Sources of non-magical alternatives to healing?

[whitefalconiv]

So, I'm running a D&D 3.5 game in a homebrew setting.

One of the two world superpowers is a staunchly anti-magic kingdom, while the other is a "magic is might" empire, oppressing and enslaving anyone who doesn't show magical aptitude.

Danglen (the anti-magic folks) are very "modernized", comparatively, to the rest of the world, which is at your typical medieval fantasy "tech level". They believe that by developing their scientific and military ability (a belief heavy reinforced with propaganda), they can win the "cold war" with the Mageocracy, who use magic to do everything, and slave labor to do what magic can't.

Danglen and its citizens are very suspicious of the use of magic, to the point that people are urged to report "suspicious magic" to the authorities. Having clerics handle healing would be seen as putting too much power in the hands of those who have magic, so there are lots of doctors, and a good bit of research done on drugs, medicines, and surgery.

What I'm wondering, though, is there a good source for mundane alternatives to magical healing? The PHB only mentions healing with bed rest, and while the DMG2 goes into the fact that apothecaries sell medicine and barbers and physicians perform surgery, there's no information on in-game effects or how to perform those actions.

Is there a book somewhere that covers this, or do I need to homebrew it?

[Curmudgeon]

There's one alchemical source of healing: Healing Salve (Tome and Blood, page 72).

[docnessuno]

Originally Posted by whitefalconiv

The PHB only mentions healing with bed rest, and while the DMG2 goes into the fact that apothecaries sell medicine and barbers and physicians perform surgery, there's no information on in-game effects or how to perform those actions.

The info you seek is right into the PHB 1:
Medical treatment: Heal check
Medicines: Healer's kit.

And that's pretty much all. Even modern day medicine cannot instantly heal wounds, it's a long and slow process.
Also to craft alchemical item you need to be a spellcaster.

[daemonaetea]

If you're not against homebrew solutions, this thread might interest you:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=246531

Basically rules for making the Heal skill do what you want to accomplish. I really liked them, and am planning to implement something like them in a game I'm starting.

[whitefalconiv]

Originally Posted by docnessuno

The info you seek is right into the PHB 1:
Medical treatment: Heal check
Medicines: Healer's kit.

And that's pretty much all. Even modern day medicine cannot instantly heal wounds, it's a long and slow process.
Also to craft alchemical item you need to be a spellcaster.

Yeah, I'm a noob, didn't even think of the heal skill because I've never taken it and never seen it taken, so when I was doing a search through everything I assumed it was magical in nature.

I know about alchemical items requiring spellcaster levels, but I'm looking at more...non-magicy items. purely mundane. No divine or arcane capability whatsoever. Just good ol' human ingenuity in a world full of fantastic creatures and abilities.

[Hirax]

What you're looking for doesn't exist in D&D or real life. Real life antibiotics and the like wouldn't properly be classified as healing hit point or ability score damage, they work more like D&D's antitoxins. Modern wound dressings don't heal things more quickly, they just reduce the risk of dismemberment, infection, etc. If someone had access to more modern medical equipment, I would only grant that as a circumstance bonus to their heal check, basically treating it as a souped up healer's kit. It's still up to a person's body at the end of the day to heal the damage that's been done to it, all you can do is make sure it's properly cared for so that people heal at an optimal rate. The other area where we've improved in modern medicine is eschewing things like leeches.

[Psyren]

Make them psionic

[Kantolin]

The closest you can come is rest-based healing.

It's kinda hard to make it relevant - there's a microguide here - but well... most of it requires magic.

Still, you can be a bard with the healing hymn alternate class feature, a restful candle (alchemical), bitterleaf oil (you can grow these), and the heal skill. Then the bard can heal people by singing restful music while they sleep and are cared for by physicians. Bards /can/ cast magic, but don't necessarily have to - you can make them have 'bards who have no magic' as basically healers.

If they can legitimately capture an Elysian Thrush, they could breed it to be a sort of national animal given how much its music helps out healing. If so, doing this is also a nonmagical option.

Then tome of battle isn't magical, but it does have some limited methods of healing - primarily on the crusader. Incarnum is then technically not magical although it will probably ping on the magic-o-meter - if it doesn't, you can go with that for some mild healing or healing amplification. Psionics is then technically not magical that is even more of a ping on the magic-o-meter than incarnum, but also has healing options (Artificers could fit in here too).

All of these except the alchemy are supernatural (I believe even the ToB healing is supernatural, but I'm not too familiar with the book) so they may or may not work.

Finally, some spells have no real visible effects, so those may help out. For example, the 'healthful rest' spell may not constitute actaully being magic as it doesn't visibly do anything. You could even house rule many spells like that to be nonmagical - make a 'spell list' of not spells for the bard, make them not actually count as magic (No dispelling, and such), and make that a 'Nonmagical healer' for them which specializes in slow and steady inobvious option, and give them an elysian thrush animal companion or several.

Finally uh... I thought there was /something/ that let you give other people your fast healing if you have it, but I cannot for the life of me find where or what that is. It's probably a spell, but if it's a feat or something then you can have someone slowly heal people in an out of combat scenario.

[Absol197]

One thing you can do is make it so that a significantly high Heal check (or one that makes use of more "modern" medical techniques) allows a person to heal the same amount of healing as full bed rest, only without the bed rest. Essentially, their medical technology allows for the optimal healing rate, without needing to be layed out the whole time.

The other option is to adopt the wound/vigor point system, which makes the majority of the damage you take essentially non-lethal, which heals much faster. IT wouldn't help much with wound point damage, but would allow the non-magical folks to get back to nearly full much faster.

[Catszeid]

Rapid Metabolism lets you heal the normal you would gain from resting plus 2 times con mod. Mind Over Body helps heal ability damage faster. Both are general feats that require Con 13. They are found in EPH.

[Mithril Leaf]

Would items be okay so long as non-magics can use them? If so, the healing belt would be ideal, perhaps refluffed as nanobots

[Mari01]

Originally Posted by Psyren

Make them psionic

I second this