Healers and Hospitals in fantasy

I feel like healers often get overlooked in fantasy settings. I often wish there was a setting that looked at them more in depth. I think having a modernish view would be neat. For example, the healers guild will fix up anyone good or evil, just like hospitals today. "I don't care who you are or what you do, we took an oath to do no harm." "ill patch you up, but once you're better I cant stop the paladins from coming for you" sorta thing.

But then "hospitals" would have to have their own enforcement to keep the outside world playing by their rules. Or maybe everyone plays nice in case they ever need help. Would this lead to rogue practitioners? Would you need to call in specialists for void infected wounds? Would you have to go to med school, or will they allow a naturally inclined druid in just due to his prowess?

I'm just spit balling here, please join in if you please.

I'm a big fanof that knights hospitallier where they protect and heal the knights and crusaders. Gotta protect pilgrims yo.

I had a cleric in an AD&D campaign that would spend his off days and pray to change out his remaining spell slots after adventures healing and aiding the sick and poor as much as he could. The usual argument I've encountered is that adventurers are uncommon and that healing magic just works like most magic.

I'm imagining a healer that becomes disillusioned with his profession. Knowing how to save a life also means you have intimate knowledge of how to end one. That medicine you use to slow a fast heart rate can be used to stop a normal one. Too much of any medicine becomes a poison.

I wonder if scientific medicine develops more slowly or faster if you have magical healing. Like you say, they should be rare enough where they aren't on every corner.

Yeah, healing magic is way too common and "easy" in fantasy settings. I very much prefer settings where magical healing doesn't exist at all, or doesn't work like "regular" magic. I much prefer potions and alchemy and studied specialists to be involved, as opposed to just "LOL I SAID A PRAYER TO PELOR, I CAN CURE X-NUMBER OF DEADLY DISEASES PER DAY LOL!"

Obviously it depends on the nature of how such healing magic works. DND style magic would be what I imagine miracles would be even if cranking out 50 wands of clw is a simple matter .

For my own purposes I like healing magic to be such that you still have to do regular surgical and medical work but it's "aided" by magic such as creating various potions to cure poisons and illness and spells to promote healing but if you just try to heal a broken leg you could cause the bones to heal wrong and cripple your charges.

That said, such magic can also be used to horrific effect

>Return
Sorry cure disease doesn't get rid of herpes its a virus not bacterial based.

I think I'm going to start house-ruling that magic can't cure diseases or poison, only suppress their effects, with actual curing taking medicine or herbs.

God knows Medicine has basically zero uses in 5e. Wow, I can stabilize a downed ally if I pass a DC10 check... something I can do with no skill proficiency and no dice roll if I have a spell that restores even a single point of HP. Yawn...

>I think I'm going to start house-ruling that magic can't cure diseases or poison, only suppress their effects, with actual curing taking medicine or herbs.

Maybe take a look at 4e's remove affliction ritual? It actually made magical healing of long term effects really risky (As the strain that burning that effect out of your body could kill someone if the spellcaster was unlucky/poorly skilled)

>Remove Affliction wipes away a single enduring effect afflicting the subject. The ritual can remove curses, effects such as charm or domination, and fear, confusion, insanity, polymorph, and petrification effects. All effects of the curse or other effect end.
>This ritual is physically taxing to the recipient; if used on an injured character, it can even kill him or her. Upon completing this ritual, make a Heal check, using the level of the effect you are trying to remove (or the level of the creature that caused the effect) as a penalty to this check. The result indicates the amount of damage the character takes. Assuming the character survives, this damage can be healed normally.

>0 or lower Death
>1–9 Damage equal to the target's maximum hit points
>10–19 Damage equal to one-half of the target's maximum hit points
>20–29 Damage equal to one-quarter of the target's maximum hit points
>30 or higher No damage

In my head setting (Cuz I don't have friends)

There would be miracle healing (ie by a divine source) super rare works like DND healing in that it is instant and works perfectly.

