“Ah! Let go of me!”
The halfling cleric shouted in pain and frustration as the necromancer’s gaunt, talon-like fingers tightened around her wrist. She struggled against his grip as he left her aloft, tears of rage welling up in her eyes as her blood began to dribble out from beneath his fetid fingernails. He smiled a wicked, gap-toothed smile as a sickly green glow began to surround his hand, casting his face in long, eerie shadows. The cleric’s face grew pale. Not from fear, though she was nearly paralyzed with it, but with a queasy, vomitous ache in the pit of her stomach.
Her senses began to stretch. The world went into soft focus, and sounds became muffled and quiet. She vaguely comprehended movement to her left, then a flash of steel in front of her. The necromancer’s bony face twisted into fear, and then into pain. A gout of hazy red shot up in front of her face, and she fell suddenly to the ground. The shock snapped everything suddenly back into focus.
“She said ‘let go,’ monster,” the fighter said. She flicked the necromancer’s blood from one of her scimitars and spat upon his corpse. The cleric caught her casting a tentative glance up at the undead horde her allies her fighting, then, assured that she was safe for a moment, turned towards the cleric and knelt down, putting a callused hand upon her chest. “Hey,” the fighter said, “Are you okay?”
The cleric gagged as another wave of queasiness traveled up her guts and into her throat. “Y-yeah,” she stammered, fumbling for the holy symbol around her neck. “I don’t know what’s happening,” she gasped, struggle to hold back her morning rations.
“Your wrist,” the fighter muttered, worry spreading across her face. “It won’t stop bleeding. Oh, gods. Your blood, it’s so thick. It’s like jelly!”
The cleric struggled to focus her hazy vision on her bleeding wrist as the fighter desperately searched for a cloth to staunch the bleeding. The halfling wracked her brain, thinking of what spell could possibly have caused something like this. Then it struck her.
“It’s a disease,” she muttered. “Slimy Doom.”
The fighter looked at her companion and stifled a giggle. “Come again?”
“It’s a magical contagion. It hasn’t taken root yet, though. There’s still time to… Ah!” The cleric muttered a quick prayer and pressed her glowing holy symbol to her wound, casting a lesser restorative charm to purge the magical poison from her body. She looked up at the fighter, warmth returning to her cheeks. “Good as new. Lathander keeps us safe from all ills, does he not?”
The fighter laughed and held the halfling close for a brief, joyous moment, then set her down. “Grab your mace,” she said, glancing at the necromancer’s plague-ridden undead creations. “This isn’t over yet.”
Contagion used to be one of D&D’s most polarized spells. A lengthy online debate raged around this spell since the release of the Player’s Handbook in summer 2014. The reason was that its rules, while interesting, weren’t clear. There were two valid readings of the spell’s text: one that made the spell wickedly powerful, and one that made it practically useless. A recent errata made a small but elegant and impactful change to the spell, transforming it from a spell that sparked furor across the internet to one that now fills a comfortable niche in any cleric or druid’s spell list.
The Woes of Old Contagion
Contagion is a 5th-level spell typically cast by clerics and druids. In short, it infects a single target with a magical disease that will really ruin your target’s week. When you cast the spell, you were presented with six diseases to choose from, corresponding to each of the six ability scores. It seems simple on paper, but there’s a wrinkle: the spell didn’t properly explain how it worked. Here’s the controversial part of the spell’s original text:
“Your touch inflicts disease. Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach. On a hit, you afflict the creature with a disease of your choice from any of the ones described below.
At the end of each of the target's turns, it must make a Constitution saving throw. After failing three of these saving throws, the disease's effects last for the duration, and the creature stops making these saves. After succeeding on three of these saving throws, the creature recovers from the disease, and the spell ends.”
It seems fairly innocuous, but there’s a big problem there. It doesn’t specify when the disease takes effect. One way to read it suggests that the spell instantly causes the target to suffer the effects of the disease, and it must make three successful Constitution saving throws to shake it off before it accumulates three failed saves, otherwise it is stuck with the disease for seven full days. When interpreted this way, contagion is a really potent spell, especially when paired with the Slimy Doom disease, which gives the target disadvantage on Constitution saving throws, making it harder for afflicted creatures to resist the encroaching disease.
