Been messing with a homebrew outline for a while based off of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
In the original many prominent figures die to age or disease. How would you deal with this issue when many races are long lived, and their are clerics about that can just cure any sort of illness?
You create obstacles to prevent the simple solutions. The populace fears the gods, or god of your cleric. There is a restriction that disallows anyone from approaching the person, such as quarantines. Aging goes normally, rather than per the book, or that aging creates a problem where the race(s) aren't trusted. Pretty much use the idea of fear, confusion, racism, bias, etc. to create roadblocks for the "easy" solutions.
The long-lived races are far less common than humans and generally don't build empires.
Disease won't be a concern for powerful individuals, but powerful curses and old age are still problems for human leaders. However, all the magic in the world can't easily fix problems tied to human behavior. If your right hand man wants to kill you and take your place or someone's starting an uprising, those are hard problems to solve. Assassination is harder to thwart when your killer can teleport or haunt your dreams from the other side of the country. Someone in your court could be cutting deals with a devil, or a yuan-ti spy might've infiltrated your inner circle.
The simple answer is to modify the rules to accomodate a world where age and disease matter. Remove the long-lived races or restrict them to NPCs; alternatively, reduce their lifespans to be in line with their human counterparts and give some explanation (or don't). Reduce access to magic that can cure diseases, either by restricting it outright or making it much more difficult to obtain or use. Or create diseases that are supernatural in nature and not curable by the normal means.
There's nothing wrong with making these kinds of changes. You just need to be upfront about it with your players.
That’s a tough one. The dark and gritty part of some stories are hard to achieve with the tools of D&D at hand. If you run it as a one off adventure or short campaign, you can go with an alternate setting where you simply remove some spells or say that different rules apply. One shots can be a lot of fun.
Otherwise, there is always the excuse as a DM that there are incurable diseases. Did a god or another powerful entity (well beyond that of mere PC:s) curse the families, making them immune to the spells of clerics?
Keep the key players human and aging is “normal”. If memories of other races create a problem, perhaps keep non humans rare in the region or simply uninterested in the goings of mere men?
EDIT: pretty much the same answer again. All these posts popping up while writing this. :)
Lot of fast replies, but yeah just trying to figure out what to do with some of the more notable npcs due to those concerns. Got a weird mix of the historical and theatrical version and am taking inspirations from multiple sources on the base material.
Writing out a simplified plot outline of things that need to happen. But if you look at some of the more notable characters like Zuge Liang having him simply pass away from illness and age doesn't seem that exciting. Just trying to think of ways to make it more plausible. Best solution on my own was clerics are simply rare, make them favored priest of their diety, i.e. normal priest and then magic powers priest.
I would recommend first designing your diseases. Are they bacterial? Fungal? Parasitic? Viral? How contagious are they? What are the symptoms? Is the disease fatal and is so, what's the mortality rate?
Then, assign your diseases levels, with higher levels representing more difficulty in curing. Then make a house rule that states that a disease can only be cured by a spell of an equal or higher level to its own. Then you can make some diseases that have effects upon being cured by magic, diseases that spread to others so quickly that clerics run out of spell slots before being able to stem the infection, or just plain old super bugs with a a magic twist, resistant to being cured, either requiring multiple casting, or causing the would-be healer to incur a penalty on any roll cure it.
Best solution on my own was clerics are simply rare, make them favored priest of their diety, i.e. normal priest and then magic powers priest.
That's actually how clerics are currently defined. Not all priests are clerics, and not all clerics are priests. clerics are rarer and divinely appointed.
Best solution on my own was clerics are simply rare, make them favored priest of their diety, i.e. normal priest and then magic powers priest.
That's actually how clerics are currently defined. Not all priests are clerics, and not all clerics are priests. clerics are rarer and divinely appointed.
More around the lines of 1 per god, their messianic figure. My old campaigns usually had 1-2 a town (per god) acting as keepers and guards of shrines/churches.
Best solution on my own was clerics are simply rare, make them favored priest of their diety, i.e. normal priest and then magic powers priest.
That's actually how clerics are currently defined. Not all priests are clerics, and not all clerics are priests. clerics are rarer and divinely appointed.
More around the lines of 1 per god, their messianic figure. My old campaigns usually had 1-2 a town (per god) acting as keepers and guards of shrines/churches.
