Developing a pandemic in a D&D type setting - how do you do it?

[Ghostwind]

One of the most difficult obstacles in a D&D type campaign is for a DM to be able to develop a pandemic that poses a threat to the characters and such. How do you counter the old standby Cure Disease spell so you can have a plague ravage the land and have the PCs be a part of it?

 

[Nagol]

You increase the infection rate beyond the ability of the restoratives to counter it.

In an epidemic environment, each person may require a Cure Disease every day to prevent the ravages of the disease. No one knows if they have the plague until symptoms show and will want the spell cast for them "just in case".

Even if the temples refuse and only use the cure on those showing symptomology, they can be quickly overwhelmed.

Create a disease with a 1 day infection rate and a 1 day progression checks and the temples will be completely swamped and unable to keep up with those in need.

Now if you are trying to nail those in power directly as opposed to the masses, it gets tougher as those in power can pay for/demand prophylactic care.

 

[Umbran]

One of the most difficult obstacles in a D&D type campaign is for a DM to be able to develop a pandemic that poses a threat to the characters and such. How do you counter the old standby Cure Disease spell so you can have a plague ravage the land and have the PCs be a part of it?

First and foremost, by reading the description of Remove Disease (from the d20 SRD):

"Certain special diseases may not be countered by this spell or may be countered only by a caster of a certain level or higher."

So, if you want a special pandemic (at least in 3e), you just make it so some agent in the game world worked to create one that cannot be Removed, or requires a really high-level caster. The same really goes for any system - the GM can always create a special case.

Or, you could add a material component to the spell, or require this particular disease to need a slight variant of the spell with a material component, and make it expensive or rare - maybe someone who wants the pandemic may be acting to make that component rare?

Or, if you simply don't have that many clerics in the game world, there may not be enough of them 5th level and over to cover the problem.

 

[Tonguez]

Use free candy to ensure that all of the towns/nations children are infected with a sentient parasite (a black fungal growth) that latches on to the brain stem putting them into a coma so that Lord Autumn (the Unseelie Lord who created the parasite) can enter gain control of their collective Dreaming.
The PCs can't use cure disease on a sentient creature and they can't remove it without killing the victim. However Rotten Eddy the local Ratcatcher (and a ghoul-bogeyman) knows the secret of entering the Dreaming so that the PCs can fight the parasite. Also ensure that a PC gets infected and then have them captured by Lord Autumn.

Thats what I did

 

[Asmor]

How about a disease that feeds on magic. Starts out as a harmless cold, something like that, nothing major, but some noble hires a cleric to cure him of his sniffles. That causes it to mutate into something far more deadly and infectious.

 

[Squire James]

My general thought is that player characters should rarely be seriously hampered by a pandemic. The disease works better as a backdrop for spurring the PC's to action. "Normal" people get the plague, and many will get violent. "Elites" such as nobles and people with money (which normally includes the PC's) don't have to worry much about the disease, but very much DO have to worry about some violent mob attacking them.

The PC's should feel at least some motivation to find the source of the disease and eliminate it, and perhaps find a cure. There should probably be some sinister force behind the plague... otherwise That Would Be Boring. Those sinister beings CAN likely threaten to debilitate the PC's with poisons and fast-acting diseases (basically the same thing).

As for ideas on how to start one that might affect even the "Elites", place the plague agent on gold and platinum coins! If you're really mean, make the disease act quickly, so anyone toting money to the temple for healing fall dead before they get there!

 

[Umbran]

The PCs can't use cure disease on a sentient creature ...

I'm curious - why not? Nothing in the SRD spell description prevents it from being used on an sentient parasite. I can use swords and fireballs on sentient creatures, but not Remove Disease?

I'd be fine with saying, "It doesn't work in this case, period," like I mentioned above, a special magical case. I am less okay with giving a general reason why it doesn't work, and not have that reason consistent with the rules.

 

[Vascant]

I love creating a few new diseases that originate from other planes, well beyond the curing ability of low level magic. I figure on creating a few new little beauties for my underground campaign which will tie into the history of the area. Some diseases I treat almost like artifacts in there is a specific way to cure, anything else is a wasted effort.

 

[Umbran]

My general thought is that player characters should rarely be seriously hampered by a pandemic.

Not personally, no. The point of a pandemic is more to put the PCs in the middle of a world falling apart than to make the individuals in the party sick.

You could make it more interesting if (as you'd actually expect) there's some social stigma attached to the disease. "Our holiest priests cannot cure the disease? Well, surely that is because the infected is really a sinner...," for example. Then, making someone in the party visibly ill becomes an interesting plot point.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You can easily have the PC's never be directly infected, and have the pandemic still ravage the countryside. Even in 3e, Remove Disease is a pretty rare and exceptional thing, certainly out of the means of 99% of the population (and you know, SOME people survived the Black Plague, so there's that). The party might be functionally immune to the disease, but that doesn't mean that the world is, and as society collapses and wars break out and people go mad and grief strikes the land around them, and their only enemy is not a great fiend or a horrible alien monstrosity, but a simple illness, they will begin to feel like they are in a plague-ravaged campaign setting, even if they never get touched by it.

In that general case, you can even have occasional "super-strains" of the illness that DO threaten the PC's to some degree. Give them Spell Resistence (an idea cribbed from Nyambe), and/or require multiple castings of the spell to weed out the illness, and change up the effects and the durations. Some might kill you in your sleep if you're not aware, others might take a long time, wearing you down gradually, until you are left a husk. Give PC's with the Heal skill something to do in combating the thing, too (in order to spread out the challenge of the disease to party members who may not have CD). And keep new and interesting forms of contamination in the mix: some strains may only be spread by direct injury (perhaps even only with saliva or fluids or intimate contact), others might be airborne, and given the likely understanding of infectious diseases of a pseudomedieval world, they're all piggybacking on the dirty peasants all over the place.

This is even believable -- our own world has the legacy of antibiotic resistance as the price we pay for factory farming that has real people who study actual pandemics kind of freaked out.