What does it mean for plague to "continue until the victim reaches Constitution 0"?

Question

I could use some help understanding the following line as it pertains to the Plague disease carried by a Plague Spewer (Monster Manuel III, pg. 125):

Unlike normal diseases, plague continues until the victim reaches Constitution 0 (and dies) or until a remove disease spell or similar magic (see Disease, page 304 of the Dungeon Master's Guide) is applied.

Note: The incubation period is 1 minute.

Specifically, I’m not sure what it means when it says it continues until the subject reaches 0 con. Does the damage continue? If so, in what interval of time? Every minute? Every round?

Any clarification would help.

Answer 1

As the parenthetical says, you have to read the Dungeon Master’s Guide rules about disease for this to make sense.

Unfortunately, “page 304” is incorrect, at least for my printing of the 3.5e Dungeon Master’s Guide. Monster Manual III “uses updated material from the v.3.5 revision” per its copyright page, so I don’t know why the page number is wrong. (Though I am also somewhat surprised to even see one—Wizards of the Coast’s official style guide recommended against page numbers for this exact reason.)

Anyway, here’s the relevant rules:

Disease Descriptions

[…] Damage: The ability damage the character takes after incubation and each day afterward.

^{(Dungeon Master’s Guide, pg. 292—at least in my copy)}

So that answers your question: yes, the damage repeats daily.