So,
I know that ghouls are made by the HMHVV III virus. What I dont know is how exactly this works for the spreading. It specifically states under I and II that they are spread via bodily fluid, however, it states under III that it is spread through bodily fluids or unprotected contact.

Does that mean if a ghoul claws me and deals physical damage (i.e. gets through my armor) then i have to make the toxin resistance test?

If so, is that made immediatly, or is it made after the 1 day. If it is made the first time, then does it not take hold? Or if you are infected (regardless of making your first resistance test) do you just keep making tests every day untill you become a ghoul?

Sorry, no books in front of me and its a little hazy, but i would appreciate your input, house rules, book/page #'s, examples, etc.

Thanks Dumpshockers!

Yeah. If the world worked the way the rules describe it, there'd be a full blown ghoul invasion by now.
There's some obscure subordinate clause somewhere that I use to justify it not being so.
Basically, in my game world, you can only be infected by a ghoul of your own metatype.

1) Physical damage that deals boxes (or if you're dumb enough to drink their blood).
2) Toxin text is made...I'm not sure when. 1 day, I think. I am AFB.
3) As for how many tests, and what happens, you'd have to look at the toxin rules. Generally there's a Power of the toxin, and Ghoul is very high, resulting in you needing multiple tests and multiple successes (last I recall, the disease was impossible to resist unless you either a) were a lucky son of a bitch and a troll, b) had cyber/bio for resisting and a high body and a lucky son of a bitch or c) spent edge and were still a lucky son of a bitch*).

*Decidedly "rules people" and "fluff people" not looking at each other's work, and having the fluff guy decide on the power of the ghoul disease.

Don't forget that Patrick Goodman gave us the fixes for Infected, specifically ghouls… a few months ago?

Disease resistance is definitely different from Toxin resistance, usually involving a long series of tests as you fight it off, and yes, Ghoul and Loup-Garou infection is incredibly hard to resist as written.

What that boils down to though is that a ghoul using his claws can infect? it doesnt have to be a bite etc?

Yeah, good look with cyber/bioware for resistance tests Magical disease and all that, nothing allowed, not even Cure Disease spells. Ridiculous, really.
Basically, only a troll with VERY high natural body has ANY chance at all to survive and NOT being a ghoul afterwards. I recall something like 8 body tests against a threshold of .. 8 or so. But I might misremember that.

Edit: According to the rules, the ghoul only needs to look at you funny and you're infected.

Oh? where can i find this godssend Yera?

I can look around. :/

Some people think O-Cells (beforehand) makes you basically immune to everything, but I consider that just as gamebreaking. It's not too hard to house rule a reasonable threat level/survival chance into this issue, of course.

its a power 8 with a -6 resistance (i think that applies to like, your chem gear?) and a speed of 1 day (10) dunno what that part means, does it mean it will only hit 10 times?

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showuser=388 It's in his sig.

III is ghouls: "Page 68, 2nd column, HMHVV III entry:
Change Vector to Injection (used to be Contact)
Change Penetration to -3 (used to be -6)
Change Power to 6" (used to be 8 )

Yes, it means you have to resist it 10 times, and the Power *builds up* as you do. Yes, the 'piercing' effect is like AP, reducing the effects of your defensive gear/implants/etc.

Which is why you rent a crop duster for a few days, pulp a few ghouls, and mist the city.

Hooray zombie apocalypse!

The rules for diseases are in Augmentation, p. 129
In a nutshell:
The (10) means, that this is the number of disease resistance tests you need to make, so one every day for 10 days in this case.
You need to reduce the power of the disease (8 ) to 0 or lose 0.1 essence points with every test. If you lose 1 essence, you become a ghoul (very likely). If you fall below 0 essence, you die.
The -6 refers to the penetration, of 'ware or pharmaceuticals, though there are very few that even work at all.

Need to correct myself a bit:


Of course, the lead researchers of HMHVV III both succumbed to the disease in the fluff

Okay, thats a little different, essentially that means you only need to make 1 test to avoide becoming a ghoul, but you may lose the other essence anyway.

If i remember right any unresisted power goes into the next test.
i.e. power 8, you resist 4, the next test is at power 12, etc

Thanks much for the awesome info and refs!

You might have it wrong, I can't tell. You *must* make 10 tests, even if you 'succeed' on the first one. Test 1: 8 hits, great, Test 2, the Power is *still* 8 again, etc. However, 10 is not the maximum number of tests! You have to eventually get rid of all 80 points of Power.

I.E. you have to succeed 10 times before you fail 10 times.

AHA...okay, I see where I messed up there. you have to succeed at 10 tests to get rid of it. That makes a little more sense...and it also is a wonder that the entire world isnt overrun. But it also explains why ghouls are as shunned as they are, and why it would be so hard for them to find any type of medical attention. I think I like the errata from Goodman there as well.



