So we ran into a situation running the first book of the adventure path last night. I had a PC who was injured multiple times by an Akata and failed his save multiple times.
Does a PC's condition worsen each time he is injured by an Akata's void bite ability and fails a save or once he is afflicted the disease only progresses as he fails further saves once the appropriate frequency period has passed?
I did not see anything regarding this in the core rules so I thought I would reach out for clarification. If it were poison it seems like it could be fairly believable to get worse with each injury as more of the poison enters the system but with a disease I just wasn't sure and without anything in the rule book to go on I just left him at the initial staring point for the disease until I get more clarification on the issue.
So nobody else has ran into this situation or am I missing something obvious thats already spelled out in the core book?
Little bit of a raise thread here but the situation is about to become relevant to me, too.
I can't seem to find a clear ruling on this that specifically calls out the case of multiple contractions of the same disease.
Unless someone shares their wisdom here I think I am going to handle it quite literally: every single contraction will be its own instance of the disease.
So if you are unlucky enough to fail 4 saves vs the space-flu-spreading monster's sneeze attack, you will start to progress down 4 different physical disease tracks.
Common sense tells me it should be the first time and subsequent fails should increase the frequency. First it is days, then 12 hours, 6,3,and finally 1 hour.
As far as I know you don't track the disease multiple times. Nor do you accelerate the disease track if you're exposed to multiple sources of the same disease, that mechanic is only detailed in the poison section of the afflictions text. Once you've caught a disease you follow the progress track for that disease, that's it.
I think that makes sense when you consider how a typical disease progresses. Let's use the bubonic plague as an example. If my character gets bitten by an infected rat, he could catch bubonic plague. If he gets bitten by 300 infected rats, he has a really good chance of catching the plague. However, in either case the disease should still follow the normal incubation time for bubonic plague. He wouldn't spontaneously bust out in boils or develop gangrene minutes after the first exposure, no matter how severe it was.
Thank you for bringing this up again. Ultimately I decided to rule and play it out as Kudaku suggested as it make the most common sense but it would be nice to get some clarification on the issue.
Unless someone shares their wisdom here I think I am going to handle it quite literally: every single contraction will be its own instance of the disease.
Don't forget to come back here and tell us how that TPK went.