The other reading of this spell, however, is less impressive. If one assumes that the disease doesn’t instantly take effect when the spell is cast, then contagion ultimately asks you to spend a 5th-level spell slot to do nothing for at least 3 rounds. Then, if the target fails three saving throws before making three successful ones, the disease takes effect for seven days. But, by that point, the battle is probably already over.
The real issue here is that if you interpret contagion charitably, its effects were ridiculously overpowered. If you appraised contagion less highly, the spell was essentially useless in combat. Most fights would be finished by the time the disease took root, and that’s assuming the target failed its saves at all! Its most effective use under this reading was as a slow-paced, out-of-combat spell, used for secretly infecting NPCs with a disease that would slowly ravage their bodies.
Fortunately, this all changed.
The New, Shiny Contagion
Contagion got some special attention in a recent update to the rules released in November 2018. It’s not distinctly a buff or a nerf, since it makes one reading of the old rules better and one reading worse. What it does quite successfully, however, is clear up any confusion on how this spell works. Now, when the spell is cast, the target creature is poisoned. While poisoned in this way, the creature must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of each of its turns. If it gets three successes before three failures, it resists the disease and the poisoned condition ends. If it gets three failures first, however, the disease kicks in.
This errata solves contagion’s biggest problems by sucking out any ambiguity in the original rules. The “weaker” version of contagion in the old rules has been highlighted as the proper reading of the spell, and that version has been given a tidy buff in the process. But then, if you were playing with the more powerful version of contagion before, you might feel like your favorite spell was just knocked down a few pegs. Ultimately I think it’s for the best; contagion still has a clear niche that few other spells occupy, and now it won’t cause nearly as many arguments at the table.
But it’s not perfect.
Contagion’s Awkward Shortcomings
Contagion has always had a pretty serious weakness. Namely, it’s easy to cure diseases in D&D, especially by the time contagion, a 5th-level spell, is being used against you. A simple casting of lesser restoration is enough to scrub the sickness away. Trading a 2nd-level spell slot for a 5th-level one is a great trade for the heroes, but it’s a pretty raw deal for the villainous necromancer who cast it in the first place. And it’s not hard to become immune to disease, either. Paladin’s gain that power at 3rd level through their Divine Health feature, and the periapt of health grants disease immunity for only the cost of an uncommon magic item.
As a point in contagion’s favor, however, most characters won’t be ravenously hunting for a periapt of health, since diseases are generally not a major problem in D&D. Poisons are dangerous, traps are deadly, and monsters are an omnipresent challenge, but diseases don’t turn up too often. Overcoming a disease (typically) isn’t the stuff of heroic fantasy in the same way that monsters and poisoned daggers are. So many characters will be caught off-guard if this spell is used against them, and precious few Dungeon Masters will remember to give their important villains a periapt of health, just in case.
The new version of contagion, however, makes things a bit more difficult by introducing the poisoned condition into the mix. First of all, curing poison is no harder than curing disease; a simple lesser restoration will still do it. And if you can get rid of the poisoned condition, the afflicted creature doesn’t have to keep making saving throws against the encroaching disease, and the spell ends. So far, nothing has really changed.
The big problem is immunity to poison. By introducing the poisoned condition into its process, contagion has suddenly become a lot less useful for player characters, while remaining similarly effective for Dungeon Masters. While most player characters aren’t immune to poison (who’s buying a periapt of proof against poison, anyway?), a lot of monsters are. Undead, fiends, celestials, elementals, constructs—practically all creatures who fall under these categories are immune to the poisoned condition, along with a handful of aberrations and monstrosities, and a smattering of other random creatures.
