D&D 5E Does Condition Immunity: Poison give Disease Immunity?

[Savage Wombat]

My first glance at low-level undead suggests that a lot of creatures will be missing immunities they should logically have. Probably an "err on the side of shorter text blocks" mistake.

 

[the Jester]

No, poison (condition) immunity doesn't grant immunity to disease. However, I wouldn't be surprised if it negates many of the effects of a disease- I suspect that the poisoned condition will be a common result of many diseases.

I've always thought that in a magical world like the ones D&D games happen on, it makes a lot of sense for there to actually be some diseases that specifically affect only creatures like undead, plant monsters, constructs, etc. Cerebral parasites are an early example of the type of thing that I mean; maybe a fungus that feeds on the negative energy that undead need to survive, or a ghost cough that affects only incorporeal monsters and wracks them with phantom coughs, negating their normal silence. Demon fever, golem lock, death leak, the crumbles- I can think of lots of cool "this won't hurt normal creatures" diseases, and I think it's a cool idea for some of the kind of weird stuff in D&D that Erol Otus liked to draw.

 

[Tormyr]

For the most part (at least in what I have looked through), disease seems to go along with the poisoned condition. Some diseases give the poisoned condition. Some monster attacks poison with a disease. Intoxication seems to also fit under the poisoned condition. So it seems that the poisoned condition covers more than it used to cover.

That being said, I will still keep my eyes open for cases where a disease seems to fit even though the creature is immune to the poisoned condition.

As for undead, can someone look up some undead in the monster manual? I think most of them have an entry that is not in the stat block that says they do not need food, air and are immune to disease (running off of memory here).

 

[Eejit]

As for undead, can someone look up some undead in the monster manual? I think most of them have an entry that is not in the stat block that says they do not need food, air and are immune to disease (running off of memory here).

Most of the ones I checked said not requiring air, food, drink or sleep. Same deal with the descriptions of the more elemental elementals and with angelic creatures and constructs. Disease and poison didn't get a mention there.

A few oddities though, Will'O'The'Wisps apparently aren't exempt from needing food but get the rest.

Ghouls, Ghasts and Deathknights don't have that Undead Nature entry.

 

[the Jester]

As for undead, can someone look up some undead in the monster manual? I think most of them have an entry that is not in the stat block that says they do not need food, air and are immune to disease (running off of memory here).

The wording for wights, wraiths, ghosts, banshees, spectres and skeletons is

Undead Nature: A _____ doesn't require air, food, drink or sleep.

For vampires:

Undead Nature: Neither a vampire nor a vampire spawn requires air.

Ghouls lack the entry entirely.

There are certainly a few more that I didn't check, but that's enough to convince me that it's case by case. Also, I love the image of a ghoul suffering from some horrible venereal disease that has opened boils on its face, like that one nasty guy in Stephen King's the Waste Lands (I don't remember his name).

 

[Hand of Evil]

Think we need to start listing diseases and poisons out and grouping them to see if they would be covered by both immunities, you know the chart, two circles, one for Poisons and One for Diseases, where they overlap; you are covered by both.

 

[Tormyr]

Most of the ones I checked said not requiring air, food, drink or sleep. Same deal with the descriptions of the more elemental elementals and with angelic creatures and constructs. Disease and poison didn't get a mention there.

A few oddities though, Will'O'The'Wisps apparently aren't exempt from needing food but get the rest.

Ghouls, Ghasts and Deathknights don't have that Undead Nature entry.

Cheers for the help.

It makes sense that they ghouls and ghasts need food with their eating of corpses, although I think I would not require them needing water. In Age of Worms, you encounter one underwater. That was a scary little encounter (paralyzed underwater).

 

[Eejit]

Think we need to start listing diseases and poisons out and grouping them to see if they would be covered by both immunities, you know the chart, two circles, one for Poisons and One for Diseases, where they overlap; you are covered by both.

The difficulty is our understanding of poisons and diseases will be based on real-world examples with real-world rules.

Once you get to a molecular level a lot of the actual illness caused by many infectious pathogens is due to toxins.

And non-infectious, partly psychological 'diseases' are based more "poisons" - alcoholism for example would still affect someone with "disease immunity" but not if they had "poison immunity"?


It's so very complicated!

 

[Tormyr]

Think we need to start listing diseases and poisons out and grouping them to see if they would be covered by both immunities, you know the chart, two circles, one for Poisons and One for Diseases, where they overlap; you are covered by both.

A Venn diagram sounds like a good idea. It would confirm or reject the gut feeling of diseases falling under poisons.

 

[Grazzt]

So a Banshee can catch the cold? A Skeleton can suffer from Ebola? A Fire Elemental can run a temperature from a nasty flu?

In real world science diseases often cause harmful conditions through toxins they release, i.e. poison.

Only if the DM says they do. If the DM says "nope", then they don't. Problem solved.