Would a non-magical physician have any place in the worlds of D&D?

[MonkeySage]

Just been thinking about this. Healing potions are everywhere, temples with spell-casting priests are in abundance. Where would this leave Gaius the Court Physician? When all of his patients are going to the local Temple of Ilmater, does this mean he's out of a job?

Would the cost of magical healing be enough to keep him in business?

I once ran a story where the players had encountered a case of Mummy Rot, and with no priest present, the local lord put his non-magical physician in charge of it. Unfortunately, this is mummy rot, and there's no non-magical cure.

[Demidos]

Well, I can think of a few answers...

Depending on the setting, clerics may be rare, or extremely plentiful. If they are rare, then obviously he becomes far more important.

As attendants of their deities, clerics usually have many duties. A court physician who could supervise rank-and-file army sparring sessions to stabilize victims of training accidents until a cleric arrives or something similar could be useful, again depending on the prevalence of clerics.

In post-large battle scenarios, there will probably not be enough clerics to heal all the victims, nor to be actively slinging healing spells when they could be destroying the enemy during combat. At these times a temporary solution can be critical.

Necrotic Cysts, derived from a line of spells in BoVD (iirc) specifically are ONLY able to be removed with heal checks, which, ironically, are usually a waste of time for clerics who can spontaneously cure wounds. So he could be a specialist surgeon.

A kingdom which distrusts magic or gods might have a focus on non-magical healing.




So in short, clerics are almost always better, but could be limited by number of spell slots, available time, prevalence, cost and some specific rules. A lot of half answers, but hopefully you find something of use.

[Rfkannen]

I think magical healing might stomp out non magical healing, but I don't think that there would be no use for medical docters.

The main thing I think would be scholars, people who study the human body and diseases in order to get a better understanding of the world they live in, docters would be a lot more theoretical, perhaps resembling real world bioligists more than what we typically think of as a docter.

[daniel_ream]

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Gaius can always have a few levels in an NPC alchemist class and make his own potions without being a priest or full-blown wizard.

Correct-but-unhelpful answer: Trying to extrapolate societal changes from the existence of specific magic in a D&D world is a fool's errand. D&D is a gonzo pastiche of things the designers thought were cool, and trying to reconcile them isn't fruitful.

[Nifft]

If we're talking 3.5e D&D, maybe you could re-fulff the Artificer class to be a "non-magical" SCIENCE!!! guy. Then you can Use Magic Device-- er, Evoke Scientific Effect, yeah that's the ticket -- to cure various ailments, without any spells whatsoever.

If we're talking 4e D&D, you've got non-magical "healing" already in the Warlord class.

In 5e, you'd want a Healer's Kit, the Healer feat, and proficiency with the Herbalism Kit tool. Then you can make antitoxins and healing potions. Non-magical healing is reasonably viable by default in 5e.

[Vitruviansquid]

I think the warlord doesn't actually heal people, he inspires them to fight through the injuries.

[Anymage]

If spellcasters are not common, there will be more people facing injuries, even just accidental ones, than there are spell slots available to cure them. Noncasters with the heal skill will take up much of the slack.

As spellcasters become more common but not quite to the point of ubiquity, the ability to tend to sick people without needing to spend a limited resource will still come in handy. Not so much for PCs or other individuals in positions of power, but workable for devoted healer types.

As spellcasters reach the point of ubiquity, either you stop caring about verisimilitude or else you acknowledge that the world will look radically different than your average campaign setting.

[SilverLeaf167]

The city my current campaign takes place in has at least one notable NPC working as a non-magical physician; or rather, he's an Alchemist, but his services mostly involve mundane care, because he's chosen to work in the poorest part of the city where people can't afford even potions (and he doesn't have the budget to hand them out for free). The mutual distrust between residents of said slum and the rest of the city also stops them from turning to the local Clerics for (possibly) free healing.

Apart from that, the setting generally operates under the assumption that Clerics can handle everyday injuries but more large-scale trouble (like a large accident, breakout of violence or epidemic) may well overwhelm their spell slot capacity, in which case mundane aid is needed. There are also injuries too small for magical healing to be needed. Physicians are less important than in our world, certainly, but their main purpose is to develop affordable, more easily reproducible alternatives to healing magic, or just operate in communities that simply don't have that many Clerics. That, and research for its own sake, I suppose.

