Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;835088Cure: Bloody Flux cannot be cured, outside of a Critical Success with a Heal Test. It must simply run its course.

I saw what you did there.

Quote from: One Horse Town;835097The herbalism document i did for v2 had a few diseases in it, like The Drummer's Measels, Trout Lips and Elvish Ears - a particularly virulent disease that deforms the ears and requires houses to be boarded up to stop its spread. Of course, once the house was clean, the word went round that Elvish had left the building...

Everybody saw what you did there.

Quote from: Simlasa;835048There's gotta be rules somewhere for catching Nurgle's Rot.

Yep.  Core book, even - the sample adventure in the back of the WFRP1 rulebook features a Beast of Nurgle, making a point of describing it as a big, slimy, playful puppy that just wants to jump up and slobber all over you... and here's what happens when you come in contact with the slime and contract Nurgle's Rot.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;835088ZWEIHÄNDER uses diseases. Some of these rules may not be readily apparent to those who aren't familiar with the Grim & Perilous ruleset, but will definitely resonate with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay enthusiasts:

BLOODY FLUX
Blood in your feces, dehydration, general weakness and inability to focus are symptomatic of the Bloody Flux. Your stool becomes watery, causing your bowels to cramp in a most uncomfortable manner. Living within the squalid quarters of the city and amongst soldiers' camps causes this uncomfortable Disease to spread from person to person. Blood sausages, spicy foods and eel pies are oftentimes prescribed to ward away its effects.

Resist: (Routine +10%) Toughness Test
Onset: Immediately
Duration: 1D6+3 days
Effect: Over the duration, you awaken each day suffering 1D6+9 Peril from sickness.
Treatment: To have a chance at being treated, a caregiver must have Skill Rank: Journeyman in Heal, have a rich meal to feed you (which are expended after use) and be left uninterrupted for at least ten minutes. A healer must succeed a (Routine +10%) Heal Test, which can be attempted once per day. If successful, you suffer no loss of Peril the following day. A Critical Success cures you of Bloody Flux. Failure results in no recovery, whereas a Critical Failure causes you to lose 1D6+6 Peril the following day instead.
Cure: Bloody Flux cannot be cured, outside of a Critical Success with a Heal Test. It must simply run its course. However, a creative Gamemaster may introduce ways for you to cure Bloody Flux.


FILTH FEVER
A terribly disgusting disease, it quickly debilitates those who are exposed to it. Wading through a midden or traipsing through bogs and sewers can expose would-be adventurers to Filth Fever. It inhibits the body's ability to recover appropriately and causes wounds and other Injuries to grow more severe.

Resist: (Challenging -10%) Toughness Test
Onset: Immediately
Duration: 1D6+6 days
Effect: Over the duration, all Moderate and Serious Injuries you suffer are treated as Grievous Injuries instead.
Treatment: To have a chance at being treated, a caregiver must have Skill Rank: Journeyman in Heal, have  4 bottles of rotgut to cleanse the wounds (which are expended after use) and be left uninterrupted for at least one hour. A healer must succeed a (Challenging -10%) Heal Test, which can be attempted once per day. If successful, all Moderate and Serious Injuries you suffer are treated as Serious Injuries instead. A Critical Success cures you of Filth Fever. Failure results in no recovery, whereas a Critical Failure causes you to be Slain! if you suffer any Injury until the following day.
Cure: Filth Fever cannot be cured, outside of a Critical Success with a Heal Test. It must simply run its course. However, a creative Gamemaster may introduce ways for you to cure Filth Fever.


VENEREAL DISEASE
There are many names for these sort of illnesses - the clap, sailor's pain, the drip, great pox or hot piss - all evocative in their own way, but the resulting discomfort is generally the same. Its treatment involves an iron catheter while inserting mites and lice into the genitalia.Terribly embarrassing and potentially fatal, Venereal Diseases persist over a lifetime.

Resist: (Standard +/-0%) Toughness Test
Onset: Immediately
Duration: Until cured
Effect: Over the duration, you lose 1% from your Brawn Primary Attribute every day. Should your Brawn ever reach 0%, you are dead!
Treatment: To have a chance at being treated, a caregiver must have Skill Rank: Journeyman in Heal, have a dose of mandrake root (which are expended after use) and be left uninterrupted for at least ten minutes. A healer must succeed a (Standard +/-0%) Heal Test, which can be attempted once per day. If successful, you do not lose any Brawn. A Critical Success ensures you are safe for three days without having to lose any Brawn. Failure results in no recovery, whereas a Critical Failure causes to lose 3% Brawn immediately.
Cure: By sacrificing 1 Fate Point, you are immediately cured of this disease. As a result, you are also immune to Venereal Disease in the future. In exchange, you gain a Drawback the Gamemaster feels appropriate. However, a creative Gamemaster may introduce ways for you to cure Venereal Disease.

