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Imagine the following:
Your an intrepid adventurer romping through a dungeon. You kill the half-fiend ogre and claim his treasure hoard, then head back to town. Your saving up for that nice new +2 flaming burst bastard sword, so instead of shelling out for a really nice room you toss the innkeep of a smaller, less clean establishment a few coppers to sleep in the common room.
A couple of days later you find yourself suffering from fever, headaches, nausea, swollen lymph nodes and a blackening of the skin. Uh oh! You've contracted bubonic plague!
What do you do? Why you rush over to the local church and have the first priest you meet cast a Remove Disease spell! Good as new!
How threatening can diseases actually BE in a world where a 5th level Cleric (3rd level if he has the Restoration subdomain) can cure all but the most virulent (or magical) diseases? The illnesses that threatened our medieval world, like plague, dysentery, tetanus, tuberculosis and rabies, can be healed by the town priest in fantasy worlds. So, why bother at all?
Taking into account that most resident priests wont be 5th level, there's still traveling clerics (like the PCs), or the local priest could appeal to his church to send a more experienced healer. Even failing all of these, any witch or alchemist worth his salt can brew up a potion of remove disease, or at least a dose of antiplague.
So how can you make contracting an illness more pressing than "Oh, just got tetanus, better make a quick stop at the cathedral"? Sure, removing such spells is viable, or upping the DCs of the illnesses. Can anyone think of anything else?
I have a reason beyond theory to ask this, honestly; one of my players in Rise of the Runelords just contracted tetanus from the trapped chest in Thistletop. Their 4th level and by the time they defeat Nualia (or allow her to escape, they have a foolish habit of that) they'll be 5th, high enough for the druid to cast the fore-mentioned miracle spell. I'm trying to up the ante for my group as they've been mowing through every encounter (including the tentomort, which I had even slapped the Advanced template and a Mythic rank on), so I want to give them some out-of-combat reason to fret.
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If you have the means, I HIGHLY recommend AP #8, Seven Days to the Grave, as the adventure foreword discusses exactly this topic. The short version is, yes, adventurers can afford these cures, but for average people, the costs are more extreme. Additionally, what you're describing is limited exposure. Once a few poor people contract something contagious, though, especially in a crowded city, the disease can spread faster than such cures are available.
It's a great adventure in a great Path, and if you're already in Varisia, you could run it next and work up to Shattered Star. I can't recommend it enough.
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Spellcasting services aren't cheap. Look at the craft and profession rules for making money, and assume you're a 1 rank commoner with a +1 or +2 in INT or WIS. Craft and Profession yield you pennies. A level one guy with a +5 modifier (1 rank, 1 modifier, 3 class skill), earns 3-12gp per *WEEK* with profession, and a crafter earns 10-25gp per week on a DC10 item before 1/3 of his materials is subtracted.
Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell, spellcasting services are 10*cl*slvl, which would give you a 150gp cost to have the spell cast. In other words, the 1st level peon would have to work more than 15 weeks (nearly 1/3 of a year) to save up enough money just to have the spell cast on them.
A better solution is to have your 1st level clerics casting resistance on everybody constantly, and burning corpses, or hope that an altruistic adventuring party comes through and helps find a cure or casts a lot of free spells.
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"Seven Days to the Grave" really is the best place to go, in my opinion, for an in-world example of how a plague can work in a city where one might think there's plenty of cleric/healer types to stop the plague.
The fact is that there's just not enough clerics to do the job, even if they don't charge for the remove disease spells. Especially when you consider that someone who gets remove disease has no additional protection from catching the same disease 10 minutes later. Or how evil opportunists might capitalize on the situation by selling snake oil that makes people THINK they're cured when they're not. Or what happens if there's an agent at work actively seeking to spread the plague.
And that was all written for 3.5. In Pathifnder, remove disease doesn't always work without fail like it did in 3.5.
Something is only worth what people are willing or able to pay. It doesn't cost a hedgewitch anything to cast a remove disease spell and they're not going to sit there and starve because no one in the region could afford the arbitrary 150gp price tag. RPG economics frustrate me.
Something is only worth what people are willing or able to pay. It doesn't cost a hedgewitch anything to cast a remove disease spell and they're not going to sit there and starve because no one in the region could afford the arbitrary 150gp price tag. RPG economics frustrate me.
