Contagion causes a terrible disease to afflict a single creature if it doesn't save vs Spell. The victim becomes permanently sluggish and loses Strength, Dexterity and Charisma.
A sick creature will never recover naturally from Contagion. Besides death and resurrection, only an appropriate cure can heal it.
Description[]
| “ | This spell causes a major disease and weakness in a creature. The afflicted individual is immediately stricken with painful and distracting symptoms: boils, blotches, lesions, seeping abscesses, and so on. Strength, Dexterity, and Charisma are reduced by 2. The afflicted character is also slowed. These effects persist until the character receives a Cure Disease spell. | ” |
Gameplay[]
- Bypasses Magic Resistance in Enhanced Editions.
- Contagion is implemented as four different Disease effects. Three of them reduce respectively Strength, Dexterity and Charisma by 2 points, while the fourth is a slowing Disease.
- Keep in mind that although many slow effects come accompanied with penalties to AC and THAC0 (such as the effect caused by the Slow arcane spell), Contagion causes only slowness itself, meaning the enemy will move at a reduced pace, have their attacks per round halved and suffer a penalty to casting time, as well as other effects described in the Slow effect article, but without any penalties to AC or THAC0.
- The slowness inflicted by this spell is different from most sources, as it's considered a "disease effect" with the "disease type: slow target", so it's not a traditional "slow effect". In more practical terms, this means that Contagion is able to slow enemies who are immune to traditional slow effects, but vulnerable to diseases.
- Multiple Contagion spells can stack on a single creature. Note: Death from ability score drain gives no XP to the killer.
- Since the effects are considered nonmagical, they cannot be cured by Dispel/Remove Magic, only through the removal of the disease, like via the spell Cure Disease. This means that, if an enemy is both slowed by this spell and hasted, you can safely dispel said enemy so only the disease slow effect remains.
Bugs[]
- Normally, a single saving throw is required to resist (or fall prey to) all of Contagion's effects, but this is no longer true when the game option auto-pause on spell cast is enabled. Contagion can then take various forms depending on which of the four Diseases were saved against and which were not. The actual bug is triggered when the game is paused while the engine is in the process of evaluating whether or not a (normally) cohesive list of effects will be applied to a creature. The auto-pause on spell cast feature triggers the bug in this case because Contagion reaches its target instantly upon being cast — in other words the pause and the engine's evaluation process happen at the same time, making the list of 4 Disease effects lose cohesion. Each 4 effects are then saved against independently by the character. Other examples of spells that easily trigger this bug are Power Word, Sleep, Vampiric Touch and Safana's Kiss.
Where to obtain its scroll[]
The Black Pits[]
Sold by[]
- Dinguer the Mad (×3)
Baldur's Gate[]
Shadows of Amn[]
Throne of Bhaal[]
Mod content[]
This section is about unofficial content that is only available via fan-made mods.
Spell Revisions mod has changed this arcane spell, revising its effects, saving throw and range. See below for description:
Contagion
Level: 4
School: Necromancy
Range: Short
Duration: 8 hours
Casting Time: 4
Area of Effect: 1 creature
Saving Throw: Death negates
This spell causes a major disease and weakness in a creature. Every 2 rounds the afflicted individual must make a saving throw vs. poison at -2 or suffer additional -2 penalty to strength, dexterity, constitution, and charisma (up to -8 to all stats). The effects of this spell will persist until the creature receives a Cure Disease spell, or the spell duration expires.
The Spell Revisions mod adds a new 3rd Level Divine spell called "Contagion". Its usable by all Divine caster classes. Description below:
Contagion
Level: 3
School: Necromancy
Sphere: Necromantic
Range: Short
Duration: 8 hours
Casting Time: 3
Area of Effect: 1 creature
Saving Throw: Poison negates
This spell causes a major disease and weakness in a creature. Every 2 rounds the afflicted individual must make a saving throw vs. poison at -2 or suffer additional -2 penalty to strength, dexterity, constitution, and charisma (up to -6 to all stats). The effects of this spell will persist until the creature receives a Cure Disease spell, or the spell duration expires.
External Links[]
- Contagion on the Forgotten Realms Wiki, a wiki for the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Forgotten Realms.
- Contagion on the Icewind Dale Wiki, a wiki for the first Icewind Dale game.