These sound like fantastic afflictions with which to curse a player character.

Heck, I use disease all the time.  Some of the characters in my campaigns have chronic illnesses (fibro, rheumatism) that occasionally affect them.

Adventurers also travel.  A lot.  And often in rotten weather conditions, unless you run (admittedly one of the many) campaigns that seem to be perpetually Southern California in the late springtime, never rainy, never cold and never too hot.  HT rolls to avoid sickness happen a lot, and those folks imprudent enough to lowball their HT pay for that.

Dragon Warriors had a nice collection of nasty poxes and agues. Used some kind of infected crypt once, which the players didn't like. Overall its an area difficult to really make fun: poisons are easier to use.

Quote from: The_Shadow;835661Dragon Warriors had a nice collection of nasty poxes and agues. Used some kind of infected crypt once, which the players didn't like. Overall its an area difficult to really make fun: poisons are easier to use.

Mostly poisons are easier because most games treat poisons unrealistically. If one wants to make diseases more entertaining one should probably treat them unrealistically as well.

Quote from: Bren;835663Mostly poisons are easier because most games treat poisons unrealistically. If one wants to make diseases more entertaining one should probably treat them unrealistically as well.

This probably is the secret to a good approach to diseases, assuming such an approach exists (much early human attempts at flying tried to imitate the "realistic" flying of birds, which clearly wasn't the way to go).

Forget rules. Who's used diseases in their games, other than as a macguffin (e.g. villain threatens world with super bioweapon) or a special attack (e.g. lycanthropy and mummy rot in D&D), and how?

I ask because I'd love to write a bit on how to use diseases (similar to my old article on injury) but I'm not sure if/how people feature diseases in their games.

Quote from: The Butcher;835676Forget rules. Who's used diseases in their games, other than as a macguffin (e.g. villain threatens world with super bioweapon) or a special attack (e.g. lycanthropy and mummy rot in D&D), and how?

I ask because I'd love to write a bit on how to use diseases (similar to my old article on injury) but I'm not sure if/how people feature diseases in their games.

I have used them, but only early in the campaign (before "cure disease" and the other host of powahs characters gets makes diseases irrelevant).

Probably the most successful was in 4e (yes, 4e had issues, but it was very good at very low levels). The players needed to go into a swamp to track down a black dragon.

Pretty much everything in the swamp could inflict disease with a bite. I made up the diseases ("Swamp Fever", "Swamp Tetanus", "Swamp Nausea"), giving effects for various levels of severity (pretty much just minutes to some rolls and abilities) and the DCs to avoid the diseases getting worse.

Every time a character got a disease, I handed him/her a 3x5 card with the name of the disease, the effects, and the DCs and whatever else was needed. You pretty much have to do this, because you'll be looking at the disease effect essentially every round of combat (a big issue why they often don't work in games).

By the time players got to the dragon, they were so loaded down with diseases (one guy had all three) that the fight with the dragon was pretty good (solos in 5e were pretty bad without extensive errata).

Quote from: The Butcher;835676Forget rules. Who's used diseases in their games, other than as a macguffin (e.g. villain threatens world with super bioweapon) or a special attack (e.g. lycanthropy and mummy rot in D&D), and how?

I mentioned diseases in Runequest in Glorantha.

• Various chaos creatures, especially broos, can expose characters to disease from touching such creatures or the items they have contaminated. So characters who fight chaos are likely to get exposed, especially if they loot the corpses or lairs of creatures of chaos.
• Spirits of disease can be independently encountered. In a sense those are a type of special attack.
• Actual chaos taints are more of a mutation than a disease, and are a sort of special attack similar to lycanthropy.

In my Honor+Intrigue (H+I) campaign diseases come up a couple ways.

