Medicine in D&D 5e

>healer's kit removes the need for Medicine checks to stabilize people
>herbalism kit proficiency is for identifying and using herbs, and is REQUIRED for making antitoxins and potions of healing
>Investigation is for piecing together clues about what happened
>Nature covers all theoretical knowledge of the natural world and biology
>curing ailments is as simple as a Lesser Restoration, which can automatically remove a disease

Why is Medicine a skill in D&D 5e? Is it another sacred cow?

Pretty much. Healing should be a use of several different skills, not a single skill in and of itself.

>Nature covers all theoretical knowledge of the natural world and biology

But, there's unnatural diseases as well.

In general, the fact that other skills and abilities can cover for a particular skill doesn't invalidate that skill. In fact, what you've done is help illustrate just how versatile the medicine skill is.

The biggest problem is that medicine's only real uses are made superfluous by cheap items or low-level spells. There is not a single case where the mundane treatment which involves rolling is better than just casting (such as slot dumping before rest), due to risk of failure and time spent.

I think it's a factor of things getting shifted or removed in changes. I feel like Medicine used to be more useful, but they altered what Healer's kit did so many times that it eventually became worthless.

Ideally there does need to be something else you can do with Medicine checks, but right now there aren't as many hard and fast examples like there are for other skills.

A good use might be to let someone roll medicine while applying a healer's kit or healing potion in order to maximize the dice roll or add an extra bonus to it. Not too out there, and makes Medicine useful for someone actually trying to be a mundane medic.

>proficiency in Medicine is required to learn and cast healing and curing spells

Opinions?

...Why not apply that to all spells?

Magical knowledge must be rooted in mundane understanding. In a single change you make the skill system relevant again and make spells that obviate skill uses, like Knock, much more reasonable. You have to know how to pick a lock before you can magic one open. It becomes an interesting extension of the skill use rather than a replacement for it.

That'd be an interesting take on the system, though also might make things rather annoying in many regards for players.

There are probably more unnatural diseases than natural ones in D&D. It's been horribly gunshy about actually inflicting cholera or syphilis on characters since its inception, instead opting for "filth fever" or "mummy rot", the latter of which sounds kind of lewd.

Or require a healing check if you want to use healing spells on someone with 0 hp. You don't technically need the proficiency, but it'd be difficult to manage without it.

This is the sort of thing I've been saying, the spells shouldn't outright replace skills and a set up like this makes the spell more useful for those who specialize in it anyways.

If you use spider climb for example it should give you a certain amount of ranks in climb and you still have to make the climb check except now you don't fall off the wall (or it's harder to fall off the wall).

Spider Climb is a bit of a different case since it's presumably making your hands adhesive via amplified VDW forces instead of building on a skill.

But you'd agree a person better at athletics would be able to make better use of it then someone who doesn't?

Half the game is made superfluous by spells. I assume the option is still there just in case you don't want spellcasters for some bizarre reason.

I'd still say it would require a certain degree of Athleticism. Just because your hands are covered in magic glue doesn't mean you become better at actually lifting yourself up a surface, just that there's now an unlimited number of handholds. Low Athletics would mean going very slowly while spiderclimbing as you inch your way up, while High Athletics would mean basically flying across the wall as you use the full range of motion.

Yeah.

Sure. D&D is just really loath to loan out things like additional speed and movement types, to a degree that, playing other games, seems very strange.

Spiderclimb is specifically about not using your hands. It lets you walk on surfaces with your feet, orienting you as if you were walking on the ground. I have no idea how athletics would affect that.

I say this also applies to a number of other things. Whats the point of having 20 in strength when it doesn't have applications outside of giving you a plus 5 to damage?

A principle complaint about martials is the fact they lack versatility. Now, let's say my 20 STR fighter can lift and easily hold thousands of lbs of weight with ease.

>"Oh no! The cart is stuck in a ditch and one of the wheels is broken!"
>Proceeds to lift the cart up and holds it up while the wheel is replaced

>"Oh no! This giant boulder is blocking our way!"
>Strength check to push the boulder aside

Well, if you still have to fight gravity to go faster as you run up the side of a wall, it would help to have Athletics.

If you're fighting gravity it would be incredibly hard to stand straight on a vertical surface in the first place. It's just some nonsense magic shit keeping you up I imagine.

