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I can't see how this desease can be a problem in a big city.
Any NPC with 4 ranks in Heal skill and a Healer's kit can help anyone to overcome the Save DC by taking 10 in his Heal check.
This takes 10 minutes. So, in 8 hours he can help 48 people to make this save.
In two day all this people can be saved.
How many experts of level 1 with Heal class skill are in the city?
I think I'm missing something, but it seems there's no need magical healing for this desease.
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I think my post disappeared - apologies if this turns up twice.
When a character is injured by a contaminated attack, touches an item smeared with diseased matter, or consumes disease-tainted food or drink, he must make an immediate Fortitude saving throw. If he succeeds, the disease has no effect—his immune system fought off the infection. If he fails, he takes damage after an incubation period. Once per day afterward, he must make a successful Fortitude saving throw to avoid repeated damage. Two successful saving throws in a row indicate that he has fought off the disease and recovers, taking no more damage.
These Fortitude saving throws can be rolled secretly so that the player doesn’t know whether the disease has taken hold.Use of the Heal skill can help a diseased character. Every time a diseased character makes a saving throw against disease effects, the healer makes a check. The diseased character can use the healer’s result in place of his saving throw if the Heal check result is higher. The diseased character must be in the healer’s care and must have spent the previous 8 hours resting.
The healer would need to have the diseased person in their care for both saving throws, each of which can only be made once per day. So it would take at least 24 hours to cure someone using this method. Note that until the second saving throw is successful the person is still contagious.
Also, it can be surmised from the “long term care” part of the Heal skill description that a healer can only tend to 6 patients in this manner at a time.
And there probably wouldn’t be that many more people in the city with 4 ranks of heal and healing kits than there are clerics – apart from the afore-mentioned plague doctors of course.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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You missed one of the key SRD sections on use of the Heal skill, what type of action it is:
Treating a disease or tending a creature wounded by a spike growth or spike stones spell takes 10 minutes of work.
One healer can treat dozens of people a day, either by traveling to their homes (where they would be resting) or in a place where the sick can rest. It isn't long term care, that is a separate use of the Heal skill. Treating a disease is explicitly a single person, by the way, it just doesn't take nearly as much time as long term care.
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You missed one of the key SRD sections on use of the Heal skill, what type of action it is:
Treating a disease or tending a creature wounded by a spike growth or spike stones spell takes 10 minutes of work.One healer can treat dozens of people a day, either by traveling to their homes (where they would be resting) or in a place where the sick can rest. It isn't long term care, that is a separate use of the Heal skill. Treating a disease is explicitly a single person, by the way, it just doesn't take nearly as much time as long term care.
Right you are! Missed that.
EDIT: but we’re getting into metagame territory here: The healer must be present at the time that the patient makes the saving throw against the disease, which happens once per day. The DM knows that this saving throw is made at X time of day, but the healer does not – by implication, they would need to be with them (at least in the general vicinity) through most of the day to “monitor them” (look out for the point where the saving throw is made) even though the actual treatment actually takes 10 minutes … interesting.
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But this is not long term care, it is cure a disease. In heal skill description it says that it takes 10 minutes, from SRD:
Providing first aid, treating a wound, or treating poison is a standard action. Treating a disease or tending a creature wounded by a spike growth or spike stones spell takes 10 minutes of work. Providing long-term care requires 8 hours of light activity
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But this is not long term care, it is cure a disease. In heal skill description it says that it takes 10 minutes, from SRD:
Providing first aid, treating a wound, or treating poison is a standard action. Treating a disease or tending a creature wounded by a spike growth or spike stones spell takes 10 minutes of work. Providing long-term care requires 8 hours of light activity
Yep, as I said in the post above, I missed that, my mistake. See my edit though.
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Additionally, whilst I�m sure there would be a few people around the place who had the requisite ranks in heal, or ranks plus wisdom bonus, your first level barber / doctor is not likely to own a healers kit when they cost 50gp a pop and only lasts for 10 uses.
