Interesting use of Disease mechanics

[unobserved]

Also just thought that in a one-on-one game, say featuring a rogue cat-burglar, a DM might be able to use the disease mechanics for something along the lines of being "on or off" one's game.

Something along the lines of a string of bad luck could trigger bad nerves that result in a lack of self confidence. Instead of rolling endurance checks at each extended rest, the could be rolled at the end of attempted missions with success or failure of the mission being a determining factor in a bonus to the roll.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'm half thinking it might be a good mechanic to use to track progress of a skill challenge instead of the x/y thing.

 

[unobserved]

I'd think at the very least a cure disease ritual should cure the infection and gangrene and put somebody back to the initial stage of the "disease".

Keep in mind too that once you hit the final stages of the disease you can no longer make checks to recover. There should be some way not to die if you get gangrene (preferably other then the traditional method........)

Another person that commented in the original thread toyed with the idea of removing some of the final stage penalties for a broken arm and replacing it with "you have contracted gangrene - you are now at the initial stage for that disease"

I don't know if I personally would want to go through the effort of making up two diseases like that, but there's nothing wrong with it.

And obviously, if you didn't have NPC's in place in your world that were capable of curing this broken arm disease with a specialize ritual that you would need to have another means for it to be cured other than by chance, but it does leave you *options*

 

[mattdm]

Because a broken arm isn't a disease (though it follows much the same mechanic)?

Well, the final stages as listed basically are.

But the further point is: if "Cure Disease" doesn't work, does "Regeneration"? "Mend Bones"? Or, nothing possible?

 

[Zsig]

That puts a whole new perspective to it, and I like it, a lot.

One could make a bunch of those traumas as different diseases and then house rule that once you get to 0 HP and then up again, you gain one "disease" of somesort, kinda like battle scars....

...yeah, I like it

 

[Boarstorm]

That puts a whole new perspective to it, and I like it, a lot.

One could make a bunch of those traumas as different diseases and then house rule that once you get to 0 HP and then up again, you gain one "disease" of somesort, kinda like battle scars....

...yeah, I like it

I was thinking the same exact thing.

 

[Hellcow]

Hmmm. I'd like to hear a little bit more about why the "cure disease" ritual doesn't work.

Because, as mentioned in the post, I was making it up off the top of my head and didn't actually LOOK at Cure Disease at the time. My thought was that it would take a higher-level ritual to actually mend a bone - something more akin to regeneration. However, in looking at the final form of the ritual, it sounds like it could probably handle something like this... though I might raise the level of the "disease", so that you COULD heal a break quickly with magic but that it would be a painful experience in comparison to letting time resolve it.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I would think broken bones and the dangerous lacerations that are prone to infection would inevitable heal with time. Assuming you do not actually die from the gangrene first, of course.

Can someone walk me through the mechanics here? How long would healing usually take?

 

[half-dragon dragon]

Sorry if someone else already mentioned this, but does anyone else see the potential for diseases to become one thing in a list of 'long-term effects'? As others have mentioned such a list could include grievous wounds, taint, neuroses, even long term poisons.

Heck, I'm thinking of making a generic Wound condition that characters receive after being hit by a critical hit. Hmm, this certainly takes care of any concerns I had about wearing down PCs beyond HP loss.

 

[Aegir]

I'm half thinking it might be a good mechanic to use to track progress of a skill challenge instead of the x/y thing.

That... is a really interesting idea. I was actually pondering something slightly similar, in that successes and failures were assigned point values (based on easy/medium/hard difficulty) and you won or lost when you hit a certain total (start at 0, win at +10, lose at -8, for example).

I'd think a system like this could go a long way towards mending the apparent problems with the system as currently written. Biggest flaw is that it could literally go on indefinitely.

does anyone else see the potential for diseases to become one thing in a list of 'long-term effects'?

The disease mechanic does indeed have alot of potential. I've felt since first seeing it that it may be one of the little pots of gold in 4E. It was really never discussed at all in the previews, yet has turned out to be one of the biggest improvements over 3E, especially when you consider (at least IMO) that diseases in 3E were virtually unusable.