Can't they already do those things? It's just those problems never come up because it's a high fantasy interdimensional super magic gods game. Nobody has carts, they all have pocket dimensions in their handbags. No one is going to worry about clearing paths when they can just teleport or planeshift to where they want to be.

Hence why good Athletics should probably be required. Otherwise you're forced to move slowly and carefully close to the wall anyway, while someone with more Athletics could probably do Spiderman-esque feats.

For a low strength Wizard, Spiderclimb would let them slowly and carefully climb almost anything. For a skilled rock climber, it'd be enough of an advantage for them to do insane feats and practically bounce off of walls.

Basically, add one more line to each spell - which skill they require? So for most wizard spells, the default would be Arcana (I've never seen a wizard PC without it anyway), Nature for druids/rangers and Religion for clerics/paladins. Bards just Perform and wing it. Some spells do not require much understanding of magical theory or sacred mysteries, but practical knowledge - some insights into psychology (Friends, Charm Person etc. tied to Persuasion), how to deal with animals (Animal Friendship, Beast Bond etc. tied to Animal Handling), what to watch for when hiding and sneaking (Invisibility tied to Stealth) and so forth.

Basically, casters aren't swiss army knives anymore that can solve every imaginable problem with 1 night's rest. They specialize, at least to some degree, based on what they actually know and learned.

Yep. You'd need to be careful and quite restrictive with Arcana- It represents pure magical knowledge, so no bullshitting it into being able to do everything anyway and just making it the superskill in itself.

And I'd rule that Sorcerers ignore the skill requirement entirely. That's their "intuitive magic" aspect.

This is how rituals in 4e worked

Could just say spontaneous casting, although I don't know how splatbooks break this

I like how this makes specialist wizards feel more thematic as well. Invisibility as a mechanic already covers that, though. You can't be seen but can be heard.

Medicine is also a knowledge check, user. Roll medicine to identify the nature of someone's ailment, etc.

Or skip the roll and do the "Detect Poison and Disease" dance

I mean if you want to waste spell slots on that, sure.

But you could also skip almost any skill by using magic instead.

Which is a big problem in D&D that the developers have consistently failed to address.

At least in the current edition, most bypasses are too costly in terms of spell slots or have other downsides that make skills better in some regards.

Trying to use Charm spells, Invisibility, and Knock to pretend to be a Rogue is going to get you found out very fast.

Okay but rolling skill checks is unlimited. Blowing spell slots on them? Not so much.

It's paying a huge convenience fee for something you could get for free, basically.

Detect Poison and Disease is a ritual.

Medicine BTFO.

Oh man, I sure want to spend that long diagnosing someone dying of fucking poison or disease.

furthering this, I don't want that spell even on my limited number of spells known or prepared.

Moon Druids can afford it. No biggie loading up on pure utility when all you do in combat is wildshape anyway.

This is fair, I agree. More of the exception than the norm, though.

10min isn't a long time. It's shorter than a doctor check up, and fr more likely to produce an accurate diagnosis. It could tell you things even modern medical testing would only hint at.

That's how 4e's healing rituals worked. You didn't roll Arcana or Religion to use them, you rolled Heal.

Anons you are geniuses. Ima stealing this for my setting

This. This would make the different wizard schools more meaningful to if they have certain skills tied to their spells that they specialize in which makes sense when you think about it.

Why wouldn't a necromancer have medince? Why wouldn't an abjuration wizard not have some kind of knowledge skill in construction? Why wouldn't an evocation wizard not have skills in alchemy?

The problem with Medicine is that it's not useful enough. It should be excellent for helping people recover from exhaustion and injury when resting and recuperating. Here's an image that sums up my feelings on 'weak' skills while fixing the whole 'short and long rest' problem and making lifestyle matter for once.

>Illusion: Deception
>Enchantment: Persuasion
>Divination: Insight
>Necromancy: Medicine
>Abjuration: Investigation
>Evocation: Performance
>Transmutation: Alchemy
>Conjuration: Animal Handling

Surgery. Nothing will replace medicine for amputations and open heart surgery's. Also you're looking at this backwards. Sure all of those methods achieve the same result but wouldn't it be more efficient and flavorful to just take medicine and use your other spare skill/skills on something fun/useful.

D&D is all about being presented with a problem and finding one of many different and creative ways to solve it. Very little is totally useless. It's just how much do you want to use it?

