I don't think Lesser Restoration is problematic. I think its clear that Disease and Poison aren't meant to be constant, lethal threats. There's a huge number of classes and races that automatically get some defense against poison and disease:
Artificer (Alchemist) becomes immune to the poisoned condition and resistant to poison damage. (They also cast Lesser Restoration at a discount).
Druid (Spores) becomes immune to poison.
Druid (Land) becomes immune to poison and disease.
All Monks become immune to poison and disease.
All Paladins become immune to disease.
Sorcerer (Draconic) may be resistant to poison damage.
Warlock (Undying) has advantage versus disease.
Dragonborn may be resistant to poison damage.
All Dwarves have advantage versus poisons and resistance to poison damage.
Halfling (Stout) have advantage versus poisons and resistance to poison damage.
Yuan-ti Purebloods are immune to poison.
Warforged are immune to disease, have advantage versus poisons, and resistance to poison damage.
Locathah have advantage versus poison.
Grung are immune to poison (though they're grey-area official).
And those are just automatic, passive defenses. For instance, a Paladin can cure poison for 5 hit points worth of healing. Casting Lesser Restoration instead of a level 2 Cure Wounds means you're sacrificing something like 12 points of healing and a spell slot.
A poison would have to deal tremendous amounts of instantaneous damage or incapacitate the target to be a threat, at which point you're in Save or Die territory anyway (wrong direction) and Lesser Restoration wouldn't really help.
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Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
Strangely, I actually had this very conversation recently, on a very similar topic.
I think it comes down to what your issue is. If you think, from a rules perspective, that being able to remove a condition or disease with a 2nd level slot is too powerful... then that's one thing. Personally, I reckon it's balanced well enough. As a combat mechanic, they require the decision to either push through to continue fighting, or spend a turn and resources to sort out.
But if your issue is that it makes diseases and conditions hard to weave into any kind of story hook because they're so trivial, then that's different... e.g: 'Adventurers, please help!...the king's daughter has been afflicted with a terrible disease by a witch... she's been told she has but one week to cure it, or will be forever afflicted with... oh, nevermind... low-level cleric just swung by. Be on your way.'
If it's a story hook, then in my mind, it doesn't have the obey what are essentially combat rules. Average D&D PC Game, Neverwinter Nights did this... twice in fact... with a city-wide plague called the Wailing Death. 'Our strongest magic can't cure it... and those killed by it cannot be raised from the dead!'
Well isn't that convenient to a plot that's revolved around gathering reagents to cure it? Turned out it was a plague with a divine edge, so it couldn't just be cured with restoration magic... because plot.
And then later in its slightly better-than-average expansion pack, Shadows of Undrentide, in which someone is afflicted by poison: 'I should be able to counter it with my magic... hold on good Dwarf! ... What?? The poison resists!? This is no simple toxin these kobolds have used here...'
I don't think Neverwinter Nights did a very good job of not simply hand-waving the issue away... but they didn't have your top-notch DM story-telling skills, did they.
As a DM, if your plot requires a disease that can't just be Lesser Restoration'd away, then I'd say feel free to invent one - and make it dramatic and part of the story. Your cleric is summoned to cure it, up he steps, casts his spell... and nothing... well that's both embarrassing, and suddenly very worrying - this isn't 'just a disease'. Sometimes the mechanics and rules have to take a back-seat to the story you're trying to tell.
If you want a disease or poison to be a plot point, yeah, have it be something special that's not treatable by ordinary magic. If you want to have a disease outbreak ravage an area, do so. Remember that the average commoner isn't going to go running to the local temple as soon as they've got the sniffles. It's probably expensive for them and the local clergy doesn't have an unlimited number of Lesser Restorations per day. The party might be able to cure 12 cases of Gnoll Pox a day, but that's only if they blow all the cleric and paladin's magic on healing people. And that's not going to work if there are 50 new infections every day. Guess saving the day requires a quest and should be done in a hurry.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
On a different note, if you are a DM who has grappled with this issue in your campaign-planning, world-building, how have you solved it? Do you prepare a list of house rules and read them off the players before the make their characters? If the campaign has already begun, is there a graceful way of introducing this kind of houserule?
