Good morning! It’s Jonathan here with time for one last Rules Ramble before our November event, BLOOD FEAST.
I’ve posted a few notes about the nature of disease in Dystopia Rising, HERE.
I’ve posted a brief summary of the Disease mechanics in the book, with Part 1 HERE, and Part 2 HERE.
With the book out of the way, I’d like to tease a bit of other mechanics you might see this weekend, particularly ones that might be used by some nefarious enemies and NPCs.
INFLICT DISEASE: A single strike that causes a disease to be inflicted at stage one/two/three. The enemy will call “INFLICT DISEASE: [NAME OF DISEASE], STAGE <LEVEL>”
One call in particular you need to know about is INFLICT DISEASE. This is a Skill often used by monsters like diseased Zed or Raiders, but can enter play in some other interesting ways. This call can be countered in a few different ways.
If it is delivered as a Ranged or Melee Strike, then the Avoid skill can completely negate the Strike. Plot can’t kill what plot can’t catch!
If a Inflict Disease strike is not Avoided, a member of the Mutant Lineage can spend 1 Resolve to call “Mutated Immune System, No Effect!”. Remember, the strain advantage only protects you from the INITIAL source of the disease, so once you are infected you are impacted by INFLICT DISEASE calls like normal. Use your Resolve early if you want to avoid Disease!
If the Inflict Disease call is delivered as an Area of Effect or Sound of My Voice call, it cannot be Avoided.
This skill is most commonly delivered as part of a Cannibalism attack while you are in Bleed Out. Remember, while in Bleed Out you can’t use most skills, so it’s not normally possible to avoid an Inflict Disease call like this. Mutants can still use their Strain advantage, though!
If you have been Inoculated against a particular disease (see my blog post HERE), then you can call “No Effect, Inoculated!”. However, particularly infectious Diseases can OVERPOWER your Inoculation.
If you try to use this effect more than once an hour, the NPC can call “OVERPOWER, INFLICT DISEASE” and you’ll have to either Avoid the strike or be infected with the disease. Inoculation is a temporary protection, but won’t last during a long fight.
Lastly, this is a bit of a Spoiler (sorry!). Sometimes a source of INFLICT DISEASE can be a trigger to causing Diseases to get worse. This means that an infection can quickly become deadly if you are exposed to it again and again. Best to avoid those monsters completely!
POISON DAMAGE: (Damage Augment) Add “MIND DAMAGE” to spike damage attack. The Target hit loses an amount of Mind points equal to the damage called INSTEAD OF LOSING BODY.
Particularly nasty or infectious monsters can sometimes use “Damage Augments”. These modify a normal strike to also do an additional effect. Normally, this is things like Lineage Bane or Body Damage, but one particularly terrible call is POISON. This is normally used by tribes of Raiders that coat snake venom on their weapons, or particularly poisonous Critters.
If you are hit by a monster that is using POISON damage, instead of losing Body damage, you lose MIND points! This means it will be harder to use that next Skill later, especially once you run out of Mind! This is a particularly insidious type of damage, as using Avoid to block a small source of Poison Damage often costs you as much as the damage would have inflicted in the first place.
The only Damage Augment more deadly than Poison is RADIATION, as when you take Radiation damage you not only lose Body, you also lose Mind. It’s like a combination of Poison and Body damage in one Strike!
We have a few more days to go, but I can’t wait to see everyone at our November event. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence I’ve mentioned these two rules above. :D