If the barber has less than 14 Wis he has a problem. With 14 Wis he doesn't need to use Healer's kit to treat the disease.
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EDIT: but we�re getting into metagame territory here: The healer must be present at the time that the patient makes the saving throw against the disease, which happens once per day. The DM knows that this saving throw is made at X time of day, but the healer does not � by implication, they would need to be with them (at least in the general vicinity) through most of the day to �monitor them� (look out for the point where the saving throw is made) even though the actual treatment actually takes 10 minutes � interesting.
Have to be the treatment in the same moment of the Heal chek?
I believe that if you take 10 minutes to heal the desease during the day, we can make this check in the moment of the save.
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While you may be correct in your interpretation of the rules (I can't check right now), none of this happens in a hermetically-sealed environment.
Even if a healer works night and day (and the adventure does assume this is being done, by all conscientious skilled folk), he can heal his patient, they go back to work, someone sneezes on them, and they're back to square one.
The fact that the disease can survive outside the body, on handled items, and has an incubation period, means that anyone could have been exposed (via the coinage), even those who have avoided the riff-raff of the slums, and will be walking around infecting others without yet showing any symptoms. And even if symptoms do start to show, there will always be those folk who struggle into work because 'no-one can manage without me', and 'It's only a headache'.
You can't send the whole city to bed with some chicken soup, to rest it off, since there are so many essential jobs that still need to be done. Like, making the chicken soup (which someone sneezes in...oh, dear...here we go again...).
Additionally, whilst I�m sure there would be a few people around the place who had the requisite ranks in heal, or ranks plus wisdom bonus, your first level barber / doctor is not likely to own a healers kit when they cost 50gp a pop and only lasts for 10 uses.If the barber has less than 14 Wis he has a problem. With 14 Wis he doesn't need to use Healer's kit to treat the disease.
Expert NPCs don't get 14 wisdom.
Their stats are 8,9,10,11,12,13.
I mean there might be one or two truly exceptional NPCs with 14 around but by as a rule these NPCs defy the rules and are therefore very uncommon. Hence there, more or less, are no 'experts' with a wisdom (or any other stat) of 14. In a big city like Korvosa there are probably exceptions with exceptional healers of this ilk but were talking about maybe 3 or 4 around.
Beyond this I think your overestimating just how many people with this type of skill are wandering around. DMG II gives the number of Apocatharies in a city the size of Korvosa at roughly 30. There probably are no more then maybe 100 people around that have the heal skill and most of those are mid wives and such and don't have a healers kit and may not have taken skill focus heal.
What we really need to determine is how many people can be treated by this healer in a day. If we say 1 per hour and there are 30 people in the city with heal then they could heal 120 people a day (they need to see each person twice to insure the disease is cured). We can play with these numbers but its easy to get the disease to beat this out by simply increasing its infectiousness.
That said the other easy way to get around this is to raise the DC of the disease to 17. At that point very few NPCs will be around that could beat it by taking 10. They'd need to be at least 2nd level.
Remember that there are a lot of these NPC's and Clerics actualy have the disease themselves. The Clerics of Ababdar actually keep getting re-infected from the money that they are unaware is inheirently infected.
They spend much of their time healing and curing themselves and their own folk.
Just because you are cured doesn't mean that you can't get re-infected the next day by exposure to another victum.
Remember that there are a lot of these NPC's and Clerics actualy have the disease themselves. The Clerics of Ababdar actually keep getting re-infected from the money that they are unaware is inheirently infected.
They spend much of their time healing and curing themselves and their own folk.
Just because you are cured doesn't mean that you can't get re-infected the next day by exposure to another victum.
Does not really matter if the healer himself is infected. I mean that means he has to spend 10 minutes on himself insuring that he automatically makes his next save but thats it really.
