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Regitnui
2016-04-06, 02:06 PM
How common is medical magic in your fantasy worlds?

We're all aware as adventurers of our beloved cleric's ability to heal the rest of our tomb-robbing selves. But healing magic is pretty much "more hit points now", not really medical. There are complex and difficult procedures in IRL modern medicine, and diseases that can't just be cured with time (long/short rests) and antibiotics (remove disease), as well as medicine in general being too expensive for many people.

In short, how many people here treat medicine as more than just curespells and hit points?

Thought that sparked the thread. Spoilered for off-topic gender politics.
Many Status Quo Warriors are complaining about the inclusion of a trans character in the new Balder's Gate expansion. Is it really so hard to believe that gender-changing magic might be out of the average citizen's reach in a setting?

Slipperychicken
2016-04-06, 02:12 PM
My group's current game is in Innistrad (yes, from MtG), a gothic horror setting where divine power is fading from the world. That means most people hardly ever interact with magic, and when they do it's usually not for their benefit. As such, most NPCs have to make do with mortal remedies.

JeenLeen
2016-04-06, 02:26 PM
I think it depends on the setting and system.

In D&D, my group generally treats it as a magical cure. The spellcaster doesn't need any medical knowledge to heal the body of wounds (Cure Wounds) or disease (Remove Disease). It just works. I could see some having Medicine skill out of interest or research, but it's tangential to the actual casting.

In old World of Darkness, magical healing was a thing but to heal anything beyond basic wounds (including things like a gunshot rupturing organs), the caster needed medical knowledge. The magic was the tool, but the caster needed to know what they were doing to succeed.

In Exalted (2nd edition), the healing Charms literally are doing surgery. Just magically fast, magically well, and/or magically without tools. Even if you 'punch the pain away' with the Medicine Charms, it is because you punch in a precise way to distribute force through the body so that wounds knit and broken bones heal. (There are other ways to heal that don't require medical knowledge, but the basic Core rulebook healing spells require it. You even roll your Medicine skill as part of your dice pool for how much healing is done.)
We played a game recently where having a high Medicine score meant we could help more people during a plague. (It was a magical disease we couldn't just cure with the normal magic.) It was nice for it to be useful, even if it was a minor roleplaying aspect.

In all, mundanes certainly would use mundane medical knowledge, plus available magic (if any, and probably rare). I do tend to dislike having to 'waste' points on Medicine when I never use it directly, so I prefer something where normal healing is okay without medical skill but you can have it be useful from time to time.


EDIT a little more on topic: I think in most settings magic would be relatively rare. There would be 'surgeons' who are really sorcerers. I can see this most in Exalted. A rich nobleman might be able to buy the equivalent to plastic surgery, but it wouldn't be available (either due to connections or cost) to most people. In oWoD, mundanes generally don't know about magic. In D&D, only the rich would have access to such spellcasters, if a spell to permanently alter one's body exists. BUT if magic is common, like science in the modern age, I can see it being rather easy to do. Maybe like Shadowrun?

Darth Ultron
2016-04-06, 06:37 PM
Most games try to avoid the ''real world'' stuff in the game. A RPG has a focus on ''larger then life characters'', not ''everyday things''. No RPG is not an alternative reality simulator. Even if they wanted to, it would take something like a trillion trillion words to even scratch the surface.

D&D is a good example. It would take very little magic to change the world. But everyone in the world just forgets about magic and has everything exactly like Old Tyme Earth. So there are no clerics around with magic powers as that would ruin the feel. Except, of course, things like evil cults. If the game needs it, there can be a hundred cultist and all with magic powers. And they could rule the world with just using all the magic....but they just sit around and do ''cult'' things.

In my world, everyone discovered what magic could do back on day one. And so magic was added to everyday life. So when the first cave man cast a spell, everyone did not just say ''whatever'' but lets go and develop just like Earth did for no reason.

And medical magic would be right at the top of the list. Of course people saw the benefits of such magic, as everyone likes to lead long and healthy lives. As a result, such magic is common in my games. People have far better health care then even 21st folks.

I see low level magic (1-3 level in D&D) as very common. Anyone can get their hands on that, even commoners. So such things like low level polymorphs are common. And ''alter gender'' is a spell of that level.