Now, even though these creatures aren’t immune to diseases, their immunity to poison prevents contagion from ever taking root. Generally speaking, it makes sense that you can’t infect fiends, celestials, elementals, undead, or constructs with a disease anyway, so even though they could be infected by rules-as-written (RAW), a DM should be fully empowered to rule that they’re immune. But some of the edge case creatures, like the hardy dire troll is immune to being poisoned simply by virtue of its mutations and its strong stomach. A disease that causes blindness or that enflames the mind shouldn’t be edged out by this paltry immunity. The same goes for green dragons, who are immune to being poisoned by virtue of their poisonous breath. Surely that shouldn’t grant it immunity to disease.
This is a rules quirk that may stymie players who take RAW as gospel. I’ve seen many such players in the D&D Adventurers League. Ultimately, however, it is the role of the DM is to adjudicate the rules in a coherent manner. If a creature is immune to being poisoned because it lacks blood or living flesh, then it makes sense that it’s also immune to diseases and thus, the contagion spell. If it is immune to poison because it employs venom or poisonous gas in its attacks, then it should be affected by contagion’s “poisoned” effects as usual.
Even if you’re DMing an adventure in the D&D Adventurers League and feel bound to follow RAW, recall the first major piece of advice: You’re Empowered. You can bend the rules to suit the story, and to make the world make a bit more realistic. Don’t break the rules into tiny pieces, but don’t feel constricted by them, especially when they don’t make sense.
Have you used contagion in your D&D game? How do you like the update to this spell in the latest errata? Let us know in the comments!
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their sweet kitties Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Here's how I deal with it -- I use the errata (poisoned condition). If the player or NPC is so dumb as to use this on a character that is immune to poison, then they've wasted the spell. Oh well.
However, situationally, I remove the three round gestation time all together and the disease takes root as soon as the attack is made.
Naturally, the victim can save out of it or get cleansed with a lesser restoration, but sometimes, it's worth it (hags in a death coven for example, can use it twice!)
I think the update is stronger than what came before.
I think the issue was the diseases and spell concept, not the spell description. There is no discussion of incubation period, so the implication is immediate effect.
Slimy doom was simply too good, followed closely by flesh rot.
If you feel the need to nerf the spell, remove or replace those 2 diseases, and make the spell a concentration effect until the saving throws have been resolved. Though, if you are adding those stipulations, you might slightly balance them out by making the spell close range (5-10') but not require a touch attack - "you breath a gust of sickness onto the target" or some such.
Optional disease replacements: Slimy doom as the con effect could have been something like they take extra damage (1d4? unresistable?) each time they are hit - fits with the bleeding out thematic - and flesh rot could have been another variation of a disabling effect - disadvantage on charisma and Fear of every creature of which they are aware (Don't look at me!!) or Slow (my muscles feel like they are rotting off my bones!) or something similar.
I think one really overlooked feature of this spell that makes it really, really powerful in its new form is the fact that it takes three saving throw successes to end the effect. That can be insanely huge in the right circumstances, namely against legendary monsters. Any legendary monster that isn't immune to poison or disease, like say an adult red dragon, is going to absolutely hate having to go against this spell. Even popping legendary resistance won't end the effect. Moreover, because these creatures are often long lived, intelligent, and/or versed in magic, these are exactly the ones who would hate having a long-lasting magic disease hanging over their heads. Especially in the case of dragons who rarely want to fight adventurers to the death. So you could very well get a dragon or another legendary monster to blow 2 or more legendary resistances with a single spell. That's insanely efficient.
I agree with the dire troll but dragons are technically of their breath it's not like they just have, but I get what you're saying
Old contagion with the "charitable" interpretation may be overpowered but that's because those diseases are nasty as hell. The diseases should take time to have such a debilitating effect. Maybe just make the spell description short and have it direct players to the disease options that have initial effects and advanced effects of left untreated. The spell could inflict a disease and accelerate it's progression if the target fails it's saves. Additionally, the "charitable" way is the only reasonable way to read the old version unless the disease could spread somehow because the alternative is not only clearly wrong but totally useless. Making it take three turns to have any potential effect is insanely weak for that kind of cost and could only be justified if the effects had some rules for infecting others. The new contagion has problems too though. What does poison have to do with disease other than poison potentially making you susceptible to disease? Bringing the poisoned condition into the mix complicates the use of the spell and reduces it's appeal. The spell currently has very little practical use imo. You'd have to be playing a very unique campaign to see much use of it because of its cost and lack of immediate versatility.
