D&D 5E Paladin and 'disease' - your ruling on this matter, please

[neobolts]

I don't think any player has ever been happy when a DM places a monster in front of them that they are compelled to deal with and it can literately one shot them.

If the player is looking for a "Dark Souls" type experience as the OP suggests, then they are definitely the exception to this statement . That game is for death-courting masochists.

 

[Sage Genesis]

I would treat the attack as parasitic and not a disease.

In D&D a parasite like that is a disease. Look at the 5e Slaad and see what it says about implanting an egg into a victim: it's a disease. Fungal spores invading a body? Explicitly a disease. Go look at the Gas Spore in the Monster Manual, you'll find it under "Fungi".

People really need to start realizing that in D&D a disease is not just bacteria and viruses.

 

[gyor]

I would say it's a disease, it's a biological agent that is not a venom, so yes its the sort of thing a Paladin would be immune too. Infections are disease.

 

[aramis erak]

I would say it's a disease, it's a biological agent that is not a venom, so yes its the sort of thing a Paladin would be immune too. Infections are disease.

that'd be my call, too.

 

[Saeviomagy]

If the player is looking for a "Dark Souls" type experience as the OP suggests, then they are definitely the exception to this statement . That game is for death-courting masochists.

The key part of dark souls is not that you die a lot. It's that when you die it's entirely your fault for doing the wrong thing, and once you learn how to defeat a monster and practise it a bit, the monster ceases to be a threat.

In order to transpose that to D&D, you need to give your monster's big hits some sort of tell, so that your characters can avoid the big hits simply by stating "I dive for cover when he inhales deeply".

Oh, and somehow reducing the penalty for death to "minor speedbump" instead of "reroll character and start over", or otherwise give some reasonable time for the learning curve to happen.

My personal favourite would be to greatly reduce damage dealt (by limiting use of the big hits so that the party can heal back from them) and increase monster hitpoints until the monster takes significant damage, giving combat a sort of natural flow where the stakes raise as the players work out what they're supposed to be doing.

 

[Uchawi]

In D&D a parasite like that is a disease. Look at the 5e Slaad and see what it says about implanting an egg into a victim: it's a disease. Fungal spores invading a body? Explicitly a disease. Go look at the Gas Spore in the Monster Manual, you'll find it under "Fungi".

People really need to start realizing that in D&D a disease is not just bacteria and viruses.

I don't have 5E monster manual or the DMG to make a comparison. But I do not consider a parasite a disease, so just one monster is enough to set a precedent. So it is up to the creator of the monster. We have provided enough opinion to make either interpretation plausible. It would be interesting to see if a paladin at the table would give the DM a hard time referencing other monster abilities.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't think any player has ever been happy when a DM places a monster in front of them that they are compelled to deal with and it can literately one shot them.

Then a player has never been happy with a challenge? This is an argument that can be applied into absurdity. What about two-shots? Three? Four-hundred? Is it OK for me to throw the Balor Oevrlord at them in order to defeat the demon army or would they prefer to much on some kobolds?

The players have a modicum of control in the game. But they are only part of the equation. They cannot always find themselves in situations where they will "win" because then the win has no meaning.

I've thrown one-shotty monsters at my players before. It was a gargantuan shambling mound that had been super-charged by crazy druids. It swung trees at my players doing a line of 6d12 damage (at 5th level). Though I killed a couple of them (there were 9 people there that day) others avoided it by staying at range and the casters took to the sky. The lumbering beast went down eventually and the party got their squished friends back up after the fact. It was a very real threat and there was a very real chance of getting one-shot. But that's what made victory so much fun, and why they got cool loot!

Sure, throwing a demilich at a level 1 party is probably not going to be much fun. But will I never present a challenge that could one-shot them? No! I just won't use such things often.

 

[Camillus]

I don't have 5E monster manual or the DMG to make a comparison. But I do not consider a parasite a disease, so just one monster is enough to set a precedent. So it is up to the creator of the monster. We have provided enough opinion to make either interpretation plausible. It would be interesting to see if a paladin at the table would give the DM a hard time referencing other monster abilities.

There are a lot real world parasitic diseases, malaria being perhaps the best known and as such I don't think "it's a parasite" is an argument to use against it being a disease. If the effect is a growth triggered by a fungus entering the bloodstream of another creature and not an area effect of the attack I'd be inclined to call it a disease and say paladins are immune.

 

[Dausuul]

There are a lot real world parasitic diseases, malaria being perhaps the best known and as such I don't think "it's a parasite" is an argument to use against it being a disease.

Agreed. As a matter of fact, the only reason I come down on the "not a disease" side is that the fungus doesn't act like a parasite--it acts like a physical attack. If the description specified that the fungus was parasitic, then I would rule it constituted a disease and the paladin was immune.

Incidentally, the original Pathfinder tree is for me a (minor) example of game design failure. The flavor text states that it's a disease - because that's what fungal infections are, even in D&D. The mechanics say that it isn't. This is a situation that never should have happened in the first place.

Also agreed. The text is vague enough about what's happening that it could be interpreted as the fungus sprouting mobile filaments, which then plunge into your body and rip it apart; I interpret it that way because it's consistent with the mechanics, which leads me to say "not a disease." But I'm not real happy with that interpretation.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

Sounds like Vrock spores, which are poison this edition.