D&D (2024) Did Someone Cast Remove Disease?

[Kobold Avenger]

Meanwhile, the STD-full bard keeps ravaging the countryside.

Once a Bard reaches 4th level, they'll bother to cast Lesser Restoration on themselves to remove a disease once per week.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Divine Health is no longer a Paladin class feature and Lay on Hands no longer cures disease.

Has the pandemic made disease the new slavery?

I imagine disease will just be made part of poisoned. "While poisoned in this way x effect happens a result of the disease" and the like

 

[JAMUMU]

Meanwhile, the STD-full bard keeps ravaging the countryside.

More evidence that all bards are Maoist.

 

[deganawida]

I mean, it's a ribbon feature until it interjects to spoil the DM's plans. It's kind of just one more thing hemming in what sort of challenges DMs can effectively throw at players, and one more thing DM's have to remember when planning, while at the same time being something that will never come up at the average table.

I'd say the better move would be to make it part of a larger, high level ribbon feature. At level 18 you are immune to disease, you never age, and your teeth always stay pearly white, or something. Then we still get the flavor, but the inconvenience of remembering it is shunted off to the levels people don't play.

I think that this ability has suffered from the removal of the old, more stringent, requirements to both become and remain a paladin. One could theoretically have a party of paladins from 4e on, and thus disease immunity would remove another tool from the DM's toolbox. However, back when it had those extreme ability requirements*, was human-only, and was more than just LG (had special additions to the alignment restriction), paladins were much rarer, and thus only one person (maybe two, but rarely IME) in a group would be immune.

Side note: I find it somewhat ironic that paladins are now a beloved class. I played a couple of paladins in 2e, and the groans and complaints that I got whenever I announced my class choice were loud.

*I know that people often let players meet minimum requirements in 2e without rolling. Still, the system was designed with them having those requirements.

 

[Amrûnril]

I imagine disease will just be made part of poisoned. "While poisoned in this way x effect happens a result of the disease" and the like

I think this would be a good approach if executed well, in that it would allow specifically designated diseases to be treated with low level magic, but wouldn't create the same worldbuilding implications as universal disease curing effects.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think that this ability has suffered from the removal of the old, more stringent, requirements to both become and remain a paladin. One could theoretically have a party of paladins from 4e on, and thus disease immunity would remove another tool from the DM's toolbox.

To clarify, the issue I'm concerned with is less with having a whole party of paladins, and more with a DM thinking sewer sickness (or whatever) is going to be a challenge for the whole party, when, in fact, it is something the single 3rd level paladin is both immune to and can cure in 3 party members fairly trivially if he still has all his lay on hands.

It's just one of those snakes in the grass for DMs who haven't memorized all the rarely used or mentioned secondary abilities of each character class. And it's not the end of the world, but it's just one of those things that make running the game seem like an impossible task to people who aren't hyper-rules competent.

Which is maybe not a good enough reason to remove it, but it's the strongest reason I can think of to remove it, and other abilities like it.

 

[Charlaquin]

On the flip side, disease immunity has been a thing for paladins for a long time, and it’s not that strong and ability, mostly ribbon until that once in a blue moon occasion. So why remove it?

You’ve just described exactly why. Like, does anybody actually like diseases in D&D? Or do they just include them to make sure the party Paladin doesn’t feel like one of their abilities is useless? And if you’re including a mechanic nobody really likes just so a specific character won’t be affected by it… At a certain point it’s worth asking why even have the mechanic and the ability that circumvents it? Why not just drop both. And as an added bonus, now you can have a plot point where a character or community is suffering from a severe illness that you have to go on a quest to find a cure for, without having to explicitly make it a magical illness that none of the PCs’ disease-curing abilities work on.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

You’ve just described exactly why. Like, does anybody actually like diseases in D&D? Or do they just include them to make sure the party Paladin doesn’t feel like one of their abilities is useless? And if you’re including a mechanic nobody really likes just so a specific character won’t be affected by it… At a certain point it’s worth asking why even have the mechanic and the ability that circumvents it? Why not just drop both. And as an added bonus, now you can have a plot point where a character or community is suffering from a severe illness that you have to go on a quest to find a cure for, without having to explicitly make it a magical illness that none of the PCs’ disease-curing abilities work on.

I mean, I do like the idea at least of diseases in my D&D. I think their a lot of roleplay potential, and I think having non-magical afflictions is a nice option for DMs weary of the everything is magic all the time vibe of 5e.

But that's all the more reason I don't want paladins to be able to trivially cure disease at a low level. It just negates a whole type of challenge practically out of the gate if you have a particular party configuration. I'd be happy to have Goodberry's food replacement capacity nerfed or eliminated for similar reasons. A mid-tier ability to trivialize disease or hunger is a different manner, but tier one characters should remain possible to challenge with mundane things.

 

[FireLance]

I had intended this to be just a snarky observation with the name of a spell from past editions for a catchier thread title, but I thought there have been some good observations and points, and it sparked some ideas of my own.

I agree that immunity to disease is a ribbon until it isn't, and I thought that folding disease into poison is a great idea, especially if there is a class of long-term or persistent poisons or disease, perhaps using something similar to the 4E disease track, that lower-level abilities like Lay on Hands and lesser restoration are less effective against.

Maybe recovery from persistent poisons or disease requires Constitution saves, Medicine checks, or high-level spells such as greater restoration or heal. Lay on Hands or lesser restoration only supresses the effects for 24 hours in the initial stage or reduces the effect by one step on the poison/disease track at the later stages.

So, a low-level paladin can suppress or reduce the effects of a disease on themself and up to a few others, depending on level, but it will exhaust their Lay on Hands capacity for the day. Plagues become a real possibility because low-level clerics can only offer temporary relief and can't actually cure disease. And maybe some poisons or diseases can't be fully cured until the PCs find an ancient medical text and gather the rare herbs required.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I imagine disease will just be made part of poisoned. "While poisoned in this way x effect happens a result of the disease" and the like

This would be a really interesting direction, and not just for the player side of things.

Currently, I am not aware of any creature that is immune to disease in the MM (could be, don't know) but combining the two categories could lead to not only more interesting effects, but also give you story beats, like undead no longer being vulnerable to diseases (most weren't over effected by them anyways, because they were immune to exhaustion, but still)

I'll be interested to see where it goes, but I am not terribly worried by paladins no longer being immune to disease, it was a story beat for "purity" purposes that just didn't make a lot of sense when so many other classes should have something similar, but don't.