No, but they did so already by using the "similar to" bit.

I was stating that "in good faith" as you put it.

And for the record by making my posts similar to yours, I was trying not to give offense. Unless you were.

It seemed very much like aping, especially after the second time.

Again, I see what you're going for, but it's much more logical for the 'similar' analogy to be this: Penetration counters non-Body defenses, like AP counters Armor. If you were explaining Penetration to someone, that's how you'd do it. It's 100% as 'similar', but it doesn't leave a hole for no reason (magic O-Cells), and it doesn't contradict the sweeping terms of 'any protective system that defends'. If it was meant to be more restrictive and exact, they could have used stronger words than 'similar'.

This is starting to remind me why I hate SR4's smart armor. Like really, "each point of SM reduces AP; each point of which reduces the armor's rating." Really? Couldn't we just make the armor's rating higher to begin with?

and how the hell does smart armor work with bullets?

I can understand Smart Armor working against Rockets, and Shells and such. But it doesn't make any sense against bullets. They just move too fast, and there's too many of them.

Smart Armor by RAW doesn't even work against Rockets. Trust me, the entire section is so poorly written it too me a week to even come up with two possible "what RAW actually says" interpretations (one of which assumed that "adds to AP" meant "moves it towards 0") neither of which was even as effective than packing on real armor (one of them actually meant that having smart armor was a dumb idea, as your 20 armor + 10 smart armor meant that the 10 DV -10AP rocket did 15 DV -15 AP against 15 armor*).

*Numbers made up on the spot for this post, but it was like for every 3 smart armor you added to your 20 normal armor meant that you had 3 less dice to resist the same amount of damage.

Except that there is no definition of what is "any protective system that defends", apart from the explicit pharmaceuticals. In fact, apart from pharmaceuticals, we do not know what is "any protective system that defends", hence we need to look elsewhere to find out. But upon closer reading, we find that there is a "similar" clause. Perhaps if you could find a description of some system that includes the phrase "protective system that defends" or some such, then I would agree that that system falls under this.

It is more logical that Penetration counters dice adding defenses, similar to how AP counters Armor. That would be how I would explain Penetration to someone.

O-cells don't defend. They attack. Penetration therefore does not reduce the effectiveness of O-cells.

Notice how Penetration doesn't bypass Body. Why? Because the body doesn't defend against disease. It attacks alien cells. O-cells act like the normal immune system only moreso, right?

From the description of O-cells, I agree with the first.

But from a rules standpoint, I disagree with the second. It makes an assumption about how Body works with respect to diseases that may or may not prove valid in the game world.

Rystefn, that's beyond ridiculous. They attack… in order to defend against the disease. Your natural immune system defends against diseases… by attacking them. If you're going to make arguments like that, you have to let other things slide, too: Pathogenic Defense, for example, simply boosts the natural immune system; antibiotics and antivirals 'attack' the pathogens, too, so you'd better let them ignore Penetration as well. Is there anything that Penetration *does* apply to, under this logic? There's no merit there at all.

That fact is that 'any protective system that defends' doesn't need a mechanical definition. If they wanted one, 'similar to Armor', they'd have given it a capital letter and defined term (bio-armor, I dunno). O-Cells certainly defend, and they're certainly a protective system. There can't be any argument about that, unless you're arguing against the language.

I understand toturi's position that O-Cells *are* a 'protective defending system', but that they are *not* 'similar' enough to armor. It is a logical position, and it could indeed work. I simply disagree; I think that it is simpler, more balanced, and more logical that they are. All things being equal, I choose the option with those merits, but that doesn't mean toturi's position is wrong.

Apart from all this, the GM does have a decision to make because of the fact that O-Cells *are* different from dice adders: does the Penetration apply first to O-Cells (because they take effect first in the sequence), even though this hurts the player more than if it applied to any dice adders (because O-Cells function as automatic hits)? Penetration certainly applies once to the entire process, so it has to apply to one or the other first.

Hey. This is gonna shift the focus of this topic slightly away from 0-cells, and back towards the OP

I've only recently started running a Shadowrun game, been playing for about a month, and have just had my first run-in with HMHVV.

My players were investigating a facility out in the barrens, which turned out to be working on a HMHVV cure, and thus had several ghouls in it. Ghouls get loose, attack players, hilarity ensued.

Anyway, on to my points. This was my first HMHVV encounter as a newish player and so I had to read the disease rules through from scratch to figure out what happened.

