Making a pestilence themed character

[Grim Portent]

Hi all, I'm wondering in anyone knows any classes/spells etc that are good for a character based around spreading plague, disease and famine over large areas at a time.

I know of Cancer Mage, which is much too small scale for what I'm wanting to do, and Contagion affects far too few people for my tastes.

Are there any ways to afflict people with disease over an area similar to that of Control Weather or Fimbulwinter?

[Flickerdart]

Your best bet might be to use disease-carrying minions. Dire rats and rat swarms (via summon swarm, plague of rats or naturally) are excellent for this, but consider were-rats, who pass on both filth fever and lycanthropy when they bite. Their victims then become like them and transmit disease further. A necromancer cleric can animate ghouls who inflict ghoul fever, which works in a similar way.

For transmitting diseases without biting there are a few spells:
Epidemic (Druid 9): A touched creature becomes diseased, anyone within 30 feet of a diseased creature has to save or also be diseased, and passes on the disease the same way.
Pestilence (Cleric 8, Druid 7): Touched creature becomes diseased. For 24 hours, anyone touching it also contracts the disease, and is infectious for 24 hours.
Contagious fog (Sor/wiz 3): Rolling fog in 20ft radius persists for rounds/level, infects those inside.

[J-H]

You want a Blighter.

[Grim Portent]

Your best bet might be to use disease-carrying minions. Dire rats and rat swarms (via summon swarm, plague of rats or naturally) are excellent for this, but consider were-rats, who pass on both filth fever and lycanthropy when they bite. Their victims then become like them and transmit disease further. A necromancer cleric can animate ghouls who inflict ghoul fever, which works in a similar way.

For transmitting diseases without biting there are a few spells:
Epidemic (Druid 9): A touched creature becomes diseased, anyone within 30 feet of a diseased creature has to save or also be diseased, and passes on the disease the same way.
Pestilence (Cleric 8, Druid 7): Touched creature becomes diseased. For 24 hours, anyone touching it also contracts the disease, and is infectious for 24 hours.
Contagious fog (Sor/wiz 3): Rolling fog in 20ft radius persists for rounds/level, infects those inside.

So maybe something like using Dark Speech to acquire rat swarms to spread disease, and an item of continuous/at-will Contagious Fog. If I'm going to use Dark Speech though I should probably dip into Binder for that vestige that heals stat damage quickly. Naberius I think. Throw in an item of at-will/staff of Contagion when feasible just for the added ability to spread plagues.

Given how few disease based spells there are I'll probably have to prop up the pestilence theme with a sub theme of famine. I'll need to look for spells that would let me kill or spoil large amounts of crops and taint water supplies.

Is it possible to get the black dragon's Corrupt Water in magic items/on a spell list? Repeating traps of it in rivers could be really fun.

[Seto]

I recently had my players go through a Pestilence dungeon (the unofficial name for it was "Roll-your-fort-save-dungeon"). Monsters used were : Otyugh, Reason Stealer, Wyste (MM2). There were poison and disease-based traps (like, hidden sprinklers of infested water). The boss was a Druid (well, he had 2 levels of Cancer Mage, but there's like no synergy) focused on summoning swarms (Summon Pest Swarm from Cityscape is fun), with a Warforged Rogue acolyte who, being immune to disease and poison, could smash bombs of them centered on himself.

Problem is, you specifically mentioned Cancer Mage or Contagion stuff is too small-scale for you. By the way, do you really need magic to spread the plague? Or can you do it with cleverness? What my villain did was set up his lair next to a river, and pollute it with disease filters so that villages down the river would start dropping.
By the way, I've already got War and Death, but if you have famine-themed ideas let me know, I could use those.

[The Viscount]

Nosomatic Chirurgeon might prove useful.

[Grim Portent]

I recently had my players go through a Pestilence dungeon (the unofficial name for it was "Roll-your-fort-save-dungeon"). Monsters used were : Otyugh, Reason Stealer, Wyste (MM2). There were poison and disease-based traps (like, hidden sprinklers of infested water). The boss was a Druid (well, he had 2 levels of Cancer Mage, but there's like no synergy) focused on summoning swarms (Summon Pest Swarm from Cityscape is fun), with a Warforged Rogue acolyte who, being immune to disease and poison, could smash bombs of them centered on himself.

Problem is, you specifically mentioned Cancer Mage or Contagion stuff is too small-scale for you. By the way, do you really need magic to spread the plague? Or can you do it with cleverness? What my villain did was set up his lair next to a river, and pollute it with disease filters so that villages down the river would start dropping.
By the way, I've already got War and Death, but if you have famine-themed ideas let me know, I could use those.

Magic isn't strictly necessary, but it is much easier to work with than normal pestilence vectors.

A famine based character would probably need to be able to spoil the weather to stop crops from growing by the way, high winds, cold temperature, snowfall, decaying food stores, all would fit.


Nosomatic Chirurgeon might prove useful.

Looking at it and it has the same problem as Cancer Mage, it can't do anything to actually spread disease over a large area. :smallfrown:

[Psyren]

I'd go with a Ratfolk Alchemist with poison bombs and some fun stuff like Bottled Ooze :smallsmile:

Either that or a Ratfolk Witch