griffrat
Commander
3506 Posts
    
 | | 02/10/2006 7:24 AM |
| Okay, so I am working on a “terrestrial animal venoms and poisons” (as opposed to aquatic critters) lecture for one of my classes. This topic got me thinking about poisons and diseases in D&D. Now I make no secrets that I really dig poisons and diseases in D&D as well. My players understand that it is a direct correlation with my line of work.
So here is my question. Do other folks around here use diseases and poisons? Have you run into any strange in game effects because of the players actions?
Here is a story from a very recent game that is still having a lasting impact. The party had defeated an erinyes deep in the chamber of a lich lord’s keep. The victorious party took her head as a trophy as the fight was very intense. This devil had been cursed to remain on this plane and at the keep of this certain lich to do his bidding.
The party returned to its main city (base of operations). The party contacts the best taxidermist in the city and commissions the head to certain specifications. Well, during the cleaning process of the head an apprentice wounds himself and becomes ill. The master taxidermist becomes infected but does not show outward signs. With an impending war the main healers are taxed and the taxidermist does not seek help but goes about his day to day duties until the apprentice becomes deathly ill. This is when the taxidermist contacts the healing priests.
Seeking out the healing clerics the party discovers that there is a plague spreading from the capital city into the surrounding countryside. This plague and its “extra-planar nature” is spreading the healing resources of the healers even more thin.
Has anything like this happened in any of your games?
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jgsugden
Commander
4320 Posts
Walnut Creek, CA
| | 02/10/2006 8:18 AM |
| (I'll get to the disease thing, but it'll take a little explanation - Ian, you can read this, but you may prefer to skip it, as it has a few clarified details that Renfro does not know (yet), but it doesn't spoil anything as the threads are pretty neatly tied up)
In my current campign world, the Efreeti Pashas are low powered demi-gods, whose wish abilities exceed those of normal wishes. The wishes they grant are more powerful than typical wishes, but have a unique twist common to many wishes in my world: The wishes are partly conditional.
If the creature granting the wish (the Pasha in the is case) leaves the plane for more than a few seconds, the wishes become 'permanent'. If they die before leaving the plane, the wish is reversed (much as break enchantment reverses instantaneous effects).
Creatures like the Pashas tend to use this as leverage to gain allegiance and power. A Pasha might freely grant wishes to others who will then have the power to help/serve the Pasha. The creatures then protect the Pasha to prevent him from being killed, which would reverse their wishes.
One cruel and mischevious Pasha (breaking the always LE rule, this guy was CE) played a central role in my current campaign. That Pasha liked to grant greatly beneficial wishes to the masses, while simultaneously granting other wishes in such a fashion that the wishes caused disaster to slowly spread. As one example, he used a series of wishes (that he tricked others into making) to make people forget about one of the lesser Gods.
One day the Pasha used magics to slowly trick a young and disturbed boy into believing that his father was trying to kill him. He used his permanent images to make the boy think his father was luring him into a swamp filled with basilisks, where he was supposedly to die of being diseased or stoned. The weakling boy turned to the Efreet and asked that his father suffer those fates: That he be diseased and stoned. The Efreet granted the wish, and inflicted the father with a magical disease that slowly drained his charisma - and when it took him to 0 charisma, turned him to stone. The disease proved highly communicable, hard to diagnose and devastatingly power (very high DC for a disease), and became a plague on the entire civilization, often going undetected in a settlement until the first stoned individual was found, and dozens had been infected.
The authorities of the realm discovered the source of the disease and imprisoned the Efreeti Pasha, but were reluctant to kill him for his crime (as it would undue his beneficial wishes, such as raising the royal dead), and would not let him leave the plane (as they currently had no way to stop the plague completely, and they feared that if he left the plane, the plague would prove the end of everyone eventually). Accordingly, they imprisoned him in a special prison, where he was locked when a catacalysm occurred that pretty much destroyed everyone anyways (and destroyed almost all signs of the plague).