What am I trying to do? If I want a plague, I'll laugh at their wasting of spellslots to solve a problem that won't go away fast enough being cast on 4 people a day.
If I want them specifically to get sick, I could just create a disease that mutes them as a symptom. They can't speak, they can't cast lesser restoration. Of course, this does nothing for Paladin's lay on hands. If they have that, I'll just let them have it. They chose a whole class for it, so it doesn't bother me none.
Instead of poison, you could curse them with silence, then curse them with disadvantage on attack rolls. That's probably torture and bad design, though, so make sure to target the cleric when you do, no more remove curses for you.
I don't have a problem with a class/race ability or feature that resists or prevents disease or poison on one person. That fits the theme of the class or race and it only protects that one individual.
The difference with the spell as written is that it provides instant relief for conditions that we know can be quite dangerous in real life and has been frequently crucial to plot points in fiction and in changing how we see people.
Anybody here who remembers the last season of Star Trek: DS 9 knows how crucial having a disease agent be used against _________ was to the ending. We're talking about a fictional advanced scientific universe and even they don't have an equivalent to Lesser Restoration. A wonder drug that works on every disease is ridiculously earth-shattering an influence to just blithely exist without explanation and caveats. And good thing it didn't exist, too, b/c that would have completely changed the ending to DS 9. Yes, it's a different fictional universe, but my point is that the disease mattered in a big way to the story precisely b/c not everybody could shake some prayer beads and Voila! no more sickness.
Genghis Khan, one of the most effective military leaders in history. Suffered from gout much of his latter life due to his rich diet, which may have been related to his fall from a horse during his final campaign, leading to his death at 60 and thus preventing the collapse of continental Europe to the Mongol Empire. Ludwig Beethoven, an impressive composer well remembered to this day. His hearing gradually went out on him. As the story goes, he was so deaf towards the end of his career that he couldn't even hear the loud applause that the audience gave him for his final symphony. James Joyce suffered from syphilis while writing "Ulysses." These and other stories of illness are so memorable because they relay to us how even the influential and powerful are subject to the common experiences of everyday people. There is something about them that whispers to us the shared human capacity for fame/notoriety/achievement despite physical infirmities.
So when I say that a story-telling hook gets taken away by an always-reliable 2nd level spell, I mean not only that DMs have to use DM fiat to create a divine spell-resistant plague meaningful as a doorway to a quest, I also mean that it alters the kinds of stories we and our players allow ourselves to tell. Many PCs have backstories about their parents being killed in a monster raid, right? How many PCs have backstories about becoming an Illusionist because she was the hearing kid raised by deaf parents so that she could show them what music "sounds" like? Or whose hard-drinking Wizard uncle died in combat, not from being impaled on a sword, but from falling off a horse because of his hangover and ended up drowning in a rushing river? See how that can change the depth of the story? B/c Lesser Restoration is unfailingly reliable, it short-circuits many people from mining everyday life for informing the reasons they became heroes in the first place and once they become heroic adventurers it detaches them from the NPCs who often become little more than just dispensers of magic item/beer/quest hook/one-night-stand.
We have antibiotics now and people still die of infections. Why? Because the existence of a cure is not the same thing as having that cure be readily available to everyone, everywhere. The fact that there is a spell to cure disease does not mean that the average person in a D&D world can easily get it like they're buying a pack of Tylenol from the local Walgreens. Does the fact that Cure Wounds exists mean that it's suddenly unrealistic to have a character who's mother was killed by a hobgoblin?
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
If your Big Bad had an ally that could normally dispel the status effects but, now couldn't due to the inclusion of your house rules, that would be the difference in results.
Very marginally. A lot of big bads will have legendary resistance, mooting the issue, and if not, the supporting ally has to be alive (usually the mooks die first in a mooks+boss encounter) and needs an action before someone walks up and ganks the boss. If the PCs using crawler venom is a known tactic, Protection from Poison is a better use of a second level spell slot.
If the OP is already pissed about 2nd lvl Lesser Resto, this is rubbing salt in the wounds, LOL.
