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

[miniaturehoarder]

Now if the fungus then stuck with the victim preventing hit point recovery or some other effect and each day the character got a con save to remove the effect, that would be a disease,

 

[miniaturehoarder]

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".

The initial gas spore damage is suffered by a disease immune paladin. The lasting infection is what the Paladin is unaffected by.

 

[Uchawi]

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.

I was thinking more along the line of a stirge, or simlar type of host that feeds off a parent organism. So you could have the tendrils or seeds sink into the flesh and feed the tree through the air with engorged spores, necrotic energy, etc. But it does bring up a good point on how you want to fill in the details of a basic game like 5E. It would be an opportunity to add extra damage types and categorizations to help fine tune what disease immunity covers. The same applies to other immunities.

 

[Sage Genesis]

The initial gas spore damage is suffered by a disease immune paladin. The lasting infection is what the Paladin is unaffected by.

I know but I'm unsure what you mean to say with this. The initial burst is poison. The spores invading the creature's body is the disease. To extend this to the treant, the initial slam is bludgeoning and the fungus is the disease. I'm not saying the treant's slam is entirely negated, just the disease part of it.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

I know but I'm unsure what you mean to say with this. The initial burst is poison. The spores invading the creature's body is the disease. To extend this to the treant, the initial slam is bludgeoning and the fungus is the disease. I'm not saying the treant's slam is entirely negated, just the disease part of it.

In 5e mechanics the slam's damaging of dexterity would be a poison, if it was even classed as anything (see Roper). Effects that continue for days are diseases.

 

[Sage Genesis]

Effects that continue for days are diseases.

Sorry but that's incorrect. See the Harm spell for example. Or see, again, the Gas Spore. Or the Contagion spell.

 

[Herobizkit]

Aside: If every combat encounter is of equal or lesser strength than the players, they are seldom challenged and 'winning' becomes the expectation, which begets no risk, which makes combat a waste of time except for storytelling purposes. But then we're playing something like Dungeon World or the new Serenity.

Aside 2: I am going to very much telegraph via out-of-game exposition that this treebeast caused 30ish hobgoblins (warriors, mothers and children) to run for the hills rather than try and deal with it... and their (6th-level) Druid friend was powerless to stop it.

Aside 3: By the time the players get there, there is no saving the town; it's gone. The tree eats the villagers, turns them all to wooden zombies and taints the land so that farms cannot grow. SCARY STUFF is happening in the world; one of the players has the Hermit background and her campaign secret is "The World Is Coming To And End".

Ultimately, it looks like opinions vary wildly on the effects of this attack. I think I'm going to rule in favor of calling it a disease and have the paladin be immune to it. It might actually add to the horrifying effect to have fungus-spawning wounds - which should raise many questions.