Every since I started playing Fallout 3, I noticed the only real medical problems are radiation sickness ( including the TDC ) and the addictions. Can anybody shed any light on why their are no other diseases in Fallout 3?

Because there weren't any in Fallout or Fallout 2 and there's no reason to add an unneccessary debuff system when there's already addiction to deal with.

Too make it simple let's just say the radiation killed every germ and virus except the FEV

That would explain why the raiders can stand around all those corpses and body parts... lol.

Seriously though, other kinds of sickness does happen, just not in-game because they're not relevant to gameplay. That called gameplay abstraction.

While I think it's pretty safe to say that cancer doesn't exist in the Fallout world; there's no real definitive answer one way or another on whether or not there are other illnesses.

some say that tetanus have killed more in battle than enemy action directly. One would think that in a PA environment, tetanus would be quite a problem. I wonder, though, how incorportating that in game would make the game more fun.

Who said there werent any diseases? I think its more likely that there was no need to add a needless mechaninc, and that Radiation sickness is just a greater concern due to the prevelence of high radiation areas.

I think getting diseases would be just like having to eat, sleep and go to the toilet. It would get in the way and be very annoying so they didn't put it in.

I wouldn't think so, unfortunately though, Bethesda never managed to make diseases to be anything more than an insignificant nuisance - in which case I also prefer it that they didn't have any at all.

well they did go the sickness that people get in the pitt.. i forget exactly, but its not really radiation sickness, but probablly closer to oxidation, or severe cancer, no?

I dont believe that diseased would have to be a part of the game mechanics for them to be in the game though..
There could have been something as simple as a sidequest where you have to deliver freshwater, or medical supplies to a small community running ramapnt with cholera.

I'm sure there is illness and disease, it's just not focused on very much. For example, a Fallout 2 cinematic had a sick Child and Fallout 2 and 3 both had plots involving introducing a Super Disease to the population. Also, in Point Lookout if your Medicine skill is high enough, you can comment on treating numerous illnesses (That appearently happened "off screen"...)

However, a more "In Game" explanation might be two fold. First, is the New Plague which ravaged the country prior to the Great War and the mutated airborne strain of FEV which inoculates the majority of Wastelanders against the full effects of the Virus. Given how potent a mutagen FEV is, even a small inoculation would probably stave off a host of more common ailments.


It would be slightly ironic, if in the blasted out wasteland the Common Cold had finally been defeated.

My pet theory is that the FEV protects survivors from a lot of disease they would otherwise be subject to. There is awful sanitation in most places, but cholera kills babies and the infirm far more than advlts. Basically all of the advlts you see are the survivors of what may be an almost unspeakable infant mortality rate - I can't imagine that there is mcuh contraception and not much to do all night yet we don't see many children (beyond Little Lamplight). H\aving not many people around and teh difficulty of travel means taht diseas is more contained as well, as inter-group transmission is reduced by the very fact you aren't likely to travel very far (no cars, no planes, no horses even for most folk).

I hear people saying that diseases would be a hassle. I like 'em in Oblivion. It adds A LOT of flavor to the environment, and I always make sure to carry a cure disease and cure poison with me.

I'd love to see them. Sure, it'd be a hassle, but again, it would be flavor, make it a little more realistic. The Wasteland is not exactly sterile.

As a game mechanic it's mostly a hassle, as it just means you carry about a curative until you need it (like you do stimpacks) but you don't need it often. Not many players go about being diseased when given an option and generally curatives are readily available. You generally only spend any real time with a disease in a game is when it is at the start and you can't get the mcguffin that cures it yet. It may add a small amount of flavor, but the instant cure takes away a lot of that flavor while a non-instantly curable disease is usually rectified by reloading. I don't really see that as adding realism but instead just making more work for a player.

The problem with implementing diseases is that if you make them strong enough to warrant remedial action upon acquiring one you also have to include a mechanic for curing them or people will just reload upon acquiring one, and if you don't then they get ignored until they accumulate to the point of needing attention which then requires multiple cures (or one cure that's a pain in the ass, such as Vampirism in Oblivion) or a reload.

Either way there's not all that much to be gained by including them.

I don't particularly care for the ones in Oblivion, but they make sense given the setting and aren't crippling if you get one so I make sure all my characters have a Cure Disease spell on hand just in case (the fact I need to carry a disease cure for 'just in case' is mildly annoying, but I don't really mind too much).




One thing I would like to see is an 'improvement' in the way Poison works, since unless you fight 3-4 Albino Radscorps at once you'll never take enough Poison damage to really matter. In FO1 and 2 getting Poisoned was a big deal, since you took heavy DoT from it until it wore off unless you happened to find a vial of Antidote and those were fairly rare. Critters that did Poison damage tended to not do much physical damage in trade, but if you took on a pack of Centaurs without either Antidote or Super Stims (for fast-healing the DoTs) you could easily take well over 300 Poison damage in short order which just might kill you depending on your level. While there was very little Poison Resistance to be had (the perk Tastes Like Chicken granted +25% for one), the use of the Armor Class mechanic meant that with better armor the critters tended to miss a lot which kept the damage down.

In FO3 terms what I would do is add additional Poison resistance to the various armors and increase the amount of damage poisons deal (base damage on the Dart Gun would need to be lowered to compensate...) while decreasing the non-Poison damage accordingly to keep fighting Poison-users from becoming a death sentence.

A similar mechanic I would reinstate is how Radiation damage worked in FO1 and 2. In those games you didn't suffer any adverse effects up front, however if you didn't cure it quickly it started having progressively more debilitating effects the longer it remained until it killed you, depending on what stage of rad poisoning you had. There was no Infirmary so you needed either a supply of Rad-Away or a (fairly expensive) doctor visit to get rid of it and Rad-Away had a flat level of efficacy rather than FO3's scaling values, so a high level of contamination was not to be taken lightly and could/would even kill you if you didn't deal with it.

Wrong.

In the Pitt, Midea (or whatever her name is) says that the radiation causes most of them to develop cancer, prior into turning into Trogs.