We have antibiotics now and people still die of infections. Why? Because the existence of a cure is not the same thing as having that cure be readily available to everyone, everywhere. The fact that there is a spell to cure disease does not mean that the average person in a D&D world can easily get it like they're buying a pack of Tylenol from the local Walgreens. Does the fact that Cure Wounds exists mean that it's suddenly unrealistic to have a character who's mother was killed by a hobgoblin?
No, people still do die of infections. In fact, there are now antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria killing people. Because nature is not stagnant. It adapts to human chemical warfare, which, from the bacteria's POV, is what antibiotics amount to.
Lesser Restoration is free. No material component costs. That means any cleric with a 2nd level spell slot can cast it.
I don't know where you extrapolated that I think it's unrealistic that somebody's mother got killed by a hobgoblin. That is totally realistic in a D&D universe.
If your Big Bad had an ally that could normally dispel the status effects but, now couldn't due to the inclusion of your house rules, that would be the difference in results.
Very marginally. A lot of big bads will have legendary resistance, mooting the issue, and if not, the supporting ally has to be alive (usually the mooks die first in a mooks+boss encounter) and needs an action before someone walks up and ganks the boss. If the PCs using crawler venom is a known tactic, Protection from Poison is a better use of a second level spell slot.
If the OP is already pissed about 2nd lvl Lesser Resto, this is rubbing salt in the wounds, LOL.
I don't know why you would assume that. A spell used as a preventative measure to evade poison is not the same as a spell used ex post facto on any and all disease. You're talking about comparing apples and oranges, as I see it.
We have antibiotics now and people still die of infections. Why? Because the existence of a cure is not the same thing as having that cure be readily available to everyone, everywhere. The fact that there is a spell to cure disease does not mean that the average person in a D&D world can easily get it like they're buying a pack of Tylenol from the local Walgreens. Does the fact that Cure Wounds exists mean that it's suddenly unrealistic to have a character who's mother was killed by a hobgoblin?
No, people still do die of infections. In fact, there are now antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria killing people. Because nature is not stagnant. It adapts to human chemical warfare, which, from the bacteria's POV, is what antibiotics amount to.
Lesser Restoration is free. No material component costs. That means any cleric with a 2nd level spell slot can cast it.
I don't know where you extrapolated that I think it's unrealistic that somebody's mother got killed by a hobgoblin. That is totally realistic in a D&D universe.
Because Cure Wounds is a first level spell with no expensive components, which by your own logic means that it should be even easier to negate death due to physical trauma than death due to illness or toxin.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Death from sword/axe/arrow happens very quickly to a level 0 NPC. All it takes is one hit, often times, for a non-adventurer to die (subject to DM plot armor). Therefore, a hobgoblin raid causing deaths to 0 level persons? Totally makes sense.
Cure Wounds is not the same as a Revivify or Raise Dead spell, which have very justifiable material component costs for precisely that reason I am saying that Lesser Restoration should not be free or should not be as 100% reliable for all disease/poison as it currently is. It cheeses and cheapens the condition it was made to alleviate.
People have already explained why that's not the case repeatedly. But you appear to be far too invested in your opinion to actually be willing to listen to anyone else.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
If you think that Lesser Restoration is a problem then I don't know what to tell you about resurrection in this game. I saw that you thought this was fair based on the fact it had a monetary cost tied to it, but the monetary cost associated with it is negligible by the time the PCs have access to the spell. According to the DMG, just 1 treasure hoard of CR 5, yields over 3500 GP in just coins, then there is a whole table for art items, gems, and magic items that can be contained within. At that point just one adventure pays for multiple resurrections. IMO the material cost for all spells in 5e are really just a minor inconvenience at best, unless of course you are making the materials hard to come by at which point why even have a material cost at all?
Just say you need the blood of a hard to find and/or kill monster to get what you need, or have the monster guarding the material. In most cases, DMs that want the players to earn resurrection do something similar to this. Others just hand wave it and have you visit the local jeweler to get what you need.
But regarding Lesser Restoration specifically, many have already mentioned the best ways to get around it if you want it as a plot point. Either make the disease immune to being cured in such a way, or have it spread faster than the cleric's can cure it. It is no different than the way diseases behave in real life, they become resistant to the treatments meant to fight them.
