Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Plague Doctor

So, Plague Doctors are cool, mostly because all attempts of Medieval minds to understand and deal with the world are cool. In fact there is a lot of logic behind Medieval medicine, even if it was not necessarily correct.

They were also brave individuals who, at great personal risk, treated plague victims both rich and poor. They were typically hired by a municipality or town council during times of plague to especially focus on the poor who could not afford private physicians. Although they did not always have medical training, their prerogative was still to care for victims of the plague, witness wills, offer moral succor, and subject themselves to voluntary quarantine by dealing with none save plague victims.

This is not a Medieval Doctor.
This is different sort of Doctor.

Plague Doctor

You are a Doctor.
Plague Doctors: Killing it in fashion since the 16th C.

Your skills are many and your understanding of the four humors is deep and should not be questioned. It is your job to heal whining peasants and arrogant nobles of whatever plague ails them, with the use of your many tools and amazing clothes. Sometimes this takes the form of leeching, sometimes feeding them purgatives, sometimes of jabbing them with a pointed stick, sometimes tying them up and having them bound in a dark room, and sometimes (for greatest efficacy) all at once.

Doctor seen here with important jabbing stick
As a Doctor you wander the land, solving plagues and getting paid. The one thing that surely all Doctors want is even fancier Doctor clothes, and sharper Doctors sticks. For that you obviously need cash. 


Scary Doctor Mask

Now, the most important thing you learn in Doctor school, is that in order to properly treat people for Plague, they must be properly terrified. Sometimes people stop complaining if you just turn up looking scary enough. Thus the thesis is proved that you can scare Plague right out of the body. Hence, the Scary Doctor Mask.

Seen here being creepy
The mask is made of leather, metal, and glass, and most importantly it looks really spooky. The main point of the mask is to show people that you are a Serious Doctor and look cool and scary. People like to know that their lives are in the hands of someone appropriately intimidating, and surely someone you are that afraid of must know what they are talking about. 

However, this badass mask has another property: to keep out all the awful smells that poor, unwashed, gross, peasants reek of. It probably also helps keep out plague miasmas or something.

Dancing skellingtons are a common side-effect of plague


These people suffer from an excess of boils probably due to a dearth of leeches


See, here's your problem. You were full of animals


Important Doctor tools
Important Doctor Bag

As an important Doctor, you carry with you a bag always filled with interesting bits and pieces, often sharp and pokey, for medical purposes. Along with this, it often contains odds and ends of a confusing and medical nature. It cannot hold anything else other than non-encumbering items (it is already full of Important Doctor things), however it will never ever truly be empty of such things as small stabby tools, bits of weird glassware, suspicious herbs of unknown provenance, and possibly a dead vole or two.

The main thing that the contents of your Important Doctor Bag is for, other than holding surgical instruments, is brewing up curative patent medicines and cures.


Some so-called Doctors may wander around selling false hope and snake-oil. Not you though, your patent medicines work all the time, or at least most of the time, they mostly do something in any case. You certainly wouldn't stoop to selling snake-oil... unless you found some oily snakes.... and some dumb peasants were willing to buy it.

Rules Malarky
Hit Dice: d6 per level
Experience Track: As Specialist
Saves: As Specialist

Special Abilities:
Scary Doctor Mask: You wear a cool and creepy Doctor Mask. You have a bonus, equal to your level, when attempting to frighten or intimidate someone.
Pointy Doctor Stick: For jabbing patients. Does 1d6 jabbing damage, always non-lethal (you're a Doctor dammit, not a murderer) however subdued patients are much more open to surgery. You receive your level as an attack bonus but only with your Pointy Doctor Stick.
Doctor Bag: This is a neat looking Doctor's bag which goes well with all your other Doctor clothes. It is jam packed with nifty instruments, herbs, and unguents. It is packed to the brim, and you can never fit anything more in it; however it is always assumed to contain a supply of cruel looking metal probes, scalpels, pliers, and bonesaws [count as Daggers for rule purposes], as well as a number of glass phials, some interesting bits of string, jars of leeches, and a supply of healing (or at least weird smelling) plants and herbs.
Potion Making: Given access to your Doctor's Bag and an entire day of downtime you can brew up a single dose of potion. You can spend a day fiddling with herbs, bits of dirt, funny glassware from your Doctor bag until the potion is formed. The potion remains essentially inert and unspoiled until consumed, at which point the effect of the potion is rolled. You can change the die roll either up or down by up to half your level (rounded down).

