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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Do commoners get healed?

    In a RAW D&D 5e world, you have a (possibly small) number of folks running around with healing power. At least some of them are probably nominally in the service of a good-aligned deity, and it is not a stretch to imagine that the followers of some good-aligned deities would consider themselves obligated to help those in need, especially those of modest means.

    Given a quasi-medieval world, there would be no end to the number of commoners in need of divine healing.

    There are other methods of healing, such as healing potions, that also heal in ways that would dramatically change life in a medieval world.

    How do you handle this in your world?

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    I always assumed no, otherwise it wouldn't resemble the medieval world as we know at it all. If peasants have access to healing magic that wouldn't they also be affected by other low-level spells. I usually assume magic users are scarce and that adventurers are scarce. Otherwise you're left with a world like Eberron.

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    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by gtwucla View Post
    I always assumed no, otherwise it wouldn't resemble the medieval world as we know at it all. If peasants have access to healing magic that wouldn't they also be affected by other low-level spells. I usually assume magic users are scarce and that adventurers are scarce. Otherwise you're left with a world like Eberron.
    Well, I am mentally leaving other magic off the table at the moment. I am willing to imagine for a moment that your average wizard is a butt, and wouldn't bother to stop for the literal minute it would take to help a stranger with a broken wagonwheel. Mend alone is world-changing.

    But never mind that.

    Like the PHB says, "not every acolyte or officiant at a temple or shrine is a cleric", and "true clerics are rare".

    I would imagine even the rumor of instant healing would be enough to bring the peasants flocking. They would be camped out like they were trying to get concert tickets.

    What's a good cleric to do? Step over the commoners begging for help?

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Going in all Miracle Man is a great way to get mobbed, or start a riot. You have to ration somehow. Maybe you only heal peasants during ceremonies (that are partially designed to keep people calm while they wait). Maybe you get a couple of acolytes to do a triage. There's only so much Cleric to go around. A Good Cleric would probably try to provide some sort of comfort, even if they're out of spells for the day.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Nimble View Post
    Well, I am mentally leaving other magic off the table at the moment. I am willing to imagine for a moment that your average wizard is a butt, and wouldn't bother to stop for the literal minute it would take to help a stranger with a broken wagonwheel. Mend alone is world-changing.

    But never mind that.

    Like the PHB says, "not every acolyte or officiant at a temple or shrine is a cleric", and "true clerics are rare".

    I would imagine even the rumor of instant healing would be enough to bring the peasants flocking. They would be camped out like they were trying to get concert tickets.

    What's a good cleric to do? Step over the commoners begging for help?
    In my way of thinking, the best clerics would do their best to treat the sources of the problem rather than the individual ailments. Half the town is suddenly sick from drinking the well water? Use some of that divine mojo to get that water source cleaned and then figure out where to go from there. Maybe you focus on the young and otherwise generally able. Maybe you focus on someone a little older, but with more know-how, such as someone with some skill in First Aid to help with the more minor cases. Maximize your effects for the most people, rather than individually healing ever person who comes in asking for a pseudo-miracle. For example, if there's an old farmer who broke his foot, maybe get it set properly and suggest that he adopt a couple of the orphans from the church to help him out, at least while he recovers, rather than wasting a spell slot on instantly mending the bone that could theoretically get broken again by the time he makes it back home. Offer your best advice on making sure a plague doesn't reach the entire town's population, such as staying indoors while it passes.

    Commoners who get healed directly would be the ones who can contribute the most to the immediate population, whether through being local leaders, being able to pay for a proper tribute to the deity who made the miracle possible (and, by extension, perhaps leaving enough left over for more mundane medical supplies), or by being the ones with hard to replace skills.

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    GreataxeFighterGuy

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    I always just assumed that the churches would charge money for their healing/magical services. Sure, there are a few adventuring clerics who are good people willing to help just for the sake of doing the right thing, but a church has to make money somehow. If the churches charged a prohibitively large tithe, commoners would not be able to afford it.
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    In 3rd edition D&D it was spell level x caster level x 10 gp. This would mean that a simple remove disease would cost 150 gp. An average commoner would make 9 gp/week with a succesfull profession check. So it would cost him 17 weeks of income.
    Ofcourse there are other ways to get that kind of money. Don't forget that a family of 4 would make 36 gp/week. Your friends and relatives might be able to chip in, knowing you'd do the same for them. (I actually live in a country with proper health insurance so I've only seen crowdfunding for experimental treatments and transportation for people with less mobility around here.)

