Mononucleosis
Name: Mononucleosis (Ex)
Infection DC: 20 (Contact)
Incubation: 3-6 weeks
Damage: Sore Throat (see text), fatigue, headache (see text), insomnia (see text)
This disease is spread from anyone who has the disease, and it is spread through the mildest contact, including handshakes. Anyone who contracts this disease feels the symptoms 3-6 weeks later, and the symptoms last for 1-3 weeks. Anyone who contracts this disease is contagious, and can therefore spread it to their party, so often they are left behind for the duration (though they are not contagious until the symptoms appear). Those who contract this disease feel the following symptoms:
Fatigue: A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a -2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted.
Headache: A character with a headache cannot concentrate as well as normal. This causes a -6 penalty to Concentration checks.
Insomnia: A character with insomnia cannot sleep very well. Any time the character attempts to fall asleep, and every hour that they remain sleeping, they must succeed a fortitude save (DC 15) or wake up, not being able to fall asleep again for 6d4 minutes. If a character of a race that does not sleep (such as elves) has insomnia, treat his form of sleep (such as meditation) as sleep for the purposes of this symptom.
Sore Throat: Any time the character attempts to speak, he must succeed a fortitude save (DC 15) or take 1 Voice damage. This damage is permanent, unless treated specifically with a healing spell (the voice has its own HP, so a healing spell must target the voice specifically, rather than the body). If the character’s voice HP is reduced to 0, the damage cannot be healed. Voice damage is shown below.
Voice Damage: All characters have 10 Voice HP. Whenever a character attempts to speak, he must roll a d10. If the result of the d10 is greater than the character’s current voice HP, he fails to say what he was attempting to, and cannot speak for one full round. (ex. If a character has taken 2 Voice Damage, and therefore has 8 VHP remaining, he must roll a d10. If the result is 9 or 10, he fails to speak. This VHP is used for all characters, regardless of whether or not they have the disease; it just isn’t thought of, since at 10 VHP, it is impossible to fail the speech.) If a character’s Voice Damage isn’t healed within 2 weeks of its initial occurrence, the damage is completely permanent. Some DMs may allow permanent Voice Damage as a character flaw upon creation.