[Kitten Champion]

In 5e, you'd want a Healer's Kit, the Healer feat, and proficiency with the Herbalism Kit tool. Then you can make antitoxins and healing potions. Non-magical healing is reasonably viable by default in 5e.

Which was my thought, mundane medicine is still pretty hyperbolic in its effectiveness within the D&D universes. It's not like the choice is between literal miracles and real-world pre-modern medicine. For most of the diseases you're likely to face as a common person, turning to the healer/apothecary is as dependable a solution as a temple.

[Mike_G]

If you run with the assumption that most people in the world are low level NPC classes, then yes, a nonmagical physician would be useful, since many people might not have access to a Cleric.

Even if they do have a local Cleric, Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell, so you need a 5th level Cleric. That's not much to ask of a party of adventurers, but for a small village, that's unlikely, and the cost for spellcasting is way more than a 1st level Commoner would make in a year.

So, yes, for world creating purposes, non magical healers, probably the Expert NPC class with maxed "heal" skill and a kit or some masterwork items make sense. For adventuring parties, I don't think they really apply

[wolflance]

Or you can fluff your magic to...lets say, healing magic also heals bacteria/cancer cells, causing tumors to grow bigger/worsen infection, so that a mundane doctor with a scapel has more uses.

[Strigon]

Well, it entirely depends on the prevalency of magic users when compared to the rates of injury and amount of time it takes to become a useful doctor.
If we take RAW to be the actual laws of the universe, then no. This is primarily because accidents don't really happen, by RAW, and most injuries would be from accidents; farmers who broke their leg in the field, training accidents that wouldn't happen because they're using nonlethal damage, things like that. Without accidents, the rate of injuries goes down, and so does the need for healing.

Another reason why not is that Heal checks aren't really useful in day-to-day life. From what I recall, their main uses are to stabilize a dying person - which means they have to be on scene within 60 seconds or they're useless - and to increase the rate of healing. Now, increasing the rate of healing is nice, but not economically viable. For the cost of hiring a professional doctor for the days it would take to regain full health, accounting for the lost profit from having a worker out of commission for the same time, I suspect it would be roughly the same as paying for a low-grade healing spell.

[MasterMercury]

This isn't RAW, but something I ran in a homebrew campaign. Gnolls were spreading a demon disease that magic couldn't cure, so science had to step in. Granted, what the scientist did was basically magic, but hey. Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic, right?

[Mike_G]

At the end of the day, D&D isn;t a very good world simulator. It's designed to simulate adventuring, which is a very specific subset of people in the world. NPCs exist as scenery, and the rules are...not great when you try to apply them to a first level commoner doing first level commoner stuff.

In a world where injury and disease happen, and magic is expensive and only usable by a tiny fraction of the population, of course there would be physicians and midwives and so on.

And the idea that injuries don;t happen by RAW is just madness. There aren't rules for things like complications of pregnancy, because nobody expects to run a campaign where the goal is to survive a pregnancy. But if the player are told that they need to go on a adventure and find a a high level cleric to resurrect the lover of the king because she died in childbirth, nobody's gonna say "But there's no RULES for miscarrying!"

So, to answer the question, is there a place in the world for a skilled guy who can treat sick and injured NPCs who don't have magic swords and bags of gold? Sure. Will adventurers go to him very often? Probably not.

[TripleD]

Yes, if only because it's not 100% clear what healing spells actually do.

Spells restore HP. HP is an abstraction of your ability to not get hit by a deadly blow. Since a player can fight as well with 1HP or 200HP, it must not factor in things like broken bones, concussions, painful burns, or a dozens of other things you would need a physician to help you with.

Diseases are another kettle of fish entirely. There are spells that can remove disease, but unless you're a very high level spell caster you can only heal a few dozen people a day. Great for the occasional cold or fever, bad for a plague that may be affecting thousands. So while you may not have doctors specializing in everyday disease, you'd definitely want someone that knows how to organize things in an epidemic.

[Jay R]

How much does it cost to get a healing spell, and how much money do the average commoners have?

Yes, of course there'd be a place for doctors, for the same reason that there is a place for builders in a world with Wall of Stone, and for weavers in a world with Fabricate.

Most people can't afford magic.

