i know it says to put questions about rules in the appropiate design forums but considering i only see the one for races im just gonna ask here.(if there is one woops, this place's layout is confusing).
edit: in fact it likes to eat my threads D=
it at this one
so i've always been interested in poisons and diseases and when i started d&d was more then a little disappointed with how little they were actually used, and doing so no matter what it was used for was evil. stabbing an evil dictator =good; poisoning an evil dictator = bad.
so when i saw the rules for pathfinder poisons i had high hopes. so first of all pathfinder gives all kinds of poisons but no rules on applying them. then there was some confusion on my part when reading what yall had, did the first hit require a save or did that always work? or what about the frequency, i have no idea what the frequency on the stat boxes actually mean.i remember there was some stuff in the old dm's guide but im a player not a dm. then there's also making poisons. im assuming it is alchemy due to the fact it says it can make antitoxin, and to cure it you need to understand making it. but there's no guidelines at all about that, but in the poisons section it clearly states you can make it.
then there is higher level games where some players literally have the stats to never fail their saves against the poisons. makes someone who spent the lower levels working towards using poisons rather useless. so would there be a way to distill(i think thats the term) it to get a more potent version with a higher save? i think it would probably be a craft check where if you messed up you lost that batch if it was, that is if there is no ruling on that. then the checks would get progressively harder as you distilled it more and more.
anyways what about disease creation? similar questions about that. i know it can be done, in fact there's peoples jobs today that revolve solely around creating horrible horrible things. so translate that to place where you just dont die from disease but can rise up and go bite people, and theres just as evil people with access to magic that doesnt have to follow the rules of nature. in game how would you do it?
ok now this is just getting upsetting. seems unless you have some street cred or whatever passes for that around here, your post where you tried your best to make a well reasoned well thought out post gets ignored. or better yet if your not agreeing with the general mindset of these "regulars" you once again get the glazed over.
but know what, i can live with that, but here i am asking for some help and i still get nothing. while same six people argue the same thing in four different threads.
whatever
ok now this is just getting upsetting. seems unless you have some street cred or whatever passes for that around here, your post where you tried your best to make a well reasoned well thought out post gets ignored. or better yet if your not agreeing with the general mindset of these "regulars" you once again get the glazed over.
but know what, i can live with that, but here i am asking for some help and i still get nothing. while same six people argue the same thing in four different threads.
whatever
Personally, I skip over your posts because you don't bother to capitalize spell, or punctuate properly. It makes them hard to read and it makes me not want to bother.
Ah, didn't notice this thread...
An issue I have complained a lot over the years is that diseases in D&D are meaningless, they don't affect the world and they don't affect the game (ok, maybe on first level or two that dire rat bite might turn into something nasty).
Main problem: extremely powerful Remove disease is level 3 spell, so even if the cleric wouldn't memorize it, it is still available in relatively cheap potion or scroll form, and level 5 clerics are not hugely powerful or unusual NPCs...
Unfortunately this hasn't changed in Pathfinder. I have been tinkering a bit on houserules about the subject (and posted some suggestions time ago on 3.5 board here).
Poisons, too, are unfortunately marginalized.
The problem is that most people seem to want to keep these things marginalized, so outside optional rules at some point I am not expecting major changes.
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An issue I have complained a lot over the years is that diseases in D&D are meaningless, they don't affect the world and they don't affect the game
Indeed. The disease rules are pretty soft. A Commoner with a Con of 10 or 11 still has a 40% chance to shake Filth Fever every day, and it's guaranteed if he can find someone who can make a Heal check of 12, which an NPC Adept with a Wisdom of 12 and 1 rank of Heal is goign to make 50% of the time. Meanwhile, the 'fever' is going to take 4 days to kill him (after the 1d3 day incubation period) *if* the fever rolls 'max damage' every day!
At a bare minimum, someone suffering from a disease shouldn't be able to recover the ability points that the disease is targetting, save by magical or Heal check use, until the disease has 'broken.' Other diseases might require more than two successful saves to break, and some might even require progressively higher DCs, the longer they last, as they entrench within the body (retroviruses, for example), until the victim requires a natural 20 to break the fever!
