Alternatives to Cure Disease

[Mandrake]

Hi!

This is kinda urgent and specific - are there any ways of curing diseases without the Cure Disease ritual or Heal check attendance?

My players are no way near Heal and they have a task to somehow cure a small community of people infected with Soul Rot and Cemetery Rot, before they all die and turn into dreadful undead!
Is there some sort of an item, "holy water thing" or similar which can cure people's diseases in the books, or should I make something up?

Thanks in advance!

[Adoendithas]

There's Delay Affliction in Dragon 405, which is lower level and they might find some scrolls of. Or there's a tenth-level Bard utility in HotF, although it needs to be cast before the affliction sets in. Other than that, I can't think of anything, sorry.

[Badgerish]

The Warpriest class gets a daily utility at 5th/6th level that cures everything but death (Holy Cleansing).

There is a skill-crystal-thing that I can't remember the name of, it gives you training in a skill for an encounter. That might give them limited access to the Heal skill.

I'm assuming that you are the GM? If so, make an adventure of it: there is a local herb that will slow/heal the afflictions, but they will need a lot of it. When the character go to harvest it, turns out it's already been harvested! Find out who did it, see how much of the herb you can recover... if you don't have enough, who do you choose to heal?

What level/classes are the characters?

[Hal]

Originally Posted by Badgerish

I'm assuming that you are the GM? If so, make an adventure of it: there is a local herb that will slow/heal the afflictions, but they will need a lot of it. When the character go to harvest it, turns out it's already been harvested! Find out who did it, see how much of the herb you can recover... if you don't have enough, who do you choose to heal?

Yeah, I'm going to second this suggestion. As the GM, you can give them a way to cure disease whether they have the mechanical means at their disposal or not. In fact, given that this is an entire village and not just a few characters, you almost have to provide means of providing mass cure; a ritual isn't going to cut it.

In other words, I wouldn't worry too much about finding something in the books to cover this.

Just out of curiosity, how did these people contract said diseases in the first place?

[Ashdate]

Better yet, allow only a limited amount of the "cure" in question, forcing the players to make some tough choices about who lives and who dies.

[Mandrake]

Actually, guys, all of your advice, though gold it is, proved to be unnecessary.

I thought of something like that, maybe, giving them tough decisions to make, making them harvest local wildlife/water wells or something, with an idea to improvise
but
upon getting to the village they suddenly became very suspicious of those that weren't afflicted (as if a normal Endurance check from their side is impossible).

In short, I went with that, and in the very end they managed to find proof of inner conspiracy (Vecnian symbols), although most of it was a bitter fail, since they lost like pretty much everyone, except for this one guy they saved that is actually one of the Vecna cultists, and one other woman who fled, which was a cultist as well.

Just out of curiosity, how did these people contract said diseases in the first place?

Well, it's a long campaign plot, but - a new "Cult of the Liberated" (Tharizdun's, he's free, nvm) suddenly appears in a small, secluded valley and starts it's conquest. In order to protect one small town from the fanatics, a guy named Mean who is a captain of the Legion (nvm) makes a deal out of desperation (and imprudence) with some old one-eyed man. Undead start spawning in the loess valley around the town, preventing the attacks. Soon, the town itself is engulfed in necrotic and Mean becomes a Death Knight under Vecna. The Undead became so successful that they pushed back the Cultists and took control of almost the entire valley.
So, original plan was that, since undead appear for no reason, some of the few villagers that survived in that remote place got the disease from eating carcasses or from dead animals and graves; you catch the drift. Afterwards, when the PCs were heavy on "that grandma is really suspicious, I should just tie her down or kill her!", then I decided on intentional sickening by the Vecnian necromancers.

Thanks again, guys. Wish this forum had a heart smiley.

[darkdragoon]

Keoghtom's Ointment (PHB)

Heal is not *that* hard to boost; Chirurgeon's Tools (MME) are one fairly inexpensive way.

There are a few other items that are useful as far as preventing the spread (sweet water, lodret leaves), but that seems about it.