How do you make a Plague Doctor class without it just being a cleric with a fancy coat of paint?

don't use classes

Short-range healing, where he has to administer it instead of just casting a spell, possibly trading in healing a lot at once to a little over time. He also has limited buffing ability, instead doing debuffs on the enemy and medium damage, with a few minor actions capable of putting a light DoT on enemies.

Ironically enough Plague Doctor is probably the worst healer in that game. Heck, even the Arbalist is better at healing.

As for the question - Here are some ideas:

For a setting without magic -

[The Surgery]
In between fights he can perform surgeries and operations on others. Through a series of rolls and skill checks you get the result - which is anything from a complete health recovery with stat bonuses to unfortunate accidents that get people crippled for the rest of their life

[The Remedy]
Once a day he can quickly distribute his latest remedy - a chaotic combination of multiple drugs and potions that produces amazing results and more often than not, disastrous after effects.

[Cure for the Wicked]
An educated man like you understands, that Evil is a condition that has only one known cure. Use your large collection of disease samples, powerful drugs and deadly poisons to administer that cure to your foes. Choose a combo of effects for three concoctions, one for your gas bombs (small effect), one for the coating of your scalpel (medium effect) and one for your "special" syringe (heavy effect)

Give him skills the buff the players but also damage them. Something like bloodletting will cure poison and give them high damage resistance for a few turns, but requires the doctor basically doing an attack roll on them; or "I am growing strong" where you intentionally poison a character, but said character gains a significant damage buff while poisoned.

>Healing arts
Science! Actually, magic-lite is fine. The doctor class is educated as a mage should be, but instead of magic he studies the ancient and modern arts of healing. He can detect the 4 humors on the body, determine the nature of the ambient miasma and the proper amount of bleeding necessary to heal a person. He can, by touch alone, know what sickness ills a man.

All of that translates of mundane healing, a higher chance of knowing which enviroments are dangerous to health, and which techniques and places will help cure a disease.

>Death will not touch you!
Again, I exagerate. But those masks sure as hell are not for atracting the ladies (or guys). They protect against diseases, even when operating. The plague doctor can walk across the most pestilent, plagued city and not fear sickness or corruption of the flesh, as long as proper procedures are religiously practiced.

>Fear
I do not exagerate. Medics are scary. They deal with death and disease everyday, and nobody know best that them how frail life is. "The only requeriment to die is to be alive" might as well be their motto, if hippocrates is not adequate enough. They work by love on some of the most exausting, stressful enviroments a human can work while not fighting, for decades and until they drop dead or become too demented to continue. They convince people to listen to them, and do so willingly, even when they must hack them to pieces, forbid them of doing what they love or force them to share their most hidden secrets. Medics have presence, authority, and cunning.

Thus, if the doctor wants you to be afraid, you will be afraid.

>Devil's hands
Anybody can cut a person with a knife. Far more precious is to do so and make the victim healthier. It takes practice, and steady hands, and steady nerves. Plague doctors are man-butchers, but careful enouth to put everything back together. Those hands can be a boon in other situations.

Ability: Leeching

Requires leeches to perform this ability. The plague doctor can, as an action, apply leeches to an ally or willing creature. The leeches deal 1d4 necrotic damage at the start of that creature's turn, every turn. Also, the creature can perform one of two free actions:
- Grant themselves 1d8 temporary hit points.
- Cure themselves of poisoning.

The leeches do not affect the temporary hit points, and instead target the creature's regular hit points only. As an action, the creature can remove the leeches and end the effect, or the plague doctor can do it on their turn as an action.

>Plague doctor will never lovingly apply leeches to you while telling you all their names

Depends on system.

>Ironically enough Plague Doctor is probably the worst healer in that game. Heck, even the Arbalist is better at healing.
Well yeah, healing's not her job. He job is preventing damage with stuns and curing bleed when you get snibbidy snabbed in the cove for like twenty fucking damage.

