Leprosy

[Garnfellow]

Is there a d20 description of the disease leprosy floating around anywhere?

 

[frankthedm]

Use mummy rot. Maybe it is too fast, but the model works well enough.

Touch based contagion, speadable to others, victims justifiably treated like pariah, uncurable.

Slimy doom makes a decent Ebola.

 

[Artoomis]

Use mummy rot. Maybe it is too fast, but the model works well enough.

Touch based contagion, speadable to others, victims justifiably treated like pariah, uncurable.

Slimy doom makes a decent Ebola.

Leprosy is not spread by touch alone- it's way more complicated and as has to do with living conditions, poor immune systems, etc. Anyway, the model of Mummy Rot is indeed close enough for D&D purposes, except curable with any cure disease effect.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Use mummy rot. Maybe it is too fast, but the model works well enough.

Touch based contagion

Leprosy isn't spread that way. It's caused by a plasmid that is sometimes found in a particular bacterium, which can only infect a human host if the bacterium is forced into close proximity with the nervous system of the host. This seems to happen mostly due to sleeping on hard surfaces, which presses an infected surface against tissue for long periods of time, allowing infection. Also, you have to be susceptible to the disease, which is at least partly genetic. Holy people have long been known to associate with and touch lepers without contracting the disease, and for a long time it was not known how it is contracted.

uncurable

Mummy rot is incurable because it's supernatural. Plain old leprosy should be treatable with a Remove Disease spell.

 

[Edheldur]

Is there a d20 description of the disease leprosy floating around anywhere?

Nature's Wrath by Bloodstone Press covers this one.

 

[3d6]

Something else to consider is that "The bacterium is ubiquitous in HD endemic areas and approximately 95% of people who are exposed to it do not develop Leprosy due to natural immunity", according to Wikipedia. That implies that it should have an initial Fortitude save of -5 or so (so that only a natural 1 causes infection).

 

[frankthedm]

Leprosy isn't spread that way.

We know this. In they past, people did not. D&D usually takes place in worlds based on the myth and populated by eidolons of the beliefs of the past. In our world People believed leprosy was spread by contact, just as they believed dragons flew in the sky and breathed fire.

In a fantasy setting those both equally deserve to be truths. Superstitions take form and wild fancies dance among the fǽry circle to the satyr’s pipes. I see nothing wrong with a setting where the morally neutral humans are justified in doing what we today perceive as ‘historical wrongs’. Like forcing plague-bearers out of the populated cites

Mummy rot is incurable because it's supernatural. Plain old leprosy should be treatable with a Remove Disease spell

In a modern setting that finally gets a hold of magic, sure. In a fantasy setting, there is nothing wrong with diseases that laugh in the face of magic. A slow onset, fatal years later, magic resistant disease could easily thrive.

 

[Artoomis]

... In a fantasy setting, there is nothing wrong with diseases that laugh in the face of magic. A slow onset, fatal years later, magic resistant disease could easily thrive.

Sure, but that would not be leprosy. It would be something else. That's the point.

 

[Garnfellow]

Green Ronin's excellent Testament setting has a bunch of real-world diseases. Their take on leprosy:

Contact, DC 16, incubation 2d6 weeks, 1d2 Dexterity and 1d6 Charisma.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

We know this. In they past, people did not. D&D usually takes place in worlds based on the myth and populated by eidolons of the beliefs of the past. In our world People believed leprosy was spread by contact, just as they believed dragons flew in the sky and breathed fire.

In a fantasy setting those both equally deserve to be truths.

If you say so. People also used to believe that the heavy metal-esque "horns" gesture warded off the evil eye. Should this be considered proof against the Eyebite spell? I think that you might be overgeneralizing. Not every myth, legend, and superstition needs to be taken account of in D&D's metaphysics.