EvilestWeevil
2016-04-06, 07:29 PM
Depends on the setting. For my tastes I prefer medical magic in the form of alchemy. Not everyone is a grifter with colored water, some people actually do have the talent to provide mixtures that cure headaches and other common ailments.

RazorChain
2016-04-06, 11:51 PM
In my current campaign I am running Mythical Europe setting using Gurps. There healing magic exists in the hands of the church mostly. The problem is that nobody in the group wants to be a bible thumping do gooder.....err fanatic I mean.

So mostly they use first aid to bind wounds. Herb Lore for medical concoctions or Alchemy for healing potions.

As for trans gender and gender switching...sure it can be done with body spells but Magi are rare...as for transgender the church is very happy to burn people on the stake for being different.

Storm_Of_Snow
2016-04-07, 03:12 AM
I think that, to an extent, this sort of area is the realm of the Nanny Ogg-type witch - the local midwife, veterinarian and undertaker. Some would be based around herb lore, some reflexology/acupunture or similar, a bit of psychology, maybe a little basic surgery here and there, and spells and incantations for the really nasty stuff.

As for gender changing, it probably would be out of reach for the vast majority of the population - there might be some of the nobility that can afford it (and the "jump anything with a pulse" brigade might change for an evening, then change back again once the event is over), and maybe the occasional kindly mage who'd offer it in certain circumstances, but that's about it.

And I guess in matriarchal/patriarchal societies, someone's birth gender may be all important and set their role for the rest of their life, and changing may cause a whole chain of events. Same for political marriages.

goto124
2016-04-07, 09:03 AM
And I guess in matriarchal/patriarchal societies, someone's birth gender may be all important and set their role for the rest of their life, and changing may cause a whole chain of events. Same for political marriages.

If in a patriarchal society, a couple is desperately trying for a son but keeps getting daughters, they could look into magic...

Regitnui
2016-04-07, 09:25 AM
If in a patriarchal society, a couple is desperately trying for a son but keeps getting daughters, they could look into magic...

That's a different sort of magic to doing it post-conception.

Talakeal
2016-04-07, 12:22 PM
My character in Mage the Ascension was a medical student and a life mage whose paradigm was that she had invented several techniques for genetic alteration and cellular rejuvenation allowing her to cure normally incurable diseases and would do magical plastic surgery such as the above mentioned gender reassignment as a hobby.

Unfortunately we switched over to Mage the awakening. In Awakening the only lasting changes you can perform on a humam with magic are healing damage, curing poison, and curing diseases. It is explicitly impossible to perform a permanent change on a human outside this list, and even healing a permanent injury such as a scar or lost limb wears off after a few hours. For some reason the game's cosmology doesnt allow any kind of long termmagic to affect humans, blessings or curses, although apparently second edition will loosen up about this.


In my own system (see link in sig!) magic or alchemy can permentantly reshape almost any aspect of the human mind or body if you put enough skill and resources into it. Alchemy itself is an outgrowth of Atlantean medicine and requires some defree of medical knowledge to apply properly.
One thing I have beem struggling with is keeping magic and alchemy rare and mysterious in the setting but still accessible to "adventurers", as is it is only social pressure and superstition against the supernatural that keeps the upper classes from using alchemy to turn themselves into physically flawless and eternally beautiful immortals.

Kol Korran
2016-04-08, 04:10 AM
Hi there! I'm a medical intern, about to start my residency in pediatrics, if that may matter.

The subject of medicinal magic in RPGs in quite interesting. But it bears some considerations:
1. What is illness in the game? What is disease? What is well being? What is a cure? what is treatment?
These are subjects that have plagued (Pun intended) our real world cultures and human development since the dawn of our existence, and still does. Is "disease" anything that hampers us? Is it only from "purely biological" effects? Is it also mental? Emotional? Spiritual? Is it any deviation from "the norm"? (Whatever that may be?) Who decides who is sick, and who is not, and when is intervention accepted, and where is it not?