The rules in this game are simply a starting point. There are exceptions to every rule (including a few that are actually baked into certain monsters and spells).
People have already explained why that's not the case repeatedly. But you appear to be far too invested in your opinion to actually be willing to listen to anyone else.
Since you are being vague in your references, I cannot accurately assess the truth or lack thereof to your argument here.
Nasty stuff can happen during the time between getting hit with a condition and curing it. A critical hit caused by a paralyzed character getting hit with an attack doesn't get erased with the condition when lesser restoration is cast.
Roleplaying-wise, the spell restores 1 target per casting. A plague is on too big of a scale for people to rely on it. Perhaps a condition that it normally cures can't be handled that way due to the underlying cause, such as from a curse. It also does not prevent a cured creature from being infected again, so a hag causing a disease on a princess will likely just reapply it once the party moves on, causing the king to recall them again...
One way I had a cursed item not be defeated easily by remove curse was to have it immediately attune to whoever's holding it (again), similarly to how a certain magic sword in a specific campaign can. Thus, an NPC possessed by such a thing has to be handled differently.
Strangely, I actually had this very conversation recently, on a very similar topic.
I think it comes down to what your issue is. If you think, from a rules perspective, that being able to remove a condition or disease with a 2nd level slot is too powerful... then that's one thing. Personally, I reckon it's balanced well enough. As a combat mechanic, they require the decision to either push through to continue fighting, or spend a turn and resources to sort out.
But if your issue is that it makes diseases and conditions hard to weave into any kind of story hook because they're so trivial, then that's different... e.g: 'Adventurers, please help!...the king's daughter has been afflicted with a terrible disease by a witch... she's been told she has but one week to cure it, or will be forever afflicted with... oh, nevermind... low-level cleric just swung by. Be on your way.'
If it's a story hook, then in my mind, it doesn't have the obey what are essentially combat rules. Average D&D PC Game, Neverwinter Nights did this... twice in fact... with a city-wide plague called the Wailing Death. 'Our strongest magic can't cure it... and those killed by it cannot be raised from the dead!'
Well isn't that convenient to a plot that's revolved around gathering reagents to cure it? Turned out it was a plague with a divine edge, so it couldn't just be cured with restoration magic... because plot.
And then later in its slightly better-than-average expansion pack, Shadows of Undrentide, in which someone is afflicted by poison: 'I should be able to counter it with my magic... hold on good Dwarf! ... What?? The poison resists!? This is no simple toxin these kobolds have used here...'
I don't think Neverwinter Nights did a very good job of not simply hand-waving the issue away... but they didn't have your top-notch DM story-telling skills, did they.
As a DM, if your plot requires a disease that can't just be Lesser Restoration'd away, then I'd say feel free to invent one - and make it dramatic and part of the story. Your cleric is summoned to cure it, up he steps, casts his spell... and nothing... well that's both embarrassing, and suddenly very worrying - this isn't 'just a disease'. Sometimes the mechanics and rules have to take a back-seat to the story you're trying to tell.
Yeah and I don't understand the OPs issue with this, the people in the world of DnD aren't going to have the same issues and struggles, they have MAGIC after all. A big city like Waterdeep probably wouldn't suffer the same effects of a normal plague as say a smaller or poorer city with shadier clerics that will only cure for gold. Spell casting is a service after all and I can think of a bunch of temples that wouldn't just toss out free healing like some of the more friendly ones would in a crisis.
But if you need to hit a bigger city like Waterdeep, that normally wouldn't struggle with something like a standard plague spread.. than yeah you have to spice it up so they can't just magic it away.
Yeah and I don't understand the OPs issue with this, the people in the world of DnD aren't going to have the same issues and struggles, they have MAGIC after all. A big city like Waterdeep probably wouldn't suffer the same effects of a normal plague as say a smaller or poorer city with shadier clerics that will only cure for gold. Spell casting is a service after all and I can think of a bunch of temples that wouldn't just toss out free healing like some of the more friendly ones would in a crisis.
