Illness and Disease

[lecudas 170]

Hey there faithful forumites!

I am working on a pretty gritty sci-fi setting, and am wondering if anyone have given any thought to rules regarding sicknesses and diseases. PCs in my campaign will encounter various alien maladies, and also viral outbreaks on earth and in space... I couldn't even really locate any rules on how to handle sickness in the Star Wars RPG. Any ideas? I am thinking something along Resilience checks and Strain damage, but am open to suggestions!

[DarthGM 2,323]

Catching a sickness or disease is almost like getting a critical injury. Think about it; your body is now occupied fighting off the disease, so any further damage to it is even more severe (i.e. +10 to the critical injury roll for already having a critical injury).

It doesn't have to be something from the existing table. Like, "common cold" could be an Easy critical injury that applies one setback die to all rolls while the Critical Injury is in effect.  Martian Death Flu could be a Hard Critical Injury that increases the difficulty or upgrades the difficulty of all skill checks until cured. Think along those lines and you might find what you're looking for.

[Richardbuxton 7,234]

57 minutes ago, DarthGM said:

Catching a sickness or disease is almost like getting a critical injury. Think about it; your body is now occupied fighting off the disease, so any further damage to it is even more severe (i.e. +10 to the critical injury roll for already having a critical injury).

It doesn't have to be something from the existing table. Like, "common cold" could be an Easy critical injury that applies one setback die to all rolls while the Critical Injury is in effect.  Martian Death Flu could be a Hard Critical Injury that increases the difficulty or upgrades the difficulty of all skill checks until cured. Think along those lines and you might find what you're looking for.

This.

rebuild the Crit table into a list of symptoms. As the disease gets worse the symptoms add up and get worse. The ultimate 150+ Would be death just like the Crit 

[yeti1069 339]

Sounds interesting! I'll wait here for someone to put up such a table.

Edited December 24, 2017 by yeti1069

[DarthGM 2,323]

On 12/22/2017 at 8:31 PM, Richardbuxton said:

This.

rebuild the Crit table into a list of symptoms. As the disease gets worse the symptoms add up and get worse. The ultimate 150+ Would be death just like the Crit 

I like your idea here...

[Richardbuxton 7,234]

Things like these would be fun, they are not in order of severity, just the order I thought of them:

Runny nose: recover 1 less Strain whenever recovering Strain.

Sneezes: add a setback dice to all combat checks

Watery eyes: add setback dice to any vision related checks

Conjunctivitis: add a difficulty dice to all vision related checks

Fever: Unable to recover Strain by any method other than medical attention.

Boils: Upgrade all checks to interact socially with others.

Contageous: Anyone coming within Engaged of you must make an Average Resilience check or suffer a disease symptom at -20 on the roll.

Highly Contagious: Anyone coming within Short range of you must make a Hard Resilience check or suffer a disease symptom by rolling on the disease table.

Comatose: you fall unconscious, suffering 1 Wound every hour until you either pass the Resilience check to recover from the disease, are stabilised with medical care, or die from disease/Critical injuries.

150+ Haemorrhaging: Internall bleeding will kill you at the end of the next round or in 5 minuets.

Edited December 26, 2017 by Richardbuxton

[Richardbuxton 7,234]

If others can contribute ideas I’ll build it into a list, suggest severity ranges for them if you have ideas.

The general idea is when exposed to a disease you make a Resilience check of a predetermined Difficulty, if you fail then roll a d100 on the table. Each prior symptom adds 10 to the roll, some talents may reduce the roll.

To recover you make a Resilience check against the most severe symptom each day, or when appropriate to the story. Success means you recover from that symptom, Triumph can be spent to recover from the next lower symptom.

Is that too complicated? Should it be a Resilience check for each symptom? Or Success and you recover from them all?

 

Perhaps failure on the daily Resilience check results in another symptom?

Edited December 26, 2017 by Richardbuxton

[yeti1069 339]

6 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

If others can contribute ideas I’ll build it into a list, suggest severity ranges for them if you have ideas.

The general idea is when exposed to a disease you make a Resilience check of a predetermined Difficulty, if you fail then roll a d100 on the table. Each prior symptom adds 10 to the roll, some talents may reduce the roll.

To recover you make a Resilience check against the most severe symptom each day, or when appropriate to the story. Success means you recover from that symptom, Triumph can be spent to recover from the next lower symptom.

Is that too complicated? Should it be a Resilience check for each symptom? Or Success and you recover from them all?

 

Perhaps failure on the daily Resilience check results in another symptom?

Rather than add new talents to combat disease (I could see adding maybe one), the results of the Resilience check could be used to affect the d% roll...

Success = unaffected by the disease.

Advantage on a failure could reduce the roll by 10.

Triumph could delay the effects of the disease for another day, or allow you to ignore (not be affected by) the symptom from the disease.

Threat could add 10 to the roll.

Despair could double the effects of the symptom for a day, or force you to roll twice on the table (not adding +10).

 

I think disease recovery should maybe be a little faster than critical injury recovery, where appropriate. I would probably have each symptom, or each tier of severity dictate how frequently you get to roll a Resilience check: once a day, once every two days, once a week, once a month? Medicine checks could grant a new roll, or hasten how fast you get to try a new roll? The tough part, I think, is balancing the streamlined nature of the system with the fact that some diseases (in real life) last forever (are incurable), for years, months, or weeks.

[Richardbuxton 7,234]

Definitely agree disease should be faster to recover, that’s why I suggested a daily roll.

What if there was an optional rule:

If your character ever receives the same symptom for a second time it becomes permanent and incurable without some extraordinary event occurring.

 

For Talents I was thinking of something like Blooded, also something like Durable but for disease.

[yeti1069 339]

Seems reasonable. Could also use Despair for that.