    Edit: That would be lesser restoration in 5e, making it only 60 gp. A skilled hireling would make 2 gp/day, so it would cost one month of income.
    Last edited by the_david; 2016-01-22 at 06:31 PM.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    In my settings, no one gives a damn about the commoners, so the question, as unimportant as it is, is "no." Healing's for important people (but it usually isn't sold per se, either), and if you're a commoner getting healed, it's because you're lucky enough to live in a community that has a cleric and is small enough that everyone in it counts as "important."

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    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by VoxRationis View Post
    In my settings, no one gives a damn about the commoners, so the question, as unimportant as it is, is "no." Healing's for important people (but it usually isn't sold per se, either), and if you're a commoner getting healed, it's because you're lucky enough to live in a community that has a cleric and is small enough that everyone in it counts as "important."
    Yeah, I can see that. And when they storm the castle with pitchforks, well, that's what area-effect spells are for, right?

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by the_david View Post
    In 3rd edition D&D it was spell level x caster level x 10 gp. This would mean that a simple remove disease would cost 150 gp. An average commoner would make 9 gp/week with a succesfull profession check. So it would cost him 17 weeks of income.
    Ofcourse there are other ways to get that kind of money. Don't forget that a family of 4 would make 36 gp/week. Your friends and relatives might be able to chip in, knowing you'd do the same for them. (I actually live in a country with proper health insurance so I've only seen crowdfunding for experimental treatments and transportation for people with less mobility around here.)

    Edit: That would be lesser restoration in 5e, making it only 60 gp. A skilled hireling would make 2 gp/day, so it would cost one month of income.
    That's assuming that divine magic sells at the same rate as arcane magic. I could imagine scenarios in which other things were more important to the religious organization involved than just money. Perhaps the divinity involved has mandated that his/her clerics heal the indigent without expectation of payment. Or perhaps the divinity involved revels in pain and suffering, and so only wants clerics healing certain individuals.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    My take on D&D religion is different--the gods and religions are driven by the needs and beliefs of the worshippers rather than vice versa (cf Terry Pratchett's Small Gods, Hogfather.) With a few heroic-adventuring exceptions, priests serve their towns/kingdoms/communities more than their gods. Much like the old pagan priest-kings and priest-elders, their role is to be the Ryan Seacrest of the numerous festivals of the gods, directing and conducting the community's worship. (Cicero's idea of religio as cultus deorum, cultivation of the gods.) The people give their devotion (different emotions having different flavors to the gods), the gods ensure that the crops don't blight and the cows give milk and the earth doesn't quake, etc.

    Churches are a public utility as much as roads and sewer systems and armies and city walls. That's one of the things the king (or whoever) collects taxes for.

    Those priests are definitely going to be using their low-level spells to heal the injured, and do a decent amount of curing disease. The DMG prices for spellcasting aside, that 3rd level spell slot is a wasting asset. At nightfall (or dawn) or whatever, it's gone/replaced. So state-supported churches are doing a sizable amount of healing.

    Otherwise, it makes too much sense for clerics to spend all of their downtime crafting magic items for money, money which should be hard to come by in a pseudo-medieval economy.

    (I also try to maintain a favor-based economy, partially inspired by Terry Prachetts' witches. Reciprocating favors puts you in good esteem with the community, doing large favors starts to increase your fame. So it makes sense to go on an adventure path to return that +1 battleaxe to the clan hall of the dwarven hero it was forged for a couple of centuries ago.)

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sam113097 View Post
    I always just assumed that the churches would charge money for their healing/magical services. Sure, there are a few adventuring clerics who are good people willing to help just for the sake of doing the right thing, but a church has to make money somehow. If the churches charged a prohibitively large tithe, commoners would not be able to afford it.
    On the other hand, churches might charge a large but affordable fee to those adventurers who are awash with cash and keep seeking out danger and getting themselves into scrapes, and use the profits from that to cover the expenses of healing commoners who are more blameless but can't afford their services. It's not a perfect model, as there are resources which affect the rate of available healing other than money, and some churches might not give a damn about the poor, but some probably would and might operate something like the above.
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    I mean, it partly depends on what your desired setting is. If you don't want the commoners to get healed, it's very easy to justify by way of limited resources and big pictures. If you want the commoners to get healed, it doesn't really detract much from the standard fantasy vibe, it just removes the realistic plague and squalor.
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    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Whether or not commoners get healed is largely an ancillary question as to the abundance of magic and spellcasters in general, which is hugely important to the setting.

