It says with the healing skill you can treat disease but can you find out if a character is diseased with the healing skill? If someone were bitten by a rat, after the fight could someone with healing check him to see if he has been infected or do they have to wait for the sickness to take hold, to late to treat the disease, then treat it if there are anymore saves that need to be made?
Healing Skill
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CRGreathouse
Community Supporter
Sure, I'd allow a character with Heal to determine if someone's sick. DC ~20, perhaps?
CRGreathouse said:
Well, by what is written in the PHB, it does not appear as if you could tell is someone was diseased before the diease manifests.
Can a doctor tell if you have chicken pox before the itchy red bumps appear? Maybe, but it would not be easy. I might allow a DC 20+disease's save DC to determine if someone is diseased before onset.
Trainz
Explorer
Mmm... for rat fever ? That's too high. That would only allow level 10 characters to have a 50/50 chance, for something as tame as filth fever (from a CR 1/4 critter).WCrawford said:
Maybe 10 plus save DC for before onset diagnosis ?
After symptoms appear, then it's a given that the healer can try to treat it.
Going by logic, I would agree with WCrawford on this. It's pretty darn hard to determine if someone has a disease before symptoms set it. Nowadays, it's not always very hard with chemical testing, but I don't see that as being a very likely occurance in a D+D universe.
In terms of balance, though, heal isn't all that uselfull. If someone were going to take the effort to dump that many skill points into Heal, I would let them. I would use the diseases DC as a base, and modify from there based on rarity (+0 for very common, +10 for moderate, or +20 for rare, etc) and incubation period (+0 for immediate, +10 for a day, +20 for a week, etc) of the disease. I would also give a bonus to the healer if they could examine the rat in question.
In terms of balance, though, heal isn't all that uselfull. If someone were going to take the effort to dump that many skill points into Heal, I would let them. I would use the diseases DC as a base, and modify from there based on rarity (+0 for very common, +10 for moderate, or +20 for rare, etc) and incubation period (+0 for immediate, +10 for a day, +20 for a week, etc) of the disease. I would also give a bonus to the healer if they could examine the rat in question.
Li Shenron
Legend
I am sure that this use of the Heal skill has been covered at least in some book. Maybe the Kingdom of Kalamar's Players Guide?
