How do I Implement a Disease in 4E?

[Jonny Tenebrous]

I'm getting near the end of my conversion D&D Encounters Season 2 into a Fantasy Grounds campaign and have run into a snag. It won't be spoiling much to say that in the desert world of Athas in the Dark Sun Campaign, there's an effect called "Sun Sickness". It's an attack of Level + 4 vs. Fortitude. The final stage results in death. How do I build such a thing into my campaign? Thanks. ~Jonny

[Jonny Tenebrous]

Well, I've just copied the disease text in as an image for now... guess that'll work until I discover a more official way.

[Griogre]

I used the image way myself recently. I like the image way myself because you can drag a token on it for each character and keep track what stage they are on (and share it or not with the players as you wish).

It is possible to input diseases in a way the 4E ruleset can understand and display but you will have to modify the db.xml XML by hand. Its not particularly difficult but may not be worth the time to you. It wasn't to me.

[Jonny Tenebrous]

Thanks Griorgre. For some reason it hadn't occured to me to use a token to chart the progression on a picture... great idea. I actually did have a crack at editing the db.xml by hand, but for some reason it didn't work, and I had to move on. I'll pursue that path when I have more time.

[Zeus]

Jonny, you can also use the 4E Parser to produce a small module which can hold the diseases for reference. Do a quick search on the term '4E Parser' and you will find a number of posts with instructions on how to use it.