Disease

[Psycho]

Does anyone know how it is calculated whether a unit will be affected by disease? Is it a MR resistible effect? Is there any difference between disease attack caused by plague carrier ability and the one caused by touch of leprosy?

[Endoperez]

Disease is an affliction. There are many ways to get it:

1) As a normal affliction. See FAQ.
2) As an old age affliction. Almost the same as above, but Death magic helps either against all old age afflictions or just getting disease from old age. FAQ.
3) From certain items, such as Bane Venom Charm, Rod of the Leper King, Fever Fetish. Magic resistance does not protect. Avoid by not giving these items to important non-undead commanders.
4) From being the target of certain weapons and/or spells, such as Plague Bow wielded by some pretenders, Touch of Leprosy, and spells like Seven Year Fever. Seven Year Fever is negated my magic resistance, but the weapons aren't AFAIK.
5) Plague Carrier units
6) some magic sites, even before they're found
7) starving for too long
8) probably something else as well



Plague caused by the spell Plague is different. From the manual, page 241:
The plague does 1-2 damage and 1-4 fatigue each turn. Also, each turn the plague spreads from infected units to adjancent units. It continues to spread each round until all infected units are dead.

At least the initial spell is negated by magic resistance, and probably the spreading as well.

[Psycho]

Thanks for the answer, but what I am actually interested to learn is what are the chances of getting diseased from weapons such as plague bow, touch of leprosy and aoe effects such as plague carrier. Is it a MR resistible roll or something else and is there any difference between them? At least for plague carrier I can see that not every unit caught in it's cloud is affected.

[Endoperez]

Edi's database gives details on spesific weapons. Special effects like Disease or various poisons are handled as poisons, and Edi's database will tell you if a spesific weapon is negated by magic resistance. In a quick search, it seems like only disease caused by Axe of Hate and Plague Scythe can be negated by magic resistance. Other weapons' secondary effect Disease isn't negated by magic resistance, but some of those weapons can be negated by magic resistance. Plague Breath can be resisted, as an example, and if it is resisted you won't suffer the secondary effect either. I don't know what unit has Plague Breath weapon, BTW.

I didn't know a plague carrier wouldn't disease everyone around him. I thought it would be automatic.


I also didn't know that every time a Death 9 bless deals damage, it automatically causes disease. I found that out while going through Edi's DB.

[Psycho]

It appears that plague carrier effect is MR resistible, since I detected that it easily affects troops and not so easily thugs with better MR.

I also discovered that with weapons that have a disease effect which is not resistible, you still have to inflict some damage before the disease takes effect. So, high protection helps as well, it's not like poison in that regard. But maybe this is not news for others.

[Nikelaos]

IIRC touch of leprosy can't be resisted, one reason why disease demons are dangerous, send horror i find is better because horror marks tend to be more dangerous for an SC than disease and horrors have a better chance of killing a mage in battle than a disease demon, though 99% of the time disease demons will succeed in diseasing a target.

disease demons can work well vs SCs but they would need other stuff to finish it. The big boost would be making SCs unable to heal and furthermore gain afflictions to gradually make them weaker. However that strategy is near useless if the enemy has GoH up, or has healers or owns the chalice.

[Dragar]

As a related question, does regen impact disease at all? I'm thinking specifically of the Leprosy spell - if cast on regenerating units will they be normally affected, and if so will they regenerate the hit points:
• Never?
• Each turn, so basically unaffected?
• In battle?

[Lingchih]

Regeneration effects all afflictions, by reducing the chance of affliction. I am not sure what the numbers are, but yes it reduces the chance of disease as well.

[vfb]

Is the manual wrong? It says each unit in the province hit by Leprosy has a 50% chance of being targeted, and will become diseased if it fails an MR check. Does not say anything about regeneration influencing the MR check or providing an additional check.

As far as diseased units go (non-undead, non-demon), if they have regeneration:

- They still have a chance to receive additional monthly afflictions, but not as many as if they were diseased and non-regenerating.

- They will regenerate to their max HP in battle. There is some weirdness with prophets and pretenders as to what that max HP is, depending on dominion.

- They will not lose 1HP per month (or regen outside battles), except in late winter I think they will lose 1HP.

[Lingchih]

I was just going by the line in the manual that says regeneration decreases the chance of afflictions.