One game I had animal handling and land vehicle proficiency because I of my background. I thought they were useless until we had to go on a long expedition. I suggested we buy a wagon and mounts and low and behold who became the star. The guy who could calm the horse, tell if they were shit, and run the wagon with out breaking an axle every 20 minutes. Sure it could've been done differently with a druid or bard but using it made me happy. So why not try to find a use for medicine instead of saying it is useless.

Honestly, I like that it's made of so many different sub-systems that all have different bonuses and costs. I think it adds depth to have characters say things like "I'm not actually worried about the fever, it will go away on its own with rest as long as you're still holding down water. I can set the leg, but you'll have to wait until one of the Clerics can get to you about the fingers. For now, drink this."

What I do wish, though, is that all the various parts of the healing system had gotten their own chapter, perhaps under "Heaing, Injury, and Disease," explicitly laying it out as a one big overarching system instead of having it fragmented throughout.

I use Medicine instead of Nature for knowledge about humanoid physiology.

I really dislike this. I mean if you want magic users to be worse or whatever, fine. The problem here is that on the larger scale this would only really punish players for not being a human or half elf, and at the same time force them to be picking out of a smaller list of skills. Never mind when you get to things like eldritch knights, arcane trickers, or classes that aren't wizards that don't really follow a clear path for the schools of spells

Magic users being forced to specialise more and actually think about their choices only sounds like a positive in my book.

Those two gishes are outright forced into a clear path for two schools

>4e does it
>lol 4e slrituals suck
>5e does it
>omg genius
Yeah, I'm a little salty...

That's because you aren't thinking it through. Every option that is "soft restricted" from casters like the perception skill is basically soft forced on to a non-caster anyway so you're actually just forcing everyone to specialize more. I also have no idea why every caster being a human or half elf is a good thing.
If you wanted to make casters more restricted in some way there are better options, like just restricting the class. Tying it to another unrelated game mechanic is mostly just reckless and imprecise

>Oh no, my god wizard!

First the skills would be tied to the spells and not the school itself. so for gishes they would have to focus on the skills associated with the spells they take and they tend to stick a few unlike wizards who jump all over the place.

Second, why does being a human or half elf matter? It should be nothing to unchain skills so they arn't exclusively checked behind certain classes via cross class skills.

I mean, if you want the regular wizards who can do everything unchecked then why bother commenting?

That'd be great if the schools were designe with specialization in mind, but they aren't, they're full of empty levels and lopsided distribution. Some school would bluntly be bad to specialize in and others obscenely rewarding. Then there are the limited skills characters get in the first place.

This is a nifty idea but requires more tweaks to the system than it proposes.

And with that an eldritch knight would have to pick up alchemy to learn haste as one of their non-restricted spells. I don't really know what arcane tricksters pick, but I'm guessing there's at least a few things they would want

>Second, why does being a human or half elf matter?
More skills dummy. This system would clearly favor races with access to more skills

I don't care if you nerf the wizard you retard. More than anything it wouldn't do anything to my own games. The problem is you actually hurt everything else with that idea.

I mentioned half elf and human not because they have free choice of skills, but because they have significantly more than other races between racial features and the human being able to pick the skilled feat

And the version you're describing here where it's on an "per spell" basis would require a player knowing the whole spell list at character creation to get what they want when they level up. Now you're just punishing players for not having high levels of system mastery.

Also what the fuck are you talking about with "cross class" skills. They're talking about 5e, not 3.5

>abjuration: investigation
>not divination, the school all about spying on people and finding things
And alchemy isn't even a skill

do not play DnD

I've always fluffed it this way in my headcanon. How do you know what to magically put back together?

The way I sort of see it, you still have to tell your magic *what* to do. For example, waving your hand and saying "heal this dude" always felt lame. I prefer you having to think in your mind and imagine the tendons going back together and the blood flowing again and those sorts of things. So an understanding of medicine makes sense. The same applies to other magic too. I like it when shows or games feature the actual effects of magic (Dresden File's air popping and hot air from fireball spells comes to mind first, that had great magic effects). The mage would will the air to superheat, he wouldn't just think "fireball lol" in his head.

My characters always have medicine skill and healing spells and I always saw it as building on the other. It would be nice to have it reflected in the rules and not just me being autistic.

And that's bad because...?

Races with broadness of learning would actually have that broadness manifest itself better. Half-elves are traditionally a race with varied perspectives and experiences, so they are exactly the kind of race that would make a versatile spellcaster.