• One is a chance of exposure to disease for characters who enter the underground and sewers below Paris. So far the PCs haven't been in the sewers at all or in the underground enough to be exposed, but that may change.
• Also we have used disease like cold, flu, or intestinal distress/dysentery as the explanation for a PC to sit out when their player was unavailable. That seems like a useful rationale to use so we'll probably see more of that.
• I've been tempted to add disease exposure as a possibility for badly wounded characters, but haven't bother tracking the extra detail in part because this doesn't really fit the swashbuckling cape & sword genre nor the Barbarians of Lemuria based damage, recovery, and healing rules.
• I'm also tempted to add something for areas exposed to a plague or for poor quality food or water. But have similar concerns about detail tracking and genre appropriateness.

Since H+I uses a bonus and penalty die mechanic as well as composure loss. as far as an easy, but not too realistic effect one could use either of those mechanics. All characters have starting Composure=3. Each point of lost composure is a -1 penalty to all actions and rolls. If Composure is reduced to 0 the character is essentially taken out of the scene. So two choices for modeling game effects of disease could be composure loss or assigning a penalty die to certain or all actions. Something like:

• Mild to Moderate diseases : -1 Composure (e.g. a really bad cold with congestion);
• Moderate diseases: as above but use a penalty die instead of -1 (wracking coughs, fever, nausea, or diarrhea;
• Moderate to severe diseases :-2 composure (ignore the penalty die) (e.g. as above but multiple symptoms and/or high fever);
• Severe diseases: -2 composure plus a penalty die;
• Fatal to near fatal diseases : -3 composure, character is bed ridden and semi-conscious or in a coma until at least 1 composure is recovered by healing (e.g. the plague).

The big problem with disease, I think, is that it has a tricky complexity-scale:  make it too complex and you're going to a lot of bother for something that isn't worth it. Make it too simple, and it seems too on-the-fly.   And the flip between one and other seems to be on a hair.

Quote from: RPGPundit;835704The big problem with disease, I think, is that it has a tricky complexity-scale:  make it too complex and you're going to a lot of bother for something that isn't worth it. Make it too simple, and it seems too on-the-fly.   And the flip between one and other seems to be on a hair.

Yeah that and there isn't likely to be a lot of fun for the players in having their PC get or be sick. And unless the PC is some kind of healer type, there's not likely to be tons of payoff in having their PC stay healthy and end up tending to others when the NPCs get sick.  Which is in direct contrast to the rules on wounding and death from combat wherein PCs avoiding death when others die tends to be fun/cool for the players.

Quote from: The Butcher;835676Forget rules. Who's used diseases in their games, other than as a macguffin (e.g. villain threatens world with super bioweapon) or a special attack (e.g. lycanthropy and mummy rot in D&D), and how?

I ask because I'd love to write a bit on how to use diseases (similar to my old article on injury) but I'm not sure if/how people feature diseases in their games.

The first installment of the PF AP about the pirates has a nifty sandbox island thing the players must explore to eventually get off the island. You could catch diseases; you checked everyday unless you came up with a way to keep the insects at bay(smoke, herbs, etc.). By the end of the adventure, these people HATED Malaria and jungle rot. :-) The mage almost died from it!

Quote from: Bren;835717Yeah that and there isn't likely to be a lot of fun for the players in having their PC get or be sick. And unless the PC is some kind of healer type, there's not likely to be tons of payoff in having their PC stay healthy and end up tending to others when the NPCs get sick.  Which is in direct contrast to the rules on wounding and death from combat wherein PCs avoiding death when others die tends to be fun/cool for the players.

Well, in certain campaigns (particularly ones where there isn't instant cure-disease magical healing), having an illness that is slowly killing a PC gives a sense of urgency for them (or their friends) to find a cure.  Or, if no cure is possible, to settle their pending business before it's too late.

There's a lot of potential drama in illness. Its just that the combination of bad mechanics and clerical-magic tends to undermine it in D&D.

Quote from: RPGPundit;836126Well, in certain campaigns (particularly ones where there isn't instant cure-disease magical healing), having an illness that is slowly killing a PC gives a sense of urgency for them (or their friends) to find a cure.  Or, if no cure is possible, to settle their pending business before it's too late.

There's a lot of potential drama in illness. Its just that the combination of bad mechanics and clerical-magic tends to undermine it in D&D.

I wasn't thinking of D&D Clerics, but yes, D&D Clerical magic nerfs a lot of potential drama - thirst, starvation, disease, wounds, and even death. That eliminates a lot of problems that ordinary mortals have to worry about, plan around, or triumph over.