| aboyd |
I have a player who has Ghoul Fever, and failed a couple saves so now it's ongoing saves each day to try to end it. The team is now trying to stack advantages to the saving throws as he's making the rolls. However, I never thought that the PCs even had a real "time of day" when a save is made -- we mostly just roll in the morning as the game day starts, but the roll is a reflection of 24 hours of disease.
Because of this, I thought short-term boosts would not help. You wouldn't even know when to time them for a save, and if you did, you'd need the boost to last the whole day leading up to the save.
So can casting Remove Sickness at 1st level, in which it only lasts 10 minutes, be enough to grant a +4 to that day's saving throw against Ghoul Fever?
Also, since this is the rules forum, if you do have an answer, I'd love to see any rules text that backs it up directly or indirectly.
Thanks for your advice!
| Joey Cote |
Hmm. Well, the rules say frequency of a disease occurs after the player failed a save against the disease. Ghoul Fever has a frequency of a day. So technically they would have to use these short term effects shortly before 24 hours after the character failed the initial saving throw, which would be when they would have to make their save to try to start throwing off the disease. Technically I think it would work. I cannot find any rule that says otherwise (unlike short term bonuses to skill checks not working on crafting checks for instance).
This is very metagamy however and I wouldn't allow it.
Are your players aware that they can do a heal check to help the person with the disease?
| Mark Hoover 330 |
Heal check DC of the Ghoul Fever; if the healer succeeds the victim gains a +4 Competence bonus. This doesn't seem to have a time LIMIT, but it takes 10 minutes to use this function of the Heal skill. During that time, the skill user might also be able to deduce times when the symptoms seem to be getting worse. This is a staple of multiple forms of media:
Patient: how much time do I have doctor?
Doctor: based on how the disease is spreading, I'd say days
So extrapolating from that trope, you COULD (not RAW so consult the GM or if you're the GM, consider allowing this function of the Heal skill) the Healer might be able to spot signs that the disease is progressing and offer something to help arrest it.
There's also the spell Diagnose Disease that tells you exactly what someone is suffering from - this might also provide the unique timing needed to line up other forms of aid.