one character and its duration is so short that it's mostly impractical. (There are also no Restoration spells in Stahd's Possession. The only way to deal with the considerable amount of level draining undead in that game is to avoid being drained, mainly by never engaging them in melee combat and saving a lot, plus keeping a careful eye on your characters' levels. The same thing goes for shadows there, since recovery of drained strength is bugged in that game.)

There is not even a save for level drain in 1st and 2nd edition. A hit from a level-draining undead automatically drains 1 level for wights and wraiths and 2 levels for specters and vampires. I can't answer every question about what 01kipper pointed out, but they are right that restoration will bring you back only to the minimum experience to regain all your lost levels. Any further experience is lost permanently and must be earned anew. I don't know how hit points lost with level drain are restored (i.e. does the game somehow remember what your original hit points were or does it roll for them again just like you had gained a new level?)

Probably, your best option for dealing with level drain in gold box is not to get hit in the first place by the undead I mentioned. I would use whatever means necessary to try to minimize such hits. Turning with your cleric in Death Knights of Krynn is not exactly ideal, since you get no experience for turning (you generally won't be high enough level to destroy those undead by turning), but it's better than being drained. If you can find a way to destroy them reliably without turning, that would be even better. Also, remember what I said about some particularly cursed regions in the game.

A couple of other things:
1) Although many types of undead abound in Death Knights, mostly only the types I already mentioned can drain levels.
2) If you're not averse to a spoiler, I'm pretty sure the spectral dragons in the final fight of the postgame Dave's Challenge can also drain levels, maybe 3 per hit. However, that region and that fight are supposed to be EXTREMELY tough by design.

My understanding is that the game doesn't keep track, and instead just rolls once to see how many HP you lose when you're level drained, and rolls again to see how many HP you gain when you regain the level.

This means (if my knowledge is correct) that there's an exploit: Get level drained on purpose, and reload if you get a bad HP loss roll. This way, you can lose a level with a minimum of HP loss. Then, regain the level, and reload if you don't get a good HP roll. This will put you back at the level you were, but with more HP you had than before. This can be repeated to raise HP as high as desired.

There is a catch: From what I've read, HP is represented as a single byte in these games, so if you go over 255 HP, your HP will overflow and become small.

XP loss even after level regaining, bummer. That really is a setback at high levels.

But I saw that the full HP are restored that they had before (rerolled with every level-up until the maximum), so this is good news, rolling again would be even nastier.

I don't know which, but one of my fighter chars was affected, and they have -9 and -6 AC respectively.