    If divine spellcasters, even of very low levels, are abundant and widespread, then of course commoners get healed - in fact everyone does - and this has dramatic impacts on the nature of the setting. D&D 3.5, by raw, suggests that almost every settlement is likely to have a divine spellcaster (cleric, adept, or druid) of at least low levels present, which has profound implications for how the setting works. Which is actually to say that it doesn't, because 3.5 D&D by RAW naturally evolves into the Tippyverse or some other post-medieval magically empowered fantasy in short order.

    5e doesn't have the same tables in the back that the 3.5 DMG does, so it is unclear what the generic assumption is, but presumably low-level divine casters are still abundant because FR is used as the type setting. A commoner who can scrape together some money from relatives and trek a day or two to town can probably still get access to Cure Light Wounds - but that may not be all that useful, given the limitations of just what that spell can heal. Ex. It may cost more to heal a broken arm than the farmer would lose in lost harvest revenue for the season by waiting for it to heal naturally. On the other hand, because Lesser Restoration (a 2nd level spell) cures diseases (and cancer? maybe?) in 5e, as opposed to requiring a 3rd level spell in 3.X, powerful healing magic of great long term utility is actually significantly more common.

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    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    A commoner who can scrape together some money from relatives and trek a day or two to town can probably still get access to Cure Light Wounds....
    Would a low-level cleric necessarily require payment? I can certainly imagine a scenario in which the local cleric does what he or she can to heal the injured and sick for a variety of reasons, that don't involve direct payment.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    I'm shocked no one has mentioned VHumans with Goodberry or Cure Light Wounds as their Magic Initiate spell.
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Nimble View Post
    Would a low-level cleric necessarily require payment? I can certainly imagine a scenario in which the local cleric does what he or she can to heal the injured and sick for a variety of reasons, that don't involve direct payment.
    Ultimately, I think any church that could without self-deception describe itself as "good" should be giving its healing away most of the time (adventurers are an exception, since the church knows they have money to burn and aren't going to be improving the community any other way). While spells/day is a significant limit, it's not actually costing the priests anything—they don't have to work, besides the prayer they're doing anyway, to do it, and the basic cure spells don't have any expenses associated with them. 99% of the time, those spells aren't going to be used, unless there's a truly significant monster problem locally, so they might as well do something with them. Only an economist (who, on account of being an economist, could never be "Good") would argue that the limit of spells/day would justify turning away the needy because they can't pay.
    You may ask why I said what I said earlier, if I'm saying this now. Well, in my world, few people can say without self-deception that they are good, and the priests usually are giving away their healing—just not to commoners.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    I think this is why heal/medicine is always a class skill for clerics. Whole real-world religious orders exist with the dual purpose of venerating their deity and providing medical assistance to those in need. A fantasy church-sponsored hospital would be mostly staffed by doctor-priests and nurse-acolytes, with one or two proper clerics on hand for emergencies; acolytes have to have worked their way up through the ranks to receive clerical training, meaning they typically understand medicine as well as magic. A trained medic is capable of handling almost anything that comes their way, and the cost of recovery - in time for being laid up in bed for mundane healing, in a firmly-but-gently encouraged tithe of some sort for magic - prevents commoners from taking the type of risk that results in immediately life-threatening injury. Clerics don't toss around their spells, but if they haven't had to deal with many emergencies and thus have spells left at the end of the day, they spend them on the residents to speed along their healing, then prepare them again in the morning.
    Last edited by quinron; 2016-02-05 at 03:41 AM.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by jinjitsu View Post
    I think this is why heal/medicine is always a class skill for clerics. Whole real-world religious orders exist with the dual purpose of venerating their deity and providing medical assistance to those in need. A fantasy church-sponsored hospital would be mostly staffed by doctor-priests and nurse-acolytes, with one or two proper clerics on hand for emergencies; acolytes have to have worked their way up through the ranks to receive clerical training, meaning they typically understand medicine as well as magic. A trained medic is capable of handling almost anything that comes their way, and the cost of recovery - in time for being laid up in bed for mundane healing, in a firmly-but-gently encouraged tithe of some sort for magic - prevents commoners from taking the type of risk that results in immediately life-threatening injury. Clerics don't toss around their spells, but if they haven't had to deal with many emergencies and thus have spells left at the end of the day, they spend them on the residents to speed along their healing, then prepare them again in the morning.
    You'd also think that something like goodberry would be a cleric spell. People needing an extra 1 hp cured magically are going to be more common than murderhobos and warriors stumbling into the temple, holding their intestines in and bleeding all over the mosaics.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    They might not get healed all that often, but they are going to get spare the dying'ed on occasion. As long as the Cleric gets there in time, people don't really bleed to death. Frankly, outside of actually being a Combat Medic (and other occasions when you need someone back on their feet Right Now) the Clerics damage-based healing is a little redundant - most of the time, unlimited perfect stabilisation plus conventional medicine is going to be enough.

