“You have to admire its simplicity. It’s one billionth our size and it’s beating us.” ~ Col. Daniels (Outbreak, Dustin Hoffman, 1995)

No matter what generation you’re in, diseases seem to always be in the “top ten list of favorite apocalyptic themes”.  In books, movies, and even television shows, we humans seem to love the idea of terrifying ourselves imagining the end of the world by viruses and microbes we can’t even see.

Just look at all the examples of apocalypse-by-disease movies: The Andromeda Strain, The Stand, Outbreak, 28 Days Later, The Crazies, and the list goes on.  And why shouldn’t we humans think diseases are scary – they are scary!

Pandemics in the past wiped out huge numbers of people all around the world.  The Black Plague, for instance, killed an estimated 75 million people worldwide in about 50 years.  That might not seem like much now when we have nearly 5 billion people on the planet, but considering that in the 14th Century, the world topped out at only 450 million – that’s a lot of death!  And in Europe, the death tolls were extremely concentrated, approaching 50% or higher.  Just imagine it: half of your entire family and half of all your friends dying out in the space of a couple decades.

Is it any wonder we all can envision the End of the World by microbes?

So if you’re inclined to include more diseases into your campaign, there is a supplement out there you might consider.  Tangent Games has a an ebook called, A Pox Upon You, which explores diseases and afflictions of all types.

A Pox Upon You

• Designer:  Jeff Habiger
• Illustrations: Jeff Habiger (cover), Pierre C. Arseneault (interior)
• Publisher: Tangent Games
• Year: 2009
• Media: PDF (44 pages)
• Price: $10.00

A Pox Upon You is an ebook supplement focusing on diseases and afflictions for use in most D&D 4E campaigns.  The supplement gives detailed statistics on more than twenty new fantasy-based illnesses, and nearly thirty “Earth-based” diseases from the mundane world.  In addition to all these new diseases, A Pox Upon You contains variant rules for using the Healing Skill to cure disease, new disease-based Clerical Powers, both offensive and defensive, plus two new Clerical Paragon Paths – the Faith Healer and the Necrotic Servant .  The supplement introduces new statistics to add to disease tracks, such as Treatment Resistance, Magic Resistance, Transmission, Contagiousness, and Frequency of encountering a particular disease.  And A Pox Upon You adds fourteen new diseased-based monsters, nine new magic items, and two new rituals.

The production quality of A Pox Upon You is good, with diseases, items, and powers displayed in formats easily recognized by D&D 4E gamers.  The artwork is adequate to good, and assists in conveying the descriptions of some of the diseases, monsters, and magical items.

Surprisingly, there are some very cool things to give to Player-Characters from the supplement – and I’m not talking about diseases.  For instance, the supplement does add some solid “crunch” to Clerics.  The two new Rituals, Detect Disease and Plague Barrier, and the new Clerical Utility “defensive” powers are nicely designed, and offer Player-Characters ways to counter old diseases, as well as the new diseases that the book brings into a D&D 4E game.  The new Paragon Paths, Faith Healer and Necrotic Servant, offer some really nice options, and can really boost a Clerics healing potential or, in the case of the latter, their offensive capabilities.

And the Author does a nice job of creating some nifty new magic items, such as a Rod of Caduceus (the winged staff with entwined snakes), and the Symbols of Health and of Disease.  They definitely fit in nicely with the disease theme of A Pox Upon You, and offer Player-Characters new options for unusual magic items.  I particularly enjoyed the two new Potions, Endurance and Vaccinae, which add bonuses to Endurance Checks to overcome disease.

However, on the other side of the screen, the supplement is somewhat of a mixed bag.

The monsters, for instance, add some new and original threats, mainly in that they are carriers and transmitters of some fairly nasty diseases.  From swarms of Plague Rats and Mosquitoes, to Pox Slime and mushroom-like Virals, there are lots of new monsters for Heroes to encounter that might afflict them with diseases.  There is even a Pox Dragon, which spreads a terrible new disease called Legerdamania, and magically steals a victim’s powers over time.  These are definitely some vicious beasties in A Pox Upon You that will cause a lot more damage to adventurers than just a few teeth marks.