It's bad because it's pointlessly centralizing despite some flimsily justified excuse like that, but it also just outright contradictory for the existing themes of races like high elves and gnomes to be worse at magic than humans and half elves

You're focusing on tiny specific issues to try and dispute something that improves things on the whole. Tweaking it to fit won't be hard, the concept is golden.

But elves and gnomes still *are* great at magic. Intelligence bonus, extra cantrips? They are inherently magical and have the easiest path to reach the greatest magical power. All of them! Humans and their kin are just more versatile - exactly what they've always been portrayed like.

No, I'm responding to someone justifying 2 races being above and beyond with a proposed game change. The biggest reason I'm against it is that tying skills to magic doesn't really do anything aside take choices that were previously freed up between classes and force them back. As long as people have talked about fixing wizards in 3.5 the idea of restricting schools of magic more has come up, but I can only see tying that to skill proficiencies as something that would ripple throughout every other character's choices. Just outright saying "Choose two schools of magic which you can not cast" when someone makes a wizard would do much more while not shaking up any other character

So you're a salty casterfag, got it.

Universal restrictions on magic is a good thing for the system, and tying them to mundane skills is a great way of doing it.

Now you're just saying random shit without explaining why you think it

He's saying your restriction would hurt everyone else more than it would hurt wizards. Thats like the opposite of casterfaggotry.

That doesn't even make sense. All of the proposed changes limit caster exclusively. They have no impact on noncasters.

>This thread

That would be nice to Wizards, but to Sorcerers would be horrible.

Hence the suggestion to make them exempt from this rule. Their magic is fluffed as intuitive rather than analytic anyway, so it's easy to justify why they do not need to grasp the theory behind their spells.

On the lesser level it changes the relative value of skills, creating a scarcity in non-casting skills that non-casters would have to act one. Using the list it would mean in a party of casters a non-caster would be near forced to pick perception, athletics, and acrobatics for the sake of covering holes.
The more dramatic issue is just how much it would fuck up gishes by forcing them to invest that much more of their character into one side of their multiclassing or subclass

I don't know what weird kind of game you're playing, but groups can get by perfectly fine without having precisely balanced and distributed skills. I find it laughable that you interpret a limitation of casters as actually just a limitation of noncasters. That's some real mental acrobatics.

To be fair, most non-casters are already picking up Athletics or Acrobatics, and Perception is such a universally good skill that everyone should be wanting to grab it anyway.

Besides, there's nothing demanding that casters go out of their way with this system to still try and be as versatile as possible. If a Cleric still wants to grab Perception to make use of their high Wisdom with it, they'll still have plenty of spells that they can cast and use.

5e was written so that you can say as a DM "You need to roll medicine and expend a healer's kit charge to roll hit dice to heal"

I would do that if for some reason I thought a wound needed to be cleaned or something similar, but generally that seems like the sort of rule you should only use if players were actually expecting it. Needing healing kits to use their hit dice is the sort of thing that effects buying decisions long before the short rest
Or are you talking about something other than short rests?

Shit...this it's a really good idea.
The thing I hate about casters it's that their god like powers steal the purpose to the rest of the players, being the jack of all trades and master of all (it's also bothers me how little shit most settings give to this people than can cast meteorites and revive the dead).
This with a stronger need of materials could give casters more personality for low magic settings.

It's a variant rule in the DMG, and many groups use variants of that again.
But yes it's like you said, it's something you take up before the campaign starts.

A lot of people think healing comes too easy in 5e, magical healing can be handwaved as magic of course, but natural healing with bandages and such I think should require some investment.

I'd probably say, healing more than 1 hit dice (or a scaling number of them) would be free at short rests, or perhaps if a character has taken less than half their max HP in damage they needn't expend healing kits.

So, would you have proficiency in the skill be enough to validate the spell? Or do different spells require different skill ranks as prereqs for casting?

For better balance against martials, if every spell is associated with a skill anyway, should rolling that skill be required for casting the spell? In that case, examples like casting Knock might be more difficult than picking a very simple lock, but it works on magical locks and other things that a thief would normally have to roll much higher on.

That's how it worked in 4e with rituals. Rituals were not just 'Do this and you auto-succeed with X value' (With a few minor exceptions). Let's take Plane Shift (Picked an iconic spell) as an example.

