Plagues have afflicted humanity for as long as historical records exist. They have killed kings, toppled empires, and changed the course of major world events. The idea of plague is burned so deeply into our collective consciousness that they even feature in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.

Because of their histor♉ical importance, plagues appear in fantasy novels, ꧙films, TV shows, and video games. A plague can be a useful narrative device to change the tone, inject urgency, or force characters to make important decisions. Thankfully, history and fiction are packed with illustrative examples of how plagues work and how they are fought.

Check with your players to ensure that they're alright with Plagues as a theme before you introduce it. The world has recently experienced some real-life trauma related to this issue, and so some players might feel the subject is too topical, preferring to keep their fantasy fantastical.

DM Tips For Running A Plague In D&D

In reality, plagues spread even when cures and vaccines are available. The problem is always the rate of infection. Sickness moves through cities much faster than people can roll out their solutions. This situation should play out similarly in D&D. Be prepared for your pl♈ayers' quick attempts to fix the issue.

Your players (especially the clerics) will want to use their magic to cure the plague. They won't appreciate it if you tell them their magic doesn't work for plot reasons. It's more believable to say the sickness spreads faster than magical🐲 means can keep up with. Here are more tips for running a fun plague game:

Define The Sickness

Rather than giving your players plot armour plague immunity, be straight with them about symptoms and transmission. What saving throw is required to avoid getting sick? (A constitution check usually worꦑks best♈.) What debuffs to stats occur when the plague is contracted?

Page 257 of the Dungeons Masters Guide (DMG) lists some diseases. You can use or adapt any of these to fit your scenario. You can also get creative with your own unique plague, using the DMG for inspiration. Ensure you know the di𝔍fficulty check (D𒈔C) required to avoid infection and that you're consistent with symptoms.

You need to signal that people are very sick to make your players nervous about the plague. Don't be afraid to oversell it here. Infected NPCs should be clearly suffering from bebuffs that the players want to avoid.

Temples, Churches, And Shrines

The people of Faerûn place their faith in a pantheon of gods. These gods' places of worship would become crowded during a plague event. People would come seeking healing and to ask for divine blessing from their gods. A pl♈ague can be a good opportunity to explore the workings and hierarchies of a city's religious orders.

As a plague progresses, more and more sick people congregate at temples and churches. This, in turn, motivates religious leaders to seek out cures and solutions. A druid, priest, or other religious figure can be the quest giver that sets the party on the path to finding the cure.

Temples and churches can also act as the locus of an infection. Perhaps some place of worship has been infiltrated by evil cultists or other corrupting fo🌃rces.

One Rule For The Wealthy

When the plague returned to London in 1665, King Charles II suspended parliament so all the lords and MPs could leave the city. The rich inhabitants of a city will always try to use their wealth to buy safety. Think about how that might🔴 look in your setting. Have rich folk fled to country estates? Are they locked high in their towers with food and water carefully sta🌄shed?

Plagues inevitably affect supply lines, leading to food shortages. Wealthier people have stores, larders, and privileged access to markets. They can hold out longer than the common folk ♈of the city, who often live hand-to-mouth. Hunger does strange things to civilized people. A hungry city should feel de♒sperate and frightening.

City-Wide Measures

How the city reacts to the plague should influence the players' experience. Who is in charge of burning the dead? Are quarantines in place? Has the city employed the services of any plag⛄ue doctors? Has the city's food supply been affected by the plague? Have the authorities responded in any way?

Plagues create corpses. Unless these corpses are disposed of quickly, the sickness spreads and worsens. How far gone is the city? Are there still people taking the dead to funeral pyres? Is law and order holding up, or has the mi๊litia gone rogue?

Creative Symptoms

While real-world illness typically comes with a standard set of bodily symptoms, D&D plagues can be more colourful. D&D plagues can turn you into slime, make you cackle uncontrollably, or cause permanent ability point drain. Depending on your game's tone, a D&D plague🎐 can be𒀰 funny, tragic, or frightening.

Page 257 of the DMG has some interesting sicknesses to choose from. However, feel free to invent your own symptoms - especially those that are more for flavour than game mechanics.

Who Benefits?

Your story should feature at least one faction that wants the plague to spread unchecked. This could be a foreign ruler, a deposed noble, or an angry religious group. The plague itself can be an act of the gods or the deliberate work of this faction. Having a flesh and blood party acting against the adventurers' interests helps the narr🐻🅷ative.

The malignant faction should look to take advantage of any weakness or power vacuums that the plague creates. They can either be responsible for the plague or opportunistically respond to it. Either way, the bad guys should thwart the party's efforts at every opportunity.

Milestones

This is up to the individual DM. Decide whether you want the plague to be the main event or something happening in the background. If the plague is the primary mystery, divide ✤its discovery, containmentꩲ, and cure into plot milestones.

The discovery could start with a party member falling ill and then rushing to a town for a cure. Once in town, the party realise that everyone around them is sick. Containment might look like the party battling their way across a map to administer a cure, light a beacon, deliver potions, etc. The cure phase could mean defeating the monster that's causing the infection or destroying a cult's underground temple.

Best Settings For Plague Dungeons & Dragons

Plagues hit towns and cities hardest. Population density plays an important role in the spread of disease. Running a plague game in a city makes sense for these reasons. However, the joy of tabletop RPGs is their open nature. If the players want to outrun the sickness in the countryside, let them try.

Problems in the countryside during a plague include a severe lack of food and gangs of roving bandits. Alternatively, the party could ingratiate themselves with a noble intent on holing up in their keep or estate. The open sea could even offer temporary refuge, so long as you have enou🔯gh food ❀and water.

Present the players with unique challenges and situation🐬s depending on their location. But always keep the devastating results of the plague at the forefront.

Many existing settings lend themselves well to a plague story. Sigil is a city in the centre of the multiverse accessed by magical portal doors. Every intelligent species visits Sigil to trade and interact. The huge volume of different species could easily lead to infection. Species that rarely interact🤪 meet in Sigil, potentially introducing each other to previously unknown pathogens.

Ravenloft, with its vampire overlords, could make for an interesting plague setting. Vampires are traditionally immune from human sickness. The party could be forced to turn undead or fall victim to the plague.

With its population of over 20,000, Neverwinter could make a perfect setting for a large-scale plague with potentially devastating consequences.