Healing Magics

Healing magics are a part of every high fantasy adventurer’s life.  This magic is one of the main tricks that allow adventurers to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.  As is often the case in most campaigns, the players come to rely on these magics.  They have no fear of braving the dragon’s lair, because they know that the cures, heals, and resuscitation spells will be waiting for them when they are done (or dead).

This situation must severely affect the characters.  This is not bravery but desensitizing oneself to pain.  In effect, the character is becoming a berserker warrior.  After all, how many adventurers hide behind cover during a fight?  Most will simply walk down the middle of the room, dodging arrows and crossbow bolts, until they get to their prey.  This lack of good judgment will stay with the character, even when the clerics and healing potions are no longer around.

Reports of adventurers killed in simple bar fights should be common.  After all, what barbarian who had just faced down three dragons is going to fear a couple of teamsters or thieves?  Granted, his healer is at home studying or sleeping, but he probably would never bother to think about that.  Someone always made the pain go away before, why not now?  It is this type of mentality that should be role-played, and if not, the same warrior should avoid every fight in which his healer was not nearby.  After all, getting stabbed is going to hurt, maybe he is only willing to put up with it for a short time.  Without a healer near, he is not willing to put up with it at all.

Another problem with healing spells is blood diseases.  As the person can become lazy due to an over reliance on magic, so can the body.  Blood diseases, and in rare cases hemophilia, have been documented in people who consistently use magic to heal.  It appears that these relatively rare cases occur when the body ceases to fight off diseases and infections on its own, because it has never had to.  The truly unfortunate part is that magical disease curing spells cannot cure these magic caused diseases.  In fact, they may even escalate them.

 

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This post was written as part of The River of Youth aka Potion Making 4 Noobs aka All About Magical Ingredients & Alchemical Health, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  (These book titles just seem to keep getting longer!)  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing all the ingredients and components used in that really popular book’s spell casting, as well as alchemy and how it can be used for the health and wellbeing of the fantasy community.

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