Healers kit is not actually necessary. An Expert healer would put 4 skill points in Healand take Skill Focus (Heal). Thats +7 right there and thats enough to take 10 and automatically beat the disease. Come to think of it we need to make the DC 19 to get this past most healers since presumably one of their 12 or 13 stats is in the stat needed for Heal.|
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Also... the Queen's Physicians are intentionally spreading the disease. They are the ones to whom sick people are turning, not barbers and faith healers and the like. Refusing to admit them to one's home is a crime, as described in the text of the writ handout in the adventure.
Apologies if this has already been mentioned above.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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Against most run of the mill diseases your method would be perfectly acceptable, but this is an epidemic that has an unknown vector (initianlly) and is extremely contagious. It is also being actively spread by the Plague Doctors and cult members of Urgathoa. All these factors make the traditional healer with several ranks of Heal fight a losing battle. They can only treat so many people in a day. In that same time the disease is being spread to an exponentially larger number of people.
I think this is one of those situations where strict adherence to the game mechanics does not make sense for the story or compared to history. No doctor, regardless of skill, could simply cure someone of the Black Death because they had no knowledge of what it really was or how it could be stopped.
First, you can simply rule that one cannot cure Blood Veil using the Heal skill at this time. The "Concluding the Adventure" section in Seven Days to the Grave talks about how a cure can be created based on notes found from the bad guys. This cure would not be needed if existing healers could already cure. Until this cure is found, only the spell Remove Disease works. In the meantime, Heal checks could only be useful in quarantining the sick and slowing down the plague. Simply tell the PCs that as the disease is new and unheard of and all existing methods don't seem to work.
Second, if you don't want to take such extreme measures, I'd still rule that a) Healing Kits don't give any bonus because existing healing kits weren't prepared to take account of this new, unknown disease, and b) give all checks a -2 circumstance penalty because the disease is unknown. These penalties apply until the cure is found per "Concluding the Adventure." I think this fits in well with the rules.
Third, one reason giant epidemics happen is that the body has no existing immunity to new diseases. Rather harmless childhood diseases like measles were terrible killers during the time of the Roman Empire. 2000 years of coexisting with the disease reduced that lethality though. Maybe the DC20 represents the save for populations already exposed to the disease (after the events of Seven Days), so you could increase the current DC to 25 or 30 to represent its first appearance in Seven Days.
Second, if you don't want to take such extreme measures, I'd still rule that a) Healing Kits don't give any bonus because existing healing kits weren't prepared to take account of this new, unknown disease, and b) give all checks a -2 circumstance penalty because the disease is unknown. These penalties apply until the cure is found per "Concluding the Adventure." I think this fits in well with the rules.
Hmm. You know I think the idea of a healing check penalty is actually a really good one. In theory one can actually add such a penalty to any disease they want to be infectious. The only downside is that this reduces the effectiveness of players with the Heal Skill but really this skill is unfortunately so ill defined on how it interacts with disease that reducing the PCs effectiveness is probably a good thing, it just might save one from arguments about how many people one can be treated in an hour.
btw, taking "10" on a heal check, especially against an initially obscure and magically created disease, with an unknown vector, almost non-existant diagnostics, lack of sanitary conditions and probably with less than precisely measured and adminsitered medic actions is...... highly unlikely.
after all, the healer does not even have an idea whether his skilluse was even successful, nor is the lowering of the CON-stat affecting the general resistance/physical ability to shrug off the disease taken into account for the skill check (something that has always nagged me about the "heal" skill-check anyway, just as an aside ). Pretty doubtful this would ount as "free of stress and immediate threat", plus very difficult to adjucatein terms of success. If the healer were not certain his/her minsitarzions were successful, would they honetsly try "taking 10" instead of striving as hard as possible to save the patient's life ? That the entire skill check does not take into account the patient's condition and possible advance of a sickness is even more ludicruous. Not evervypone respinds the same to medical treatment, even nowadays with far more scientifically calibrated treatment.
Perhaps if the healers positvely knew what they were actually dealing with, and had some prior experience as to the plagues vector etc. taking "10" might be reasonable, but under the conditions given ? I would doubt it.
