Can't we just use cure disease? Oh wait now it's remove disease I think.

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On Sun, 19 Apr 2020 12:07:47 -0700 (PDT), tkerruish@yahoo.com wrote:

Can't we just use cure disease? Oh wait now it's remove disease I think.

Might be expensive.

Let's see: going by old-school rules*, a Cure Disease spell costs
1,000gp. 10 coins to a pound, so that's 100lbs of gold, or 1,600
ounces. Price of gold is now about $1,600 USD (neat coincidence!) per
ounce, so that comes to $2.5 million USD per spell.

Currently there are 1.6million active, tracked cases of COVID-19. That
comes to $4 trillion USD to cure them all. Ouch. If we just cast the
spells on the current critical cases - around 40,000 people - it would
still set us back a mere $100 billion USD. That's just for the people
we know have the disease, of course; there's a lot of untested out
there. And of course, none of these spells would prevent a recurrence
of the pandemic, since they don't grant immunity and - since the
survivors didn't get their on their own - they haven't built up the
necessary antibodies.

Still, it's quite obvious the American Healthcare Industry has gotten
their greedy fingers into clerical healing too. Think they'll give us
a discount for mass-healings?




* The only DMG I found that specified the price for Cure Disease was
first edition, so that's what I used. Later editions also shrink the
weight of a coin down to about 1/3 of an ounce each, so divide
calculated prices above by 3 if you are living in a world that uses 2E
or later rules ;-)

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On Monday, April 20, 2020 at 6:11:25 AM UTC-7, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2020 12:07:47 -0700 (PDT), tkerruish@yahoo.com wrote:

Can't we just use cure disease? Oh wait now it's remove disease I think.

Might be expensive.

Let's see: going by old-school rules*, a Cure Disease spell costs
1,000gp. 10 coins to a pound, so that's 100lbs of gold, or 1,600
ounces. Price of gold is now about $1,600 USD (neat coincidence!) per
ounce, so that comes to $2.5 million USD per spell.

Currently there are 1.6million active, tracked cases of COVID-19. That
comes to $4 trillion USD to cure them all. Ouch. If we just cast the
spells on the current critical cases - around 40,000 people - it would
still set us back a mere $100 billion USD. That's just for the people
we know have the disease, of course; there's a lot of untested out
there. And of course, none of these spells would prevent a recurrence
of the pandemic, since they don't grant immunity and - since the
survivors didn't get their on their own - they haven't built up the
necessary antibodies.

Still, it's quite obvious the American Healthcare Industry has gotten
their greedy fingers into clerical healing too. Think they'll give us
a discount for mass-healings?

* The only DMG I found that specified the price for Cure Disease was
first edition, so that's what I used. Later editions also shrink the
weight of a coin down to about 1/3 of an ounce each, so divide
calculated prices above by 3 if you are living in a world that uses 2E
or later rules ;-)

Later editions are 50 to the pound so 1/5. That price is what clerics charge in 1e, but will do it free for the faithful, or quests etc.

In 3e you could perhaps go for the price of cure disease potions, which I think are 200 gold? That's even more though.

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tkerruish@yahoo.com wrote:

Can't we just use cure disease? Oh wait now it's remove disease I think.

If memory serves, there's a campaign based on a plague.

I know for certain there's an adventure in which the players have to investigate a plague and filth infested junkyard or city dump.

--
Every American should want President Trump and his administration to handle
the coronavirus epidemic effectively and successfully. Those who seem eager
to see the president fail and to call every administration misstep a fiasco risk letting their partisanship blind them to the demands not only of civic responsibility but of basic decency.

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On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 16:20:36 -0400, Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net>
wrote:

tkerruish@yahoo.com wrote:

Can't we just use cure disease? Oh wait now it's remove disease I think.

If memory serves, there's a campaign based on a plague.
I know for certain there's an adventure in which the players have to >investigate a plague and filth infested junkyard or city dump.

