Contagious disease

[Nimor Starseeker]

So my one of my players characters caught a nasty disease starting himself on the physical progression track. In the rulebook, it says the character can pass on the disease. How does that work? How can my players character pass on a disease to another character?

For reference: Page 414, CRB
Physical Disease Track Healthy—Latent—Weakened—Impaired—Debilitated— Bedridden—Comatose—Dead
Latent: The victim has contracted a disease. She suffers no ill effects yet, but if the disease is contagious, she can pass it on.

[AtlasSniperman]

How did they get it?:
Ingested: Can't really see how they'd pass it on
Injury: damage someone with an unarmed attack
Contact: touch someone
inhaled: start coughing

[Nimor Starseeker]

AtlasSniperman wrote:

How did they get it?:

Ingested: Can't really see how they'd pass it on
Injury: damage someone with an unarmed attack
Contact: touch someone
inhaled: start coughing

In this case it was through an injury. I am not sure how that could be contagious. However, the contact disease seems a bit more risky. Hypotheticaly speaking if one the characters was suffering from the disease, and just happened to be a healer of the group: walks around touching the team members to give them hp could pass on the disease at the same time. Is this a possible scenario? But only with the contact disease?

What about the inhaled disease - you start coughing, do you get to spread the disease? How would I go on about doing that? Make up some rules? Something like, for each progression track stage there is an accumulative 10% chance each day of spreading your disease, and forcing another character to make a saving throw?

[AtlasSniperman]

Nimor Starseeker wrote:

AtlasSniperman wrote:

How did they get it?:

Ingested: Can't really see how they'd pass it on
Injury: damage someone with an unarmed attack
Contact: touch someone
inhaled: start coughing

In this case it was through an injury. I am not sure how that could be contagious. However, the contact disease seems a bit more risky. Hypotheticaly speaking if one the characters was suffering from the disease, and just happened to be a healer of the group: walks around touching the team members to give them hp could pass on the disease at the same time. Is this a possible scenario? But only with the contact disease?

What about the inhaled disease - you start coughing, do you get to spread the disease? How would I go on about doing that? Make up some rules? Something like, for each progression track stage there is an accumulative 10% chance each day of spreading your disease, and forcing another character to make a saving throw?

That all feels reasonable to me, but these forums are filled with people who actually know what they're talking about so they can give far better advice than I.

[ThermalCat]

Most PCs will have a space suit or vacuum-proof armor, which should in most cases be a great way to contain a contagious disease. The key factor is recognizing someone is diseased, so a perception or medicine check will be needed. A lifesciences, mysticism or relevant field (culture) can also provide the players a chance to know that creature/plant/NPC may possibly carry certain diseases or use a venom.

Having an undiagnosed touch contagious disease could really cramp a healer that needs to make touch based healing. But the rules seem to allow characters in armor to heal each other just fine, so they just need to keep their gloves on when healing, even though they may be in the habit of taking them off and making skin to skin contact.