    Most of the time, then, your average small town acolyte might not even prepare cure wounds. The spells that are most important to him and his flock - the spells that he will prepare every normal day, the spells he will spend much of every normal day casting, and the spells that really change life in the town - are detect poison and disease and purify food and drink. These are both rituals, meaning the only thing they cost is time. Detect allows him to almost perfectly monitor the health of a pretty large amount of people, and identify any diseases in the food and water supply. Purify then eradicates said diseases - and depending on how one interprets the wording of the spell, also restores spoiled food (It explicitly did so in previous editions, and I would argue that spoiling qualifies as being impure), greatly improving the effective productivity of the locals.

    Any community with access to even a first level cleric-list caster (more commonly an npc acolyte than a full cleric, naturally) will benefit very significantly from it, certainly enough to support said caster many times over. I'm hesistant to source previous editions, but the 3.5 dmg suggests that divine casters are common enough that the majority of villages will have at least one, and a small town is certain to (p.139), giving a Support Value of at most 2000 - by those numbers, clerics are at least as common as inns (which are incidentally much rarer than one might think, and are also not the same thing as taverns), and thus should be significantly affecting the lives of the common folk, to say nothing of their betters. Just not with cure wounds, most of the time.

    Edit: Oh, and mending. He'll be casting mending a lot. Also guidance.
    Last edited by TheTeaMustFlow; 2016-02-05 at 11:22 AM.
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    One of the kickers about even the low level cure spells is that they are amazing bandages. Massive ongoing issues are stabilized and natural healing can begin. That's HUGE. Also if at the end of the day the cleric has two cure light wound spells and they are going to be invalidated at the end of the day the cleric can gain in the society he/she lives in by using the spell for societal gain (and the society thus comes to see the cleric as a greater asset to the community which is then honored by access to decision making bodies, attendance at church functions etc).

    Hell, it makes perfect sense for an evil church of certain stripes to give out healing this way in order to promote its stature in a community (especially a new one)

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    If divine spellcasters, even of very low levels, are abundant and widespread, then of course commoners get healed - in fact everyone does - and this has dramatic impacts on the nature of the setting. D&D 3.5, by raw, suggests that almost every settlement is likely to have a divine spellcaster (cleric, adept, or druid) of at least low levels present, which has profound implications for how the setting works. Which is actually to say that it doesn't, because 3.5 D&D by RAW naturally evolves into the Tippyverse or some other post-medieval magically empowered fantasy in short order.
    At least in games that i run, the widespread presence of healing magic is what balances out the proliferation of magical super-predators running amok throughout the world. Without the ability to heal people beyond the ability of a real life medieval society, how would there be any semblance of normal urban or rural life in a land filled with dragons, demons, insane wizards, and stadium-sized carnivorous insects for adventures to face off with?

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    I would guess, as has been said, that market price makes the difference. But, a first level spell from a 1st level cleric is still more than a commoner makes in a week, so why would he bother if he can heal naturally in four or five days? You'd only really want healing if you were in danger of dying or natural healing won't cut it, and a cure minor wounds will stabilize a dying person. So, if they can, they might save up for a remove disease if it's incurable, or live with whatever it is if not. And some clerics might go around healing indiscriminately, but like other people have said, they'd want bodyguards or some other way to slow down and organize the mobs of disease-riddled peasants. What else do commoners worry about?

    TL;DR version: people would probably avoid paying the price for magic unless it's something that only magic can do.
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Sadly for most peasants, sickness is likely to be even more of a concern than injuries, and you need a 2nd level spell to deal with that.

    Something I'm going to be doing for an upcoming spelljammer campaign is to have professional healers in cities and large towns. Starting with the Druid NPC in the MM, I just swap Wisdom and Charisma, pick appropriate healing spells from the Bard list, and make Charisma their casting stat. The proficiencies work fine as they are. They charge enough to maintain a wealthy standard of living, which puts them still within the price range of most average people. Of course, spelljammer is by it's very nature a high magic setting, so that might not work for your world.
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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Just imagine the world where the healing magic is commonly used... You'll have people think they can visit the least reputable brothels or do very dangerous things and then will guilt clerics into fixing their trouble, clerics will get annoyed and pricing for spells/prayers will become the standard so the people understand that such measures shouldn't be taken for granted.