Yeah, good point, but then it would be so OP
I agree with @Caerdwyn re: Lesser Restoration being too effective against diseases being the real problem here. The fact that diseases are so simple to cure is what makes Contagion and a host of other diseases trivial in most circumstances. While I understand that the devs probably did that to emphasize the combat pillar of the game, it weakens a role-playing/story-telling tool of the DM. Lesser Restoration should be nerfed, not so much for the sake of players who want to use the Contagion spell, but because it currently takes away some really great tragedy/race-against-the-clock story hooks from being taken seriously by the players.
Contagion is a touch spell. It can be used with find familiar. This can be interesting.
Huh. Maybe I will use contagion in a campaign I'm running. I'll make sure to give characters a periapt of health before though, they are level one and have very low hit points.
I have no idea where people took the weaker reading of the spell from. It was an amazing spell for anything that isn't immune to disease, which is countered by how easy diseases are to cure in DnD 5e and how many creatures are immune to them. Meaning, it was really niche, but it was crazy powerful in its niche. As you'd expect from a 5th level spell.
My party literally only survived a battle against an adult white dragon because I managed to hit it with Contagion (obviously, Slimy Doom), and gladly most dragons aren't immune to disease. DM was furious and later came to tell me dragons are immune and he shouldn't have allowed it (which isn't true, I checked the statblock later). Contagion became one of my favorite spells afterwards.
And now it's ruined. Thanks for nothing.
Lmao. As if any party is going to last long enough for the 3-6 turns it takes for the spell to take effect now. The enemy will either be immune to disease or will pass all of the saving throws without even needing to burn legendary resistances. The enemy doesn't need to care about the disease if the party is dead. And now the spell can't even affect them if they're immune to poison too.
And, if you're using this spell on anything anything isn't super strong or a boss, you're wasting a 5th level spell slot.
Yep, the description is 100% clear. It went from a very niche yet powerful 5th level spell (as you'd expect from a spell of that level) to an useless spell that is a waste to prepare.
As if the fact that it required a successful melee spell attack and the range is touch, AND the enemy is still allowed saving throws to end the effect wasn't restrictive enough, now the spell is ruined.
As if any realistic low level villain would be stupid enough to waste their precious 5th level spell slots to HAVE A CHANCE to infect 1-2 random people everyday with a disease that they'll be cured from in just 1 week, unless the villain has an INT of 8 or lower.
As if any realistic high level villain would be stupid enough to spread random diseases when they can level a city with meteors.
The only reasonable RP way this spell could be used is to introduce the dread of the imminent battle with a Nightwalker (which can cast Contagion at will).
Exactly. The spell is pretty clear. It went from a niche spell that was powerful in its niche to an unusable waste of a prepared spell and a spell slot
If an adult red dragon is stupid enough to willingly come into melee range of a party, they deserve to get a pre-errata Contagion in the face. If the party manages to force the dragon to get into melee range, pre-errata Contagion won't even be necessary to kill them.
I had my party be saved by me casting this spell 1 turn before an adult white dragon wiping us. DM was furious that his TPK was ruined, and then came complaining that he forgot adult white dragons are immune to disease (which they aren't).
The spell was already extremely hard to use due to it being 5th level, competing with other great 5th level and lower spells to being prepared, needing a successful attack, having a touch range, and being so easy to cure, AND allowing saving throws. If it hit, it damn better be worth it. And it was.
Now it's useless. If you pick the post-errata version of this spell, any TPK is deserved.
Exactly. Diseases in general are trivial in 5E because of the low spell slot cost of L.Restoration (and Paladin's Lay on Hands ability at 1st level). This is a design problem related to how ridiculously easy it is to get rid of diseases in general to "speed the game along".
Does the 7 days refer to a single touch or all the touches you make in the next 7 days? Going on the basis of other spells with a duration I'd read it as the latter.