This makes me think of the Orzov syndicate in Ravnica. Your friendly healer cleric is going about casting cure wounds and lesser restoration because they're "essentially free," when a grandly-dressed priest walks up to him/her with several thralls in tow and says, "I'd like to have a word with you..."
I've noticed that more poisons and diseases also have shorter duration and hit harder. Compared to older editions.
Poison in 5e hits harder than "save vs. poison or die?"
It arguably hits harder than in 3.5e, since poisons in 3.5e did moderate amounts of ability score damage instead of hp damage, and ability scores aren't terribly variable with level, so 2d8 hp damage (giant spider) is more dangerous to a low level than 1d6 Strength damage. At higher levels that's reversed, since hp go up a lot more with level than ability scores.
"save or die" was the standard in 1E and 2E. (for a lot of effects, not just poison)
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I don't think Lesser Restoration is problematic. I think its clear that Disease and Poison aren't meant to be constant, lethal threats. There's a huge number of classes and races that automatically get some defense against poison and disease:
Artificer (Alchemist) becomes immune to the poisoned condition and resistant to poison damage. (They also cast Lesser Restoration at a discount).
Druid (Spores) becomes immune to poison.
Druid (Land) becomes immune to poison and disease.
All Monks become immune to poison and disease.
All Paladins become immune to disease.
Sorcerer (Draconic) may be resistant to poison damage.
Warlock (Undying) has advantage versus disease.
Dragonborn may be resistant to poison damage.
All Dwarves have advantage versus poisons and resistance to poison damage.
Halfling (Stout) have advantage versus poisons and resistance to poison damage.
Yuan-ti Purebloods are immune to poison.
Warforged are immune to disease, have advantage versus poisons, and resistance to poison damage.
Locathah have advantage versus poison.
Grung are immune to poison (though they're grey-area official).
And those are just automatic, passive defenses. For instance, a Paladin can cure poison for 5 hit points worth of healing. Casting Lesser Restoration instead of a level 2 Cure Wounds means you're sacrificing something like 12 points of healing and a spell slot.
A poison would have to deal tremendous amounts of instantaneous damage or incapacitate the target to be a threat, at which point you're in Save or Die territory anyway (wrong direction) and Lesser Restoration wouldn't really help.
Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
Strangely, I actually had this very conversation recently, on a very similar topic.
I think it comes down to what your issue is. If you think, from a rules perspective, that being able to remove a condition or disease with a 2nd level slot is too powerful... then that's one thing. Personally, I reckon it's balanced well enough. As a combat mechanic, they require the decision to either push through to continue fighting, or spend a turn and resources to sort out.
But if your issue is that it makes diseases and conditions hard to weave into any kind of story hook because they're so trivial, then that's different... e.g: 'Adventurers, please help!...the king's daughter has been afflicted with a terrible disease by a witch... she's been told she has but one week to cure it, or will be forever afflicted with... oh, nevermind... low-level cleric just swung by. Be on your way.'
If it's a story hook, then in my mind, it doesn't have the obey what are essentially combat rules. Average D&D PC Game, Neverwinter Nights did this... twice in fact... with a city-wide plague called the Wailing Death. 'Our strongest magic can't cure it... and those killed by it cannot be raised from the dead!'
Well isn't that convenient to a plot that's revolved around gathering reagents to cure it? Turned out it was a plague with a divine edge, so it couldn't just be cured with restoration magic... because plot.
And then later in its slightly better-than-average expansion pack, Shadows of Undrentide, in which someone is afflicted by poison: 'I should be able to counter it with my magic... hold on good Dwarf! ... What?? The poison resists!? This is no simple toxin these kobolds have used here...'
I don't think Neverwinter Nights did a very good job of not simply hand-waving the issue away... but they didn't have your top-notch DM story-telling skills, did they.
As a DM, if your plot requires a disease that can't just be Lesser Restoration'd away, then I'd say feel free to invent one - and make it dramatic and part of the story. Your cleric is summoned to cure it, up he steps, casts his spell... and nothing... well that's both embarrassing, and suddenly very worrying - this isn't 'just a disease'. Sometimes the mechanics and rules have to take a back-seat to the story you're trying to tell.