The PCs have since released the Pasha and killed him before he left the plane, which instantly reversed and changed about 1,000 years of history (bringing the lesser God back into common knowldge, for instance). Had they tricked him into leaving the plane first, things wouldn't have changed so much. Accordingly, the disease no longer exists, and has never existed, except when it used to exist, before it stopped existing when the Efreeti Pasha died. Had it existed, it would have (possibly) played a key role in future adventures, as it seems likely (to the PCs at least) that they will be traveling into the past at some point ... | |
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zenthrus
Warlord
5100 Posts
SLC, UT
| | 02/10/2006 12:30 PM |
| Best expression on PC faces ever came from when Monk cultists held a parade (at night, of course) through a part of the city the PCs were staying in. The monks (with Diamond Body) were burning an inhaled poison causing Wisdom damage in their censures (crazy cultists). The PCs charge into the fray and everyone immediately fails their Fortitude saves (the party Fighter needed a 3 rolled a 2). Ah, that was beautiful,
I've also used Drow Sleep Poison to good effect (both as player and DM). Diseases are more of a nuisance than a danger so I rarely use them (except in low-level campaigns where Dire rats are common). | |
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devasque
Sergeant
874 Posts
| | 02/10/2006 3:36 PM |
| Well lycanthropy being a disease it plays a huge roll in a northern section of my homebrew world. Area heralds a couple different barbarian lands and one of the most remote is sort of the black sheep of the clans as they've taken their clan name to a whole new level and harbor something like 20-30% werewolves in the population.
I've had the party run a rather desperate session trying to piece together an antidote to a poison that some mad man had polluted in to the poor section of a smaller city. Planned it for two sessions but everyone was so in to it we wound up doing an early am closure. Good fun if you want a simple mod for characters to run through and add some pressure. | |
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zenthrus
Warlord
5100 Posts
SLC, UT
| | 02/10/2006 6:23 PM |
| | My primary experience with running a game based explicitly around poison or disease was running RPGA's Epidemic. The main adventure hook was the PCs get diseased and have to find the cure before it's too late. Without knowing what I was running my PCs all showed up as 3rd-level Paladins (immune to disease). Fortunately Paladins can't run out on "saving the villagers from virulent diseases." Poisons are more entertaining in my book. | |
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taliesin
Underboss
1113 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 1:11 PM |
| I find diseases just slow the game down. Basically, the adventure is put on hold until the disease is licked and all ability damage is restored. Not very heroic.
Poison, on the other hand, sees regular use in my games. | |
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Darastrix Maekrix
dariustad
Warlord
6322 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 4:59 PM |
| | I've used both, but poison certainly beats disease as far as utility is concerned. Diseases often need carriers or special conditions to trigger. Whereas poisons can be applied to a large number of surfaces, objects, people, creatures, etc. | |
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Zenako
Commander
3469 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 5:33 PM |
| | In most campaigns I play in, except for very early on, diseases and poisons tend to be almost a non-factor. Part of the reason is that it is so easy to use delay or slow poison effects on everyone, which removes the urgency to address those effects in battle. Diseases that act quickly can affect combats, but cure disease effects are readily available to address those effects. | |
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CarrionCrawler
Underboss
1760 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 6:41 PM |
| | I've used poisons and diseases in both the DM and Player capacity. I love using the exalted poisons and diseases from BoED...so fun! | |
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dariustad
Warlord
6322 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 7:07 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by CarrionCrawler
I've used poisons and diseases in both the DM and Player capacity. I love using the exalted poisons and diseases from BoED...so fun!
Yes, the BOED Ravages and Afflictions are the good guys' way of getting the evil doers back for their wickedness. [:)] | |
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Luisjoey
Underboss
1704 Posts
Caracas Venezuela
| | 02/11/2006 11:20 PM |
| | I got pregnant once befere... that´s count as a decease or a medical situation... i was having trouble for wearing armor and weapons. | |
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dariustad
Warlord
6322 Posts
| | 02/11/2006 11:48 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by Luisjoey
I got pregnant once befere... that´s count as a decease or a medical situation... i was having trouble for wearing armor and weapons.
What? | |
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Luisjoey
Underboss
1704 Posts
Caracas Venezuela
| | 02/12/2006 12:49 AM |
| YES once i played with a female character and i become pregnant, my master put me lot of restrictions and it was funny because it changed my numbers.
It was funny really funny and from there i see pregnant as a disease in D&D, it makes everything hard to do.
Do you count pregnant as being a disease? | |
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dariustad
Warlord
6322 Posts
| | 02/12/2006 12:58 AM |
| quote:
Originally posted by Luisjoey
YES once i played with a female character and i become pregnant, my master put me lot of restrictions and it was funny because it changed my numbers.
It was funny really funny and from there i see pregnant as a disease in D&D, it makes everything hard to do.
Do you count pregnant as being a disease?
Actually, I tend to completely avoid that sort of thing in my roleplaying. I play RPGs to escape, not be reminded of the real world. I have even left games where the players/GM were involved in that. It's not the kind of false-realism I want to deal with in a game. | |
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Luisjoey
Underboss
1704 Posts
Caracas Venezuela
| | 02/12/2006 1:26 AM |
| quote:
Originally posted by dariustad
quote:
Originally posted by Luisjoey
YES once i played with a female character and i become pregnant, my master put me lot of restrictions and it was funny because it changed my numbers.
