From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@sartar.toppoint.de)
Date: Sat 16 Jul 1994 - 18:03:23 EEST
[I said that to let diseased characters rest unmolested was a GM decision
to make disease harmless.]
> The problem with this approach is that experienced players can easily see
> through this.
> "Oh no, Reginald the Thief has caught Soul Waste. If we rest here, Devin will
> attack us with monsters or something."
> Your approach works the first time or two, then gets old.
How so? Rest is a standard situation for unbidden interaction with beasts of all sorts - how often did you as GM attack the party resting for the night? The longer the party remains stationary, the more likely all kind of nasties will harrass them, beginning with ants and mosquitos smelling a picknick, and building up so that after a while every hunter worth his furs will notice their preence even without them using a fire.
Being "attacked" is the standard situation out in the wilds. Getting rest is an exception, at least if tried over more than 8 hours.
> "Agreed, this is illogical. Simple fix: a succeeding roll just lessens
> severity of the disease by one level."
> Better fix: You roll once per day to shake off any and all diseases. Let's
> make a terminal disease live up to its name.
This still makes me one day shaking with fever, the next day as fit as I'm going to become without magical intervention.
> "Again, GM decision to let the characters go off lightly. Why do you
> complain in the first hand, if you don't want to make disease a problem?"
> I complain because I don't want to have to go through these hoops and
> gyrations to make disease a thing of dread. Why attack the problem,
> indirectly by making the GM have to throw extra encounters, et al at the
> party? Just fix the disease rules. Simple.
I'm not talking about extra encounters, I'm talking about the difference a normally annoying single jackal makes to a fit adventurer trying to get sleep compared to a diseased character unable to fend off a nibble or two. These harrassments happen all the time, but to the diseased they matter.
I simply think that CON*3 is the standard roll for disease recovery for
a normal disease, under normal conditions. If your players think otherwise
and try to rules lawyer you, don't let them, and play out how their
chances sink with every single horse-fly bite to CON*1. Afterwards,
they'll believe you with CON*3...
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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