Sorry - but the entire taking "10" mechanism is a bad crutch to use in the game at the best of times.... Besides, the rules are meant to facilliate gameplay, not dominate it.
Besides - looking at the average wages of an unskilled labourer, servant or other inhabitant, I guess they would blanch at the 5 gp+ fee (that is just to cover the expense of the healing kit being used- and bought in a non-plague ridden market at that ) plus the healer's charge . 10+ gp for two days of consectutive service. This would definitely represent between one or two months wages for even a skilled labourer - for folks like cooks, servants etc. it's what they earn in six months, even for skilled artisans, at 4sp wages per day..... do the math (all wages taken from the A&E Guide 's charts, p.62. )
Quite the medical bill - especially if frequent re-infection looms.
Even if you take 10 on the Heal check and succeeds, that only means the victim gets a +4 competence bonus on their Fort save. When the PCs meet Brienna Soldado, she has an effective Fort save modifier of -3, so even with a successful Heal check against the disease, that only leaves her with a +1 modifier against a DC 16 save, so the odds pretty well stacked against her making the save.
In the AP, it says nothing of how you naturally can recover from the disease. It seems the default is usually two consecutive saves, would you say that goes for Blood Veil as well?
That is correct. You need two consecutive saves to beat the disease. Its relatively high DC and most commoners' low Fortitude bonus means you need two good roll in a row.
A successful heal check adds +4 to the save, but that's it. A spell to remove the disease requires a caster level check, again no small feat for anyone but the few highpriests in the city. In other words, it is hard to get someone better and there is no guarantee your efforts will bear fruit.
...Annnnnnd you multiply that low chance a few hundred times....
The Black Death on Earth was totally preventable. Hell, it's mostly eradicated and curable nowadays. Problem was that nobody knew what was actually happening, because either there was no germ theory in the society or it was so nascent and uninformed that it might as well not exist. That, combined with superstition and an inability to grasp what exactly was going on led to a lot of dying.
Just because someone mechanically can cure something doesn't mean that they know how to, in-game. We as players can think this, but NPCs won't be equipped with 21st century brains playing a game in a world where we literally know every rule. This is also coupled with the fact that there are agents actively propagating it, it's a magical or pseudo-magical disease, and a frikkin' goddess wants it to happen means that the city is in trouble. Besides, most commoners don't have enough money to chuck at more than rent and food; taking adventurer salaries for granted can skew NPC economics.
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Thread necro, but I ran Seven Days to the grave as an insert as part of my expanded Runelords campaign. There was a pretty simply fix - the cult of Urgothoa weaponized this disease with the aid of the Red Mantis. In my mind that makes the disease supernatural in its effects which placed it in the realm of Mummy Rot, so I took a cue from the description of that spell.
I made it so that you could save each day to resist the debilitating effects of the disease, but the ONLY way to cure it would be with the casting of a Remove Disease spell. If you fail the initial save, use of the Heal skill can help you fight it off, but without magical aid, you're eventually doomed.
Seemed like an elegant in-game solution to making the plague as terrifying as it deserves to be.
My version of the disease:
Bloodveil (contact or injury)
Save: Fort DC 16
Onset: 1 day
Frequency: 1/day
Effect: 1d3 CON & 1d3 CHA; victim is Fatigued after first failure, Exhausted after second
Cure: Can only be cured through the casting of a Remove Disease spell
Thread necro, but ...
I made it so that you could save each day to resist the debilitating effects of the disease, but the ONLY way to cure it would be with the casting of a Remove Disease spell.
That's how the disease is written in the AP. It can only be cured with remove disease. Under the disease description there's no 'cure' entry other than that. And in the AP on 80 of the anniversary edition it says:
"The PCs have three obvious choices: heal Brienna on the spot via remove disease (or a similar effect), secure a potion or NPC spellcaster to do so, or do nothing".
No mention of heal checks being allowed there, or for natural recovery. It's a very nasty disease!