And the poison rules just bug me. Instant onset, and all effects are over within 60 seconds? Yeesh. That's kind of like taking all of the martial arts and defining them by the Three-Steps-Exploding-Heart palm strike from Kill Bill...
I'd prefer using something like the Mutants & Masterminds time progression chart for poisons. The first effect might occur a round after contact (assuming a *fast* poison), the secondary effect a minute after that, then a tertiary effect ten minutes later, a fourth effect a hour later, etc. until it is shaken by a *couple* successful saves in a row (similar to how diseases require several saves in a row to break).
If I were designing a world where poison and disease had a larger role, I'd probably make Remove Disease and Neutralize Poison simply give a +1 bonus per caster level to an immediate Heal check (that replaces the next save vs. that poison / disease) or the next Fortitude save vs. that disease or poison, whichever comes first. They wouldn't be guaranteed (and they might be lower level, with Treat Disease a 2nd level spell and Treat Poison a 3rd level spell).
I think the most evocative 'cure disease' spell I ever saw was in the Complete Shaman book from Green Ronin. The Shaman would 'cure' the disease by entering the spirit world and fighting a physical manifestation of the disease, which would appear as a spirit entity with a CR based on the DC of the disease. If he lost the battle, the disease would remain in the patient, and the Shaman would be diseased and injured (possibly unconscious from nonlethal damage) from the spiritual battle as well! It's not thematically appropriate for every setting / casting style, but it's darn cool!
Right, I was pondering about raising Remove Disease spell to somewhere around level 5 or 6, making it affect only one disease at the time and maybe adding a material component, of course dependent on type of disease cured (to make it bit more "Dr Octopus has stolen rare pharmaceutical needed to cure Aunt May's worsening condition, and Spider-Man is her only hope").
And then add couple of new spells on lower levels which would give some boost to healing rolls...and of course nasty counterspells for all those evil clerics :)
But indeed, most people apparently don't want to play like this, which is unfortunate, and makes a potentially powerful storytelling tool little less than a speed bump (unless DM wants to pull some obscure magical disease Which Is Resistant To Remove Disease, ie. use Rule 0).
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a potentially powerful storytelling tool little less than a speed bump (unless DM wants to pull some obscure magical disease Which Is Resistant To Remove Disease, ie. use Rule 0).
Agreed. Quite a few good stories are centered around 'find a cure for X before they die and the kingdom falls into chaos!' and if 'X' can be handily cured by a 5th or 7th level Cleric, the whole plot of Silverthorn (save the poisoned princess) or whatever is just piddled away. It's a magical world, and I'm good with magical solutions, but poison and disease should still be credible threats in the game world, as they are too useful as storytelling tools and adventure hooks to so cheaply brush aside.
It used to be a staple of poorly designed adventures that they would start with some wounded NPC passing a charge (or relic, or whatever) to the party and then dying before he can explain what's going on, when the party almost inevitably had the power to cure the NPCs wounds and chat with him at length, pretting much blowing the entire starting premise of the story.
DM "But, he was poisoned!"
Elf player "Poison doesn't work like that. He'd already be dead, or perfectly fine, 60 seconds later. And I used Keoghtum's Ointment anyway, so he's not poisoned anyway."
DM "It was a disease!"
Elf player "Nobody dies of disease. My toad familiar beats the nastiest plague in the game and recovers fully within a week. Also, see Keoghtum's Ointment. It cures wounds, it detoxifies, it also cures disease and has a nice lemony scent."
DM "A curse!"
Elf player "What, the curse that makes you drop your weapon 50% of the time or the one that gives you -6 to a stat? There aren't any fatal curses in this game."
DM "Shut up. He just died. And it was contagious. Your elf dies, too!"
Dwarf player "We Speak with Dead."
DM "His body bursts into flames. Unquenchable evil nuclear flames. From Hell."
Halfling player "I take the Elf's stuff."
Evil nuclear flames from hell, indeed :)
I'd like now to throw in a mention for one of my favorite RPG adventures, Black Death for Ars Magica, on account of it being delightfully nasty. Plague has spread to small town, people are dying on the streets, law and order have broken down and chaos reigns...and the PCs have to go to find out what is happening, all while trying to avoid catching bubonic plague...
