Not feeling well

[Sean Waters]

Something that has come up a few times recently is that diseases and toxins are difficult to manage in camapigns because there are so many different ways they can be built. Here's an idea, as a house rule, a sugegsted disease/toxin build, which is adopted to clarify how you can deal with them.

 

General 'killing' disease/toxin (25 active and real):

 

Energy Blast 1d6, Uncontrolled (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), No Normal Defense (Relevant LS; +1), Continuous (+1), Does BODY (+1) (25 Active Points)

 

More exotic disease/toxin (70 active and real)

 

Drain BODY 1d6, Uncontrolled (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Continuous (+1), No Normal Defense (Relevant LS; +1), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per Hour; +1), all [special effect] powers simultaneously (+2) (70 Active Points)

 

The top one will KO a normal in 3 turns (36 seconds) and kill them in 13 to 14 turns (less than 2 minutes). The second can do something similar but allows for a lot more symptoms.

 

Obviously they are ridiculously dangerous in that form, so they are expected to be built with limitations slowing down the progress of the disease or toxin, but the point is they set active point costs for the vast majority of diseases or toxins.

 

This would give a clear structure for both building and defending against disease and toxins and the expectation would be that similar structure is used for players building powers for their characters with those powers. Like I said, house rule, not rule change.

 

The powers are uncontrolled, and would be switched off with a relevant antidote or innoculation.

 

It also means that you know how to get rid of a disease: a dispel that can hit 70 points will do the trick (and one of the limtiations you can apply would be reduced effective active points for dispelling purposes).

 

I appreciate that there will be players who feel that their creative juices are being dammed (or damned) but I think that there will be many more who appreciate knowing where they stand when dealing with the relatively nebulous ideas of diseases and toxins.

 

Thoughts?

[Markdoc]

Re: Not feeling well

 

This is how I have been doing it for years, but with the difference that I have different types of diseases, namely:

 

 

Disease : Lose points from any/all of :

 

Fevers .......... REC, STR, INT, DEX, BOD

Gripes .......... STR, CON, BOD

Fits .......... END, STUN, SPD

Consumptions .......... END, REC, DEX, BOD

Murrains .......... COM, PRE, SPD, BOD

 

I also do the base power slightly differently, viz:

Drain CHA 1/2d6, Reduced Endurance (1/2 END; +1/4), Uncontrolled (+1/2), Sticky (+1/2), Continuous (+1), No Normal Defense ([standard]; +1), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per Day; +1 1/2), Affects multiple stats (+2) (39 Active Points); Gradual Effect (6 Hours; -1 1/2) 16 real points, continuous can be shut off by CON roll at -4 per d6.

 

However, I also rated diseases as passing (1/2 d6), severe (1d6) or plagues (1 1/2d6), the latter having a -7 and -11 on their CON rolls normally!

 

The way this works is that every 6 hours you lose 1-3 points off a stat or stats, so that over a day. You'll lose on average 7 points and regain 5, so that you will lose 2 points off each affected Stat. If you can make a CON roll (which you get to do for each attack, or 4 times a day) the continuous shuts off and you recover normally. The effects of negative stat.s are listed in 5th ER - note that going to negative BOD will kill you.

 

This approach means that people have a pretty good chance of recovering from a passing illness on their own and even if they don't, it will take a long time to take them out - though even a few day's illness will severely degrade their performance. A severe illness will almost certainly kill or cripple them if they don't get care and a plague will fill the streets with bodies.

 

I allow the normal bonuses to rolls, so good care, a trained healer and a complementary healing roll can usually nurse even a severely ill patient through his disease. Note, however, most diseases are "sticky" so you can catch them by being around ill people

 

This approach is for my fantasy game (hence the names) and also allows me to define diseases. I don't tell the player he has smallpox (for example) I tell him that he has a murrain - in game terms, it's a severe one that affects both COM and BOD. The dread Bone Plague is a Plague fever that causes convulsions (affects STR, DEX and BOD), etc.

 

And yes, "cure disease" is a specialised dispel, though healers with fewer active points at their disposal can use an Aid spell to keep a victim alive in the hopes that he can overcome the disease himself.

 

cheers, Mark

[Sean Waters]

Re: Not feeling well

 

Nice - I'll have a proper think abuott hat later on when I'm not suppsoed to eb working . I definitely need to factor in 'Sticky' to make disease contagious, so curing a disease will be slightly more difficult than neutralising a toxin. That makes sense.

[CTaylor]

Re: Not feeling well

 

I think that the Hero system really could benefit from having a disease/poison based power like KA and blast. Something that trims down the build size and makes building this kind of thing simpler without requiring a five line block of text.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Not feeling well

 

I'm not sure that fits in with the central ethic but at the same time I can see the value of pre-costed 'prebuilds' a bit like Talents (although we'd need another name. I might suggest 'Constructs').

