Need stats for a disease not in the SRD: Rabies

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Exactly! If you want the disease to take awhile before it starts affecting you, just give it a longer incubation period.

I would hesitate to lower the damage dice that much, however. It would result in most people never taking damage.

 

[Pielorinho]

I believe the CNN news story was of a child who survived rabies after showing symptoms of the disease, but with extremely intensive treatment after she showed symptoms (she was bitten by a bat, but her parents didn't think that was a problem). It made the news because it's the second time in recorded history that a person who's shown symptoms of rabies has survived: in the first case, the afflicted child never arose from a coma.

Give the disease an incubation period of 1d3 weeks (there are cases that happen faster or slower, but these are outliers; most cases happen fairly quickly). A DC 20 initial fort save is appropriate, but if you want to model it appropriately, there should be no later saves: in a human population, rabies is 100% fatal without treatment, and 99.9% fatal with treatment.

You might allow a DC50 heal check (or higher) to cure the disease; otherwise, I would allow only a magical cure to work.

In addition to the slow wisdom and con damage (the wisdom damage should be faster, since it's a neurological disorder, and patients usually lapse into a coma before death), consider applying something similar to the effects of a Confusion spell once the patient's wisdom drops to 3 or less: at random times, the patient has a 50% chance to become very fearful, a 25% chance to become very aggressive and attack living creatures with bites and claws, and a 25% chance to fall down (rabies often diminishes the ability to balance).

Daniel
Humane Educator in real life

 

[jgsugden]

My advice: don't try to use treal diseases.

D&D rules for diseases are great for a role playing game, but do not even come close to capturing the effects of real diseases. If you want something 'rabies like', I suggest a high DC (18 - 20) disease that does wisdom damage (d4). Allowing it to do con and wisdom damage makes it too strong for game terms, especially with such a high DC.

 

[smilinggm]

Try this link out for size:
http://www.enworld.org/cc/fiend_factory/disease.php

 

[lordbasl]

Wow...just what I was looking for!

Wide range of very good ideas here. The consensus seems to be something like this:
Injury, DC 18, 3d10 days / 1d3 weeks, 1d3 Wisdom with secondary effects, uncurable without magical curing / technology or an epic-level Heal check.

The secondary effects -- I think I'll use confusion for the secondary effects, with a failed check triggering confusion sometime that day.

I'll let you all know what happens when I run this encounter this weekend.

Thank you all for some very practical help. ENWorld Forums -- tech support for Dungeon Masters and players, without waiting on hold through bad music for a guy in India to tell you to reboot or RTM

 

[domino]

A disease should never grant a bonus to stat, otherwise barbarians/fighters traveling with a Paladin will be infecting themselves with Rabies all the time, and that's just silly.

There IS a disease that results in increased strength, I think. I've seen it used as a way to up a character's strength for those "Let's throw moons at the planet until it shatters" Hulking Hurler threads.

 

[Pielorinho]

D&D rules for diseases are great for a role playing game, but do not even come close to capturing the effects of real diseases. If you want something 'rabies like', I suggest a high DC (18 - 20) disease that does wisdom damage (d4). Allowing it to do con and wisdom damage makes it too strong for game terms, especially with such a high DC.

Possibly. Personally, I like the idea of rabies being a "holy crap!" disease. Most diseases aren't really that bad: if someone in the party has a maxed-out heal skill, then you're very likely to be cured as soon as the disease is noticed, even at first level. Diseases are little more than speedbumps in D&D, as normally written.

Having a disease that's terrifying to characters is a pretty cool thing, therefore.
Daniel

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

There is also the Blood Rager template from Bestiary of Krynn that is basically a rabies-like disease that turns animals into rampaging beasts!

 

[werk]

My advice: don't use real diseases.

I've been thinking about this, and I think it's the best advice yet.

Even if you think of it like rabies, change the name.

As soon as you start using real diseases you are bound to find the one player that's little sister died from rabies, or cancer, or rickets, or diarrhea, or whatever.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Good point.