Disease tracks pointless?

[MerricB]

In Pyramid of Shadows, one of our PCs was overcome by a lycanthrope's moon fever. As that PC was the one with the ritual, no-one could then cure him!

The new PC was a cleric, who cured the moon fever, allowing the player two PCs for a while. The very next combat, the original PC was stoned (whilst bloodied) by a medusa... the removing of the affliction was a particularly low roll, and the PC took his full HP in damage - as that PC was already blooded, he was killed by the unpetrification ritual!

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Actually, the endurance DCs are so low that usually you're much better off just letting the disease run its course instead of spending the money on cure disease and suffering the damage from the ritual.

Boy, it was amusing when the PC in my previous anecdote managed to fail all of his endurance checks... but yes, he rolled exceptionally poorly.

Cheers!

 

[Noir le Lotus]

My experience with diseases in 4th edition :

* As soon as the player knows that he's ill, he'll search (and certainly) find someone to heal him : PC or NPC. The only limit is the cash needed for the ritual so this is not true at lower levels (1 or 2).

* The ill character may lose some HS with the curing ritual, which means that either the group waits the next day to continue or that the DM adapts his advetnure to avoid too much grinding before the big fight of the day.


So there's no real change with previous editions ...

 

[wedgeski]

It should be a rare day when a disease reaches fruition, but on the whole I agree with your point. There's plenty of ways to increase lethality though, decreasing the time between Endurance checks for example (after a short rest, or at milestones tied to the environment).

 

[ExploderWizard]

The problem with the system is that diseases can range from trivial to super nasty in effects but the cure is automatic and universal. What if the cure disease ritual worked automatically only if the ritual caster's level exceeded that of the disease? A caster of equal or lesser level might have to contest with the disease via a series of skill rolls or something.

This would work great when combined with unknown diseases. Such disorders might have a specific cure that require an adventure to aquire or the PC's can attempt a ritual, not knowing if it is potent enough to be effective. A disease that resists several attempts at ritual cleansing would be plenty scary.

 

[roguerouge]

Worked well in

Spoiler

Curse of the Crimson Throne AP

as the disease hit a major city... and if it's virulent enough it reaches critical mass long before the clerics can do something about it. When you look at the numbers of clerics who can cast it in 3e, even in cities, disease was a threatening thing even if it only created panicked mobs storming the temples. Since that's much more of a high fantasy setting, I would imagine that the implied "points of light" setting of 4e should make it much, much harder to acquire the ability to do this ritual.

 

[Jhaelen]

So there's no real change with previous editions ...

This.

 

[Holy Bovine]

My experience with diseases in 4E has been very positive. I ran a DCC adventure that heavily featured diseases so I modified them to be in line with 4E disease tracks and the PC managed to contract almost a dozen different diseases over the course of the adventure. They were 4th level and had no access (or any way to get access) to the Cure Disease ritual. They toughed it out for over a week with lost surges and ability damage (yes I brought it back for diseases as it just makes too much sense for diseases to affect your physical and mental state). The paladin especially suffered greatly seeing his surges reduced by 4 and taking some 10 points in ability damage all totaled. I also made the recovery process slower with ability damage coming back at a rate of 1 point per day per ability (ie if he had ability damage on Str Dex and Cha he got back 1 point in each per day). It worked really well and eventually the party managed to shake off all of the diseases. It really helped that they were over a week away from any sort of civilization so there was no 'instant cure' available. Oddly they never sought out the Cure Disease ritual once reaching civilization...

 

[hailstop]

You know, I should've asked this first.

What level are the PC and what classes are they?

Level 13

Swordmage
Infernal Pact Warlock
Wizard
Shaman
Fighter
Ranger

 

[hailstop]

Damage from the ritual that people heal is still costing surges or other healing powers. Plus not everyone has the ritual, the components for it, or the time to use it.

The problem is that Ritual Casting is easy to get (just need to spend a feat) and by Level 6 it's pretty easy to get.

The component cost isn't very expensive, especially when you get to higher levels.

Actually, perhaps that's ultimately the problem...hit the PCs where it hurts...cash.

Having a variable gold amount for the components based on the level of the disease probably would incentivize at least trying to let your Endurance take it.