Healing magic and rejuvenation

[Conradine]

Verisimilitude discussion with no pretetense of officiality.

Magical healing through positive energy ( divine magic ) heals wounds without leaving scars, even when those wounds are next to fatal.
Natural healing in real world is unable to heal nerve damage, tendons and ligaments, severe muscle lacerations, brain trauma and the like. Well, actually the body is able to heal - slowly and in a very limited measure - even those kind of wounds but not nearly good enough to grant a full recover.
Stem cells on the other side can - to some extent - do the work, and that's the reason why very young animals ( and occasionally human babies, although for obvious ethical reasons a, organized experimentation on humans cannot be done ) are often able to regenerate missing fingers and other small body parts, an ability which is lost on adulthood and that seems to be due the intense activity of stem cells in younger exemplars.

Assuming that DNA and cells do exist in D&D, an hypothesis could be that Positive Energy stimulates stem cell regeneration. And stem cells, although not immortal, age at a dramatically slower rate than normal cells.

So...
if positive energy can heal wounds that normal healing cannot, may it be able to heal those wounds inflicted by time and ageing?

[Blooming_Earth]

Healing spells are in the conjuration school, so if there's a scientific explanation for this magic, it probably conjures stem cells out of thin air and uses those.

[Karl Aegis]

Not even True Resurrection can restore a creature that has died of old age.

[El'the Ellie]

D&D seems to have a notion of how long your 'supposed' to live. Classes with immunity to aging, such as druids, still say something to the effect of 'still die of old age when her time is up'.

This is a little strange, add can definitely see the forces of nature imbuing a powerful druid with essentially immortality.

True ressurection can bring back even fully disintegrated people, or people when there is no body, and yet it still can't bring back someone who has 'died of old age'.

That all bring said, having a necromancer-like person experiment with surgery, body cells, and positive energy to create 'true immortality' sounds like a plot for the game, so I see no reason a DM couldn't tinker with these rules.
As written though, it appears higher beings in D&D can sense some sort of pure absolute on your lifespan, regardless of bodily health.

Edit: look at us white mages commenting on the healing/restoration question. :smalltongue:

[ayvango]

Assuming that DNA and cells do exist in D&D, an hypothesis could be that Positive Energy stimulates stem cell regeneration. And stem cells, although not immortal, age at a dramatically slower rate than normal cells.

If such mechanics is actually in place then sufferer would quickly die from multihead cancer. There is a reason why grown-up mammals has regeneration so scarce.

[ayvango]

Edit: look at us white mages commenting on the healing/restoration question. :smalltongue:
Actually aging is always desirable outcome for sufficiently experienced character. In other world character that has access to reincarnation in its abrupt form - the Last Breath spell. Character retain his aging mental stats bonus and regain youthful body free from aging penalties.

[Conradine]

If such mechanics is actually in place then sufferer would quickly die from multihead cancer. There is a reason why grown-up mammals has regeneration so scarce.

Well, Remove Disease.
Also, cancer comes from cumulative genetic damage ( most of times ), I guess that recently conjured stem cells would be intact.

[Hoplite308]

I could see it working like that, taking the "if this really happened" approach. To make such a thing mechanically happen, such as for aging and cancer, when old characters lose their constitution you could treat the lost HP as "injuries" with negative regeneration. Then, Cure spells would work to "heal" the lost HP, and restore their vitality for at least a time. After losing one of those HP per day for a couple weeks, they would be right back to where they were. Cancer would be a continuous negative regeneration effect that deals 1 HP of damage every two weeks or so. It could then be "healed" with Cure spells, though it wouldn't cure the cancer itself.

[Biggus]

There are a few things which can extend lifespan, the level 3 Ruathar ability is one. There's an epic spell and feat which does it. In earlier editions there were potions of longevity, although they had a risk of backfiring if you used too many of them.

But in general, yes extending natural lifespan is harder than bringing back the dead. In biological terms, apparently telomeres are really hard to regrow...