Edit - dammit, ninjaed in my own admission of missreading by Draco!!! ::shakes fist::


lol

The errata makes it a little better (less Power really adds up, and Injection is relatively strict).

Remember how under SR3, Ghoul-Infection was as easy to cure as a bad cold? Or maybe Influenza? Wonder where and when and how they lost that crucial bit of Information in the Game World . .

Maybe SR3 was wrong. It just depends on the world we want.

So . . do you want a Zombie-Apocalypse World? O.o

Well, it's still as easy to cure as a modern bad cold or influenza. Wait a few days and hope it goes away on its own, because medicine isn't going to do anything for you.

Maybe, though I wasn't expressing an opinion. That's obviously not what we have, Stahlseele. If drugs aren't effective and the disease is really virulent, then containment must be very effective. *shrug* The point is to pick the right combination of parts that we want, that's all. I do think it's lame if ghoul-ism is as weak as a cold, don't you? It can be scary without destroying the planet.

Yeah about the only thing which can save you is a good dose of O-Cells nanites. (rating 6 is not cheap at 15k).

Because the diseases penetration pretty much kills most other protective systems or reduces them heavily.

But the O-cell nanites automatically reduce the power of the disease before your resistance rolls.



But yeah the virality and sheer unlikeliness of anyone put in contact with it NOT turning into a ghoul is a major reason why I feel that the bounties on ghouls and the like should be firmly enforced and paid out.

If O-Cells work at all, *and* ignore Penetration on that technicality. None of it seems intentional, so I'd rather just fix it all than deal with broken-fights-broken.

Dont forget though that Ghouls are also cannibalistic and eat their own kind, keeping the ghoul population in check.

Ghouls are metahuman
Ghouls needs metahuman flesh to survive
Ghoul can eat ghoul

Ghoulash?

As I read it it's not quite like that. You only need to not fail 10 times. You could survive by passing just once if it was on the final test (I know this is statistically very unlikely).

If you passed the test say the first 4 days after infection (still hard, but with a high body and edge it's possible) and then failed the next 7 tests over the initial 10 day period you'd have lost 0.6 essence and probably have a disease power in the high 20s when it stops accumulating. You've then got 4 days worth of tests to reduce the power back to 0 before you've lost the 1 essence and turned. So, still ridiculously hard, but if you managed to fight it off you'd probably have lost 0.9 essence and only actually passed 5 tests. Did that make sense?

@The Jopp: That Ghoulash joke is awful and I'm embarrassed that I laughed at it...

Ghoulags serve Ghoulash.

mister_joshua, are you saying it's possible if you can roll like 30 hits on *one* test?

With Hand of God, you can.
And it's usually the only way to survive without being ghoulified, if an evil GM inflicts this on you
At least, with the standard rules.

The ghoulash joke was ... in very bad taste! I don't think, metahuman flesh makes a good goulash and it would be an attack on my tastebuds.
Still laughed out loud, though

I did say it was statistically very unlikely

Keep rolling-up them 6's!

Technically, the best chances you have for resisting it, is to use everything including all of your edge on the very first roll.
if you resist that one completely, you are done with it.

a) You can only use 1 edge per roll
b) You still have to roll at least 9 more tests, so this doesn't save you, even in the unlikely case that you resist all the damage. And you keep on rolling, until you have either 1.) resisted 80 damage or 2.) died from losing essence or 3.) lost 1 full essence (at which point your body odor will start to deteriorate fast)

Stahlseele, I'm not sure that's true. Reducing the Power to 0 means you avoid the effects, for that interval. The section on Speed in Augmentation p129 seems pretty clear about this: it's what 'minimum number of tests' means.

I thought if you could resist it once completely it meant you did not have to resist anymore?

That's toxins. Diseases are different.

To reitterate:

The link to the unofficial errata for the Infected is in my sig.

Mhm. And while it *is* theoretically possible to succeed with only one successful test, that would require losing 0.9 Essence *and* getting at least… 71 hits on the 10th test? (Only 51 under the errata!)

The virus mutated. That's my theory, at any rate.

Seems like the test is a standard extended test, so, why would the power of the disease reset for each "test", the test is already hard (the high penetration and test power) seems like if you can fight off both that the disease would take a nose-dive in effectiveness, and from a houserule stand-point the essence loss should be temporary and dependent on if the disease fully takes hold (you become a ghoul).

Standard extended test, 8 threshold, -6 penetration, when you fail to hit you loss essence kinda deal. When you properly resist the disease the threshold goes down... Just a thought.

Always thought that ghouls turn their victims because they don't get medical help or are already weak due to fringe society standing.

Fixed that for you. The threshold should be based on the original intent, not the listed threshold.

cyber/bioware isn't bad.