If you want a disease or poison to be a plot point, yeah, have it be something special that's not treatable by ordinary magic. If you want to have a disease outbreak ravage an area, do so. Remember that the average commoner isn't going to go running to the local temple as soon as they've got the sniffles. It's probably expensive for them and the local clergy doesn't have an unlimited number of Lesser Restorations per day. The party might be able to cure 12 cases of Gnoll Pox a day, but that's only if they blow all the cleric and paladin's magic on healing people. And that's not going to work if there are 50 new infections every day. Guess saving the day requires a quest and should be done in a hurry.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
What am I trying to do? If I want a plague, I'll laugh at their wasting of spellslots to solve a problem that won't go away fast enough being cast on 4 people a day.
If I want them specifically to get sick, I could just create a disease that mutes them as a symptom. They can't speak, they can't cast lesser restoration. Of course, this does nothing for Paladin's lay on hands. If they have that, I'll just let them have it. They chose a whole class for it, so it doesn't bother me none.
Instead of poison, you could curse them with silence, then curse them with disadvantage on attack rolls. That's probably torture and bad design, though, so make sure to target the cleric when you do, no more remove curses for you.
I don't have a problem with a class/race ability or feature that resists or prevents disease or poison on one person. That fits the theme of the class or race and it only protects that one individual.
The difference with the spell as written is that it provides instant relief for conditions that we know can be quite dangerous in real life and has been frequently crucial to plot points in fiction and in changing how we see people.
Anybody here who remembers the last season of Star Trek: DS 9 knows how crucial having a disease agent be used against _________ was to the ending. We're talking about a fictional advanced scientific universe and even they don't have an equivalent to Lesser Restoration. A wonder drug that works on every disease is ridiculously earth-shattering an influence to just blithely exist without explanation and caveats. And good thing it didn't exist, too, b/c that would have completely changed the ending to DS 9. Yes, it's a different fictional universe, but my point is that the disease mattered in a big way to the story precisely b/c not everybody could shake some prayer beads and Voila! no more sickness.
Genghis Khan, one of the most effective military leaders in history. Suffered from gout much of his latter life due to his rich diet, which may have been related to his fall from a horse during his final campaign, leading to his death at 60 and thus preventing the collapse of continental Europe to the Mongol Empire. Ludwig Beethoven, an impressive composer well remembered to this day. His hearing gradually went out on him. As the story goes, he was so deaf towards the end of his career that he couldn't even hear the loud applause that the audience gave him for his final symphony. James Joyce suffered from syphilis while writing "Ulysses." These and other stories of illness are so memorable because they relay to us how even the influential and powerful are subject to the common experiences of everyday people. There is something about them that whispers to us the shared human capacity for fame/notoriety/achievement despite physical infirmities.
So when I say that a story-telling hook gets taken away by an always-reliable 2nd level spell, I mean not only that DMs have to use DM fiat to create a divine spell-resistant plague meaningful as a doorway to a quest, I also mean that it alters the kinds of stories we and our players allow ourselves to tell. Many PCs have backstories about their parents being killed in a monster raid, right? How many PCs have backstories about becoming an Illusionist because she was the hearing kid raised by deaf parents so that she could show them what music "sounds" like? Or whose hard-drinking Wizard uncle died in combat, not from being impaled on a sword, but from falling off a horse because of his hangover and ended up drowning in a rushing river? See how that can change the depth of the story? B/c Lesser Restoration is unfailingly reliable, it short-circuits many people from mining everyday life for informing the reasons they became heroes in the first place and once they become heroic adventurers it detaches them from the NPCs who often become little more than just dispensers of magic item/beer/quest hook/one-night-stand.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
If the OP is already pissed about 2nd lvl Lesser Resto, this is rubbing salt in the wounds, LOL.
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No, people still do die of infections. In fact, there are now antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria killing people. Because nature is not stagnant. It adapts to human chemical warfare, which, from the bacteria's POV, is what antibiotics amount to.
Lesser Restoration is free. No material component costs. That means any cleric with a 2nd level spell slot can cast it.
I don't know where you extrapolated that I think it's unrealistic that somebody's mother got killed by a hobgoblin. That is totally realistic in a D&D universe.
