Diseases in PF aren't really all that scary, are they. Consider, for example, Ghoul Fever.
Ghoul Fever: Bite—injury; save Fort DC 13; onset 1 day; frequency 1/day; effect 1d3 Con and 1d3 Dex damage; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Charisma-based.So Frank the Fighter gets bitten by a ghoul. Frank is first level and has a 14 Con, so he has a +4 Fort save. If you run the numbers, that means Frank has well over a 90% chance of shrugging off ghoul fever unassisted. He might lose a point or two of Con along the way but, statistically speaking, it's very unlikely to kill him. Sally the Sorceress, with a +0 Fort save, might seem more vulnerable. But if a single person in the first level party has dropped a rank into Heal, then most of the time Sally will get +4 on her save, putting her in the same category as Bob.
Are there diseases that are dangerous? Yes, a few. Diseases with save DCs over 15 -- bubonic plague, malaria, a couple of others -- can pose a threat to low level characters, especially if nobody in the party has invested in healing skills. (Though note that Heal checks can be made untrained, so other PCs can always at least try to help.)
There's also the Remove Disease spell, which makes parties over 4th level effectively immune to disease unless they don't have a divine caster. PF added a caster level check against the disease's DC to this spell, meaning that a 5th level caster might have to cast it two or three times against a tough disease. But of course PCs *can* cast it repeatedly; and will. All this really does is make it a bit harder to find NPCs who will cast it for you.
So, how to make diseases more interesting and/or dangerous? One could simply hike up the DCs, but that seems crude.
Doug M.
Have the disease resurface if not cured magically or through some specific curative. Perhaps a few days or even a week or two.
Well... I've been thinking about nerfing healing spells and Remove Disease and such. I've always been annoyed that a highly skilled doctor (using the Heal skill) is completely overshadowed by a level 1 cleric that has Cure Light Wounds but wouldn't know on which end of a human the arse goes.
I'd like to see that the effect of a healing or remove disease/poison spell is dependent on a Heal skill check.
In that way you could let Remove Disease give a bonus on a Heal skill check to immediately cure the disease.
Other ways could include the fact that Remove Disease removes the pathogen but not the effects of the disease just yet. In a lot of RL cases, you don't get sick from the pathogen but from the body's immune reaction and the symptoms persist long after the pathogen has been defeated as the body has not yet winded down the immune response (an old adage is that if you're sniffling, you're not infectious anymore). Additionally, stuff like physical therapy can takes ages as the body has to build up build up muscle and such. If you get food poisoning, you can be weak for days as the body is still dehydrated. Simply let the symptoms (ability damage) persist, requiring either natural healing or a Restoration spell.
Keep in mind that your PCs are the top 5-1% that are heroes, most people are the normal NPC array (3 point buy) and the above average people are Heroic NPC array (15 point buy).
Disease shouldn't really effect the players too badly, it is more of a consequence of something that they can shrug off fairly easily, but contrast that with a normal NPC who will have a much harder time.
Your PCs are supposed to die from enemies killing them, not from a disease while they lay in bed. If you want to kill them from diseases then kill them with Mummy Rot or something that is intended to kill heroes.
Actually, I think this is RAW. If you lose 4 points of Con (or whatever) to a disease, and then you get a Remove Disease that removes it, you're still down 4 Con.
Other ways could include the fact that Remove Disease removes the pathogen but not the effects of the disease just yet.
This still just means you spend 4 days in bed, or you heal the damage over the next four days. It isn't so bad, if you mix it with negative levels then it can be very dangerous to some characters.
It isn't so bad, IF you have the time to spend in bed! In the middle of a dungeon or in a time-sensitive quest line, it could be horrendous.
It isn't so bad, IF you have the time to spend in bed! In the middle of a dungeon or in a time-sensitive quest line, it could be horrendous.
And--considering it is the characters with low fort-saves are the ones who will suffer the most from these afflictions. Your low fort-save heroes will end up being free 1-shots, or worse so I should say, they can even die from them.
Fighters, Rangers, and other full fort classes are pretty much resistant.
I ran some calculations
Frank will take "on average" 2.8 ability points of damage.
Sally will take 11.7 unless assisted by heal. However there's a catch here. Every time Sally or Frank fails a save it lowers their chances of succeeding on the next save, something my calculations doesn't take into account.
I'm not sure how to model that either, so the easiest way to test it is probably by generating random numbers. I can take a look at it later if anyone's interested.
I ran some calculations
Frank will take "on average" 2.8 ability points of damage.
Sally will take 11.7 unless assisted by heal. However there's a catch here. Every time Sally or Frank fails a save it lowers their chances of succeeding on the next save, something my calculations doesn't take into account.
So in other words, "MWHAHAHAHAHA! Be diseased, BE DISEASED!"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My party almost killed themselves to disease, by misunderstanding how dangerous diseases could be. The key is that everything is based on the DC of the disease - the Heal check to get a +4 on saves, the Caster Level check to remove the disease with the spell, all of it.
My PCs took no precautions against catching diseases when they spent a day adventuring in the stinky sewers because they figured the Fort saves were a breeze and the Cleric could take Remove Disease if they did roll a '1' and get sick. I made them roll a save when they first entered the disease-infested sewer water, then again for every fight they had in the knee-deep sludge (as they dipped open wounds into the water), plus an additional save every time a Fireball or similar effect had them breathing a cloud of sewer steam. Sure, most of them only failed on a '3' or less, the first time! But that's the other hidden danger - once you are diseased, further saves to resist repeated exposure are made at DC+2 (+4 after two failed saves, etc.).
By the end of the days adventuring, every member of the party had Sewer Disease at at least DC +2, and the Elf Wizard had it at DC +10. The first night, the Cleric, the Paladin, and the Ranger/Rogue stayed up all night treating the other three's diseases, failing to get rest and making the Paladin & the Cleric fatigued. Then the Pally and the R/R failed their Heal checks (which they had been assuming were merely a DC 15 - a holdover from 3.5 - and not the save DC of the disease) which meant only the Cleric's patient received the +4 bonus.
At least at that point they got a bit more organized and loaded up on magic for the day designed to promote rest & healing and removing diseases. Unfortunately, the Cleric failed all six checks for the Remove Disease spells he'd memorized in his third & fourth level spell slots, because his +8 caster level checks weren't any better than the PCs Fort save numbers. Eventually they started tossing Lesser Restorations left and right to mitigate the stat loss, remove the fatigue, and everybody except the Cleric took complete bed rest but it still took several days for everyone to recover or be cured.
In other words, for a disease to be serious enough to endanger a PC in the first place, it is also serious enough that getting rid of it is no minor matter. PCs who load up on the protections and then expose themselves to disease willy-nilly can find themselves in a world of hurt.
.
That said, a disease* (or poison) with a DC equal to eleven plus a character's FORT save is 75% likely to have no real effect, whereas one with a DC equal to 16 plus the character's FORT save is 43.75% likely to. At 17+FORT that drops to 36%, 18+FORT 27.75%, at 19+FORT 19%, and at 20+FORT 9.75%.
*For a "Cure: 1 save" condition. For a "2 consecutive saves" condition the numbers are about 3/4 of what's given above.