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Magic inDungeons & Dragonshas made life for the denizens of many fantasy worlds rather easy, but it can also as easily make it a living hell. One way this can happen is through magical contagions, a type of disease presented in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide.
The three contagion examples work perfectly as a jumping-off point to create your own versions, but there is little in the way of guidelines for how they should work. While the freedom is appreciated, some players might find it daunting, but that is why we are here to help.
How To Create Magical Contagions
The only general aspects to consider when making a magical contagion arehow easily it can spreadand how muchresting affects recuperation.If your contagion allows for any kind of rest, thenresting for three dayswould allow a creature to make aConstitution saving throw(DC 15), possibly gainingadvantage on saving against the contagion for 24 hours.
Initial Infection
Your magical contagion can come fromall kinds of sources, just like regular diseases in the real world. Polluted water, air, or food could spread it, as well as touching or getting attacked by creatures carrying it; it is best if you defineonly one way of getting infectedso as to not make it unnecessarily complicated.
All three examples of magical contagions in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide havethe effects of the contagion happening 1D4 days after infection, so that is a good starting point for any contagion you make. If you spend many sessions on a single day, thenthe contagion should arise the very next day, so the players have a chance to remember what infected them.
The point of a magical contagion isfor it to spread, working as botha hazard for the playersand asa plot hook.As such, the way the contagion spreads needs to be atthe center of your plot, not just a random disease affecting a village the party never needs to visit again.
You may not want to have the contagion happen ina highly urbanized city, however, unless you are ready tomanage the chaos that could entail.Quarantine zones, mass contagion areas, and secluded parts of the city are just a few things that can make an adventure hard to navigate but very memorable.
Curing The Contagion
How each contagion is cureddepends on its individual effects, but it doesn’t have to be anything too complicated. Think aboutwhat your contagion revolves aroundand how you would normally cure it. You could also have somespecial artifact as an instant solutionthat the party needs to find.
Sight Rot, a contagion example in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, can becured by spells that remove the blinded condition, while the others can be rested through.
It is important foryour contagion to be curableand not a permanent condition your players have to learn to live with.
Effects Of Magical Contagions
Based on the examples in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, contagions can have fromone to three detrimental effects.This speaks of the severity of the contagion, which wouldmake players be extra carefulwhen dealing with dirty sewers or rabid enemies.
Exhaustion
Exhaustion is used in some magical contagion examples asa way to represent fever and fatigue.A high fever is often present in many diseases and viruses plaguing the world, so knowingthe best way to represent itcan help you determine the more interesting effects of whatever you have in mind.
The adverse effects of exhaustion can beenough of a punishment on their own, however. That’s why the magical contagion Sewer Plague doesn’t add many other adversities beyond making exhaustion hard to get rid of.
Established Conditions
All Sight Rot does is give the playera ‘permanent’ version of the blinded condition, making it a simple matter to create various contagions based on the other conditions.Not all of them fit nicelyin the contagion mold, but they can offer great jumping-off points to create what you want.
A contagion that givesthe incapacitated conditionwould only allow a character touse their movement speed, restricting their action in play heavily. Now, a contagion based onthe poisoned conditionis not complex enough, but you could add a chance offalling prone and vomitingwhenever the afflicted character is hit by an attack.
Positive Effects
Magical contagionsaren’t supposed to have positive effects, but they would make for an interesting trade-off, likethe lethargy suffered after the Haste spell has ended.The positivesshouldn’t outweigh the negatives, however. Otherwise, the players might want to stay sick forever.
Examples of this could bea contagion that makes muscles grow strangely, giving a plus one to strength checks buthalving the character’s speed.Or, in another case, it could be a contagion that gives a characterone level of exhaustionbutallows them to talk to plantsas they feel they are hallucinating.