I actually read the contact transmission rules of the virus as being the exchange of bodily fluids, and thus similar to injection as some people have said already. Only one player became infected. He was slashed by a ghoul for a fair ammount of damage, and then the ghoul was splattered by autofire and proceeded to fall onto the poorly dwarf, who then made matters worse by using some of the ghouls blood-splattered clothes to tie up his wounds (facepalm).

As I read the HMHVVIII rules, if the player passes the first test then wouldn't he fight off the disease completely with no further tests required? He's a dwarf with 6 body, +2 natural resistance, and 4 edge, so there is a small but possible chance of passing the test. He's quite open to the idea of playing a ghoul for a bit anyways


I had a couple of questions I was looking for answers to, too. Will he now have to pay off the Ghoul positive quality (doubled to 70 points) with karma? This seems a little harsh as he won't get any stat improvements from the transformation as his abilities all fall above his adjusted mins. I'm thinking of making him oay for it, but just taking 1 or 2 karma from each award until it is paid off, rather than crippling a starting character from ever gaining any advancement until the 70 is paid off.

Another slightly related question as I was reading through the HMHVV section. It says that Genetech is unavailable to infected with the regeneration power as the disease immediately reverses any attempt to change the genetic code. This led me to think that surely if the genetic change was made before the infection then that would become the baseline and so be accepted? Likewise, regenerating creatures can only accept deltaware cybertech. What happens to my alphaware cyberarm if I become a vampire? Does it just grow out and drop off, or is it accepted as it was already installed before the infection took hold?

Cheers, and hello!

Josh

Geneware done prior to infection is likely to persist after, because the genetci alteration is already done when the virus takes hold.

If the HMVV strain confers regeneration, cyberware implanted before infection is expelled/purged from the body. Some of it may be salvageable for resale.

I hope he knows that his character's ghoulness is less temporary for his desire to play one ...



I don't think I've ever come across anyone who thinks RAW is ok on this one. Try being infected by a nosferatu – that's 300 karma you have to earn before any more character improvement whatsoever.

Personally, I just ignore the very concept of having to pay for qualities after chargen. If a player finds a way to remove a negative quality or aquire a positive quality then in my eyes they've earned it through roleplaying. After all, you wouldn't charge a character the nuyen cost of a focus they found/stole, or demand they pay the karma for the Restricted Gear quality when they buy some highly-classified weaponry.

Now if a player simply wanted his Enemy (say) to simply get bored of pursuing him then that would be a different matter.

"As I read the HMHVVIII rules, if the player passes the first test then wouldn't he fight off the disease completely with no further tests required?"
Not at all. Diseases are yucky, and you have to pass their minimum number of tests, and any 'leftover' Power keeps stacking.

You do have the karma 'debt'. As the GM, you're free to let them pay it off slowly, but they're really supposed to spend at least *most* of their incoming karma on it.

Geneware is probably overwritten by the virus, just as their 'baseline' *is* being overwritten by the virus. They turn into a ghoul, regardless of their original type, so it's not like the virus cares if the geneware was established or not. It's not fighting off incoming changes, per se: it's changing everything toward the virus 'end result'. However, as the GM, you can do whatever is fair, fun, and balanced for your group.

Vampires don't keep any non-delta cyber. Hell, you could even say that the delta has to be installed tailored to the vampire, which means even old delta would be expelled. Again, the GM probably wouldn't want to do that, in the rare event that a player even has delta.

The idea is that you don't get something for nothing. Things like ghoul and vampire represent a huge investment for the chargen character, and it's hardly fair for someone to spend their full 400BP and then get that free. It *is* the same for powerful loot during the game, because you should be spreading that around pretty equally. If one player got free deltaware, the other players might go, 'huh!?'

Agreed, having to pay for being infected seems fairly stupid. What I've heard some people do (which still seems a bit odd) is that if the player goes out and seeks being infected (like contacts a vampire and so on) then they have to pay the cost, but if it happens as part of the game (as in this case) there is no cost. Personally I'd just do no cost on post-chargen infection.

Part of me wants to agree with you, but there are some serious trouble spots for that. Someone could easily take the blind quality for 10BP and then the second they hit gameplay pay 500 nuyen to get some cybereyes and thus be rid of the negative quality. I suppose GM just has to counter specific problems like that. Otherwise though I agree with you whole heartedly. If the character kills their enemy, it's silly that their brother/son/sister/daughter/mother/father/uncle/underling/whatever suddenly pops up to take their place and even has the exact same level of resources and everything, or the character has to halt all advancement for a while to pay off the quality as soon as they pull that trigger.


