Hey guys...

Hey guys, please help me explain why the role of doctors are not nullified by the presence of healing magic in the clergy. This is for fantasy settings in general. Is it because they are responsible for the scientific side of medicine? Because they concoct potions?

Sometimes people with healing magic just aren't around, and you need the next best thing, which is medicine and such. Plus, the development of traditional medical systems helps societies become less reliant on magic in general.

Healing spells might not be able to cure all the diseases. Alternatively, material components might have requirements only crafted by alchemists with "scientific" alchemy skills.

Because most of the cucks on Veeky Forums are THAT GMs and make inconsistent pieces of shit settings.

Just ignore it OP, its LE MAGIC XD don't have to explain shit.

Separation of church and state.

You do realize back in the golden age of Christianity, aka: Middle Ages

The church was in charge of Education, Hospitals, Charity, Hotels/Inns, Blessings, and Parties, right?
Meanwhile the State controlled the military and taxes.

You do realize the separation of the church and the state means the church controls everything right?

OP said fantasy settings in general. Not every fantasy setting is in the middle ages.

>Hey guys, please help me explain why the role of doctors are not nullified by the presence of healing magic in the clergy.

Magical Healing doesn't attribute immunity or resistance to the patient: excellent when healing weak individuals, but very bad at dealing with large populations of people getting sick as they'll just keep getting sick.

So, while it may be beneficial or expedient to use magic to heal someone who's already sick or in serious/critical condition, it wouldn't be prudent to cure everyone and anyone with magic if you can simply send them to the herbalist who'll whip up a poultice that'll allow them to SURVIVE and PERSIST through the infection.

If it's just for physical wounds, that's fine as well, but I'd imagine if it became a constant thing a patient might develop cancers, growths, aged cells or some other such issue. Physical magical fatigue or something.

That's my input at least.

Limb setting, boil piercing, dentistry, ointments for rashes, ingrown toenails, constipation cures, etc.
Both for when there's no cleric/ won't help because you aren't a worshipper of his/her god(dess) and when they don't consider it warrants use of magic.

For a different take, it doesn't Doctors aren't a thing because cheapass healing is ubiquitous and actually studying how biology works is the province of wizards making owlbears and shit, and monks pumping natural magic through their veins to shoot pressurized blood that turns to acid.
This also means getting a malady healing magic doesn't work on (cancer, say), it means you're right and proper fucked and will be seeing the clerics soon anyway.

Also, if you do do that, make potion overdose or overdraw a thing. Just being an expensive sponge for potions should have some drawbacks after a bit.

Assuming D&D/PF, Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell, so that's a level 5 cleric. While those are around, they're likely to be fairly scarce, and even then only capable of a couple of 3rd level spells per day.

In other words, the high-quality medical magics are of a level such that they are not readily available to the may public. Great for nobles or adventurers, but not a solution for a plague, or even a substitute for basic sanitation. The thing that clerical magic excels at that would overshadow similar medicine is the repair of injuries through Cure spells. The complete lack of infections and other complications, coupled with the ready access of Cure Light Wounds (which is plenty for your average level 1 commoner) means that cure spells likely replace things like stitches and amputations due to battlefield injuries.

I imagine there will be some things healing magic cannot fix. It may be able to halt the growth of a tumor, but it won't remove it. You'll need a surgeon for that. Likewise, if you develop a hernia, healing magic may dull the pain, but it won't untangle your intestines. You'll need a surgeon for that also. Finally, there may be limits to what healing magic may do. If you lost an arm, it may close the wound, but it won't give you your arm back. If you broke a rib and bone fragments punctured your lungs, it may dull the pain and heal the immediate damage, but it won't remove the fragments. You'll need a surgeon for that as well.

Magical healing is all well and good, but when you end up grafting someone's spleen to their windpipe via sorcery, it's best to have some mundane means around to deal with it.

I remember an old comic (not going to link it, it's an old 2000s shame) where healing magic literally worked by copy/pasting whole flesh over, which meant you very much needed to be a doctor to use it effectively.
It also meant flesh-sculpting was an excellent business.

Magic may require making bargains with various entities.

Magic may be riskier. Risk deformity, madness, death, etc.