I don't want to touch on too many real world provocative matters ?(Due to forum rules), but some examples- Is being left handed a disease? Is being outrageous, outgoing, "not normal" a disease? Does intubation and resuscitation acceptable, at all costs? Should Antibiotics be used at all infections? If a child has congenital malformations- is he "sick"? What sort of malformations? Is overweight a sickness? Sexual fantasies? What bacteria are harmful? what are beneficial? Is autoimmune illness considered a disease? Is the inability to bear children a disease? Is being bummed out/ depressed a disease?
What treatment is ok? Should we go as spartans, and kill off any malformed child, so it's illness won't spread? How about Sickle Cell Anemia? (A medical situation that causes hemolysis of the blood, but also protects against malaria)

There are many "vague lines" out there, and many sensibilities, which do not always conform.
What do you include as "illness/ disease/ treatment" in your campaign. Even the "cure disease"- does it resorts a person to "normal"? A person with Asperger- would it enable easier social interaction, but also decrease the attributed enhanced focus s/he may have on their interests? Bi-polars- when you decrease their mood changes, will it also decrease their creativity? (I am Bi-polar, and many who suffer from this do not take treatment because of it "changing them").

As to your question about gender transformation- In your world, are gender identity issues considered a medicinal issue? If so, from what end? (Some will say that medicine needs to assist a person transforming, others will say that they need to help them feel comfortable/ accept in their own biological gender. I'm not taking a stand or expanding on this here, due to forum rules, but you need to discuss it with the group). And does it fall under "Disease/ illness" or augmentation? We have a 6/6 sight, but what if we can make it better? By biological means, or by mechanical ones? (Many fields are beginning to merge. technological eyes allready exist in our world, as do some limbs, though still fairly simple. A matter of time and development) D&D for example has grafts, Shadowrun has a whole book on mechanical, biological and magical augmentations. How many of these fall under "medicine"?

2. Would the play group want to deal with it?
As has been mentioned before me- a lot of people don't want to deal with sickness and such. For most people it's not fun playing the guy with the terminal disease, the disability that can't be healed, blindness, mental disability, long term recuperation from illness, a chronic or deterioration situation... For many the games are escapism from life.

Now, some people like the element of the Fantasy Aesthetic (Look for The 8 Aesthetics of gaming), which basically means the thrill of living in a world that is "real/ alive", and for them, having diseases and medicine play a real and important role in the world enhances their experience (Again, not all of them), but it's fairly rare, and should be discussed with the group.

3. Magic's place, rarity, role and requirements:
D&D's magic is assumed to be simple, available, and at no real cost. But even in D&D there re variants- in Darksun magic saps the life force of plants (If I remember correctly, I haven't read the setting in a looooong time). In Eberron it is assumed that most magical accomplishments were made by very skilled and gifted individuals, and then mass produced by magical science, including healing, which is mostly handled by a guild called "House Jorasco". Most temples there are handled by experts, not clerics, which are considered very, very rare. Raising magic is very very rare, and frowned upon by most religions.

And other systems may treat things quite differently- In Shadowrun for example, technology is better than magic in healign for the most part, and magic can weaken/ tire the caster, and can only go so far...

Different systems may require more elaboration, or more simplicity. For example- Instead of a "cure disease" spell, which cure all non magical diseases instantly, without any real costs, you can do any of the following examples:
- Each disease has a specific spell for it.
- The spells do not automatically succeed. They may need to be some sort of a roll for it (DC of disease in D&D terms?)
- There is a cost- perhaps a special item (herbs, crystals, blood sacrifice), perhaps a more personal cost to the caster (He may risk taking the disease unto itself, suffer, or more)
- It may not be as available (Either due to some guild/ nobles/ power group controlling it, or maybe other requirements, such as time, facilities, or more)
- Limits to what the spells can achieve (They might be able to deal with Bacteria, Fungus and such, but perhaps not viral diseases? Auto immune diseases? Malignancies? Congenital diseases? Mental illness? Maybe they could cure and prevent further deterioration, but not restore damage that has been done, like a dysfunctional organ, loss of organ, and more).
- Does healing magic requires other skills/ knowledge? D&D's "Cure disease" just lets the magic do all the work. The caster needs no ranks in the Heal skill, heck, he doesn't even need to know what the disease IS, or even that the patient is affected! But other systems (As mentioned before), require more understanding, more training, more skill and knowledge.