As for the penetration argument:

If I tell you 'You can take any one thing in this room, similar to how you pick prizes at the end of XXX gameshow'
Do you...?
A) take one thing from any of the things in that room
B) go watch XXX gameshow and limit yourself only to the items that appear in that gameshow

If you pick A, then Yera seems to have the correct interpretation of the words 'any' and 'similar to'
If you pick B, then toturi seems to have the correct interpretation of the words 'any' and 'similar to'

Personally I pick A and personally I don't think the words 'similar to' are nearly as binding as toturi is trying to make them. 'Similar to' is an example, it is a point of reference, it isn't an exact comparison (that would be 'exactly like') and it certainly isn't binding in how it functions.
For example: The way the body converts glucose to energy without oxygen is similar to the way it does so with oxygen. They are similar, they are not identical, and they are different in very large ways, but it is still a point of reference.

Personally, I just don't Infect players who don't want it. If they'd rather just die, they can just die (the RAW even suggests it, for HMHVV I IIRC); this includes becoming an Infected NPC, because they're still 'losing' their character. Otherwise, they are getting something and they do need to pay for it. You can have them pay half of all incoming karma, perhaps. This 'halt all development' argument seems more emotional than rational, given that they just got a huge *jump* in development, but a 'partial payment plan' addresses the problem as well as I can imagine.

That also is up for interpretation – if you pass the first test, the disease takes no effect.

Diseases may be many things, but there is no 100% infection ratio.

Not necessarily. It depends largely on which infected you've become and what type of character you are playing. If you are playing a hacker for example, and then become a ghoul, you've gained a bunch of stats you don't care about (str and bod) and lost a point of essence to get new ware with. If you were a TM you just lost all resonance abilities, you may as well rip up the character sheet. If you were a mage and got hit by a vampire, your magic gets dropped to 0 (essence drains drop your magic) and a hit from a ghoul drops you magic by at least 1 point and you gain stuff you don't care about (str and bod again). And don't forget major disadvantages like being blind and permanently duel natured (ghouls) or being killed by sunlight (nosferatu) and so on. Oh, and lets not forget becoming a vampire voids all your ware, so even a sammy who would likely otherwise want to be a vampire is going to suffer a big loss as well.

So yes, you can gain some small boosts here and there, but odds are that you're going to be spending way more than you would want and on stuff that you really don't care about and you're going to suddenly have all kinds of annoying new disadvantages you didn't want.

So no, it isn't an emotional attachment (Though that does play into it) it is the fact that rationally, mechanically, you gain a bunch of disadvantages and advantages you didn't want in exchange for a huge price tag that stops you ever improving again in areas that you do want.

It doesn't really matter if you care about them. Things do happen.

I'm not talking about emotion *attachment*, though. I'm saying that the phrase 'halt all development' is an emotional appeal, like 'pro-life'.

It's not up for interpretation: most diseases have a minimum number of tests that must be made, regardless of success. The ones that don't have a minimum are flat out incurable. If you reduce the Power to zero, you simply don't suffer any effects (until the Speed elapses again). 'Effects' doesn't mean 'the disease'; it's a specific category of the negative 'status ailments' that the disease causes (Agony, Stun Damage, etc.).

That's....debatable. The rules say "gains Magic 1, or retains their own Magic attribute if higher" implying (somehow) that a mage keeps their "full" magic value.

Vampire wizards.

Yes, they specifically changed things so you keep your Magic rating. You'll still lose 1 from the Essence loss, of course. No, it doesn't really make sense with the vampire rules (you have to drain them to 0 Essence). Welcome to Shadowrun.

You do realize that the character will be infectious since he contracted the disease rather than being a ghoul by birth. Also if you missed it, by RAW the character has pretty much no chance of not becoming a ghoul. Even if he gets 8 successes on his first test HMHVV III requires 10 rolls. There is no indication by RAW that passing the first test ends the disease, in fact the only rules on how many test you have to take state that you must take at least the minimum listed for the disease.

