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Leliel
2010-06-17, 09:34 PM
Well...That.

A lot of what the villain is able to do in my super robot game-in-planning (long story) is engineer new forms of life due to sufficently-analyzed magic.

Naturally, this tends to result in man-made plauges.

So what I was wondering was:

How would bio-warfare work in Eberron?

Snake-Aes
2010-06-17, 09:42 PM
I am not aware of any method used to build poisons...but biowarfare is summed up to two things
1) Spreading diseases
2) Spreading poison

The dc doesn't have to be very high... a mere 14 will net you infecting 3/4 of the city's population. But you have to craft massive amounts of it, and they must be ingested or inhaled. Preferably they're also hard to detect, but I don't recall rules on that.

druid91
2010-06-17, 09:51 PM
Have it fired into a snowstorm. When the snow melts everyone dies.

JeminiZero
2010-06-17, 09:53 PM
How would bio-warfare work in Eberron?

Perhaps a better question would be what is this guy aiming to achieve, and then figure out how he would engineer the plague to function from there.

Since this a magical plague, you can make it do all sorts of weird things that wouldn't be possible normally. Like say, create a plague that selectively eliminates half-elves.

Leliel
2010-06-17, 10:28 PM
Perhaps a better question would be what is this guy aiming to achieve, and then figure out how he would engineer the plague to function from there.

Well...You know the Rosalia Virus from Trauma Team?

It's an expy of that.

If you don't know, imagine Ebola...with one of it's symptoms being cancer...and it doesn't show other symptoms until it's ready to kill you...and it eats your blood veins while you're still alive.

It's purpose is terror, mainly.

Since this a magical plague, you can make it do all sorts of weird things that wouldn't be possible normally. Like say, create a plague that selectively eliminates half-elves.

See above.

Also keep in mind that Rosalia, in Trauma Team, can survive for more than two years inside a skeleton, and it's incredibly durable besides.

It's vector? Well, it's a spoiler, but:
Have you considered those monarch butterflies may be more than symbolism?

But don't worry, I can make it even more horrible...

Crafty Cultist
2010-06-17, 10:52 PM
Well, in a high magic setting like ebberon, a mad mage creating magical diseases isn't out of the question. If you want it to spread terror, make it extremly contagious, so that even being near one of the infected requires a save to resist infection. if the desease has effects that make it hard to heal magically it means catching it will have serious effects. also if the disease has effects governed by the DM rather than strict rules it becomes less predictable. and if the disease makes the victims into something dangerous, thats good too(lycanthropy, undeath, being twisted into a deformed monster, ect)

Those are my thoughts. hope I helped

avr
2010-06-17, 11:06 PM
One justification for the Silver Flames' purges of lycanthropy is that there was a change in lycanthropy's nature which made afflicted lycanthropes infectious - normally only natural ones can pass on the infection.

IMO bio-warfare in Eberron would use something like this.

Lord Vukodlak
2010-06-17, 11:36 PM
One justification for the Silver Flames' purges of lycanthropy is that there was a change in lycanthropy's nature which made afflicted lycanthropes infectious - normally only natural ones can pass on the infection.

IMO bio-warfare in Eberron would use something like this.

The silverflame also burned entire villages to the ground and slaughtered every inhabitant, because one of them was a lycanthrope and they couldn't take the chance. They also killed shifters and good aligned lycanthropes who never harmed a soul.

It would not surprise me if the purge actually started before the change in the curse.

HunterOfJello
2010-06-18, 12:59 AM
A ton of sprayers with acid or diseased liquids in them spread out over a wide area by a airship would work well as a biological weapon

You could also use warforged with hidden canisters of disease spreadying agents in them to infect huge areas. warforged are immune to disease and poisons.

Seffbasilisk
2010-06-18, 01:16 AM
Living spell (Contagition) ? Or something better...

RelentlessImp
2010-06-18, 01:41 AM
Living spell (Contagition) ? Or something better...

Living Spell (Blackflame).

Chambers
2010-06-18, 01:42 AM
How would bio-warfare work in Eberron?

Create a panic.

In brief:

Find or create a common disease (called Disease A) that has a known non-magical or low-level magic cure. Taint the supply of the cure with your disease or bio-weapon (Disease B).

Convince the public that there is a plague of Disease A. They go out and get the cure, which is tainted with the real disease.

JeminiZero
2010-06-18, 02:03 AM
and if the disease makes the victims into something dangerous, thats good too(lycanthropy, undeath, being twisted into a deformed monster, ect)

You don't really need a custom disease for this. Just set off a Wightpocalypse or Shadowpocalypse. Wights are easier to mass-create via Fell Drain Locate City Bomb, but Shadows are arguably more dangerous since they can affect relatively common Warforged, and more importantly are incorporeal and can move freely.

Teron
2010-06-18, 02:18 AM
Assuming you want to have it released in a major city, you should probably give the disease a mummy rot-like resistance to magical treatment, to limit House Jorasco's ability to deal with it. You could also give it a long incubation period so there are a lot of infectees by the time some start showing symptoms; in fact, since it's magically created, every infectee could start showing symptoms simultaneously after a set delay, or once a certain number of people are infected. That should nicely overwhelm House Jorasco and other sources of treatment.

On the other hand, I'd recommend against having it spread through simple proximity to carriers, because while that justifies huge numbers of infected, it also means the PC's can't really take effective precautions to avoid it and may as well just assume they'll get infected and have to treat it later. I think it will be more interesting if they have to avoid touching potentially infected people and objects, worry about where their food comes from, and so on. Maybe the disease could go airborne in a small area only when a carrier dies, which could affect combat tactics.


The silverflame also burned entire villages to the ground and slaughtered every inhabitant, because one of them was a lycanthrope and they couldn't take the chance. They also killed shifters and good aligned lycanthropes who never harmed a soul.

It would not surprise me if the purge actually started before the change in the curse.
That's not quite accurate. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050404a)

WeeFreeMen
2010-06-18, 04:26 AM
Cancer Mage comes to mind.