Don't forget melting Flesh, two hound masters and a plaguefu is a surprisingly powerful group

Swashbuckler
He will cut fast because people needs surgeons that severe fast wiyhout the need of expensive opiods.Also becaise he is anatomist he knows how to kill fast any plague carrion.

Aberration scholar
He has seen crazy stuff on his travels, he has collected lots of data about abnormalities.

Survivalist
He knows how to survive in the worst places of earth.You could say he is Armageddon ready

Medic
Knows how to prepare lots of powerful drugs and how to heal lots of ailments.

I'd rather take a flag, he's more useful on the way in.

Make it an assassin with a fancy coat of paint.

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fpbp

If the purpose of the character is to be a not-cleric who has the mechanics of a cleric, just don't act like the typical cleric. There's no need to devise special and unique rules for its own sake.

Thanks.

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Plot twist: He's actually undead and doesn't realize it.

They're just charlatans with spooky masks, so commoner will do. At most they'd some adaptation of a bard, but instead of making people feel good with music or stories the make people feel good by telling them how they're being cured.

I personally prefer to use them as creatures rather than a profession, I mean sure there are wandering healers who might use the beak and trenchcoat gear but the actual mystical figures who mysteriosly appears during plague to condemn or save people are angels.

Don't make one for a game where dealing with a plague means just casting Remove Disease several times in a row.

Healing's not her job, like said, and don't forget that 1 hp heals in DD are just as powerful as a 20 hp heal. 1 point of heal is already enough to get you out of Death's Door and ensure you can survive another attack.

The fact that her only heal also cures Blight and Bleed in both herself and her target is also very powerful, since DoTs are usually what get your bois killed. There's nothing sadder than your Occultist healing someone for 20 hp, but that person getting Bleed from the heal, critted down to Death's Door again, and then dying to the bleed you inflicted on him.

Why are plague doctors (or, at least, the image of them) usually antagonists or villains in stories? Weren't they some of the most badass motherfucking heroes to walk the planet? I mean, they fought diseases with a cocktail of almost useless remedies with only a handful of sweet-smelling plants for protection.

Going into hellscapes that a literal pope had to say 'if you help the sick, instant heaven,' is scary shit.

By actually using that fat inside your head called a brain as opposed to using it to fertilize your hair growth.

That has nothing to do with his fighting style then. Make him a DEX fighter then, I guess?

Nah, senpai, make him a Yatsuki Courtier or a Pink Mohawk Street Sam, or just a Hunter with sufficient dots in medicine.

Indeed. Plot twist: They are just expert doctors from an avian species.

because they are spooky etc etc.

Also protestants seeing evil and demons everywhere.

>"So doc, what's the deal with that mask? You never take it off?"
>"What mask?"

Dex based Paladin?
Detect disease/poison instead of detect magic
Lay on hands
Spells relate to curing/inflicting fear and disease
Fights with a special hollow cane, like a rapier
Just swap the key spellcasting stat from wis to int and you are good to go.
Need more science? Take a dip or two in alchemist for potion brewing.

Maybe this’ll help.

drive.google.com/open?id=0B5ttoyMfsaC7VlhZYzBfdzR6Z2s

Plague Doctor as a subtype of Kenku is suddenly my new favourite idea.

Because they were likely to have worked at a fruit stand before the plague arrived and took the job of going in and recording plague deaths for the opportunity to extort people.

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I started on a Dungeon World playbook for a player some time ago. Unfortunately the guy quit the game before I finished is, so I left it half-done.

My notes are in the .pdf if that's interesting to you.

>charlatans
>city dime
>extortionists at worst
>starry eyed helpers at best
personally, I'd style it as an INT/CHA bard

Yeah, plague doctor is almost a necessity in veteran level cove, the fact that she's one of the fastest champions in the game and can pretty much undo any status effect inflicted by a mob right off the bat helps too.