Maybe. But I think that we should keep the two type of mutagen in that event. You have a good point about an IV with mutagen. But how about this one: Ingest or inject via syringe = a quick and dirty high chance of a negative…say, 35% positive chance. 10% nothing at all, with the remainder as a negative?
IV of the same stuff could lead to better results and a much higher chance of a positive because the slow transformation.
Could keep the small “shotglass” type while having a serum remain the powerful dose. But, as I mentioned with your nice caveat?
That works great. What I’m hoping to do with suggesting the new method is to curb the race towards cooking mutagens and then just becoming an 8-legged freak by the end of week 1.
With the need for more than just a syringe and a slower transformation phase you’d have characters incentivized to play with a half baked monstrosity for a bit and with the wait on purifier, if you’re debilitated by a negative trait you’ll have to play around it until the purifier gets rid of it, again, not immediately.
Add in a few scary illnesses. During the middle ages, these were common:
Dysentry - perhaps if a character spends too long around sewers, waste, and other rotting things
Malaria - perhaps if a character spends too long in swamps or sewers in the summer?
Diphtheria -
Typhoid
Smallpox
Leprosy
And that’s not even including the relatively-uncommon stuff like plague! Or the relatively-uncommon RL stuff like bites from lone star ticks!
EDIT: Gotdamnmiracle pointed out that today, many people are vaccinated for some of these diseases. But others like salmonella, dysentry, anthrax, and plague come from animals / the environment, not people, and don’t have vaccines, so would be possible.
Make it so first aid skill lets characters more easily identify their symptoms, realize they’re illness-related, figure out the illness, understand treatment options, and find the right medication(s) or folk treatment(s) if any exist to treat the disease. Lower-skill first aid only lets you know how to treat the symptoms, if you can even figure out that you have a disease besides a cold and treatment at all.
I love it! But some of those diseases you picked are more likely to be contracted by exposure to herds (I.e. other humans). I’d be willing to keep them if perhaps there were some way to show exposure to NPC tribes like the reffugee center or something.
You’d be more likely to get Anthrax (from sheep and cattle) in your average game of CDDA than influenza, unless the blob has profound effects on the life of viruses on surfaces outside the body.
Salmonella and Dyssentary though are a must. Plague too with all the rats would be excellent. The average person is gonna be vaccinated against Pertussis (whooping cough) as well as a large chunk of that list. Meningitis is an option, and could be interesting as there are three different types (bacterial, viral, fungal) and they each travel at differing speeds. All we would need to make this viable is add antivirals.
Really anything that crops up after a horrible natural disaster where the running water and electricity is gone should be a must.
The time framing I think could be similar to the lay CBM installation system. Except, a bed is not explicitly necessary. It would however be nice to wake up on something soft and comfortable as a benefit. Such with sleeping.