That assumes everyone is some kind of Good and would rather stay in a plague city instead of setting up shop somewhere else, which they can generally afford to do if they can cast remove disease. War profiteering is a thing, and it shows how willing people can be to capitalize on suffering.
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Even if we ignore the price issue, there aren't enough clerics to combat the disease, there aren't enough spell slots to combat the disease, in PF the remove disease spell doesn't have a 100% of working, in a case of an outbreak of a contagious disease you have the problem of people who are healed getting re-infected.
So yes people die from diseases in Golarion, in fact i guess that it's higher than today's death rate but it might be a bit lower than the death rate we had in the medieval+ years.
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I think the bigger question is: how do you know you're diseased? The rules for diseases basically say you contract on the first failed save and actually take damage on the second, so between 1 and 2 by RAW you have NO symptoms.
Filth Fever has an onset of 1-3 days I think? So if you get bitten by a Dire Rat, fail your save and no one makes the Knowledge roll to know they usually carry the disease you could be somewhere 3 days later and suddenly all at once suffer a fever that deals 1-3 Con damage.
If you are suffering an inhaled disease, like Cackle Fever, can you give it to others by breathing on them during that first day before you take damage? If so, you've probably exposed your party, friends, family and everyone at the tavern while you were sleeping off that fight.
There's no RAW on transmitting a disease or the contagious period. I suppose if the GM wanted he could make one PC a Typhoid Mary and bring down an entire city from one botched Fort save.
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Even if we ignore the price issue, there aren't enough clerics to combat the disease,
Just to put things in perspective.... about 20% of the world population was affected by (as in, "caught") the influenza pandemic of 1918. Fifty million people died. That's about one billion cases, with a 5% death rate.
How many clerics would it take to provide one billion cure disease spells over the course of twelve months?
Of course, this was a world-wide pandemic. But a local epidemic sweeping through a city would be just as devastating on a local level -- yes, there would only be hundreds of thousands of people affected instead of a billion -- but there would also only be hundreds of clerics instead of millions.
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I have a reason beyond theory to ask this, honestly; one of my players in Rise of the Runelords just contracted tetanus from the trapped chest in Thistletop. Their 4th level and by the time they defeat Nualia (or allow her to escape, they have a foolish habit of that) they'll be 5th, high enough for the druid to cast the fore-mentioned miracle spell. I'm trying to up the ante for my group ....
This seems.... unfun. Dying of disease is not a fun adventure. Status effects are supposed to be curable, and that's why the spells exist in the first place. But in that regard, disease is no worse (and no better) than blindness, deafness, petrification, or death itself.
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This post touches specifically on this point as well. It's not everything but some major points to think on.
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This seems.... unfun. Dying of disease is not a fun adventure. Status effects are supposed to be curable, and that's why the spells exist in the first place. But in that regard, disease is no worse (and no better) than blindness, deafness, petrification, or death itself.
I have a reason beyond theory to ask this, honestly; one of my players in Rise of the Runelords just contracted tetanus from the trapped chest in Thistletop. Their 4th level and by the time they defeat Nualia (or allow her to escape, they have a foolish habit of that) they'll be 5th, high enough for the druid to cast the fore-mentioned miracle spell. I'm trying to up the ante for my group ....
In addition, while Sandpoint suffers on the cleric front (4th level is the highest) Magnimar is (irrc) a day's ride from Sandpoint so he can have his disease cured there.
Plagues can still be an "iffy" prospect person to person even with Cure Disease, as they have DC levels.
BUT to the OP, It depends on how you manage your game. If your game is, "I roll a Heal check to see if Gog is diseased, I got a 15, my bonus is +8 so... 23. What does he have? Tetnus, oh, that's nothing, we'll cure it before it gets too bad, ho hum." Then yes, I can see where there is an issue.
In the games I've played (and DMed), we don't "just roll" to identify a disease, or make any skill check... the player has to describe what he is doing to identify the disease and we apply bonuses (or not, depending on whether what he is doing would help in the identifying) to the roll (which is HIDDEN) based on what he was describing he is doing. Maybe he got it right, maybe he didn't, players does not know for sure, all he knows is what is described in the story the DM is unfolding...
SO - making it more dramatic or thematic through verbal descriptors can be a way to raise the tension and worry, but again, that would depend on how you already manage your game.