So things boil down that that character is going to become a ghoul, and a highly infectious one at that. The positive is that the ghoul stat mods modify the racial base stats rather than being enhancements. As a Dwarf his natural (modified) stat limits will be Body: 11(16), Agi: 6(9), Rea: 7(10), Str: 11(16), Cha: 4(6), Int: 6(9), Log: 5(7), Will: 9(13). In addition, his current base stats should be modified by the Ghoul modifiers. Finally he gets the Ghoul powers (Dual Natures, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Natural Claws) and weaknesses (Allergy Sunlight, Eats only raw meat/Metahumans, Blind [unless he has cyber eyes]).

Yeah, but the rules also say 'whenever you lose a point of magic, you also lose a point of magic and maximum magic goes down by 1'. And in order to be made a vampire you are going to be drained of 6 essence, which means you'll lose 6 magic and have a maximum magic of 0. Now, I don't remember how initiation factors into all that, so it may be possible to retain a couple points of magic if you are initiated and have raised your magic, but otherwise all your magic is going to be gone, and then you'll be brought back with 1 magic when you wake up as a vampire.

And also, vampires don't have an essence of 5, they have a variable essence from 1-12 based on how much essence they happen to have at the time, and their maximum magic is equal to their current essence (+ initiation of course).

Yeah, like I said. It's as if the writers don't talk to each other. After all, that same block of text says that someone so infected becomes an NPC.

I understand this as meaning they keep the Magic attribute they had at 1 Essence - the last step before becoming a vampire. So if they did not initiate AND increased their Magic they are at 1, if they raised it they can retain more - but not their full Magic score unless they aldready dropped their Essence to one from either earlier vampire troubles or heavy cybernetics.

I dunno. I'd say it only means you keep +Initiation levels of Magic. Yes, it's very harsh. A GM might simply waive the whole thing and let a wizard vampire keep their pre-infection Magic, if the character is paying the big karma debt.

This works too, and makes more sense.

But obviously you keep them only if you had them - a mage that Initiated without increasing it's magic falls back to 1.

Haha, yeah we discussed this, but he was of the opinion that he can roll up a dwarf any time but the chance to play as a ghoul may not come along again for a while. He is of the impression that he will die before he pays off the karma cost




That's sort of the situation I'm in. He's a rigger, and so swapping str and bod for blindness isn't really a great deal, other than being interesting roleplaying wise.




He will be infectious, but other than the other team members not wanting to first aid him I don't see that being as much of a problem as the social stigma. He's also a Fascist, and a dwarf ghoul who dislikes all none dwarfs is gonna have very few friends indeed!

There was a chance he wouldn't turn. To become a ghoul he has to lose a full 1 essence, and he loses 0.1 every test failed, so to pass even one test (probably the first one as it's easiest) would prevent ghoulism. That's what I was saying about it halting after one test. Even if, as was said, the disease carries on then there is no chance of ghoulism, just 9 more days of pain, nausia and essence loss. To me it seems fairer to just stop the essence loss rather than subject the player to the essence loss after the ghoulism chance has already gone



I understood that his natural and modified limits will change, but this didn't result in any actual stat increases. Reading through the Runner's Companion it says that the racial Minimums and Maximums are increased, and the players stats are only adjusted if they fall outside of the new range, which for the dwarf none of them did

If the character has 8 sucesses in the first test, it doesn't mean the disease ain't biting yet. If he fails the test the next day, the power goes to one and he loses 0.1 points of Essence again. The whole point is to not lose more than 10 tests.

Again, no. You have to make *at least* 10 tests, but the Power accumulates; you'll almost certainly make more tests, until you fail 10. You have to keep making tests until the power is gone. The only way to avoid ghouling is to have the Power be 0 on the tenth test (either by rolling 8-ish hits consistently, or by abusing the Edge rules). The chance of not turning is incredibly small.

Not really, you have to get the power down to zero eventually, before you fail ten times.
HMHVV is one of the few diseases that the current Power does not influence its effects in any way, except to determine if the person is healed or not yet.

You do have to get the Power to zero, without failing 10 times, but you also have to make minimum 10 tests. Logically, you can't satisfy those conditions many ways. The Power accumulates, so you have to get the *total current* Power to 0 to 'pass' that test.

I don't think I'm arguing with you, Brazilian_Shinobi.

