Remove Disease (Wizard Spell)

The remove disease spell is most often used by charlatans without true healing abilities. It merely removes a patient's symptoms, an effect that the practitioner tries to pass off as a full cure. Sometimes this leads to an incidental cure, if the patient's symptoms only prevented rest or eating well, but more often the patient's condi­tion secretly worsens.
All effects dealing with the affected person's physical appearance and perception of pain or discomfort vanish, but losses of hit points and ability scores continue, as do system shock checks and saving throws. Because the subject can feel no symptoms, he usually takes no fur­ther steps to deal with the illness and eventually dies from a disease he might otherwise have survived (for example, a pneumonia sufferer with symptoms removed might go out into the cold and damp to do a day's work, and suffering double pneumonia without realizing it).
The material component is a fertile egg from an avian or reptile.
Notes: Rare in the Dragonlance setting; virtually unknown elsewhere. (Updated from Dragon Magazine.)
==Krynn lore: Remove Disease==
During the Age of Darkness, true clerics were not to be found on Krynn, but false cler­ics took their place. Some renegade wizards used “miracles" to con­vince people of their authenticity as messen­gers of the gods; one such was the dangerous remove disease spell, still seen on rare occa­sions in isolated areas of Ansalon.
When this spell is performed, the symp­toms of the patient are transferred to the mate­rial component-a freshly laid, fertile egg from any avian or rep­tile, including dragons. Depending on the severity of the symp­toms, the creature de­veloping within the egg is likely to be disfig­ured but strangely not ill (such as a chick with all of the physical symptoms of the plague but with­out the plague germs themselves, which still covertly attack the pa­tient).
If the patient should die from the disease before the false cleric can get out of town, the egg can be brought forth and broken, with the pitiful creature inside being blamed for the miscasting of the spell (“If the egg you villagers had provided me was truly fresh, this would not have hap­pened." [crack!] “See? The evidence of your mistake is to be seen in the contents of the egg")
The false clerics wisely attempted to keep the nature of this spell secret, but even where the truth was known some people were will­ing to pay the cleric's price in order to get relief from aches and pains they suffered, even knowing that the disease itself might still affect them. Given a choice between pain, nausea, fever, and the like while waiting for a possible recovery (or at least feeling comfort­able during the wait), many sufferers of this Age were willing to pay the price, which was wildly variable, and take the gamble. Some­one in a later Age who acquires a scroll in­scribed with this spell will likely have no quick way of knowing the spell's true nature (a successful Intelligence check The false clerics wisely attempted to keep the nature of this spell secret, but even where the truth was known some people were willing to pay the cleric's price in order to get relief from aches and pains they suffered, even knowing that the disease itself might still affect them. Given a choice between pain, nausea, fever, and the like while waiting for a possible recovery (or at least feeling comfort­able during the wait), many sufferers of this Age were willing to pay the price, which was wildly variable, and take the gamble.
Someone in a later Age who acquires a scroll inscribed with this spell will likely have no quick way of knowing the spell's true nature (a successful Intelligence check after three hours of study reveals the spell's actual effects.)
Category:Wizard Spells
Category:Spells from Wizard's Spell Compendium
Category:Spells