diseases

[MR CRITICAL]

can a pc purchase a disease and apply it to a weapon like poison ??

[AwesomenessDog]

No, technically there are no rules even for spreading diseases among party members let alone infecting yourself and weaponizing it outwardly (despite that being one of Antipaladin's schticks).

Personally, I would say if you have a way to source it and are alchemically cruel enough, e.g. extracting blood from some poor infected dude you keep chained up somewhere, you could essentially have poison doses of disease to inflict on people. But unless this is a really twisted thing for a BBEG, even with a fast acting disease like mummy rot, a player doing this would probably kill them before the disease even kicks in.

[MR CRITICAL]

is Antipaladin the only thing that can spread disease ??

[willuwontu]

Plague Powder can be used spread diseases.

[AwesomenessDog]

MR CRITICAL wrote:

is Antipaladin the only thing that can spread disease ??

No, they just have their special clause of Divine Health that lets them still carry a disease they have been exposed to and are immune to the effects of. It would follow then that it's intended for them to spread said diseases but there's just no rules for it besides a special magical item willuwontu mention.

[Name Violation]

there are spells like contagion that let you do it. maybe a druid archetype or 2

[zza ni]

there is also a Ratfolk specific alchemist arch-type that can infect others with disease. it's not contagious and only make creature sick for a round\level of the alchemist. but it's called out to be specifically disease effect and not poison or anything else.

[Azothath]

Afflictions are a broad group of effects and the basic model uses the same method as Poisons. Optional rules expanded and detailed the process.
The vast majority of RAW cases involve NPCs/PCs/Vermin carrying and transmitting disease rather than any contained versions (disease in a can: Pox burster(filth fever DC12) $50, plague powder(filth fever) $144).
In a practical matter poisons are fast and combat effective, diseases are slow and mainly downtime or lingering issues. Magical healing makes disease a low-level challenge as the PCs are generally too powerful to be affected (generally an affliction of the pocketbook).

My suggestion is to just contract Leprosy. It is cheap and readily available, gives you a transmittable disease by touch and the disease itself is easy to halt and reacquire and it is hard to detect before it becomes serious. It is particularly threatening to min-maxers that dump Cha.

disease on AoN

psychic - disease transferrence
rogue talent - disease use(filth fever DC12)
sorcerer pestilence bloodline
... etc ...

[Sysryke]

I'd have to go hunting for the specific sources, but yes there are rules for disease transmission, but almost all of them are tied to specific archetypes. I'm actually playing a gestalt plague bringer ratfolk alchemist who's also a sorcerer of the pestilence bloodline. As has already been pointed out, most of the time disease has no bearing in combat because the incubation and effects intervals are measured in weeks, days, or hours at best. At higher levels, many of the disease themed builds let you infect enemies and advance the disease through multiple stages in a few rounds. Infection, transmission, and effects all work the same as poisons, just normally they take a lot longer. Sometimes higher DCs, and potentially more horrific effects, but easyish to get healed up.

I don't know if there are any established pre-set DCs, but you could in theory harvest and save diseased samples the same as harvesting poisons, but keeping those samples viable would require special equipment.

[Sysryke]

Oh, there's a disease based Oracle Mystery too, that's quite tempting, but Sorcerer ended up being better for my character.

[willuwontu]

AwesomenessDog wrote:

besides a special magical item willuwontu mention

Alchemical, not magical. Quite the big difference for availability.