Magic users may be insane, dangerous, evil, discriminated against, etc.

Wizards are rare and most arent around.
The same for clerics, but they are moving around too much.

Depends how ubiquitous healing magic is. If it's as said, then it's really only useful for the important individuals to begin with, and most peasantry has to resort to normal means.

I personally am of the belief that it really depends on how far you're going. For most fantasy settings, the general rule is that there simply aren't enough healers. Assuming that other types of magic exist, and injuries are a plentiful more, healers simply can't do it all on their own, and thus, rely on doctors in such a way that healers are the doctors, while non-magical doctors are more like nurses. Or it could be that magic exhausts or is otherwise taxing, making it so that healing through medicine is better than trying to magic everything. Or like in GURPs, it's perfectly possible that success isn't always guaranteed, so short of being a master, normal medicinal skills are simply more reliable, if not as effective.

There are a plethora of reasons, you just have to pick one.

>Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell, so that's a level 5 cleric. While those are around, they're likely to be fairly scarce, and even then only capable of a couple of 3rd level spells per day.
Not really an excuse my man. If it was experience what lacked, then the government would enforce a training program for every cleric so that they can reach level 5 someday of their life.

Then the same government would put those clerics to work on hospitals, infirmaries, and churches, healing everyone.

So yeah kinda your D&D setting doesn't make sense, much like the Resurrection spell.

I'd assume most people using healing magic would be doctors. It's not like you could always rely on it.

>tha gubmint

The concept of strong centralized federal governments didn't really exist.

The king is the government, you cuck, it couldn't be more centralized even if we all tried together.

Hype doesn't match to reality, Kings had practical limitations on their power based on how much money and military force they had

Of course people need doctors, you simply aren't qualified to get sick and die on your own. It takes years of training!

In my setting (5e) there's not enough Clerics to just spam Lesser Restoration at every single disease, so doctors are employed to determine which diseases will go away on their own with time, treat those which can still be mundanely treated, and decide which will need to be treated magically.

It's not uncommon for a cleric to have at least basic training in medicine for convenience, but they're expected to spend more time on spiritual pursuits and act of mercy and don't have the time to devote to full medical study and experimentation that a professional doctor does.

sometimes the gods stop giving a shit about mortals and they have to fend for themselves.

Worse, communication speed. The largest driving force behind feudalism was the necessity of decentralizing power into plots of land small enough to be governed by a single individual. The king's non-ceremonial duty was largely just to handle disputes between the nobility themselves.

In my game, they don't. Fantasy is fantasy, I let it be that way. Magic doctors are also the healers, they are the ones that create healing potions. Healing potions that restore flesh and blood are common enough to be used and sold in stores, though they can be expensive at times. I should mention that I don't use clerics in my game, but the Gods can totally heal their favored followers or curse people so they can't be healed by them.

Nobody dies from infection. If your arm or leg gets chopped off, or you are blinded, you can get it restored with a lot of strong healing potions. The only time this doesn't happen is if you are captive of very cruel torturers, called Mutilators, who know exactly how to remove organs and then cauterize and stitch up the wounds so they cannot be refreshed by healing magic OR if you are separated from healing for several days without access to it then the wound has 'set' and you can't grow it back.

it's not very clear how magic works so it's hard to say whether it would wipe out doctors or not. i mean, especially if we're talking medieval ""doctors.""

if it's D&D style where all you need is faith in a diety (any diety) and some class levels to regularly and reliably cast miracles which physically repair flesh, then there's really no reason it wouldn't. but if D&D style is actually that healing spells just refresh one's spirit and HP isn't treated as literal wounds but just your heroic ability to avoid damage, then there's no reason it would replace medicine. or if magic of this sort is confined to a pretty narrow and rare group of people or if it's unreliable in some way, or if magic works in some other weird kind of way where there's lots of downsides along with the benefits, then maybe not. but if magic is plentiful and easily learned by anyone and has reliable effects then absolutely it would.

i do think D&D mechanics, especially 3.5 and beyond, generally paint a world where healing magic would be so much better than mundane medicine that the latter would not be desired at all, especially if it's anything like real life pre-enlightenment medicine. there'd just be next to no reason to settle for less.