Lol, I thought you were saying that the only way was passing all the first 10 tests in a row without failing once.
Nevermind. There's nothing to see here, move along.

yeah, perhaps a simple example would help.

let's take a n exceptionally tough orc, say, bod 8. while this orc is really healthy, he doesn't really have access to a lot of tech, most of which won't work anyways (penetration -6) and we're going to ignore the possibility of using O-cells entirely because i don't want to get rabies from the rabid rules lawyers.

so, mr Orky McHealthy gets exposed to HMHVV and now has to worry about turning into a ghoul.

so, first thing first, we start off with the basics: power 8, penetration -6, the test to resist the disease is body + (stuff that boosts this dice pool which we aren't using). a minimum of 10 tests must be made, each test is 1 day apart, and once 10 tests have been failed (ever, in your entire lifetime) that's it, you're a ghoul.

so, 8 dice, needing 8 hits. for the sake of argument, we'll give our ork 10 edge (i don't think this is even possible, but for the sake of argument, it could be 12 body and 6 edge, refresh daily, for all i care. the point is how absurdly impossible this is to resist). apart from the fact that he just got infected with a nigh-unstoppable disease, Orky McHealthy might almost be described as Mr Lucky.

so anyways, he's gonna blow edge on his first 10 resistance rolls. 18 exploding dice, whee!

for convenience, here are the die rolls he'll be using:

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814628/ (will be gone if you don't check it before it disappears)

so, first day, he did pretty good. 7 hits! that's impressive. but, uhh.... too bad he needed 8. that's 0.1 essence lost, and the disease now gained 1 point of power (and is now power 9).

second day, still did pretty good. 6 hits. unfortunately, today's threshold is 9. too bad, he failed again, and the disease is now power 11. he has now lost 0.2 essence total.

day three, wow! 10 hits! ... oh, and uhhh... not enough. the disease had accumulated to power 11, so tomorrow it will be power 9. and he's lost 0.3 essence.

day four, and this is not his lucky day. 4 hits, not even close. he's lost another chunk of essence (0.4 total), and tomorrow the disease will be power 13.

day five, and he gets 6 hits. unfortunately, he needed 13, a difference of 7 hits, meaning tomorrow the disease will be power 15. and of course, that's 0.5 essence lost now.

day 6, he gets 7 hits. pretty good. the disease is now power 16, though, and 0.6 essence has been lost.

day 7, he gets 6 hits again. the disease is now power 18, and 0.7 essence has been lost.

day 8, he gets 11 hits. not bad. nowhere near good enough either. but at least the disease is now "only" power 15 again, and he's got 0.8 essence lost...

day 9, he gets 1 hit. i'd say this was the beginning of the end, but honestly the beginning of the end was the second he didn't shoot the ghoul with a sniper rifle while wearing a biohazard suit from orbit. so uhh... power 22, 0.9 essence lost.

day 10, unsurprisingly not 22 hits. it is in fact, 8 hits. keeping the power at 22. and he's lost 1 point of essence, and is now a ghoul. on the plus side, the disease has run it's course, having done as much as it will ever do. he can now safely interact with ghouls, provided neither he nor they lose their mind. which is good, because if you play with how the rules say instead of how they've been stated as being intended (that is, if you don't know the disease is supposed to be injection not contact vector) pretty soon everyone in the world is going to be a ghoul, with very few exceptions

and this is with someone that got to throw *18 exploding dice* every single time.

but hey, maybe he just didn't roll very well. let's check how effective that is in resisting the disease over, say, 15 days. i'll do 8 trials, shall i? this is hardly *proof*, but it will likely show us a very simple trend:

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814634/ (ghoul in 13 days)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814638/ (0.6 essence lost in 10 days, disease resisted... the lucky dog)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814642/ (ghoul in 11 days)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814646/ (ghoul in 13 days)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814648/ (ghoul in 12 days)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814653/ (ghoul in 10 days - forgot to relabel, this was still listed as resist 5)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814655/ (0.9 essence lost in 15 days - disease rages on at power 12, he's out of edge so he would need 12 hits on 8 non-exploding dice. yup, he's a ghoul all right. actually, he got an extra 5 days of edge already...)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2814662/ (ghoul in 10 days)

and this is with *18* exploding dice... on a superlative example of metahumanity, no less (even trolls won't often have much more bod than 8, and as i said... 10 edge is essentially unfeasible)

so yeah, the disease is *extremely* difficult to resist. an extremely healthy individual with impossibly high edge has to roll exceptionally well just to be able to resist it succesfully.

