Cure Disease will KILL YOU TO DEATH!

[ForbidenMaster]

Of course when the 10th level Wizard with no Heal skill and 8 wis tries it because the party Warlord doesn't have ritual casting it's far more dangerous .

Even then, other characters can help with the ritual. All they need is to make a DC 10 heal check for an automatic +2 (max of +8 with 4 characters). Can anyone say nurses?


PS. Just in case no one got it up to this point, cure disease is not the only way to recover from a disease. It just takes a couple of extended rests depending on how well you do on your endurance check/your "doctor" does on his heal check.

 

[Boarstorm]

... or you could just not have 5th level NPC clerics.

Madness, hong! The NPCs-by-City-Size chart quite clearly specified exactly what level clerics were available for any given community!

 

[Colmarr]

PS. Just in case no one got it up to this point, cure disease is not the only way to recover from a disease. It just takes a couple of extended rests depending on how well you do on your endurance check/your "doctor" does on his heal check.

And suddenly all the questions about the Endurance skill are answered. Does this (or something similar) apply to poisons as well?

 

[Blackeagle]

I'm thinking of curing a disease as more "cut away the infected tissue and drill a hole in his skull to let the demons out."

Do we get XP for the demons?

 

[Korgoth]

C'mon. The real question is... if I kill my buddy with a botched Cure Disease ritual, do I get XP for him?

Obviously I get to take his stuff. That goes without saying.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

And suddenly all the questions about the Endurance skill are answered. Does this (or something similar) apply to poisons as well?

Poisons end with a save.

 

[CleverNickName]

Clearly you need more flexible sensibilities.

I guess so. More and more these days.

Oh well, I guess I shouldn't fret. If a diseased character gets killed by a botched Heal check, he can always be raised from the dead without the need for a single dice roll. Because, you know, reviving someone who has been decomposing for a month clearly requires less skill than treating a living person's disease. And it is only 350gp more expensive at that.

It's probably best not to think about it so much.

 

[MindWanderer]

[sblock=Being a doctor is hard]

[/sblock]

 

[frankthedm]

Anything that makes curative magic work less like modern medicine and more like medieval chirugery gets a thumbs up from me.

 

[NMcCoy]

Not only do I love, love, love the notion that Cure Disease can prove dangerous, I'm thinking of adding similar rules to some rituals that don't have it already.

It's a great way of adding a little bit of dangerous unpredictability back into magic--one thing that D&D has never done well--without nerfing the casters' combat abilities.

Likewise. But I also like that if you botch the preparation of many rituals (e.g., trying to teleport to a nonexistent destination), or realize you're biting off more than you can chew (Cure against a high-level disease) you're not out the cost of the components. Permit calculated risks while not punishing unforseeable ones. But on the other hand, still allowing for costly stupidity - you can still waste components scrying on the coin in your pocket.