 

In essence they would be popular powers that are costed out and the real cost is used as a unit cost if you want to buy it that way. You'd still be able to see the bones of how it works but, like Combat Luck, you'd have a handy label and a ready prepared concept for you to slot in.

 

Toolkittin' Booshaka.

[Uthanar]

Re: Not feeling well

 

I like the ideas there Sean. I'm pretty new (though have been with the system coming on 20 years, almost never get to play) and so don't have a whole lot to add. Both you and Mark have some very nice ideas there, and it plays right into the post that I was making (apparently one of the reasons this one is up).

 

Uthanar

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Not feeling well

 

Pretty good. I may adopt your model. It reasonably straightforward and gets the job done.

[nexus]

Re: Not feeling well

 

Constitution should come into play somehow (IMO) since resisting diseases and poisons is one of it's possible function yet never really implemented (and it would give it a function aside from Stunned Threshold).

 

Edit: Just read markdoc's post. That's an interesting way to handle it.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Not feeling well

 

Constitution should come into play somehow (IMO) since resisting diseases and poisons is one of it's possible function yet never really implemented (and it would give it a function aside from Stunned Threshold).

 

Edit: Just read markdoc's post. That's an interesting way to handle it.

 

I agree although I might do that as a limitation: toxin/disease effects ends with a CON breakout roll at -8 (+1 for each step up the time chart) (-1/4) so if the disease does not kill you quickly you have a continually improving chance to beat it.

 

-4 to your CON roll would be -1/2 and a 'straight' CON roll would be -1.

[Markdoc]

Re: Not feeling well

 

I agree although I might do that as a limitation: toxin/disease effects ends with a CON breakout roll at -8 (+1 for each step up the time chart) (-1/4) so if the disease does not kill you quickly you have a continually improving chance to beat it.

 

I thought about that when I was putting ths together. The trouble was, I wanted, reasonably "realistic" diseases that would kill or incapacitate people in days to weeks rather than hours. That gives such big bonuses, that people would almost always recover. As it stands, even a normal would get scores of rolls before being taken out by passing disease, and dozens before dying of a severe disease, so the odds of making one of them are reasonable, even without a time bonus. If you have a disease that doesn't do BOD, you won't die at all - though you might be incapacitated for weeks or even months* - and will eventually recover, regardless.

 

Also - in real life - the longer you are sick, the worse your chances of recovery, generally. I didn't want to model that specifically, though - if I want that effect, I choose a disease that affects CON.

 

*Note: this rarely applies to PCs who even if they don't have a sufficiently powered healer in their group, usually have the wherewithal to find one. We had an exciting solo session where PC who had gone off on his own, got into a fight in a fetid swamp and got his wounds infected. He had to run, cross-country to the nearest town, in the hopes of finding a healer, and as he went, he started dumping his stuff to avoid LTE penalties as he pushed himself to his limit. And his limit got slower and slower as he got weaker and more feverish... As it was, he staggered into town days later at negative BOD, barely able to stand upright (STR drain) and so confused from the fever (INT drain) the townsfolk had to lead him to the healer.

 

I use disease but rarely, however the players do know it's there and it adds a certain "flavor" to disease-ridden environments like sewers. I also don't want to kil players with diseases (not very heroic), hence the fact that most of them are slow-acting.

 

However, if you do want to allow a time bonus, you could do it without making diseases very fast, by simply tinkering with the active points - a 2d6 drain would have much higher active points (and thefore a larger minus on the CHA roll) but if you set gradual effect up to take longer (1 day, say), the disease would not do more damage over time - you'd lose 7 on average and gain back 5 using the setup I use.

 

cheers, Mark

[Kdansky]

Re: Not feeling well

 

Is it fun? Then it's in my game.

 

Diseases very, very rarely are.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Not feeling well

 

Is it fun? Then it's in my game.

 

Diseases very, very rarely are.

 

Usually the fun is in GETTING them rather than HAVING them

[Kdansky]

Re: Not feeling well

 

Usually the fun is in GETTING them rather than HAVING them

 

Yeah, traveling through exotic countries and chases through stagnant swamps is a lot of fun.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Not feeling well

 

Now see, I might make quite an effort to not be prude, but I'm playing this game with a bunch of heterosexual guys, so romance and such are already kinda awkward. I'm bad enough at flirting, but pretending to be flirting with a girl which is played by the guy with a beard in front of me does not make it any easier.

 

And when someone asks me to roll for "how good are you in bed", I will instantly quit that group. On the spot.

 

 

I was talking about travelling to exotic countries and chases through stagnant swamps. Honest

[Kdansky]

Re: Not feeling well

 

I was talking about travelling to exotic countries and chases through stagnant swamps. Honest

 

Yeah, I know. I said so in the first place. What are you quoting there? I certainly did not write that!