They frustrate you because you expect them to be simulationist whereas the real purpose of RPG economics was to make players spend all the gold they churn up adventuring. Unless you're determined to build a campaign where the latter is changed, there's no way of reconciling it with the former.
It's less a frustration of what I expect and more a frustration of what I would like to see. I understand why the economics are what they are but I do wonder if they could be done differently.
That assumes everyone is some kind of Good and would rather stay in a plague city instead of setting up shop somewhere else, which they can generally afford to do if they can cast remove disease. War profiteering is a thing, and it shows how willing people can be to capitalize on suffering.
That assumes people are evil or neutral at best. Altruism, compassion and charity are things too. Given how disruptive epidemics can be to trade it would be in the interests of the wealthy elite to invest in appropriate countermeasures. On the scale of nations would the cost of a wish or miracle spell really be prohibitive? Now finding someone to cast such a spell...
But she wouldn't have to starve. She could live high on the hog by casting such spells a half dozen times per year for the people who could pay, and do what she wanted with the rest of the time.
I mean, it's not like hedge witches are notorious for their charitable approach towards their neighbors.
But if there are no people who can pay full cost the witch could charge less couldn't he? There's no alignment restriction on the witch class so no reason for them not to be charitable.
With regards to the op - you could consider giving some diseases magic resistance. It's another hurdle to overcome which a lower level caster might find a challenge and it kind of makes sense too. Just as real world bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics so in a world of magic strains might develop some form of SR. Becoming more resistant to magic could even be a symptom of a disease.
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I ran into this problem going through my current adventure path, but in a slightly reverse way:
I wanted to sell my spellcasting abilities, as well as spellbook access. I mean, there ARE rules for it, and it makes sense that a player would want to do that. Well my GM and I eventually agreed on was that these rules exist for players, not NPC's, primarily as a mechanic for weighing the cost of a disease and the amount of resources it can consume. For NPCs, typically you can figure out how it works based on the tone of the location.
Spellcasting services aren't cheap. Look at the craft and profession rules for making money, and assume you're a 1 rank commoner with a +1 or +2 in INT or WIS. Craft and Profession yield you pennies. A level one guy with a +5 modifier (1 rank, 1 modifier, 3 class skill), earns 3-12gp per *WEEK* with profession, and a crafter earns 10-25gp per week on a DC10 item before 1/3 of his materials is subtracted.
Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell, spellcasting services are 10*cl*slvl, which would give you a 150gp cost to have the spell cast. In other words, the 1st level peon would have to work more than 15 weeks (nearly 1/3 of a year) to save up enough money just to have the spell cast on them.
A better solution is to have your 1st level clerics casting resistance on everybody constantly, and burning corpses, or hope that an altruistic adventuring party comes through and helps find a cure or casts a lot of free spells.
except in most APs most people are about level 3-4, and the cost of living is in the coppers, meaning they'd likely have that money laying around.
in all honesty human disease would have a hard time EXISTING, in pathfinder universe. all the big bad diseases would be cleaned up for sure thanks to kings funding the clerics to cast it on everyone. disease without some god of disease isn;t a threat in pathfinder.
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Spellcasting services aren't cheap. Look at the craft and profession rules for making money, and assume you're a 1 rank commoner with a +1 or +2 in INT or WIS. Craft and Profession yield you pennies. A level one guy with a +5 modifier (1 rank, 1 modifier, 3 class skill), earns 3-12gp per *WEEK* with profession, and a crafter earns 10-25gp per week on a DC10 item before 1/3 of his materials is subtracted.
Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell, spellcasting services are 10*cl*slvl, which would give you a 150gp cost to have the spell cast. In other words, the 1st level peon would have to work more than 15 weeks (nearly 1/3 of a year) to save up enough money just to have the spell cast on them.
A better solution is to have your 1st level clerics casting resistance on everybody constantly, and burning corpses, or hope that an altruistic adventuring party comes through and helps find a cure or casts a lot of free spells.
except in most APs most people are about level 3-4, and the cost of living is in the coppers, meaning they'd likely have that money laying around.
No, the average cost of living is 10gp. Right there in the rules. So a 150 gp spell is about two or three months wages. That's not unaffordable, but that's not cheap.
