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I've got "Among the Gods" scheduled for this weekend and need a quick clarification for handling diseases in PFS.
One of the monsters has:
Plague Carrier (Ex) The *** can infect those it strikes with its slams with disease. Filth Fever: Slam—injury; save Fortitude DC 14; onset 1d3 days; frequency 1/day; effect 1d3 Dex damage and 1d3 Str damage; cure 2 consecutive saves.
As I understand it from http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz2gv1?Diseases#0, the players get a save immediately, but in effect, nothing happens if they fail it. There are no effects in the combat or the next that occurs in the same day.
In a normal campaign game, we'd deal with the disease some more days later as the onset kicks in. However, the scenario is over in short order after this combat. What do I need to do to resolve the effects of the disease? Are they diseased at the start of the next scenario? Do I have to note this on the scenario sheet in the Conditions Gained?
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Officially the disease isn't going away from itself and you have to deal with the effect. This means that in PFS you can die even after the scenario ended.
Proper option - you roll the dice to see how the disease progresses.
The player has the option to invest prestige to buy remove disease
But back to the Filth Fever.
a) Resolve it as describe above for any disease
b) One of the earlier scenarios offers a Filth Fever tonic for 5? gp. A good way to use an old chronicle sheet if applicable.
c) Filth Fever doesn't kill. The worst possible outcome is that the player goes unconscious / coma. As he has enough time between adventures he will recover eventually. So hand-waving it away is an option.
I expect an outcry against option c) from rules purist. Be clear to the player that this option only exists for non-lethal diseases that don't cause permanent harm. In my view it saves a lot of dice rolling and the end-effect is the same. BUT you and the player need to be aware that with a more serious disease that this is not an option.
C is what I have always understood how any disease that does not do permanent damage or cause death if untreated is handled. If it will go away on it's own and not leave you any worse off, then you do not have to do anything about it because of the untracked passage of time in between scenarios.
Now for this one specifically, we do have real world examples of people how never come out of comas, so I think this one would need to be treated or you would start the next scenario still having it.
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Thanks for weighing in. The hint that there is a boon from an earlier adventure makes the diseases something that helps give the "campaign feel" to the game.
I've decided that I'll be doing a couple of things to make the diseases interesting and somewhat quick.
The disease(s) that the PCs pick up have an onset that doesn't effect the adventure. But, it's part of the color of scenario, so I want to use them. So, here's the plan:
1) When the disease has a chance to effect, the PCs get the first save to see if they contract the disease. If they contract the disease, I give them a Disease Card that I've prepped. Once they have a given disease, there are no more saves for that disease.
2) At the end of the adventure, I'll ask who's got a Disease Card. Most likely the PCs will have had some time to mull over what they want to do about it, and will be reasonably creeped out by the threat of an icky disease. They'll get to "feel" like something is wrong and seek treatment from their fellow PCs.
3) We'll run through the healing check formalities, consider the possible Remove Disease casts that can be made "for free." If there's no help from a party healer we'll roll out the untreated diseases to see if any of them turn dire. Any that are looking bad we'll prompt for further action.
In general, I don't intend for this to take long. If there's a party healer with Remove Disease then we'll effectively waive it away and commend them for being team players, and give them a chance for some RP proselytizing. If there's not, the odds are still in favor of a quick resolution with lots of hammed-up coughing and chest clutching... of course, there's always that player whose dice plot against them. Which reminds me, I still need to hunt down the cost of the NPC's Remove Disease...
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Just for your information:
Remove Disease: 150 gp or 1 PP
This is from pages 20-21 in the PFSOP Guide.
Note that this is for the minimum caster level casting, so that is also what the caster level check uses, and that there is no easy way in PFS, other than having a higher level caster able to cast it from their prepared spells or known spells list, to get it cast at higher than minimum caster level.
As a third level Cleric spell, minimum caster level will be 5.
Also note that the actual PP cost, due to the tag-end proviso on the table, may be 6 instead of 1: * Add +5 to this cost if this benefit is purchased outside of a settlement of 5,000 residents or more.
Well, you can buy NPC spell-casting at higher than minimum level if you are using gold. If you use Prestige to buy the spell-casting, then yes, it is automatically at minimum caster level.