>Travel 18 (Any ritual caster can cast any ritual but some people get bonuses on types of rituals)
>Light flares around your vessel as it begins to cross the space separating planes, carrying you off to a new location.
>Time: 10 minutes
>Duration: Instantaneous
>Component Cost: 1000 gp, plus a vehicle with a navigation focus
>Market Price: 17000 gp
>Key Skill: Arcana

You move a vehicle (including the vehicle’s pilot, crew, and load) that has the navigation focus trait from one plane to another.

At the ritual’s conclusion, you name a location you have previously visited. The location must be a fixed place, and it must be in the same location it was when you last visited it. Once the location is named, make an Arcana check. The check determines the distance between your vehicle and your destination when you arrive on the plane.

>Arcana Check Result
>19 or lower -> 100 miles from the destination
>20-29 -> 50 miles from the destination
>30-39 -> 10 miles from the destination
>40 -> Arrive at destination

Instead of choosing a specific location, you can also choose a plane as a general destination. In this case, the vehicle appears in a random location on that plane (no Arcana check necessary). It’s not necessary for you to have visited the destination plane to use the ritual in this manner.

Focus: A vehicle that has the navigational focus traits.

Honestly, if every skill in the game was replaced by a cantrip that fulfilled the same purpose, I don't think anything of value would be lost because of it.

Like let's be honest here, why would anyone use a heal roll when they have access to cure spells? Why would they waste time with perception when you have spells like true sight, detect life, detect magic, etc? How many people actually use disable device when spells like disable trap, detect trap, knock, etc. exist?

It just seems weird to have skills when they only make up like 2-3 pages nowadays.

>Honestly, if every skill in the game was replaced by a cantrip that fulfilled the same purpose, I don't think anything of value would be lost because of it.

Well, non-mages being able to do things. Feels like going the other way would be better, where spells that replace skills get removed.

You're not understanding me, I'm saying that instead of a skill, everyone gets access to a cantrip that replaces the skill.

That sounds like fun if you add anti-magic zones liberally sprinkled through the campaign. The party charges in with true sight and knocks and heals and Floating Disks carrying their stuff --- and suddenly giant doors close from behind and magic stops working.

That does not sound fun at all.

As a martialfag, fuck AMF's.

You'd think "oh it shuts down magic, that'd be perfect for us martials to deal with" but no, you end up charging the chaos beast and finding out that literally all your bonuses are gone and you end up getting eaten in three turns.

I find medicine very boring in dnd.

The system has mechanics for infected wounds, but its nullified by a 2nd level spell.

Want to do a story involving a Plague and have the players fear dying to the black death?

Better hope you don't have a Paladin because they cure disease with touch.

Basically there's no grit.

4e's disease rules were a LOT harsher. The Cure Affliction spell did serious damage to anyone being affected by it as the purging isn't a kind progress (And subtracted the level of the disease from the roll, so you were more likely to fuck up and kill a guy affected by the black death than the common cold).

One of the options on the table was '100% of targets HP' if you fucked up Cure Affliction.

In addition, diseases had stages. You could use Endurance (Or Heal if someone was actively treating you) to try to resist it increasing in effect and past a certain stage you had to resort to magic.

Pic related, a very minor and low level disease. When you get to Paragon or Epic level, shit gets a lot worse.

When combined with Dark Sun's survival rules, players could get utterly fucked over by sickness and the environment. (If you would lose healing surges from environmental damage and have none left, you take damage = you healing surge value. You need to spend healing surges to be healed at all so if you are in the late stages of a disease, the cleric can't just keep throwing healing at you to negate the damage)

For a very heroic game, 4e's environment and diseases did not fucking play.

The only way for it to work is to structure a campaign around it, maybe like a signature of a specific enemy that party is investigating/fighting.
So the first time it happens it's an oh shit moment but all the party does is fight some moderately threatening enemies and solve puzzles and use their skills for a change.
The next time they know they should expect that so they get medikits and lockpicks and tactics for when this happens -- and when it springs up you reward their preparedness.
Third time they already are getting the 'useless' skills online -- and you throw a twist that rewards that but with additional thinking (like AMS flickering allowing using magic sometimes)
Fourth time you make a party WANT that AMS -- say throw an opposition group of traditional no-skills all-cantrip mages like the party itself was the first time.

Basically "loltoolbox boyz from ultramagic society become well-rounded men with skillz" the campaign.

D&D is built around having obscene amounts of magical items and spells. Regularly rendering both those things pointless just doesn't seem like a sensible idea. Maybe in a less magic obsessed system.