    You are assuming that only people might need help... well, think of the cattle and other animals... think of all the ill-looking hen peasants will bring to your holy man, saying: "It hasn't been laying eggs in last two days, please, make miracle."

    There are also some strong spells cleric may easily keep for emergencies which pretty much removes the spell slot from being used on anything unless very serious. It's never as easy as: "People bring average of 50hp of damage per day, which your spells cover." Cleric that uses spells for spontaneous healing is close to a defenseless cleric, too, which may be an issue, somewhere.

    Maybe it's not that simple, but it's a good direction in which to take your deliberations.

    EDIT: And that is assuming good clerics...
    Last edited by Tarqiup Inua; 2016-03-04 at 10:50 PM.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    Sadly for most peasants, sickness is likely to be even more of a concern than injuries, and you need a 2nd level spell to deal with that.
    That's a valid point

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    I suggest let the commoners Heal themselves have "healing tools" that allow stabization and while doesn't cure hit points doubles or triples recovery. With herbalist tools that allow attempts to deal with disease, or parasites, though the search for exotic "tools" to deal with community plague might work as quest.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    Sadly for most peasants, sickness is likely to be even more of a concern than injuries, and you need a 2nd level spell to deal with that.
    But not to stop the spread. Purify food and drink and create water could be used to quarantine sick people, keep them fed and hydrated, and isolating the rest of the area from them while the patients hopefully recover. Essentially "you stay in bed while I make you some chicken soup and let this disease run it's course" goes a long way when it comes to public health. Provided you read about infectious diseases and have a rudimentary grasp of germ theory from cleric school.

    It doesn't look like much, but those few changes could turn a medieval place on it's head. Expect to see two-children families and a lot more elderly people.
    Last edited by nrg89; 2016-03-11 at 04:08 PM.

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    I've always liked how Eberron handles this. Namely that clerics and other divine casters aren't the people that handle health care. Religious people cater to the spiritual needs of a community whereas House Jorasco, with its Mark of Healing, takes care of the medical needs. Both effectively charge for their services (religions through donations and tithes and whatnot; Jorasco through direct payments and, at least in my game, insurance), but healing isn't really the domain of religious experts.

    Of course, even though Eberron is considered to be a high magic (though "wide magic" is probably a better term, because low level magic is common whereas high level magic is still very rare), a vast majority of both religious and medical professionals are going to be entirely mundane. A hospital might have a number of mundane doctors on staff, all of which are members of House Jorasco, but only one or two lords/ladies of House Jorasco that actually have the Mark of Healing (which is what provides them with the ability to magically heal). The same is true of religious organizations: your average village priest is going to be entirely mundane with a much smaller portion actually having access to magic.

    At least as far as Eberron is concerned, the average commoner is probably not going to get magically healed unless it's an emergency or incredibly severe (and is going to get charged for it, either way). Surgery (which, if you're not insured, is crazy expensive) is replaced by magical healing (which is similarly expensive), but not every medical issue requires a surgical solution. A vast majority are going to be purely mundane/medical; broken bones get set and cast, simple lacerations get stitched up, diseases get diagnosed then treated, but cancer, severed limbs, and the like are going to get magical attention.

    Of course, I like to imagine that rather than charging people for services rendered, House Jorasco acts like the insurance company as well as the care provider (as well as CDC, FDA, and other health protecting gov't agencies) and just takes a little bit from everyone in a community to provide care for them all (and wealthy people can pay more in order to get better care, such as getting even their small boo-boos fixed immediately with magic). They charge adventurers/players on an individual basis because adventurers tend to not belong to an individual community (and therefore aren't paying "insurance") and regularly wind up with extreme injuries (and therefore are basically uninsurable).
    4e Homebrew: Shadow Knight, Scout
    roll20: Kitru

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    ElfPirate

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    Default Re: Do commoners get healed?

    Quote Originally Posted by nrg89 View Post
    But not to stop the spread. Purify food and drink and create water could be used to quarantine sick people, keep them fed and hydrated, and isolating the rest of the area from them while the patients hopefully recover. Essentially "you stay in bed while I make you some chicken soup and let this disease run it's course" goes a long way when it comes to public health. Provided you read about infectious diseases and have a rudimentary grasp of germ theory from cleric school.

    It doesn't look like much, but those few changes could turn a medieval place on it's head. Expect to see two-children families and a lot more elderly people.
    Germ theory was decidedly not medieval in our world. In a fantasy world, it might not even be correct.
    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    I've tallied up all the points for this thread, and consulted with the debate judges, and the verdict is clear: JoeJ wins the thread.

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