Something else to think about is that there are apprentices that are "learning" how to be a Cleric but can't actually perform the feat. Also, you could work it in that diseases actually decrease the "estimated" age of someone (i.e. a serious disease even when cured takes several years off of a person's life). So a Human that might live to 80 gets a serious disease when younger and might live close to 80 if cured in time, but if it goes too long, it might decrease that age; or if the person has the disease later in life, there is less of a chance of it getting cured. You can even make the Great Dwarf Blight of 0032. Just some thoughts.
i dont think you have an issue you just slow the aggression of the disease on the longer living races. As for dealing with clerics, i would just use a magical plague that has a resistance, they might delay death but cant stop it. you dont trample on them for all diseases, and they dont trample your plot.
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Been messing with a homebrew outline for a while based off of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
In the original many prominent figures die to age or disease. How would you deal with this issue when many races are long lived, and their are clerics about that can just cure any sort of illness?
You create obstacles to prevent the simple solutions. The populace fears the gods, or god of your cleric. There is a restriction that disallows anyone from approaching the person, such as quarantines. Aging goes normally, rather than per the book, or that aging creates a problem where the race(s) aren't trusted. Pretty much use the idea of fear, confusion, racism, bias, etc. to create roadblocks for the "easy" solutions.
The long-lived races are far less common than humans and generally don't build empires.
Disease won't be a concern for powerful individuals, but powerful curses and old age are still problems for human leaders. However, all the magic in the world can't easily fix problems tied to human behavior. If your right hand man wants to kill you and take your place or someone's starting an uprising, those are hard problems to solve. Assassination is harder to thwart when your killer can teleport or haunt your dreams from the other side of the country. Someone in your court could be cutting deals with a devil, or a yuan-ti spy might've infiltrated your inner circle.
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The simple answer is to modify the rules to accomodate a world where age and disease matter. Remove the long-lived races or restrict them to NPCs; alternatively, reduce their lifespans to be in line with their human counterparts and give some explanation (or don't). Reduce access to magic that can cure diseases, either by restricting it outright or making it much more difficult to obtain or use. Or create diseases that are supernatural in nature and not curable by the normal means.
There's nothing wrong with making these kinds of changes. You just need to be upfront about it with your players.
That’s a tough one. The dark and gritty part of some stories are hard to achieve with the tools of D&D at hand. If you run it as a one off adventure or short campaign, you can go with an alternate setting where you simply remove some spells or say that different rules apply. One shots can be a lot of fun.
Otherwise, there is always the excuse as a DM that there are incurable diseases. Did a god or another powerful entity (well beyond that of mere PC:s) curse the families, making them immune to the spells of clerics?
Keep the key players human and aging is “normal”. If memories of other races create a problem, perhaps keep non humans rare in the region or simply uninterested in the goings of mere men?
EDIT: pretty much the same answer again. All these posts popping up while writing this. :)
Lot of fast replies, but yeah just trying to figure out what to do with some of the more notable npcs due to those concerns. Got a weird mix of the historical and theatrical version and am taking inspirations from multiple sources on the base material.
Writing out a simplified plot outline of things that need to happen. But if you look at some of the more notable characters like Zuge Liang having him simply pass away from illness and age doesn't seem that exciting. Just trying to think of ways to make it more plausible. Best solution on my own was clerics are simply rare, make them favored priest of their diety, i.e. normal priest and then magic powers priest.
I would recommend first designing your diseases. Are they bacterial? Fungal? Parasitic? Viral? How contagious are they? What are the symptoms? Is the disease fatal and is so, what's the mortality rate?
Then, assign your diseases levels, with higher levels representing more difficulty in curing. Then make a house rule that states that a disease can only be cured by a spell of an equal or higher level to its own. Then you can make some diseases that have effects upon being cured by magic, diseases that spread to others so quickly that clerics run out of spell slots before being able to stem the infection, or just plain old super bugs with a a magic twist, resistant to being cured, either requiring multiple casting, or causing the would-be healer to incur a penalty on any roll cure it.
Ongoing Projects: The Mimic Book of Mimics :: SHARK WEEK
Completed Projects: The Trick-or-Treat Table
My Homebrews: Races :: Classes :: Spells :: Items :: Monsters
That would certainly limit their numbers.
Ongoing Projects: The Mimic Book of Mimics :: SHARK WEEK
Completed Projects: The Trick-or-Treat Table
My Homebrews: Races :: Classes :: Spells :: Items :: Monsters
i dont think you have an issue you just slow the aggression of the disease on the longer living races. As for dealing with clerics, i would just use a magical plague that has a resistance, they might delay death but cant stop it. you dont trample on them for all diseases, and they dont trample your plot.