I haven't looked at cyberware, genetech, or nanotech for disease resistance but you can get +10 dice out of bioware.

Pathogenic Defence VI provides +6 dice to toxin/disease resistance checks and costs 30,000.
Nephritic Screen IV provides +4 dice to toxin/disease resistance checks where the speed is greater than 1 minute and costs 20,000.



No.

So let's take Mr. Ghoul Exterminator who has the two bioware I listed above. Let's say he's a puny human but he has 6 Body. His total dice pool will be 13 after the penetration of -3.

Day 1: Power 6, 4 hits. -0.1 essence. (-0.1)
Day 2: Power 8, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.2)
Day 3: Power 10, 5 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.3)
Day 4: Power 11, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.4)
Day 5: Power 13, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.5)
Day 6: Power 15, 5 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.6)
Day 7: Power 16, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.7)
Day 8: Power 18, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.
Day 9: Power 20, 5 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.9)
Day 10: Power 21, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-1.0) *Became a Ghoul*
Day 11: Power 17, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-1.1)
Day 12: Power 13, 5 hits. -0.1 essence (-1.2)
Day 13: Power 8, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-1.3)
Day 14: Power 4, 4 hits. *Would have been cured if didn't become a ghoul on Day 10*

Strictly speaking. You're screwed unless you use edge. If you can keep getting edge back great, but let's say 4 edge and using it to explode 6's and add edge. You'd have 17 dice instead of 13 and probably have 6 hits on average with 7 every 3rd day (pulling that figure out).

Day 1: Power 6, 6 hits. *no essence lost* (3 edge remaining)
Day 2: Power 6, 6 hits. *no essence lost* (2 edge remaining)
Day 3: Power 6, 7 hits. *no essence lost* (1 edge remaining)
Day 4: Power 6, 6 hits. *no essence lost* (0 edge remaining)
Day 5: Power 6, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.1)
Day 6: Power 8, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.2)
Day 7: Power 10, 5 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.3)
Day 8: Power 11, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.4)
Day 9: Power 13, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.5)
Day 10: Power 15, 5 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.6)
Day 11: Power 10, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.7)
Day 12: Power 6, 4 hits. -0.1 essence (-0.
Day 13: Power 2, 5 hits. *cured*

Because, Jeremiah, if you reduce the Power to 0 for any one test, you don't suffer the effects. The effects are a big deal across the course of hours, days, or weeks.

You do have to be not-unlucky, StealthSigma, because luck only hurts you: if you roll worse than expected, you could fail the test (and/or build up a higher Power, extended the disease), but rolling better than expected doesn't gain you anything on those early rolls. So you have to be not-unlucky many times in a row, as well, or you'll hit -1.0 even with all those advantages and the errata stats. :/

Has anyone ever seen a listed threshold on any test that is anywhere close to 80? That's like, building a fighter jet in a week solo.

It's not 80, it's 8… 10 times. Croisade is also '80', Ebola+ is 48, Gamma-Anthrax is 40. You're right that it's very high, which is why we're having this whole discussion (again ). The errata makes it a more reasonable, but dangerous, 60.

The only thing I can think of that's similar would be a long-distance Climbing test (or buying a nuclear sub?). The reason is that the normal way to make a 'hard' test harder is to increase the interval a ton; most things are more time-consuming than 'impossible'. On the other hand, remember that Extended tests are theoretically subject to 'diminishing pool', and disease is not.

StealthSigma: Depends on how you interpret "No inoculations or antiviral agent has been developed which provides any bonus or protection against any species of HMHVV, though the innate resistance to disease of dwarfs does apply, as does the Cure Disease spell, if applied in time." (RC, p 82)

Personally, I use Ghouls only as a storytelling element, and to put the fear of ... well, me into my players. I let them sweat for a day, let them eat a lot of antibiotics and then tell them that they don't seem to be affected.
Were I to use the actual rules (even the better rules kindly provided by Mr. Goodman), I'd probably allow cyber / bioware to provide bonus dice. But it is, to an average player still very much touch and go and a good opportunity to use HoG.

I should note here that I don't actually agree 100% with the rules as they're written, but I'm as stuck with them as you are, at least for the time being.

Ah, that's my mistake then ^^

head>desk.
yeah, i can accept that. should have thought of that one myself <.<;,

My thoughts are to allow an initial test at the time of exposure, if that test is made then you didnt get exposed, and if you dont make that test, THEN you start making the daily resistance tests to lose essence. I think that may put a buffer on it, while still leaving it scary.

Kinda like an initial fort save from D&D.

There is one for that, Vykos: you get to Dodge *and* soak the bite/claw attack.

But yes, the disease rules *could* easily have a separate initial test, if we're fiddling with the disease rules.