Getting a "rot" disease for 60 seconds is ridiculous.
It's also mechanically not interesting as it doesn't add anything to the game. You just stand still for a minute and wait for it to go away before going in combat or initiating dialogue. So it actually creates player downtime rather than being an interesting mechanic. You don't actively avoid diseases or bring cures because it's only an annoying minor inconvenience if you get infected.
By changing diseases into quick videogamey debuffs, Larian also made their cures obsolete. You don't need Lesser Restoration when you can just wait 60 boring seconds instead and save the spell slot. You don't ever need the Medicine skill which exists precisely for this. A skilled healer won't have a purpose, so why even play one?
Disease per definition should be a long term debuff to be interesting and meaningful. Diseases work well together with the concept of Long Rests and time passing. If only Long Rest would actually work as intended instead of just being a free ability reset button. An meaningful consequence from being diseased would be to replace the diseased party member with another while they recover, or to seek a healer.
A good example of how Larian tweaking the D&D ruleset here and there to make it more "videogame" causes a domino effect where big chunks of the game are rendered weird and meaningless.
Last edited by 1varangian; 08/01/22 01:28 PM.
