Weaponizing Pestilence

Frequent commentor ChinookHK was good enough to point out the WMD rules I had been searching for for Monday's post but couldn't find because I was expecting them to be in one of the Jihad Rules Annexes, and had completely forgotten to check Historical: Reunification War.  The rules for Biological and Chemical agents start on page 296.

Simply put, all BC threats are broken down into five classes with differing mechanical effects.  Class I is at worst 3D6+6 turns of penalties and possible morale checks, whereas Class V is a make-this-check-or-die-in-1D6-days affair, without possibility of cure.

I imagine that the actual disease I'm looking to deploy here would be a Class V, although I really don't want to expose my players to the possibility of catching that, so I think a Class IV (an "unfinished" version) will work just as well for my purposes.  Under the current rules, here's how the disease will manifest.

From the moment of contact, the disease has a latency of 3-8 days (1D6+2).  Symptoms will last 1-6 days (1D6), and the target zone will be "hot" for 2-12 days (2D6).  If a target is fully susceptible to the disease, they will take a +1 penalty to all skill checks, a -1 penalty to all initiative rolls for each full day of the infection, so that at the start of Day 6 of symptoms (if they have 6 days of symptoms), all skill checks are at +5 and initiative is at -5.  In addition, if the character suffers the full six days of symptoms, one final check is made at the end of the sixth day to determine if they recover or die.

A character who is only partially susceptible to the disease takes penalties every 48 hours rather than every 24, and never has to make a check to avoid dying.  Both types of infection regenerate their penalties at +1/24 hours once symptoms have passed.

So these effects are fairly scary, but hopefully the players not expose themselves to the disease at all.  To help give them hope in case they do, though, I'll make sure the Word has documents on two different diseases this might be (they're here to find out which), that has statistics and information on each.  The alternate disease it could be would be the Class V virus that Word is throwing around shipyard worlds about this point in the timeline.

For an average human (3 BOD/3 WIL), you'd be nearly guaranteed to be infected (a Stunning Success [A Time of War, p. 41 could save you) by a Class V virus, which gives it very close to a 100% kill rate among civilian populations.  The news is only marginally better for the Class IV virus.  For the characters in this campaign, Clark, Simon and David are the most susceptible to the disease; they require a on their check to avoid the full effects of the disease (about 97% chance of infection), and need a Stunning Success of 16+ total to avoid the partial effects.  Alex is only marginally better off (92% chance of full infection.)  Shin is by far the most resilient to disease in the party, with only a 66% chance of full infection.

Now, in each case of infection, there is a 16.67% chance of it going the full six days, and opening up the possibility of the disease killing the patient.  The check against dying is the same as the infection check, meaning that if you need to make that roll, the odds for you are pretty grim.  Total probability of death from an untreated infection ranges from 7.41% for Shin to 15.75% for most of the party.  Not high, but not something I want to be making my save-or-die check against.