Followed by straight up dark healing. Pacts with demons, boons from dark gods, ect.

Then theres law of equivalent exchange healing or blood magic. Yeah I can take this guys life to heal yours, the morals of this gets messy but still pretty grey, can't get something for nothing.

Then you got the alchemist healing, studying potions and the like.

I guess thats what sparked my initial interest in the subject.

Its mundane to us players that healers can restore life points since that has always been our norm, but WTF that shit would be crazy IRL. Thats like Messiah powers. Sure the wizard can cast a fireball to kill a troll, but you can hire 20 normal guys to stab it enough to. But to be able to heal disease and keep important people alive is truly something else.

I did something similar once where I made all magical healing Temp HP instead of Actual HP.

Unfortunately, according to other people I've talked to, I'm a super shit DM for doing this and should quit the hobby and kill myself. Oh well.

>But then "hospitals" would have to have their own enforcement to keep the outside world playing by their rules.

The "fuck with the healers and your people will fucking die" enforcement seems to work best.

It's important to note, healing and such would completely change the medieval-renaissance type societies that DND games are usually set in. Even up till the Napoleonic era, medicine was fairly crude (compared to now at least, they weren't dumb by any means) and infection often would result in amputation. In fact, infection and internal bleeding would be your most frequent killers. With the plethora of ways to remove disease, and seeing as most internal bleeding tends to be a small scale hemorrhage, a cleric of level 3 with some levels in healing would have been able to phenomenally change any operating theater they were in. Cure Minor Wounds alone would save many, many lives.

The biggest problem that I've encountered with trying to have non-magical healing is just how difficult it can be and how quickly it can make people not want to play as the team medic. If you make it too real, healing time takes so long that seriously injured party members are going be forgotten since they will be out for months or longer. The healer never feels like he or she is doing enough to help and feels out shined by the caster who's magic works because it's magic. And you might need more intensive notes and a more exact combat system so that you can better quantify severity of damage and location for healing.

Week long healing is hella gay. But making the Healer closer to an alchemist, a character who makes potions and remedies and such that work quickly, feels alot more fleshed out and descriptive, flavor-wise, than "Yeah, all medical knowledge in the setting consists of a couple of spell a level 5 cleric can cast to heal anything and everything wrong with you instantly several times a day."

But how does it address more serious injuries like nerve damage or missing limbs? My personal favorite for healing magic is stuff where it really just accelerates or improves the natural healing process temporarily and puts great strain on the recipient that might cause pain, loss of consciousness, or death as a worst outcome. But ultimately it's a game so playing a healer has to be fun and most people do not seem to like playing a support role

A missing limb should be a major character-defining event on a similar level to death. It shouldn't be something you get to just handwave away with a spell. It should be the kind of thing that requires an actual quest for a sacred healing spring or the favor of a god-like being or getting a mechanical replacement or something of similar scale. It shouldn't just be a service the local cleric can provide for 500gp.

In 5e at least you need Regenerate to regrow a limb, which is a 7th level spell. That's a bit beyond the ken of your local village cleric.

Yeah, D&D healing magic is overpowered and kinda gamist in the sense that it doesn't integrates well into the lore unless you rule that magic healers are super rare which is kinda lame.

Tbf, realistic healing in a game with flat HP and high power level assumed would feel so fucking out of place.

But it'd be good for a gritty dungeon crawler game where you'd have to patch up your guys and yourself just enough to snatch that fucking treasure and flee. Doesn't matter how much time passes between adventures. Unaccessible and slow healing would make a game that much grittier and tied to resource management, which is all a welcome addition.


I also remember, in Whitehack, any magic was treated as a "Miracle". Miracles have HP costs. Now that's a very interesting thing lore-wise. Being a healer in Whitehack essentially meant you are a walking bloodbank. A fantastic roleplaying idea right there.

I think this is ultimately a big reason why some people choose to treat HP as a combination of different factors that allow you to keep fighting rather than meat points, it makes it easier to handwave instant healing without making every cleric come across as Jesus.