Nice game, really. Outdated graphics, but I knew that before I got it. But it seems that your constantly "near-death", "plagued" or "poisoned" and there seems to be nothing to help you other than a temple. And the temple will charge you an arm and a leg. Am I missing something? Or are you actually supposed to run back all the way halfway across the map to the last temple whenever someone gets one of those conditions? I wanted to get to Romney in Act 2 but it seems there is no temple anywhere near it and they won't let me in town...

There are items you can use to cure your ailments.

Even "Near Death"?

Don't remember the details. But isn't "near death" a result of going too long without treatment?

"Near death" is a result of being killed in combat. Letting your characters die is a very undesirable thing and should be avoided. Temples are expensive early in the game. Treating with herbs and resting at an inn will both accelerate healing. Isn't Sloop nearby? You could walk back and repeatedly sleep at the inn applying herbs daily. It still takes a long time, a week, two or ... , to recover from near death.

Watch your characters' dialog. If someone says something about black markings or people sure look sick, you have to watch out. That means you will probably run into someone plagued. Keep an eye on your food. If you look and one of the characters has 2 or three piles of food and neither of the piles adds up to 14 then one pile is probably poisoned or spoiled. Just right click on the food to check it occasionally, Food you get off of the bodies and in caches could be deliberately poisoned or spoiled to slow you, kill you and make you sick. Check them by right clicking.

You can recover from the illnesses without going to a temple, but you need lots of rations, healing potions and healing herbs. The rations so you can camp on the side of the road near a good inn. Then when you get healed pass single digits and you no longer have plagued, poisoned (or cursed?) you can stay in the inn and heal to max. Don't select camp until healed unless you have a LOT of rations per character. It can take weeks or longer to heal from near death. Luckily in real time that goes fast.

There are a few conditions that will worsen without treatment; you can't just rest your way out of them. Plagued is, IIRC, one of those. Healing pouches will allow all conditions to improve over time and they will do so more quickly than without treatment, but you need to reapply the pouch when its effects wear off (one rest cycle). Healing potions will also directly take a certain % off of any condition; even using a few of these initially can cut down the overall time to recovery considerably, especially "Near Death".

Certain conditions also have specific countermeasures (an antidote for poison).

"Near Death" is very hard to cure. You have to get the character to an inn, give them several doses of medicine (I think it's a few herbal packs AND several restoratives) and then rest for several days. It's much better to simply re-load a saved game if one of your characters falls in battle (or succumbs to poison).

As for "plagued" and "poisoned", I didn't get them as much. They are discussed in the manual. One of them will be cured automatically, by resting a lot, but the other will not. You will, eventually, find antivenom which can be used to cure poisoning instantly. Later in the game I was getting poisoned a lot but I always had enough antivenom on hand, or was able to buy it. You can also get your characters to a temple and pay to be cured.