Potion Effect (d100)
  1. Haha! That guy just died. Save or Die Poison
  2. Causes a feigned death for 1d4 days. I think I saw this in a play once
  3. All bones dissolve, welcome to your new life as a sack of meat! 
  4. Too many bones! Bones start growing uncontrollably
  5. Uncontrollable Blood Vomiting! Lose 4d6 HP 
  6. Powerful emetic
  7. Powerful diuretic
  8. Powerful laxative
  9. Powerful purgative (combination of the above three)
  10. Leeches (just a jar full of leeches, honestly you don't know how you didn't notice before you swallowed them) 
  11. Lose d6 to all stats for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  12. Lose d20 hit points for 24 hours
  13. Lose d6 DEX for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  14. Lose d6 CON for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  15. Lose d6 CHA for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  16. Lose d6 WIS for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  17. Lose d6 INT for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  18. Lose d6 STR for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  19. Zombie Potion, all free will is lost and the consumer rendered highly suggestible lasts a week
  20. Snake oil (water)
  21. Snake oil (sugar pills, tastes sweet)
  22. Snake oil (made of snakes, probably poison)
  23. Snake oil (pheromone that attracts snakes) 
  24. Snake oil (will transform consumer into a snake)
  25. All hair grows rapidly an extra d20 meters in length. Formerly bald characters now sport a luxurious mane.
  26. Super powered body odor. Anyone within a meter radius must save against poison or become nauseous. Lasts d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  27. Skin changes to an unnatural colour (d10: 1.Blue, 2.Green, 3.Yellow, 4.Orange, 5. Red, 6. Purple, 7. Neon Pink, 8. Monochrome, 9.Roll Twice and Combine [one half one colour, one half the other] 10. An ever shifting hue) Lasts d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  28. Pustules. Consumer develops pustules all over their body. Unsightly, but only mildly irritating. The discharge of these pustules is mildly corrosive, so I suppose you could weaponize your pimples if you want a super gross super-power Lasts d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  29. Hunger. Consumer must eat twice their weight in biomass every day to survive, on the upside while this lasts they consume any organic matter that is not explicitly poisonous. Lasts d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  30. Blindness. Lasts d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  31. Deafness. Lasts d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  32. Consumer becomes cold-blooded and must lie in the sun for 2 hours in order to remain active for a day. Lasts d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  33. Uncontrolled Flatulence for 24 hours 
  34. Immediate loss of all body hair  
  35. Cure for Lycanthropy 
  36. Cure for Vampirism 
  37. Cure for the Common Cold 
  38. Antihistamine
  39. Cough Suppressant
  40. Antiseptic
  41. Local Anesthetic
  42. Counts as an Iron Ration
  43. Mild Hallucinogen
  44. Strong Hallucinogen
  45. Super Acid! Get ready to trip balls for 24 hours
  46. Mild Sedative
  47. Strong Sedative
  48. Immediately Fall Unconscious for d4 hours 
  49. Funny Tasting Water
  50. Placebo (no effect, but consumer believes they are completely healed of all ills) 
  51. Regain d4 HP 
  52. Regain d6 HP 
  53. Regain d8 HP 
  54. Regain d10 HP 
  55. Raise consumer's body temperature by 10°C with no adverse effects. They can now be used as an emergency radiator in extreme weather conditions.
  56. Increase consumer's buoyancy. Can no longer sink in water unless specifically weighted down. Lasts d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  57. Mild Painkiller
  58. Strong Painkiller
  59. Immunity to Pain for 24 hours
  60. Mild Stimulant
  61. Strong Stimulant
  62. Liquid Crack Cocaine! Take double actions for 24 hours
  63. Lose all sense of fear.
  64. Gain an eidetic memory.
  65. Gain the ability to identify by scent.
  66. Sweat transmutes to pleasing perfume
  67. Antidote
  68. Powerful Anaphrodisiac 
  69. Powerful Aphrodisiac
  70. Powerful Priapic
  71. Immediately cast d4 random wizard spells
  72. Immediately cast d4 random cleric spells
  73. Immediately cast d8 random spells of both cleric and wizard lists
  74. Become completely immune to all magics for good or ill, can no longer cast, use, or be affected by anything magical. Lasts for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  75. Gain the spell "Speak With Toad" Chose one toad in the world. For one minute once per day you can understand and be understood by the toad, provided you are within speaking distance.
  76. Cure for Consumption 
  77. Cure for Leprosy 
  78. Cure for Plague 
  79. Four Thieves Vinegar (Keeps all plagues at bay) 
  80. Low alcohol tincture
  81. Highly alcoholic tincture
  82. Tincture of Opium
  83. SWANK 
  84. Gain d20 hit points for 24 hours
  85. Gain d6 DEX for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  86. Gain d6 CON for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  87. Gain d6 CHA for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  88. Gain d6 WIS for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  89. Gain d6 INT for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  90. Gain d6 STR for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  91. Gain d6 to all stats for d10 days (permanent on a 10)
  92. Cool mutation (Roll on your favorite mutation table) 
  93. Grow Gills! You can now breathe underwater! 10% chance that you lose the ability to breathe air 
  94. Wolverine Claws! How? Who cares! That shit is badass! You can always count as having a d6 damage weapon in each hand
  95. Beautiful Plumage. You grow exotic feathers all over. Quite fetching, although people may try to murder you to turn you into a hat 
  96. Super Ears. All problems with hearing are alleviated, plus you get a +2 bonus to hear things
  97. Leather Hide, you grow a cool scaly hide that adds +2 to your AC
  98. Super eyes. Regrow any missing eyes. Plus your eyes can now see in the dark
  99. Limb growth. If the patient is missing a limb, they regrow it. If they are not, they should no complain, because hey, free limb!
  100. Universal Panacea. Holy Shit! I hope you remember how you did that, because DAMN! That just fixed everything that was possibly wrong with that person. Plus, they permanently gain 1 point to every stat. 

You are terror, you are master of life and death, you are a Doctor.

Fear me peasants!

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