Really? How often does this come up again? If you don't like how it's written, you *change* it. Either switch it to injection vector, rule that most ghouls are non-active carriers (since hey, it gives them BACK BP... why not?, or both. Maybe ghoul dens will have a ghoul mother or something to that effect, where there are maybe only a couple active carriers per community.

Complaining and bitching about it is like complaining to the ocean that it ebbs. It gets you approximately nowhere.

Hi, welcome to Dumpshock. We like to discuss the existing rules, because we already know we can change literally everything.

Sure, we can houserule anything. But if I wanted to write my own game world from the ground up, I'd be in the business, not running Shadowrun. Not to mention con games or Missions where the RAW is what we're stuck with.

This is beating a dead horse while simultaenously attempting to get blood from a stone. There have been multiple threads dedicated to this topic and how ridiculous it is as written. Right along with the chase rules and SnS rounds.

I would like to argue about Bloodzilla now! Or Turn to Goo + harvesting cyberware! Or the hackastack!

Bloodzilla was fixed.

Yeah, I know. But I figured while we were on the subject of dead horses, he's always been my favorite.

I merely changed the power from 13 to 4 and from 8 to 3 for HMHVV II and III respectively. I made only alpha ghouls have the disease, but regular ghouls be infertile. This made it fairly contagious, but not overly contagious and gave a few plot hooks to find the contagious ghouls or have ghoul queens and kings.

I don't see how these two are contradictory. Hundreds of thousands over the course of 50 or 60 years, where the population figures number in the tens of billions? Even tens of millions is pretty rare over that same 50 or 60 years. I wrote that section, and I stand by it. Now, you want a plague, let's talk VITAS, which killed billions at each outbreak. My numbers for HMHVV don't even come close.

If vitas killed, billions each time, I don't see how the population, even counting orks, could rise to tens of billions in 50 years.
Also, dependes on how you consider something to be a plague.
The spanish flu, for instance, killed "only" 3% of the world population and was considered a pandemy.

The black plague, the only plague I can think of that relates closely to VITAS killed roughly 25% percent of the world population. Considering the fact that the black plague struck only at Europe, the black plague reduced between 40% and 70% of the population of some reasons. That was really our first VITAS.

HMHVV surely is virulent and dangerous, but the only problem about the disease is the contact vector, that Ancient History already told us it was supposed to be injury.

*Cough*

and a variant of it hit in the Mid West during the Pioneer days.
Fucking rats

They've got Vitas Killing what was it 25% world wide, and as much as 90% in parts of Africa.

First wave of VITAS killed 25% of the world's population in 2010. Assuming 6.8 billion (the approximate real-world population in July 2010), that's a casualty rate of about 1.7 billion, greater than the population of China. That leave's about 5.1 billion. Population growth is expected to be about 1.2 percent per year; there are a lot of variables involved, but I'll just use that as a constant (even though a lot of the dynamics would have changed if VITAS really happened). By the time of the second VITAS wave in 2022, that brings the world population back to approximately 5.9 billion. That killed another 10% of the population, or a mere 600 million or so. By my admittedly simplistic math, that still has VITAS killing 2.3 billion souls.

Approximate world population in 2072, starting from 5.3 billion in 2023 and increasing 1.2 percent per annum, is approximately 9.5 billion (a much more easily sustained figure than some alarmists would have you believe), barring other catastrophes (which I haven't figured in). All those births and deaths in that 50-year span...I feel reasonably justified in sticking with my "tens of millions over 50 years" figure.

Maybe I'm being a little defensive here, but I don't just pull numbers out of my ass.

While I'm sure that all makes sense, that's not quite what I was getting at. Simply put, "tens of millions" (plus "countless more") *is* a plague, and we were talking about how powerful the diseases are by the crunch. I only meant that there's a sort of (presumably intentional) tension between those two sections, and it doesn't really help us guess at the intent, see? Paragraph A says 'it's not very bad', and Paragraph B says 'it's very bad'. Yes, it's a literary device; no, it's not crystal clear.

I certainly see that the 'it's not nearly as bad as VITAS' argument, but that's sort of beside the point, unless the magnitude of VITAS destruction has re-calibrated the "modern" meaning of 'plague'.

Actually Vitas Killed more than that, mostly because the people who wrote Feral Cities are idiots.

According to them, the average death rate in Africa was 75%.. which is 750 million. (or almost half of the total supposedly killed).

LoL. I have to get new history books then...