Are there otyughs*? It's not a proper dump-adventure without an
otyugh. They're a criminally underused critter, the otyugh.

I've long considered doing an adventure revolving around plague;
historically, it's always been a major event and it would probably
make for some interesting role-playing. Plague has existed in my
campaign world (it's fairly low-magic, so clerical healing isn't up to
the task of immunizing the whole population) but mostly as a
background event. Putting the players in a diseased city and having
them deal with the chaos that results would probably make for an
interesting experience.

Or, it would have a year ago. Right now, it's a) too immediate, and b) impossible since our group still hasn't played since we decided to
isolate some months back. Even after we get back to our semi-regular
schedule, I can't imagine doing a plague-based adventure anytime soon.
It would seem too much a reaction to COVID-19 rather than something
I'm doing just because it seems neat.







* Otyughs? Otyughi? Or is otyugh one of those words that don't have a
unique plural, like deers and mooses and spaghettis?

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On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 16:20:36 -0400, Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net>
wrote:

Every American should want President Trump and his administration to handle >the coronavirus epidemic effectively and successfully. Those who seem eager >to see the president fail and to call every administration misstep a fiasco >risk letting their partisanship blind them to the demands not only of civic >responsibility but of basic decency.

He finally put on a mask today. It only took over one hundred thirty
thousand people dieing to convince him it was better to wear a mask.

He has done nothing effectively, but lie.

Now, let us see if he stops stealing PPE away from places that need
it.

And maybe he can get the 12 tons of it he shipped to China earlier
this year.

--
Jim

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spallshurgenson@gmail.com wrote:

Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

tkerruish@yahoo.com wrote:

Can't we just use cure disease? Oh wait now it's remove disease I think.

If memory serves, there's a campaign based on a plague.
I know for certain there's an adventure in which the players have to >>investigate a plague and filth infested junkyard or city dump.

Are there otyughs*? It's not a proper dump-adventure without an
otyugh. They're a criminally underused critter, the otyugh.

I think it did, but this was a low-level adventure, so that wouldn't make sense.

I've long considered doing an adventure revolving around plague; >historically, it's always been a major event and it would probably
make for some interesting role-playing. Plague has existed in my
campaign world (it's fairly low-magic, so clerical healing isn't up to
the task of immunizing the whole population) but mostly as a
background event. Putting the players in a diseased city and having
them deal with the chaos that results would probably make for an
interesting experience.

Yeah, that's what the adventure (maybe it was an adventure path) involved.

--
Every American should want President Trump and his administration to handle
the coronavirus epidemic effectively and successfully. Those who seem eager
to see the president fail and to call every administration misstep a fiasco risk letting their partisanship blind them to the demands not only of civic responsibility but of basic decency.

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On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 14:17:45 -0400, Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net>
wrote:

spallshurgenson@gmail.com wrote:

Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

tkerruish@yahoo.com wrote:

Can't we just use cure disease? Oh wait now it's remove disease I think.

If memory serves, there's a campaign based on a plague.
I know for certain there's an adventure in which the players have to >>>investigate a plague and filth infested junkyard or city dump.

I've long considered doing an adventure revolving around plague; >>historically, it's always been a major event and it would probably
make for some interesting role-playing. Plague has existed in my
campaign world (it's fairly low-magic, so clerical healing isn't up to
the task of immunizing the whole population) but mostly as a
background event. Putting the players in a diseased city and having
them deal with the chaos that results would probably make for an >>interesting experience.

Yeah, that's what the adventure (maybe it was an adventure path) involved.

Perhaps you are thinking of the "Curse of the Crimson Throne"
adventures for Pathfinder? It dealt with plague, but I've not played
that one (or read it, for that matter). I tend not to use official
adventures anyway. It's more fun to create my own ;-). But apparently
a good chunk of it has the players stuck in a plague-ravaged city.

