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Anyone here ever design new diseases for their campaign world? If so how do you figure out all your stats/balance it's difficulty with what you are wanting it to do (ie make it deadly and interesting without killing a party)? I know this may seem like an easy thing but I'm kind of new to building them and I'm just wanting to hear peoples ideas and their stories on what happened with their finished product so I can better build my own.
One of my Pcs had a habit of eating the things she killed as soon as combat ended (or in some instances during combat) so I created a disease to make her a bit more cautious.
The disease was called Dark rot and was contracted by eating the flesh of recently slain magic users who cast a lot of negative energy related spells. The more flesh you ate the harder it was to avoid.
What this disease did was make the character harmed by positive energy as well as negative energy (she had several ways to drain health so healing wasn't a worry). The disease was spread through saliva (A.K.A. seduction or biting) and had an onset of one hour. The only way you could tell you were infected was a slight chill to your skin or a greying of the skin.
The disease lasted until either one week passed or a cure disease spell was cast. Upon being cured the diseased person would vomit up a black ooze-like substance. This substance could be used as a ingested poison to spread the disease further.
In mechanics: DC 22(+1 per time encountered) fort save, 1 hour onset, harmed by positive energy. Sickened for 10 min after being cured.
By the end of the adventure she contracted it three times and managed to kill an official by seducing him.
She seduced him, he felt ill and went to a cleric, vomited, was declared possessed and executed.
The way I make my diseases is by doing something flavorfuly unpleasant and making some minor mechanical hindrances. I also allow the creative PC to find a way to turn it to their advantage.
I came up with one that some feind hunters came up with to lower spell resistance. (there also was a poison version)
Another one was a Disease that Slowly turned you to stone. You lost dexterity but gained natural armor as it progressed. It was on a variant mummy so this was a supernatural disease in the same line as mummy rot.
There was another far less interesting one I created. I called it Grokwak.
The same PC as before decided the best way to get information about the location of a troll's lair was to torture it.
Now by torture she meant "cut off it's arms, seal the stumps with flame, flay it's torso and eat the strips while the troll watches"
The troll caved fairly quickly.
The disease is basically a really nasty stomach ache created by the troll meat in the stomach slightly regenerating. It acts up and causes severe discomfort in times of stress.
In mechanics: whenever the diseased player rolls for initiative and they roll a 1 they are only able to take a partial action that turn.
It passed fairly quickly but wasn't able to be weaponized. Yet.
New disease. This time it was created by my girlfriend.
She named it Narkwood.
Narkwood is a parasitic illness that devours the body from the inside.
The disease is transmitted through the blood.
Telltale signs of the illness are sores found on the neck, back, and arms that are exuding a red and black puss.
When not found in a blood stream the illness lays dormant in a fungal spore found in dark, underground, caverns.
The only way to cure the illness is to drink an drought made from boiled succubus wings, Kingsfoil, and bizore from a goat's stomach.
Mechanics: DC 27 fort save, 1 str, con, & dex dmg per day. Inhaled / contact poison.