But the diseases themselves, which are the focal point of the book, tend to be either spot on for use in D&D 4E, or fairly wide of the mark.  And part of that comes from the variant rules that the Author uses to create added “realism” for the diseases.  One gets the impression that the Author is a strong Simulationist, writing for a system that is very Gamist in its philosophy.  And I’m not suggesting that there is anything wrong with Simulationist gaming, but it does sometimes run rough-shod over things when placed up against a Gamist rules system.

For instance, the Author adds a number of new statistics to diseases, which makes sense from a simulationist perspective, but are not necessarily suited for D&D 4E:

• Treatment Resistance (TR): Increases the DC of Endurance Checks along the disease track
• Magic Resistance (MR): Increases the difficulty DC for using a Cure Disease Ritual
• Contagiousness: an attack bonus for the disease to spread to another person who comes in contact with a someone already afflicted with the illness – can be as high as +10

While these new stats make sense to add realism to a disease, they also make contracting and then getting rid of a disease much more problematical.

For instance, a new disease called Goblin Itch, is a pretty nifty Level 8 Disease, which is a rash one can get from fighting mangy goblins.  But it can be transmitted from person-to-person and is actually more contagious from a fellow party member than it was from the goblin who was trying to kill you the previous day.  And Mole Pox, which comes from burrowing animals, is a Level 9 disease that tends to afflict gnomes.  But because of its contagiousness, treatment resistance, and magic resistance, it is far more likely to afflict you from a gnome than a burrowing animal, and is more difficult to treat and cure.

By adding these new stats, some diseases just become very unsavory – they are too easy to contract, even easier to spread, and hard to get rid of, and therefore less likely for a DM to want to add them to a game.  In typical D&D 4E philosophy, if you want to make a disease easier to contract and harder to treat, you just raise its level, and let the DM decide if he wants the disease in his campaign or not.

But I do not want to give the impression that the diseases in this book are not usable.  In fact, many of the diseases are very interesting and would definitely add a lot to a D&D 4E game, and could provide a good challenge to the Heroes.  Diseases like those I named previously, as well as Fire Fever, Legerdamania and Mind Boils are some very original concepts, but DMs should consider whether the new “stats” are necessary to make the disease a threat, or if merely a level adjustment would suffice.

There were two diseases that made me raise an eyebrow over, and that was Creeping Chaos and Plague of Law.  These diseases cause afflicted persons to change alignment, over time, to Chaotic Evil or to Lawful Good, respectively.  While I liked the concepts of the diseases – particularly in light of the recent movie, The Crazies, which to me was clearly a case of Creeping Chaos – the stats of these diseases need a serious overhaul.  Both of these illnesses are spread by inhalation of a virus, which makes them very easy to transmit.  And as Level 10 Diseases with an attack +14 vs. Fort, these illnesses would reach pandemic level in weeks, given the Fort Defense of your average Human Rabble!  Talk about your End of the World by microbe scenario…

Overall Grade: B

A Pox Upon You is a pretty decent book, overall, and if you’re a Dungeon Master shopping for new ways to challenge your Heroes, this supplement is worth a second look.  While some of the non-4E variant rules muddle things a bit, there is still a lot of very original material – with diseases, magic items, clerical powers, and even monsters – it has a lot going for it.  For an ebook, it is a bit on the pricey side, but I gave A Pox Upon You a fairly high grade for value because of the sheer volume of material packed into those 44 PDF pages.

So even though some DMs might not want the disease “variant” stats for their campaigns, there is still plenty of great stuff in this book of plagues, and adds new and worthwhile material to a part of D&D 4E that the original 4E DMG barely discussed.

So until next blog… I wish you Happy Gaming!

Grade Card

• Presentation: B-
• - Design: B+
• - Illustrations: C+
• Content: B
• - Crunch: B-
• - Fluff: B
• Value: A-

Tags: D&D 4e, disease, review, tangent games

This entry was posted by Editor-in-Chief on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 7:46 am and is filed under RPG News & Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.