D&D (2024) So how do you remove disease in 5E 2024?

[TiQuinn]

Also, just addressing the elephant in the room: there was a disease-related global tragedy with an incredibly high death toll only a few years ago, the consequences of which are still being felt today. There’s a good chance that WotC and/or Hazbro wants to steer clear of the subject of disease for sensitivity reasons, and if that’s the case I can’t really say I blame them.

That’s an elephant I didn’t notice but you’re right.

 

[Mistwell]

I do wonder if this is a step in the direction of disease being a much more serious long term issue that isn't easily magicked-away. If so I'd be in favor of that.

 

[Arilyn]

Holy people laying on hands to cure the sick is such a staple though. I know diseases do not come up often in the game but this seems an odd decision.

 

[Charlaquin]

Holy people laying on hands to cure the sick is such a staple though. I know diseases do not come up often in the game but this seems an odd decision.

That’s still a thing, it’s just expressed by the Poisoned condition now. I imagine any disease one might design that they want to be curable with lay on hands would simply inflict the poisoned condition and then say “while poisoned this way, [the other effects of the disease]”

 

[abirdcall]

Diseases were vestigial in 2014. They only existed because curing diseases has always been a thing paladins could do. But if there was a paladin in the party, diseases were trivial to cure. So, the entire exercise just felt like a weird pantomime where DMs were including diseases just to humor the Paladin player, and Paladin players were spending 5 points of Lay on Hands to cure diseases they knew only existed to humor them. By getting rid of diseases as a specific codified category of thing, we are free of that silly artifice. Now, diseases can still exist as bespoke game constructs that include their own rules for how they can be cured, and they can therefore always be as easy or as difficult to cure as the narrative demands.

To be fair, diseases were humorous in medieval times.

 

[the Jester]

That’s still a thing, it’s just expressed by the Poisoned condition now. I imagine any disease one might design that they want to be curable with lay on hands would simply inflict the poisoned condition and then say “while poisoned this way, [the other effects of the disease]”

And that is just so inelegant. Not all diseases should make you poisoned.

The pandemic thing... I get what you're saying, but if we're going to remove an element from the game because it has impacted a lot of people around the globe, when are we taking out war? Thievery? Violence entirely?

 

[Charlaquin]

And that is just so inelegant. Not all diseases should make you poisoned.

It’s just the name of the condition. It doesn’t have to mean literal poisoning.

The pandemic thing... I get what you're saying, but if we're going to remove an element from the game because it has impacted a lot of people around the globe, when are we taking out war? Thievery? Violence entirely?

This is a slippery slope fallacy. Just because they take out mention of disease in the interest of sensitivity surrounding a recent global tragedy doesn’t mean they should be expected to take out any mention of anything connected to any tragic event anywhere. And we don’t know how much of a factor sensitivity around the pandemic played in this change, or even if it actually played a role at all. It may well have been that, as per my other post, they felt that diseases as a distinct subsystem, were vestigial and not worth maintaining when individual diseases were almost entirely handled by bespoke mechanics anyway. Maybe they wouldn’t have removed diseases for either reason on its own, but with both of them combined it added up to more trouble than they felt it would be worth to keep them around.

 

[SkidAce]

Diseases were vestigial in 2014. They only existed because curing diseases has always been a thing paladins could do. But if there was a paladin in the party, diseases were trivial to cure. So, the entire exercise just felt like a weird pantomime where DMs were including diseases just to humor the Paladin player, and Paladin players were spending 5 points of Lay on Hands to cure diseases they knew only existed to humor them. By getting rid of diseases as a specific codified category of thing, we are free of that silly artifice. Now, diseases can still exist as bespoke game constructs that include their own rules for how they can be cured, and they can therefore always be as easy or as difficult to cure as the narrative demands.

Completely disagree.

Paladins in our campaigns were excited to have that ability.

They cured a town of disease (cured the near death with lay on hands) hunted down the source (a vile river serpent like a komodo dragon) and then went back to town and cured anyone else who had symptoms.

Classic adventure. Lay on Hands curing disease was no more or less "a weird pantomine" than any other characters ability.

IMHO of course.

 

[SkidAce]

So with the 2014 rules, whenever you wanted a disease to matter, you just designed it so that lay on hands and restoration didn’t work because reasons, making cure disease into a ribbon ability. I suspect the 2024 DMG will instead address disease solely as a plot point, much like traps, etc.

Having Lay on Hands and Restoration work as a cure is fine, you can only cure so many people a day after all.

I think it stands on its own as is, as a viable plot point.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This is a slippery slope fallacy.

Thank you for this.

Every time D&D even pretends to try to have some couth and consideration for something we always get the 'what, are you going to take away violence too?' without any actual examination of the discussion and reflection at hand and I'm so very sick of it.