My party noticed today that neither Lesser Restoration, nor Greater Restoration, nor Lay on Hands, nor even Heal cure diseases any longer, and for that matter there's little to no mention of "disease" in PHB2024 at all. This is fine until you get clawed by a Red Slaad while being "backwards compatible."
It is an issue with backwards compatibility but yes they essentially removed diseases entirely for 2024.
How DMs are meant to handle that with regards to backwards compatibility isn't really known yet, maybe it'll be handled in the DMG, guess we will have to wait and see. I guess for now, anything that is a disease, a DM will need to change to be something else as Diseases just aren't a thing any more. Alternatively just say all the old features & spells that remove disease still do for that old material.
My party noticed today that neither Lesser Restoration, nor Greater Restoration, nor Lay on Hands, nor even Heal cure diseases any longer, and for that matter there's little to no mention of "disease" in PHB2024 at all. This is fine until you get clawed by a Red Slaad while being "backwards compatible."
I imagine Disease is not going to be a major thing in 2024. WotC cured all disease.
The published adventures I’ve DM’d lately have tended to detail what effects (like Lesser Restoration) will cure certain diseases (e.g. slaad parasites) in the text, so those still work.
From what I’ve understood, they want diseases to have more of a narrative, rather than mechanical, function now. Essentially, the DM chooses what the cure is to best fit the story (cue fetch quest for rare flower).
Also, if you're being infected by "backwards compatibility" then surely you can be cured via the same route? I don't think it should be too big a deal, but your mileage may vary depending on your DM.
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[...] we've got curses and magical contagions [...] Cackle Fever, Sewer Plague, we've got Sight Rot, some lovely little curses to put on to your players [...] there's a lot of new text in there about how you as a DM can sort of create a custom curse, that sort of fits well into the story you're trying to tell, because a curse can take many different forms in our game.
From the curse of demonic possession to something that is more akin to lycanthropy and how do you deal with that in the context of the game, what tools do you have as a Dungeon Master to sort of realize that mechanically, that's the sort of the heart of the discussion of that particular section [...]
I'm sure that section will discuss how to cure them as well. It could be just as likely that diseases will all tell how to cure them individually. Or that things like immunity might link to other immunities, such as the poisoned condition as a general one.
What about regular diseases. The flu or whatever, do people not get sick in D&D without a curse being involved. At lower levels a rather normal disease can be a story hook. I guess not now.
edit to add, I guess paladin lost divine health. Like it never came up in any of my games so it was a ribbon feature but it was cool to be so bad ass you could never get sick. Not everything cool is about mechanical power, they took something RP cool from the paladin. Being immune allowed you to walk amongst the blighted and help them, now nope.
DM's discretion; you'll note that there's no hard rules on how you prepare a gourmet meal as opposed to trail rations either, or address a lot of other basic day-to-day tasks/aspects of life. From a mechanical perspective the "cure diseases" bit hovered somewhere between "ambiguous" and "pointless", so they're trimming it on the feature side of things. Most likely the mechanically relevant stuff will have individual "X, Y, or Z can end this effect" type clauses, just like a lot of other debuffs. For more general sniffs and fevers, the 2014 section of the DMG already says "A simple outbreak might amount to little more than a small drain on party resources, curable by a casting of lesser restoration," so they can literally just carry that text over as a DM-facing feature- if the DM feels a given instance of disease is a minor matter, they can determine what's an appropriate resource to expend to get rid of it. Something that's a story hook probably needs more than a 1st to 3rd level feature to fix in any case.
The Ruby Red Fruit from the Gulthias Tree will cure diseases as long as you are there durring summer solstice. I will need to create a artificial environment around the Gulthias Tree. Once I have where the tree is producing the Ruby Red Fruit ever few months. I can then burn the seeds and divide the aples into quarters and dry them out. After that I will turn them into a powder and sale it as a cure for 70 hp blindness, deafness, diseases to any one that eats the powder. There is saved the D&D world from diseases.
My party noticed today that neither Lesser Restoration, nor Greater Restoration, nor Lay on Hands, nor even Heal cure diseases any longer, and for that matter there's little to no mention of "disease" in PHB2024 at all. This is fine until you get clawed by a Red Slaad while being "backwards compatible."
It seems the 2014 diseases are being replaced by the Poisoned condition/mechanic.
Maybe the DMG will provide us with more information on this topic.
It is an issue with backwards compatibility but yes they essentially removed diseases entirely for 2024.
How DMs are meant to handle that with regards to backwards compatibility isn't really known yet, maybe it'll be handled in the DMG, guess we will have to wait and see. I guess for now, anything that is a disease, a DM will need to change to be something else as Diseases just aren't a thing any more. Alternatively just say all the old features & spells that remove disease still do for that old material.
I imagine Disease is not going to be a major thing in 2024. WotC cured all disease.
The published adventures I’ve DM’d lately have tended to detail what effects (like Lesser Restoration) will cure certain diseases (e.g. slaad parasites) in the text, so those still work.
From what I’ve understood, they want diseases to have more of a narrative, rather than mechanical, function now. Essentially, the DM chooses what the cure is to best fit the story (cue fetch quest for rare flower).
Also, if you're being infected by "backwards compatibility" then surely you can be cured via the same route? I don't think it should be too big a deal, but your mileage may vary depending on your DM.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
According to the video New Dungeon Master's Toolbox | 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide (around 4:57), curses and magical contagions are still a thing. Here is the transcription:
I'm sure that section will discuss how to cure them as well. It could be just as likely that diseases will all tell how to cure them individually. Or that things like immunity might link to other immunities, such as the poisoned condition as a general one.
What about regular diseases. The flu or whatever, do people not get sick in D&D without a curse being involved. At lower levels a rather normal disease can be a story hook. I guess not now.
edit to add, I guess paladin lost divine health. Like it never came up in any of my games so it was a ribbon feature but it was cool to be so bad ass you could never get sick. Not everything cool is about mechanical power, they took something RP cool from the paladin. Being immune allowed you to walk amongst the blighted and help them, now nope.
DM's discretion; you'll note that there's no hard rules on how you prepare a gourmet meal as opposed to trail rations either, or address a lot of other basic day-to-day tasks/aspects of life. From a mechanical perspective the "cure diseases" bit hovered somewhere between "ambiguous" and "pointless", so they're trimming it on the feature side of things. Most likely the mechanically relevant stuff will have individual "X, Y, or Z can end this effect" type clauses, just like a lot of other debuffs. For more general sniffs and fevers, the 2014 section of the DMG already says "A simple outbreak might amount to little more than a small drain on party resources, curable by a casting of lesser restoration," so they can literally just carry that text over as a DM-facing feature- if the DM feels a given instance of disease is a minor matter, they can determine what's an appropriate resource to expend to get rid of it. Something that's a story hook probably needs more than a 1st to 3rd level feature to fix in any case.
The spell Detect Poisons and Diseases specifically detects Poisons, Venomous Creatures, and Magical Contagions.
The Contagion spell causes the poisoned condition.
In 2024, it looks Poisons and Diseases are the same thing. This would also mean Dwarven Resilience has been upgraded to disease resistance.
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The Ruby Red Fruit from the Gulthias Tree will cure diseases as long as you are there durring summer solstice. I will need to create a artificial environment around the Gulthias Tree. Once I have where the tree is producing the Ruby Red Fruit ever few months. I can then burn the seeds and divide the aples into quarters and dry them out. After that I will turn them into a powder and sale it as a cure for 70 hp blindness, deafness, diseases to any one that eats the powder. There is saved the D&D world from diseases.