One of my recent campaigns had plague as a significant part of its
backstory but I never really used it for more than atmosphere; by the
time the heroes had gotten involved, it was a historical event. Still,
it wouldn't be too outrageous for the disease to make a return. That
is, if I were willing to go that route; as I said, I think it's "too
soon" for that sort of thing. And if I don't reset the campaign,
moving it to another location and with new PCs. And if - the biggest
if of them all - my group ever gets back together again. This stupid
pandemic has no sympathy for D&D players who prefer to play over an
actual tabletop ;-)

Even so, I'm not sure I'd use the disease as an actual plot-point
(e.g. the heroes need to find a cure) but rather would have it as a
continuing background event. Sure, it would might affect the adventure
but it wouldn't be the crux of the campaign. That a single band of
heroes *could* singlehandedly solve such a devastating occurence would
only weaken its impact anyway.

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spallshurgenson@gmail.com wrote:

Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

spallshurgenson@gmail.com wrote:

Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

If memory serves, there's a campaign based on a plague.
I know for certain there's an adventure in which the players have to >>>>investigate a plague and filth infested junkyard or city dump.

I've long considered doing an adventure revolving around plague; >>>historically, it's always been a major event and it would probably
make for some interesting role-playing. Plague has existed in my
campaign world (it's fairly low-magic, so clerical healing isn't up to >>>the task of immunizing the whole population) but mostly as a
background event. Putting the players in a diseased city and having
them deal with the chaos that results would probably make for an >>>interesting experience.

Yeah, that's what the adventure (maybe it was an adventure path) involved.

Perhaps you are thinking of the "Curse of the Crimson Throne"
adventures for Pathfinder? It dealt with plague, but I've not played
that one (or read it, for that matter). I tend not to use official
adventures anyway. It's more fun to create my own ;-). But apparently
a good chunk of it has the players stuck in a plague-ravaged city.

I think we played that in my Monday night game, but we never finished anything so it's hard to say. It involved a feuding mother and daughter (who wore Valentine's Day S&M gear?) in power struggle over Kordova while the Ice Queen kept launching attacks on their city. Now that I think about it, one of the players negotiated a truce between three, allowing them to pool their Evil power instead of using it on each other. Oops!

I finally looked it up and the adventure was The Stink, a 4th level adventure from Dungeon #105:
https://annarchive.com/files/Dungeon%20Magazine%20%23105.pdf

In summary, Incabulos was using The Stink, the region a large city was dumping their trash and sewage (because they couldn't afford to make a new one) into the poor part of town, to create new plagues to release on the world. The
party was hired to investigate the sudden appearance of ghouls, otygs, and oozes making it dangerous for the garbage men working there.

One of my recent campaigns had plague as a significant part of its
backstory but I never really used it for more than atmosphere; by the
time the heroes had gotten involved, it was a historical event. Still,
it wouldn't be too outrageous for the disease to make a return. That
is, if I were willing to go that route; as I said, I think it's "too
soon" for that sort of thing. And if I don't reset the campaign,
moving it to another location and with new PCs. And if - the biggest
if of them all - my group ever gets back together again. This stupid
pandemic has no sympathy for D&D players who prefer to play over an
actual tabletop ;-)

Even so, I'm not sure I'd use the disease as an actual plot-point
(e.g. the heroes need to find a cure) but rather would have it as a >continuing background event. Sure, it would might affect the adventure
but it wouldn't be the crux of the campaign. That a single band of
heroes *could* singlehandedly solve such a devastating occurence would
only weaken its impact anyway.

In Greyhawk, the Fate of Istus (WG8) involved a plague as a way to switch to 2nd edition.

I definitely remember someone doing a plague for his Greyhawk campaign which was later included in the Living Greyhawk tournement game.

--
Every American should want President Trump and his administration to handle
the coronavirus epidemic effectively and successfully. Those who seem eager
to see the president fail and to call every administration misstep a fiasco risk letting their partisanship blind them to the demands not only of civic responsibility but of basic decency.

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