[Xasten]

It comes down to how magic operates in your game and what particular philosophy you follow in your world building. I've always run it that positive energy greatly accelerates the natural healing process, but because it's done so "quickly" after the injury that the scarring is minimal and any systemic damage is repaired because the parts are all there and are just being stitched back together. Additionally, I also rule that cures aren't just healing wounds be restoring some of the abstract vitality that HP represents.

While D&D doesn't officially answer this, another game, Shadowrun, does to a large extent, and I think its explanation would be very informative here.

In shadowrun, magic is driven by the platonic ideal. That is, the "true self" of something or its idealized form. This is the "magical/spiritual DNA" of someone or something. In D&D, the closest we see to this idea is True Naming magic. So, any time magic is used, it interacts in some way with the "true self" and uses it as a baseline to determine the outcome of a given effect. Because magic itself is not intelligent, it needs a blueprint or some kind of logic to follow; the effect of a spell largely depends on what the normal baseline state of an object is. In the case of healing a particular injury or defect, if the defect is part of their true self, then no, healing would not ameliorate it. If the defect was from trauma or something external, then yes, healing could correct it. So dying of old age or having a genetic disorder is "part of who you are" and healing cannot restore that. There's nothing to restore: your current condition is who you are.

We can take this a step further and ask, what about an injury from 20 years ago? Can that be healed? Well, maybe. Over time certain changes may become part of your identity. Think of the Ship of Thesseus problem. Are you still "you" if you stop limping suddenly after spending 40 years with a bum knee? Was a bad knee your new baseline normal? As a general rule, the more powerful the effect, the more it can reach back into your spiritual blueprint and make your physical self more reflective of how it should be (IE healed).

What about changing your spiritual DNA? Well, sufficiently powerful magic can perhaps do it. Heal, Greater Restoration, Wish, etc. are all great candidates to make some changes to your spiritual genome. I think we can see that with Wish spells where you can give yourself stat bonuses. It takes a ton of energy to do it, but it's possible.

I think adopting a system like this has a lot of world building potential. What if someone is born with a severe genetic defect? To what extent can magic help them? If someone was a Type 1 Diabetic due to a their immune system responding poorly to a virus, they could perhaps be cured by remove disease and a heal/regenerate. But what if they were a diabetic due to their immune system inherently developing pancreatic antibodies? No amount of healing magic would help because their condition is not "incorrect," it's simply normal for them. Then they'd need a magic item like a ring of Insulin sustenance or constant castings of a spell to control their blood sugar. It puts solid limits on magic and keeps the world diverse in terms of the population. And I suppose it allows for some cool health type spells. You might see Endocrinology Clerics running around or something, and that sounds kind of cool.

[Conradine]

You might see Endocrinology Clerics running around or something, and that sounds kind of cool.

Definetly cool.

[Malphegor]

There is precedent for that. Osteomancers. Transmuters whose whole dealie is the magical enhancement and manipulation of bone. Endocrinolomagi and circulatorcerers are not that far removed, indeed they may exist under a different name.

[Falontani]

Perhaps the "when their time is up" is not linked to Telomeres in dnd. Even dragons eventually reach twilight. Perhaps maximum age is actually the soul's life span. That would fix the problem with reincarnation. It would be a good reason that increasing it's life span is so hard, because most soul magics don't even begin until mid to higher levels. The soul's life span is linked to their natural body. The one they were originally born in.

[Conradine]

Dragons in Twilight lose Constitution. I think it's tied to physical health, at least partially.

[Melcar]

Not even True Resurrection can restore a creature that has died of old age.

Which only makes sense from a game balancing aspect. Considering that most Mythals I know of stops aging. Spells doing so, should be a fairly easy endeavor to create. Everybody being immortal is however boring and broken from certain aspects, why its not doable. Why magic cant do this, but otherwise heal and resurrect, makes no sense logically.

I'd say that its simple designing a spell, that incorporates this... Analyze the magic behind the elven Mythals and then simply develop a spell based on that research. Should be a fun quest and a great reward in the end.