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At Tier 3-4, Laurel has Heal +11 to help treat a DC22 fort save. She has -20 due to the scenario, making it impossible for her to make the check (she can roll at most an 11). Our GM treated the disease such that *nobody* could make Heal checks to help unless we passed 10 "help Laurel" checks to *completely* eliminate (which I believe is different from the RAW "effectively eliminate") her penalty. I think this is incorrect... Any thoughts? Can Laurel attempt Heal checks while still retaining some penalty? Can PCs make heal checks with or without the cure? (If the PCs recover naturally unaided, does that count for Laurel's purposes of finding a cure?)

The Monk and the mounted Paladin Hustled back to the garden to retrieve the body of an infected ex-druid for dissection. The GM had the second encounter, with the beggars, happen while we were gone, which was before Laurel made the cure- the PCs leaving Laurel's shop with the cure is the starting criteria for this encounter. Can someone confirm that the GM should have waited until/unless we had a cure before beginning this encounter?

The DM ruled that we could not Aid each other in making *any* of the skill checks to help Laurel, whether or not it would be possible in the context of the action (E.g., I think aiding a Heal check to dissect a corpse is reasonable; more eyes might notice something the first person missed, nevermind that during, e.g., surgery, it takes more than one person to be effective anyway.) I'd be OK with saying that the attempt to aid counts as that character's use of that skill for the purposes of the encounter, but I think making every person roll completely independently is not supported by the rules RAW and isn't explicitly called for by the scenario.

It's infinitely frustrating for me when the scenario overrides book rules for no reason other than, apparently, to make it harder. Many/most of the skills we were using allow for retry every day; I don't see a justification for the scenario to prohibit this. We're still dealing with a disease that deals 2-4 ability damage per day, including con damage; if it needed to be more dangerous, make the disease more dangerous instead of rewriting the rules. My $.02 on that.