About Gender transformation- In our world, this encompass a HUGE variety of procedures, medicinal, surgical, hormonal, psychological and more, all coming to vastly different degrees of alteration and success. Do you want the looks? Biological functionality (I'm not talking only sexual and reproduction)? Mental and psychological? (This is a whole different topic, which also should be discussed before hand). What can magic achieve? At what cost? How rre is the service?

(I'll note the Adventure Path Wrath of The Righteous, that includes an NPC who underwent a gender change, but other than having mentioned it, and a bit of the NPC's history doesn't touch on the subject)
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All that said, in my games it greatly differs on the world. I prefer it if diseases/ ailments can't be just "hand waved" away easily, as I think a lot of character development can come from dealing with hindrances, difficulty, and being weak. But... that is my own preference, and I adjust to my gaming group, who usually prefer such matters to affect them only if they themselves wish to deal with it, and not be forced upon them. All of us have had people dear to us who greatly suffered from disease, and wish... not to bring that into the game.

I do love House Jorasco's approach- "We'll treat anyone! For the right price...". Adds a bit of conflict to the world...

VoxRationis
2016-04-08, 06:35 AM
In my settings, magic tends to be quite rare, at least if you're not an elf or something. The in-universe reasons why vary, ranging from cultural factors (magic is a closely guarded secret, not something you teach willy-nilly) to hard biological restrictions.

In any case, if you're lucky enough to be nearby or a friend of one of the few people with healing abilities, you can count on lots of healing magic. (The exception are resurrection effects, because I dislike them and have removed them from my settings.) If you aren't, tough luck. Important people might have healers available to them, but ordinary people almost never do.

@Kol Korran: Regarding your point about what sorts of maladies a spell could treat, I ruled (and it's politically important in one of my settings) that most healing spells (remove disease or restoration or the like in 3e) can't deal with anything congenital—the spell just tries to reset the body to its normal running state, which is the source of the problem. At best, it temporarily alleviates the complications of the congenital condition, but the defect itself remains, and the complications come back eventually.

Storm_Of_Snow
2016-04-08, 08:57 AM
@Kol Korran: Regarding your point about what sorts of maladies a spell could treat, I ruled (and it's politically important in one of my settings) that most healing spells (remove disease or restoration or the like in 3e) can't deal with anything congenital—the spell just tries to reset the body to its normal running state, which is the source of the problem. At best, it temporarily alleviates the complications of the congenital condition, but the defect itself remains, and the complications come back eventually.
There in lies a massive question - what is the normal running state? If it's an age related condition, would a cure spell fix it or offset it for a while? What about something like heart disease due to a poor diet, or liver disease due to alcoholism? Dementia? Substance addiction?

And what about other things - say muscle wastage due to something like polio? Or someone who's had a tonsillectomy getting hit with regeneration? Or someone who's had a tumour removed - if they get hit with regen, does the tumour start to regrow? What about something as mundane as getting a tooth knocked out? And do cure spells leave scars, or are they cured as well?

I could certainly see the more debauched members of the nobility receiving cure disease spells every so often to clear up things they may have contracted while debauchery is occuring, and bordellos having deals for something similar with local temples of those dieties that, shall we say, aren't antagonistic to their activies. :smallwink:

hifidelity2
2016-04-08, 09:59 AM
As stated above different systems do have a more “realistic” healing system – those with Hit Locations or a detailed critical system generally have a mor details magic healing system

RoleMaster
As this has a critical (damage) system some healing will not fix the more major injuries – you need specific magic for that

RuneQuest
Minor (spirit) magic healing needs to be cast onto each wound rather than into general hit points


Spacemaster
This has 2 healing types – the standard (i.e. Heal X HP’s) and then one spell list were you take the injuries into yourself from the patient and then heal yourself

LibraryOgre
2016-04-13, 11:04 AM
I generally assume that there is all sorts of magic that the PCs never really encounter because they don't need it. Chances are, there's an "Ease Delivery" spell available to clerics, but most clerics who fight monsters don't bother to memorize it, and might not know about it unless they have the Spellcraft proficiency.