Saves with onset time of days


Rules Questions


Hello everyone, I have a quick question about how the below works:

Claw Or Bite—Injury; save Fort DC 14; onset 1d3 days; frequency 1 day; effect 1d3 Dex damage and 1d3 Con damage; cure 2 consecutive saves.

Does this mean that if you fail a save you wait the onset time before you feel the effects?
Does the character take the damage and wait the onset time for the 2nd save?

I am not really sure how to proceed with this if any of the PCs should fail their saves.

Thank you very much for your time.


My understanding of it is that, once the person is hit with the disease and they fail the fort save, there is then an onset time of 1d3 days, where nothing happens to them.

Once that onset time is done, they get the effect (1d3 Dex and 1d3 Con damage) once per day, as the frequency indicates, and they continue with that until they are cured, either via their own saves, or with something else.

I think that's how it goes, at least.


I run it like Darkwolf.


Darkwolf117 wrote:

My understanding of it is that, once the person is hit with the disease and they fail the fort save, there is then an onset time of 1d3 days, where nothing happens to them.

Once that onset time is done, they get the effect (1d3 Dex and 1d3 Con damage) once per day, as the frequency indicates, and they continue with that until they are cured, either via their own saves, or with something else.

I think that's how it goes, at least.

Thanks, I thought it would have been, but I wanted an other opinion on it.

Dark Archive

Actually - I see many DM's running it just like that - You get hit, roll the fort save, then wait the onset time before effect hits.

Problem: With long onset times, the disease is easily treated and removed.
Problem: Making the player roll the fort save then and there tells him that he is hit by a disease and/or something else - leads easily to the metagaming of "needing to be treated".

Non-logical: If it has not "set" yet, how the heck do you know you need to be treated?

Think of it this way. If you get sick of flu (ie, symptoms show up) right now, you did not contract it a few seconds ago - No, you caught it a lot (read, a few days) earlier.

If I were DM'ing and I really, really wanted to get something out of the otherwise useless and easily removed diseases, let the PC's catch them, hold out on the roll until the onset perioud has passed, and then have them roll, and take the damage from it at the same time.

BONUS! If the onset period was 1d3 days, it's likely that the PC has been spreading the disease for a day or two, depending on how fast the symptoms manifested.

(An additional Bonus: I'd make a necromancer antagonist use plague zombi cats, perhaps nerf them a bit to take out the disease explosion, and then have the PC's spread zombie rot around ^.^)


Tomppa wrote:
If I were DM'ing and I really, really wanted to get something out of the otherwise useless and easily removed diseases, let the PC's catch them, hold out on the roll until the onset perioud has passed, and then have them roll, and take the damage from it at the same time.

This does sound like a rather smooth way to run things. I might need to try it out in the future.


The issue above is the main reason why I make sure I know the Fort modifier for each of the PCs when I GM. I do the initial check as a blind save without the player's knowledge, and make sure in my notes to indicate that they are effected on day X (I keep it in the margin so when I scan my notes, it stands out to me). This becomes especially important for something like contracting Lycanthropy, where the first the PC knows about it would be when they wake up the morning after the first full moon, covered in blood and missing the NPC they were bringing back to the village.

One correction to info above... I don't believe the PCs actually take damage on the first day unless they fail their Fort save the morning of the onset.

From Afflictions:
"Onset: Some afflictions have a variable amount of time before they set in. Creatures that come in contact with an affliction with an onset time must make a saving throw immediately. Success means that the affliction is avoided and no further saving throws must be made. Failure means that the creature has contracted the affliction and must begin making additional saves after the onset period has elapsed. The affliction's effect does not occur until after the onset period has elapsed and then only if further saving throws are failed."

So if they get bitten from the example above, fail the save to resist and have an onset of (roll 1d3) 2 days, they would then make the first check on the morning of the second day. A pass means no Dex/Con damage, and they'd only need one more save to kick the disease (with no actual effect). A fail means they take the Dex/Con damage, and would still need 2 cons. saves to kick it.

The one thing I'm still unsure of is this: if the PC passes the save on the first day once the onset time has elapsed, do they even know they are diseased? I've been running it as that they do not, due to the PC not feeling any ill effects... but you could make a case that they would know something was wrong (having a sniffle vs. full blown flu). I'm still on the fence with that one.

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