Caught any good diseases lately?

[phiwum]

Okay, maybe that subject line isn't great in a pandemic, but I was thinking of making ghouls a bit more of a threat. They're filthy, disease ridden buggers and any scratch from a ghoul may transmit an illness. Well, to be honest, it's not all ghouls. I just decide when setting up the adventure whether the ghouls are disease ridden or hygenic and fastidious. Some are, you know. Don't be bigoted.

Any time a character takes damage from a disease-carrying ghoul, the GM secretly rolls a 3/ST roll. On failure, the guy is infected with the blight of the day.

Here's the first one I'm playing with. In some ways, it's a bit complicated.

Heebie-Jeebies: Beginning the night after infection, the character loses ST 1. Each day thereafter, roll a 3/ST roll or 4/ST if the character is active (not bed-ridden). No wounds (including damage from Heebie-Jeebies) can be healed until the Heebie-Jeebies are in remission.
* On failure, lose 1 ST.
* If the roll was less than ST/2 or 6, whichever is more, recovery begins. The character will recover 1 ST per day (of Heebie-Jeebies loss only, not other wounds) until healed.
* Otherwise, no special effect today.
Minor Medicament will not cure the Heebie-Jeebies, but it will reduce the die roll by one die.

Obviously, I'm not using critical success/failure in this roll.

It's pretty harsh for low ST characters, especially when the transmission is by taking damage from a verminous ghoul. An ST 9 character will be ill about eleven days on average and therefore take about six or so points of damage, which may kill him if the ghoul hit was bad. But I did add a simple way to make the disease a lot easier. Get lots of bed-rest and a Minor Medicament and it won't be a big deal. After Minor Medicament, the character can expect to go into remission in two or three days.

Of course, the characters have to think about trying Minor Medicament and have a wizard handy with that spell. (One reason I was thinking of diseases is that Minor Medicament has gotten no love in my game so far.)

The complicated bit is the fast recovery, requiring the GM to segregate Heebie-Jeebies damage from other wounds. I did that just because I thought that it is already fairly nasty. If you treat wounds received by Heebie-Jeebies like any other kind of damage and heal at one point each two days, it's not that complicated to implement.

Anyway, I reckoned others must have their favorite diseases to share.

A minor variation I kinda like is a disease that is like Heebie-Jeebies Lite. Replace damage with fatigue throughout the description. A wizard who can't recover fatigue for several days will suffer a bit from this. Wound recovery during that period would be normal and anyone who takes fatigue down to -1 ST is dying in my book, though I know many think he's just tuckered.