Diseases

[kinjiru]

So, I tried to contact Wizards about this, but I got a pretty cryptic response that felt to me like they were really saying, "hey, we don't have an answer for that, feel free to handle it how you prefer."

Now, let's assume you have one character in the party who is trained in Heal and is a wisdom-based character. This isn't a foregone conclusion, but it's close to it. If you do, then you have someone whose base bonus to Heal is almost assuredly going to be 4 (half level) + 5 (trained) + (3 - 5) stat bonus = 12 - 14. That's without the many possible other bonuses out there.

With aid another checks, you could add another 0 - 8 points, for a total of 12 - 22, before you even add the d20.

The rules compendium changed how DC's for disease work. Let's use an example of a level 9 disease. The DC's are:

< 15: disease gets worse
16 - 19: disease unchanged
20+: disease improves

So, at worst case, the healing character would need at least a roll of 3 (85%) chance. Without aid another, the best case scenario healer cannot fail to at least maintain the disease. The chance to improve, without even counting aid another, is 60%-70%.

It seems to me that these rules effectively make disease something that is nigh-impossible to truly suffer from. Most characters will be cured of it on their first extended rest, and virtually none will ever get to the second stage, much less the final stage.

I wouldn't be shocked to hear a lot of people say they don't really use disease, but for those who have, does anyone have any thoughts on this or comment on how you've handled it? Did you just increase the DC's in spite of the new rules?

 

[the Jester]

Let it ride. Diseases are nasty; if a pc is unlucky enough to have one get to stage 3 or 4, it should be a memorable event, not 'oh no, more giant rats'.

 

[chriton227]

Looking at the DCs, a healer is going to either auto-succeed or be very close given the DCs. The one case where this doesn't work is if the healer gets infected, you can't use the heal skill on yourself. Most healers aren't going to be nearly as good at Endurance, so they may be looking at rolling a 4-6 (untrained) against that DC16, a much riskier proposition. Also note that with the new Aid Other rules, if someone attempts to aid the healer and fails (and at L9, that would be a DC14 to aid), it gives the healer a penalty to their roll instead of a bonus.

We also normally limit how many people a single healer can tend to, in the section of Heal where it talks about tending to the diseased, it lists the action as:

Rather than taking a particular action, the creature must attend the subject periodically throughout an extended rest taken by the subject and make a Heal check when the rest ends. The attending creature can take an extended rest at the same time.

We interpret that as the healer can only attend to a single individual at a time (they are trying to get their own extended rest in at the same time), so if multiple PCs get infected, the healer will have some tough choices to make.

 

[kinjiru]

Thanks for the ideas, chriton227!

 

[BobTheNob]

By the end of our campaign I was (house rule) treating the use of heal vs disease as an aid to the victims endurance check.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Another thing to consider is that equal level encounters, challenges, and hazards are not generally intended to be really difficult for a competently trained character to deal with. The same character dealing with say a level 14 disease (5 levels above his presumable level of 9) is going to have a more difficult time, although chances are the patient will still recover.

My feeling is the rules are designed such that PCs are very unlikely to reach the terminal stage of a disease. If things reach that point a Remove Affliction ritual would generally solve the problem in any case (though it could be risky and will obviously have some resource cost). Progression of disease to a terminal stage is really more likely to be useful to the DM as a story element where some NPC is afflicted.

 

[bganon]

And I would disagree that it's close to a foregone conclusion that the party will have a Wis-primary Heal-trained character. There are six Wis-primary classes (Avenger, Invoker, Seeker, Druid, Shaman, Cleric) out of... what is it now, 25 total classes? At least that many. It's quite easy to put together a party without any of those classes (there are more non-Wis leader classes than Wis, for example).

 

[DracoSuave]

And I would disagree that it's close to a foregone conclusion that the party will have a Wis-primary Heal-trained character. There are six Wis-primary classes (Avenger, Invoker, Seeker, Druid, Shaman, Cleric) out of... what is it now, 25 total classes? At least that many. It's quite easy to put together a party without any of those classes (there are more non-Wis leader classes than Wis, for example).

Not all characters with Heal skill are leaders.

I hear a Fighter gets Heal and can have a decent Wisdom.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It is certainly possible to have a party without a character trained in Healing, but yeah it is uncommon. Heal is arguably the single most useful skill in the game. It certainly is in the top 5, and Wisdom is an ability score of singular utility as well, with both many skills based on it and Perception also being right up there at the top of the list. It is a common primary ability and a very common secondary one.

One might also reasonably presume that Healing is likely to be one of the more common skills possessed by NPCs since it is one that is clearly useful to even ordinary people. You might not find a lot of historians in the world, but every little village is likely to have some kind of healer and any larger settlement will surely have one of reasonable competence.