It was funny really funny and from there i see pregnant as a disease in D&D, it makes everything hard to do.
Do you count pregnant as being a disease?
Actually, I tend to completely avoid that sort of thing in my roleplaying. I play RPGs to escape, not be reminded of the real world. I have even left games where the players/GM were involved in that. It's not the kind of false-realism I want to deal with in a game.
Actually i was a bitch in the game and have relations with every powerful guy to obtain benefits and favors... my master decided to punish me with pregnancy (i still don´t know who is the father¿?) it was a crazy game though, because this master have lots of House rules, and this was one; for real i love this game because it have some realism that makes the game more exiting. | |
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Red Ranger
Sergeant
708 Posts
| | 02/12/2006 7:33 AM |
| | One of my friends is going to run us through 'Red Hand of Doom' when we finish our current Star Wars sequence of missions and I was thinking of running a spellthief as a poisoner/alchemist. Where are the rules for using poisons as a PC though? I found some stuff in Complete Adventurer, but it was mainly a list of poisons and their cost and Craft DC's. Not to hijack the thread, but are there other alchemical substances besides the PHB ones too? Stuff like the potion of fire breathing and firebomb in NWN. | |
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griffrat
Commander
3506 Posts
| | 02/12/2006 9:16 AM |
| Yesterday, I ran my everyother week Saturday game. The party is in this very restrictive magic area called the "Blasted Lands". This blasted land does not allow the casting of "conjuration magic" except in certain areas that at one time were dedicated to the TN god of healing, Hen Pa. These healing "oasis" are scattered around the desolate landscape.
During the course of the night the party's watches had heard the sound of "thunder" and as the course of the night wore on the delicate sound of a triangle (musical instrument). When morning broke a single herdsman came over the dunes of the blasted land hearding a lone "Rumitbier" (think Reek from Star Wars and the size of a triceratops). The party greets this deep desert dweller and the conversations revela that the elves of the Scorpioin Queen (evil elves the players in my group call them "scrow" as they are the "drow" of my world) are on the move and have been pushed deeper into the blasted land and the deep desert. The party knows from other interactions that the scorpion elves have posions and are hard fighters.
The desert dweller and his brother are hearding a herd of rumitbier to the goblin city and there are other herders that are on the trails.
The party departs the oasis and continues on the task they have been assigned. Off in the distance the party spots a dust cloud and can hear the sound of thunder. The party moves with in 2 miles and sees that there is a herd of wild rumitbier that have killed the herdsman and are currently throwing them up in the air and trampling the herdsman into the desert sands.
A party member using a magic spyglass spots four shapes in the sand. The party moves into investigate these four shapes. At a mile out the person using the spyglass spots the tribal markings of the scorpion elves as they move into to scour the bodies of the desert herdsman.
When the party arrives on the scene of the broken bodies of the desert herdsman the party moves to the bodies to see they have been picked clean. This is when the trap is sprung.
Using a very caustic poision the scorpion elves spring from the hidding places from under the sand and shoot bows with the posion (really good hides). Hitting all the party and threatning a critical on the party mage/clr. But one member (the rogue) fails the fort and looses 11 pts of con. [XX(] Not dead but very close to it. The critical was not confirmed but the fight is on!!
It was a brutal fight but the party with the aid of a magic item was able to force the scorpion elves into a retreat and killed one that was cut off from the rest of his team.
Just thought that I would share..... | |
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Malin Lug
Sergeant
742 Posts
| | 02/12/2006 2:13 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by Luisjoey
YES once i played with a female character and i become pregnant, my master put me lot of restrictions and it was funny because it changed my numbers.
It was funny really funny and from there i see pregnant as a disease in D&D, it makes everything hard to do.
Do you count pregnant as being a disease?
Only if you are playing a horror game and it has something to do with either Aliens or a Satanic Possession. Otherwise it is a natural reaction to events.
We have some pretty long running campaigns and we have some of the PC's who have gotten married in the game. It can happen in real life and if you want any realism in your Fantasy Game, it can happen there too.
Poisons and disease can be exceptionally devastating in a campaign that is magic poor. If there is ready and cheap healing, then everything is kicked up a notch. In D&D disease and poison, as long as they don't kill you instantly are almost always reversable with no long term effeects, and are therefore not really that frightening to PC's. In a game like WFRP where a magical healer is very, very rare, then the plague is something to run away from.
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