I don't know why you would assume that. A spell used as a preventative measure to evade poison is not the same as a spell used ex post facto on any and all disease. You're talking about comparing apples and oranges, as I see it.
Because Cure Wounds is a first level spell with no expensive components, which by your own logic means that it should be even easier to negate death due to physical trauma than death due to illness or toxin.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Death from sword/axe/arrow happens very quickly to a level 0 NPC. All it takes is one hit, often times, for a non-adventurer to die (subject to DM plot armor). Therefore, a hobgoblin raid causing deaths to 0 level persons? Totally makes sense.
Cure Wounds is not the same as a Revivify or Raise Dead spell, which have very justifiable material component costs for precisely that reason I am saying that Lesser Restoration should not be free or should not be as 100% reliable for all disease/poison as it currently is. It cheeses and cheapens the condition it was made to alleviate.
People have already explained why that's not the case repeatedly. But you appear to be far too invested in your opinion to actually be willing to listen to anyone else.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
If you think that Lesser Restoration is a problem then I don't know what to tell you about resurrection in this game. I saw that you thought this was fair based on the fact it had a monetary cost tied to it, but the monetary cost associated with it is negligible by the time the PCs have access to the spell. According to the DMG, just 1 treasure hoard of CR 5, yields over 3500 GP in just coins, then there is a whole table for art items, gems, and magic items that can be contained within. At that point just one adventure pays for multiple resurrections. IMO the material cost for all spells in 5e are really just a minor inconvenience at best, unless of course you are making the materials hard to come by at which point why even have a material cost at all?
Just say you need the blood of a hard to find and/or kill monster to get what you need, or have the monster guarding the material. In most cases, DMs that want the players to earn resurrection do something similar to this. Others just hand wave it and have you visit the local jeweler to get what you need.
But regarding Lesser Restoration specifically, many have already mentioned the best ways to get around it if you want it as a plot point. Either make the disease immune to being cured in such a way, or have it spread faster than the cleric's can cure it. It is no different than the way diseases behave in real life, they become resistant to the treatments meant to fight them.
The rules in this game are simply a starting point. There are exceptions to every rule (including a few that are actually baked into certain monsters and spells).
Since you are being vague in your references, I cannot accurately assess the truth or lack thereof to your argument here.
From my experiences, lesser restoration isn't unbalanced, as the conditions it cures are often available to other casters at that same level, such as blindness/deafness or hold person. It's a counterplay option not unlike remove curse versus bestow curse or dispel magic versus duration spells at higher levels.
Nasty stuff can happen during the time between getting hit with a condition and curing it. A critical hit caused by a paralyzed character getting hit with an attack doesn't get erased with the condition when lesser restoration is cast.
Roleplaying-wise, the spell restores 1 target per casting. A plague is on too big of a scale for people to rely on it. Perhaps a condition that it normally cures can't be handled that way due to the underlying cause, such as from a curse. It also does not prevent a cured creature from being infected again, so a hag causing a disease on a princess will likely just reapply it once the party moves on, causing the king to recall them again...
One way I had a cursed item not be defeated easily by remove curse was to have it immediately attune to whoever's holding it (again), similarly to how a certain magic sword in a specific campaign can. Thus, an NPC possessed by such a thing has to be handled differently.
Yeah and I don't understand the OPs issue with this, the people in the world of DnD aren't going to have the same issues and struggles, they have MAGIC after all. A big city like Waterdeep probably wouldn't suffer the same effects of a normal plague as say a smaller or poorer city with shadier clerics that will only cure for gold. Spell casting is a service after all and I can think of a bunch of temples that wouldn't just toss out free healing like some of the more friendly ones would in a crisis.
But if you need to hit a bigger city like Waterdeep, that normally wouldn't struggle with something like a standard plague spread.. than yeah you have to spice it up so they can't just magic it away.
This makes me think of the Orzov syndicate in Ravnica. Your friendly healer cleric is going about casting cure wounds and lesser restoration because they're "essentially free," when a grandly-dressed priest walks up to him/her with several thralls in tow and says, "I'd like to have a word with you..."
"save or die" was the standard in 1E and 2E. (for a lot of effects, not just poison)