Disease, Supernatural or Otherwise

[Thia Halmades]

Good morning, Steve;

 

While prepping all the material I'll need to run the FH campaign, I began attempting to replicate the Paladin's Cure Disease power. However, "disease" as a topic wasn't covered anywhere in the text. I flipped to the Bestiary and they had cited Lycanthropy, the disease, as a Transform (Major) which only had to deal straight body. That would make curing disease (which in many cases is some sort of Transform) a Transform to convert someone from a diseased state to a non-diseased version of themselves.

 

What are your thoughts? Is this the simplest way to handle it in HERO terms, as a transform? Further, do I have to stipulate what kinds of disease the Paladin's cure encompasses? Could it cure any disease? And, lastly, it specifically states (and this is also reasonable, but I'm mentioning it for the record) that any cure only stops it from dealing additional damage (on poison), it doesn't replace the injury. In that event, would I purchase a "Healing, STR" or any variation on that theme?

 

Good morning, and thanks!

[Steve Long]

Re: Disease, Supernatural or Otherwise

 

As a matter of fact, I've thought about writing a whole HEROglyphs article on simulating and curing diseases, so I'll try to briefly summarize my thoughts here.

 

The ways I generally think of to cure diseases are:

 

--Healing of one or more Characteristics (needs to be variable, since various diseases are usually built as Drains of one or more Characteristics)

 

--a Transform (to cure all effects, a Major Transform; to just stop the disease from progressing but not cure any effects already suffered, a Minor Transform)

 

--an Aid with a really long fade rate (probably not cost-effective compared to Healing)

 

The Cure Illness spell on FHG 246 uses the Transform method. It seems to do the best job of simulating the broad-spectrum effect of curative magics as seen in most Fantasy games, and unlike Healing (which can "replace" lost Characteristics but not keep a long-running disease built with Gradual Effect from continuing to harm the character) can stop the disease at once and completely.

 

With any of these methods, there's no need to specify the type of disease curable -- these Powers just "correct" the effects of certain Attack Powers, and there's no particular restriction on that. If you wanted to restrict a spell to one or more diseases, you could do that with a Limitation.