[Mr Beer]

There may well be a need for a paramedic skill, even if it's not a recognised profession. Injury and accidents don't always happen conveniently next to a healer. The ability to keep someone alive long enough to get a cleric to deal with them is useful.

[Kane0]

They'd have a niche. Clerical magic might not be the best solution for a number of reasons:

- Power barrier (clerics are too low a level)
- Supply barrier (not enough clerics, spell slots and time to treat everybody)
- Cost barrier (price of healing or taxes)
- Religious barrier (will only heal a certain demographic)
- Legal barrier (clerical healing outlawed or reserved for nobility only)
- Magical barrier (no-magic zones, ailments that ignore magical healing)
- Conflict of interest (even if you have access, does the clergy want to spend all [or any] of their time just healing peasants?)

And here's some other justifications:
- Having someone on hand to help get patients to the clerics alive will save a lot of gold and diamonds as well as lives.
- Because clerical magic focuses on cures the non-magical folk can focus on prevention which lightens the load on clerics. There's magic that will cure your Filth Fever, but there aint nothing that will stop you from getting it again next week.
- There are the types of people that want to learn just because, anybody with time to burn could pick up and practice medicine much like they would other sciences, philosophy or even arcane magic.

[Psikerlord]

In a low magic world, non-magical healers would be more important than magical ones (on account of the fact you usually cant find the magic version).

In a high magic world, maybe the other way around. Depends how much magic exactly is floating about.

[Mechalich]

At standard D&D demographic projections of spellcaster abundance, non-magical physicians don't have a place because the magical physicians are also the non-magical physicians.

For example, a small village might have only a 1st level adept, cleric, or druid in residence. Their limited spellcasting won't likely be able to handle all medical issues that arise, but they also have heal as a class skill and if healer is part of their role in the community, they probably max it. An NPC Expert - which is what a non-magical physician would be, just has a max heal skill. They don't have Cure Light Wounds, and they also don't have Guidance (a +1 to a saving throw makes a difference when dealing with diseases and poisons) or Stabilize or any of the other valuable effects of level 0 spells.

At equal level an Expert and a divine caster who both max the Heal skill and take feats to increase that skill's efficacy are both equally good at using the skill, but one have spellcasting on top and the other has nothing. So while there will be lots of healers (the societal role) who primarily use non-magical healing, they are still going to have divine caster class levels. In some ways this is the entire point of the Adept class, and otherwise, the healing specialist who achieves mastery through study not worship fits the mold of the Archivist class (or in Pathfinder the Alchemist), but they're still using magic.

[Darth Ultron]

Yes.

Magical cures are very limited. Magic can cure hit point damage and disease, but then falls sort of most other mundane things.

Magic does not help with long term care or preventative care or even general care.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Even if Clerics are plentiful, they're still dependant on their gods allowing them to cast their spells - PCs might be seen as special cases because they're helping the Cleric further the gods agenda, but if a child in the city gets run over by a cart and has their leg broken, perhaps only the clerics of the most benevolent gods would be able to consider healing them, and they could have more potential patients than available spell slots in their entire temple, wheras a physician has no such restrictions. Or the local situation might mean anyone seeking healing from a church is brought to the attention of the authorities, whilst a physician is discrete, operating like a mob doctor or similar. They might also be cheaper than the donations a church might require.

They could also provide things like end of life care that magic can't really do.

I'd also say that's kind of where a village healer/tribal shaman/witch would operate mostly, with their use of magic limited to either ritual occasions (around solstices and the like) or those situations where bone setting, herbal infusions and psychology simply aren't going to cut it.

[Vogie]

Certainly. While clerics are key in healing damage on the fly, there is still a need for preventative medicine, bodily explanation and advice.

If you want to think about it, clerics and their healing magic is the magical equivalent of modern hospital-level care and surgery. There isn't really a 'general practice' cleric - a cleric may be able to use a spell to put a person to sleep, but wouldn't necessary know the type and amount of herbs or behaviors to help someone sleep on a nightly basis. They can regrow limbs, but not provide physical therapy or identify a twisted ankle. A physician could identify if a person is actually self-damagingly ill or just dehydrated (or pregnant!), for example, or if their ailment is a disease that requires medication or a (presumably more expensive) divine cure.