The rule of thumb that I have is that 1 gp is about $100 US, which fits pretty well (although not perfectly) with much of the rest of D&D economics. A cure disease spell costs about $15,000.... which is something that most people could come up with in an emergency, but not exactly pocket change. (To put it in perspective, that's about as much as a horse-and-wagon combination, which is also something we'd expect a farmer to have...)
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A cure disease spell costs about $15,000.... which is something that most people could come up with in an emergency, but not exactly pocket change.
And it fits well with what going to an emergency room or a minor surgery might cost in the real world. (My rule of thumb for 1 gp is more like $50 than $100, but for similar reasons.)
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This is covered in spades particularly in Adventure Path #8.
Thing is, an adventurer might be inconvenienced with it until a cure can be bought or cast with a fellow divine caster party member. Disease, like poison is expected to be a resource cost for an adventurer, not a means of finishing a PC off.
As for society at large, if clerics can heal patient zero quickly enough, plague might be held off. If the infection spreads or clerical healing doesn't happen in time, then those wealthy enough to afford cures might survive, yet the average peasant/citizen is in danger of pandemic. Clerics of course would likely be safe (physicians can heal themselves, and should), yet once the number of patients outgrows the number of spell slots and scrolls you have, healing becomes a finite resource. Who gets saved then? First one with the money is first served? Auction to the highest bidders? Heal those with the most severe symptoms first (triage)? Depends on the healer.
And if you belong to some dark cult? How best to spread the plague than eliminate the healers?
disease is less of a threat, but magic introduces a whole new slew of threats that would actually encourage a faster technological progression rate to deal with.
Spellcasting services aren't cheap. Look at the craft and profession rules for making money, and assume you're a 1 rank commoner with a +1 or +2 in INT or WIS. Craft and Profession yield you pennies. A level one guy with a +5 modifier (1 rank, 1 modifier, 3 class skill), earns 3-12gp per *WEEK* with profession, and a crafter earns 10-25gp per week on a DC10 item before 1/3 of his materials is subtracted.
Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell, spellcasting services are 10*cl*slvl, which would give you a 150gp cost to have the spell cast. In other words, the 1st level peon would have to work more than 15 weeks (nearly 1/3 of a year) to save up enough money just to have the spell cast on them.
A better solution is to have your 1st level clerics casting resistance on everybody constantly, and burning corpses, or hope that an altruistic adventuring party comes through and helps find a cure or casts a lot of free spells.
That doesn't seem quite right. I haven't done the math for a level 1 NPC, but I've done the math for a level 3, and Abraham Spalding has done it for a level 2.
At level 2, a farmer makes about 240gp per year after all expenses (pure profit). At level 3, a cobbler or shopkeeper makes about 550gp per year after expenses.
I'm not sure a level 1 would make that much. I think it would be even harder for a level one to save enough for a 3rd level spell.
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That's 240 gp if his wife does little and his kids do less though.
Again I point out however it's generally better to hire a doctor than it is to grab the closest low level cleric to cast cure disease. Much higher success rate that way (which dovetails nicely into why *everyone* doesn't always follow a god -- even those that really do and do get some divine power are not guaranteed success -- so not exactly all powerful).
If you go with anti-plague and a doctor you'll spend about 102 gp for both saves you'll need to make (if you need to make 2) and have a higher success rate. Which is why I think in general even the "healing" clerics are more likely to go with mundane means of curing disease in non-critical cases.
That's 240 gp if his wife does little and his kids do less though.
I know, I specifically removed the family's portion because we were talking about individuals.
We could also increase my cobblers annual salary by giving him a family as well.
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That's 240 gp if his wife does little and his kids do less though.Which is accurate to a Medieval society. Historically, spouses and children only did work around the home.
Except that work around the home is still economically productive. If you only need to buy wool and not cloth -- or you only need to buy cloth and not finished clothes -- you'll spend less money on clothing your family and have more shinies in your belt pouch at the end of the month.
It's also inaccurate to suggest that `women's work' didn't bring in money. For example, it is/was traditional in much of Europe for the women to milk the cows, mind the hens, churn the milk into butter, and then the butter and eggs could be sold at the market. (There's a reason that a "milkmaid" and a "milkman" do different jobs. Language, in this case, reflects long-standing custom.)
A better description is that the idea that the wife was only expected to manage the household but not to contribute economically is a product of the 19th century.