rant2

Again this isn�t a complaint but rather an idea I�ve had about monsters and mythology. I many fantasy tales, especially legends, when monsters appear there is famine and disease throughout the land. Unfortunately D&D doesn�t use disease very much and after 5th level or so most parties are more or less immune to disease (though recently there was a Pyramid article that dealt with the subject and had some interesting ideas). Therefore one might think that plagues might not have much place in the game. But the addition of a plague can be a great inducement to defeating the cause. PCs might not care if peasants are dying but if everyone except the rich and the clerics (who really can�t cure all 1000 peasants especially if remove disease does not make one immune to the disease), they might be forced to do something. Nobody wants to stay at an inn full of lepers or those with cackle fever.
      What I�ve been thinking about is the cause of these plagues and famines. Few standard D&D monsters cause disease and none cause famines (though a dragon could certainly try eat a kingdom�s harvest). Those monsters that do carry disease usually kill any peasants that they encounter long before the people could spread disease. Besides in the legend it seems as if these terrible events just happen with the arrival of the creature. If you want to have the mythic effect of great monsters bringing with them horrible plagues, then what is needed is a magical spreading of disease. Hence the feat below:

Pestilent [aberration, dragon, magical beast, outsider, and undead only]
The creature is able to spread disease to the surrounding area for as long as it lives.
      Prerequisites: Constitution 15+ or undead, 6 or more Hit Dice
      Benefit: The creature is able to spread a normal non-magical disease (or any disease it is normally capable of spreading) throughout the area about its lair. This has a range in miles equal to the creatures hit dice. DC to avoid contracting the disease from the area (not an already diseased creature) is 5 lower. Any creature that contracts the disease and survives is immune to this creature�s disease.
       Additionally any creature with this feat will automatically seem unwholesome or diseased.
       Variant: If wished this disease could be applied to plant life instead, thus causing famine.

For the creature the benefit of this feat is its wide-ranging impact. NPCs in this area will quickly sicken and a plague will spread across the campaign region. Nations will be in turmoil and be unlikely to stage any organized attacks on the creature. But besides that this is just a cool way to get the PCs involved. They may not really care about the people about them but if half of town is about to drop dead, they may be spurred into doing something about it.