Medical illnesses, diseases., trodo, 2004-03-05 14:43:38

Medical illnesses, diseases.

diseaes, malap, 2004-03-05 22:11:09

I seriously dislike this idea. Players hate not being in control of their characters and this would deliberately be a loss of control and ability.

I could accept it if the penalties were small, and there were quests or crafts for items to fix them.

I'm moving this to backburner. If people post some detailed ideas, some of them may not be hard to implement and this can come up to todo.

Flu, aeao, 2004-03-05 22:23:40

I agree with Malap. But since I do have an idea think I'll post it. Maybe you could get the flu. I've never had the flu so I could be wrong about some stuff :)
1) Move slightly slower
2) Lose end more quickly
3) lose control of spells more easily and have trouble doing tasks that take concentration

headache, anonymous, 2004-03-29 10:50:35

i love it when some people think that just because they have to dis every one else i'm very tired of people doing it to me

Off-topic, acius, 2004-03-29 14:25:29

Sounds like you're having a bad day, and that's a pity, but this isn't really a social forum. Also, why are you posting anonymously? Are you lost and posting in the wrong place?

Anyway, this post is far enough off topic that I'm planning on deleting it. Any reason why I shouldn't should reply to me here within the next, oh, couple days.

nuke it, malap, 2004-03-29 19:41:36

A quick check of the logs says they've never connected to the game or visited any web pages. They Googled for "diseaes and illnesses" (without quotes, and note typo) and this thread was first. They tried 3 times to use logins that don't exist on this site, then posted anonymously.

Yes, they were very lost.

I'd nuke it but..., acius, 2004-03-30 01:38:38

It's freaking hilarious. I kinda want to leave it for posterity.

Sure, don't use heisenwack compensators, sora, 2005-09-08 09:23:26

So I'm curious as to why we were top page for that, but now that you've added your little bit, we'll never really know (or you will)

yeah..., allaryin, 2004-03-29 15:05:18

I think as far as lingering illnesses, things should be largely cosmetic. Three diseases I can think of that I wouldn't mind seeing in the game:

cold - You sneeze and cough occasionally, and that's it. However, sneezing of coughing during spellcasting has a chance of interrupting.

fleas - You have scratchy varmints living on your flesh. Every so often, they will bite you particularly hard and you will take 1 point of damage. Mostly, you get lots of annoying messages and scratch frequently (which scratching could interrupt spells).

hives - You break out in splotchy ugliness. Same scratching as with fleas, but it also reduces cha.

A cold and fleas would be contagious, chance every itch or sneeze of infecting people near you. If somebody writes diseases, I'll immediately write a spell and a prayer to fix them.

Medicine, focker, 2004-03-29 18:59:56

What about non-magical solutions to illnesses? Certain foods or plants (which could either be ingested directly or used to make medicine in the form of food or drink) should have effects on illnesses -- and while we're at it, why not have them affect other things? (But that's off-topic, so moving on.)

Spells and prayers would be nice though. But there should be other ways to cure yourself of any malady besides those, because I would think a curing spell would require a lot of skill in magic, and not all people pray.

kusuri o nonda hou ga ii to omou, allaryin, 2004-07-27 06:02:32

Yeah, medicine is good. It does, however, imply that we have people with sufficient scientific or alchemical knowledge to get the job done. Also, to be accurate, medicines would not be instantly functional.

The kinds of diseases I had listed are not really the sort to be cured by drinking an elixer, as they are largely exterior. One would want to smear a healative salve over the sores or take a bath (this is how one cures fleas on Discworld).

Cough syrup would be fun, as would stimulant pills and pain killers. However, this sort of thing will really have to wait until we write either Forgehaven (dwarves have seriously good medical science) or Tinkers (who actually probably have nanobots :P).

Alchemical or Herbological knowledge?, garvin, 2005-09-08 09:17:50

I know i'm probably bringing up an otherwise dead concept here, but I'm bored, and this subject was linked by the "Food Thread" that was redone.

I wonder if using plant sources for medicine would really require Alchemical knowledge.

Grant, It would require Great medical knowledge, but herbal knowledge could be the only other requirement, in my not-so-humble opinion, to get the basic treatments.

However, building on that knowledge of medical and herbal combined, one could add alchemical knowledge in a pharmaceutical sense. In that way, a player could extract the essences of the plants that make them good healing agents, and thereby making them more potent. So that instead of having a plant-based poultice that is crushed, rolled on bark or even chewed before being applied, one could have a salve of the extracted elements that permits greater dexterity than a bandaged poultice and weighs less and twice the effective healing properties.

On a side note, not just plants have healing properties. I remember instances where the stinging "poison" of Bull Ants is very effective on an open wound. Just throw a cloth on a nest of bull ants, which agitates them and they sting it. Then wrap the bandage on the wound.