But of course under current D20 system couple of clerics, adepts and paladins of rather modest levels could deal with it without any problem, actually the whole plague couldn't seriously have started to spread.
So even outside those king-is-sick-go-find-a-cure quests, adventuring in plaguestruck area brings new dimensions to the game, from practical issues to morality.
True, they now have an check to see if they work...nevertheless, I would be ready to nerf them even further.
Poisons and diseases are not meant to be a mid and high level threat. Unless it's something like a Pit Fiend's bite, then maybe.
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i know it says to put questions about rules in the appropiate design forums but considering i only see the one for races im just gonna ask here.(if there is one woops, this place's layout is confusing).
edit: in fact it likes to eat my threads D=
it at this oneso i've always been interested in poisons and diseases and when i started d&d was more then a little disappointed with how little they were actually used, and doing so no matter what it was used for was evil. stabbing an evil dictator =good; poisoning an evil dictator = bad.
so when i saw the rules for pathfinder poisons i had high hopes. so first of all pathfinder gives all kinds of poisons but no rules on applying them. then there was some confusion on my part when reading what yall had, did the first hit require a save or did that always work? or what about the frequency, i have no idea what the frequency on the stat boxes actually mean.i remember there was some stuff in the old dm's guide but im a player not a dm. then there's also making poisons. im assuming it is alchemy due to the fact it says it can make antitoxin, and to cure it you need to understand making it. but there's no guidelines at all about that, but in the poisons section it clearly states you can make it.
then there is higher level games where some players literally have the stats to never fail their saves against the poisons. makes someone who spent the lower levels working towards using poisons rather useless. so would there be a way to distill(i think thats the term) it to get a more potent version with a higher save? i think it would probably be a craft check where if you messed up you lost that batch if it was, that is if there is no ruling on that. then the checks would get progressively harder as you distilled it more and more.
anyways what about disease creation? similar questions about that. i know it can be done, in fact there's peoples jobs today that revolve solely around creating horrible horrible things. so translate that to place where you just dont...
Well your doing better than I. I've read through this PDF forwards and backwards and I STILL can't find what page the rules for Poison etc. are on! Am I just blind folks?!
Poisons and diseases are not meant to be a mid and high level threat. Unless it's something like a Pit Fiend's bite, then maybe.
That's a matter of taste, and depends quite a lot on the style of play you want to set...if you want to keep things straightforward heroic and cinematic, poisons and diseases should not be a serious mid-level threat, but if you want to add a dose of realism and closer connection to actual medieval societies, having too easy Remove disease and Neutralize poison is rough equivalent of introducing to campaign ultra-powerful NPC wizards who could eradicate all evil from the land...but choose not to.
Though in a similar vein I could discuss socio-economic influence of having Mending a cantrip castable at will. I guess most campaigns don't want to consider issues like that too closely...
Realism has left the building starting at level 1, where any Commoner skilled at Jumping can break the world record for long jumps 10% of the time. By the time any of those effects are available, it has already changed its name, social security number, and is living in some foreign tourist hotspot.
Further, just because it is easily available to the high levels such as that cleric's buddies, powerful officials such as the King etc does not mean it is easily available to everyone else.
Overall, the idea is a distant cousin of 'fighters don't get nice things'.
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Poisons and diseases are not meant to be a mid and high level threat. Unless it's something like a Pit Fiend's bite, then maybe.That's a matter of taste, and depends quite a lot on the style of play you want to set...if you want to keep things straightforward heroic and cinematic, poisons and diseases should not be a serious mid-level threat, but if you want to add a dose of realism and closer connection to actual medieval societies, having too easy Remove disease and Neutralize poison is rough equivalent of introducing to campaign ultra-powerful NPC wizards who could eradicate all evil from the land...but choose not to.
Though in a similar vein I could discuss socio-economic influence of having Mending a cantrip castable at will. I guess most campaigns don't want to consider issues like that too closely...
I agree. OMG--somewhere, somebody's getting sciencebutter in my chocolate!!!
I personally don't care for diseases either; I work in medicine so I don't feel like messing around with it. But to each his own.