Symbiont's Echo (5e Disease)
"He had what looked like red worms coming out of his arms and chest...the way he drained that raider of blood will haunt me for the rest of my life"-farmer brown
Symbiont's echo(or parting gift)[edit]
Contracting Symbiont's echo[edit]
Symbiont's echo is a bacterial infection that can occur after the removal of a symbiont it is more likely to occur after removing a living breastplate with a constitution save needing to be higher than ten points more than the breastplate's ego. On a successful save the victim will take 1 D4 necrotic damage for 1 D6 minutes as the bacteria dies releasing it's decay into the victims body after which they will be fine except for needing to heal, but on a failed save the victim will be infected the disease can also be spread through contact with the blood from the wounds of an infected person or animal.
Effects[edit]
Stage 1: After a full day you will start to hear a voice that sounds like it just woke up at first the voice will try to convince you to do things that are more on the chaotic side of your alignment with a wisdom saving throw to prevent insanity at the start of each day afterwards.
Stage 2: After three days you will be able to understand undercommon.
Stage 3: after five days your body will develop small red holes on the hands, arms and chest which you will be able to release small red tendrils from that latch onto victims to drain blood for two D6 necrotic damage and heals you for half the damage dealt while grappling an enemy. Additional spaces or effects will be added depending on what symbiont you were using before infection (storm stalks produces them on the head, living breastplate creates more on the back, spellwurm lets you use one touch based spell that the symbiont knew through the tendrils, the tentacle whip will make the tendrils longer allowing for one D6 slashing damage with an additional D6 with proficiency, the throwing scarab adds one D4 acid damage to the basic necrotic damage without additional healing, the crawling gauntlet creates clawed tendrils from the base of your fingers on your palms for two D4 slashing damage and the tongue worm develops a poisonous barbed tendril under the host's tongue) you can also siphon your own blood through the tendrils which clean the blood to heal an ally but for every bit of health you restore to your ally you take as damage if you stabilise an ally with this method it takes half your health.
Stage 4:
after seven days the voice becomes a second personality whose alignment will always be chaotic and based off of your primary alignment and you will no longer need to perform wisdom saves at the start of each day but you will need to do a wisdom saving throw against your will stat when the second personality tries to take over when you try to do something it doesn't agree with and you will need to perform will saves against your intelligence when near a symbiont as to prevent the bacteria from lashing out at the symbiont.
Stage 5: after nine days you will undergo a mutation depending on your race: wood elves gain bark skin or insectoid wings which allow flight and double movement speed, goblins can either gain claws similar to the crawling gauntlet or like the wood elves insectoid wings which allow flight and double movement speed, high elves gain reflective glass like fins that can fold out into a shield that specifically protects against magic, dragon born grow an organ on their tails that can fire their specific breath type but this can only be done after a long rest, please add ideas for other races
Stage 6: after eleven days you will need to drain victims of blood every five days to survive, food tastes like ash and ale like acid you can no longer bond with any symbionts except for shadow siblings and when surprised your other personality has a 50-50 chance to use a reaction to lash out at the ambushing enemy.
Treatment[edit]
Symbiont's echo has no traditional cures there is a chance(coin toss) that on a failed save against an instant death spell the disease will be cured instead of you dying. It is also believed that drinking an excessive amount of alcohol will kill the disease though once the infection reaches a certain point the bacteria will actively try to prevent you from drinking ale and once the infection is complete alcohol will taste like acid.
Back to Main Page → 5e Homebrew → Diseases