The Role of Physicians

Undrask

Undrask

Adept
Ok, so obviously the quickest, easiest way to fix people in Fortannis is to just magic em up and let them go on their way. So, other than massage therapists (because they're useful no matter how much magic there is), is there any role for a physician in this world? Can you Cure Disease by actually studying a disease and trying to find a cure that doesn't involve an Earth spell?

Honestly, as far as economy goes, it seems like it would be easier and require less expertise to cure somebody with a spell, so physical cures might even cost MORE than magical ones.

Just curious here.
 
The general flavor of the time period is Medieval/pre-Renaissance, so medical technology of that sort really didn't exist, unless you count ineffective home remedies such as sleeping with an onion under your pillow.
 
OrcFighterFTW said:
The general flavor of the time period is Medieval/pre-Renaissance, so medical technology of that sort really didn't exist, unless you count ineffective home remedies such as sleeping with an onion under your pillow.
Click to expand...

some of those 'ineffective' home remedies did work. but not to the level that magic and modern medicine work.
 
In a high fantasy setting, mundane occupations are - by definition - useless where Adventurers are present simply because things like Healing Arts and First Aid and Earth spells exist. Who needs a doctor when you can Cure Light Wounds? You can't stay sick with Purify around!

Put another way: If there is one person who can shoot a bow and hit anything they aim at no matter what, that's amazing.

But if all 100 people in a village can shoot a bow and never miss, that skill becomes less valuable. The exceptional becomes mundane.
 
Do any of you think there's anything that a physician could do that magic CAN'T? For example, surgeries to remove something from within the body or correcting some kind of defect in the body? There's not a spell that can technically soothe IBS or to correct a natural but faulty limb. What happens if somebody has a birth defect or when they get cancer? Are there magic spells that the players just aren't allowed to know, or are there just not spells for that?

I know it might seem a bit nit picky, but I'm interested to see how fleshed out this subject is in the game.
 
Undrask said:
Do any of you think there's anything that a physician could do that magic CAN'T? For example, surgeries to remove something from within the body or correcting some kind of defect in the body? There's not a spell that can technically soothe IBS or to correct a natural but faulty limb. What happens if somebody has a birth defect or when they get cancer? Are there magic spells that the players just aren't allowed to know, or are there just not spells for that?

I know it might seem a bit nit picky, but I'm interested to see how fleshed out this subject is in the game.
Click to expand...

"Natural healing" does have a place in our game. The entire line of Herbal Lore elixirs and such has apothecary written all over it. Second, healing arts and first aid don't involve any "magic" they are the triage and physical healing skills.

Basic non magical healing consists of First Aid/Healing Arts/ and ample supplies of Cure Light Damage elixirs.

There ARE things that can't be done with natural healing, namely healing severed limbs and such.

Hope this helps!

edited to switch to Herbal Lore (not Arts... oops)
 
Alliance CT has an alchemist who roleplays as a doctor.

There is nothing that he can do for adventurer's over the short term that our Earth Scholars can't do better or faster. But, he runs a hospital that serves as a place for the local population to come for basic medical care. A lot of the value of a physician vs a magical healer is going to come down to your plot team and how much they are willing to throw into the game world to support that skillset.

With all of that said, a lot of our doctor's value comes from his in depth knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Our Earth Scholars don't really know a huge amount about the humanoid body because we just throw some aura at it and it is fixed. He has performed surgery. He has given stitches. His ability to identify what it going on when humanoids get tainted, mutated, or what not has been very helpful in a number of plotlines.

The bottom line: Its not really about effectiveness so much as it is about flavor.

I'll ping him and tell him to come comment.

Stephen
 
Yeah, I guess the answer I was expecting was "it comes down to plot" and I totally get that. I'm planning on going pretty hardcore with the physician RP, regardless of the IG effects. I'm really really interested in doing disections and studies on pretty much everything I can sink a scalpel into.

I plan on running a clinic, but it just seemed silly to do that if earth healers could do that better.
 
I suppose that will depend on the flavor of your game.

Alliance CT takes place near a military encampment where there are several large refugee camps. Healing spells are at a premium, so mundane healing from a doctor is invaluable to the population at large.

Stephen
 
Undrask said:
Yeah, I guess the answer I was expecting was "it comes down to plot" and I totally get that. I'm planning on going pretty hardcore with the physician RP, regardless of the IG effects. I'm really really interested in doing disections and studies on pretty much everything I can sink a scalpel into.

I plan on running a clinic, but it just seemed silly to do that if earth healers could do that better.
Click to expand...

I am doing something similar, but with an angle including vet medicine also.
 
So Yeah... I am that doctor that Stephen mentioned.

So my character is a doctor with training in surgery and veterinary medicine. My physician plays the role of scientist rather than straight up healer (although he makes a regular supply of antidotes with his alchemy skill). My character's reason to have basic knowledge of the scientific method and forensic procedures stems from that training as well.

Physicians can be played a variety of ways: Some ways supplement the magical healing community (like a research hospital), and others do things that earth magic are ill equipped to handle...

"Just my luck that I have had two dead racial elders on ice in the last month" - is something my character has said out loud.

Finally, physicians can play the role of "non-magical intellectual" from a greater society perspective (and character community perspective at well).

Hope that helps a bit.

Cheers,
Mike D. / Dr. Paolo Oscarot
 
Hey, I dealt with this in my first Fortannis novel. ;)

Seems to me there should be a need for doctors for all sort of things, and that doctors would be alchemists. Not everything destroys body points and needs magic healing, after all.

"Elixirs" can also include things that don't require production points because they don't affect body points or game abilities. An alchemist can also make an ointment to treat a rash. Aspirin and other pain-killers can be made by alchemists, too. IG, my character has referred to having to take his "allergy prevention elixir" when it was time for my allegra. The Ashbury Healers Guild always has Tylenol and emergency minor first aid stuff and IG we pretend that the Guildmistress (who has a lot of levels of alchemy) has made them.

So yes, there should always be a need for "doctors", some of whom have first aid and also lots of alchemy.
 
Mike if that is true then why is there not a Cure Disease Poison? It would really make a tremendous amount of sense.

That said my dictionary distortion sensor has gone off on this one.

A Physician in any sense that we now understand it really should be comeplete foreign to any medieval setting. Fantasy retards the ability of what we perceive as physicians to spring forth because of the simplicity of magic. Even Alchemy is a massive cheat as opposed to what real early chemists had to deal with. But then there would be no fun if we did it the way they did it back then. We like to see results after 1-10 minutes...not 1-10 centuries. Allot of this is as it should be for fun. After all, if any of this were actually fun we would all be doctors and soldiers for real instead of just playing them for a few days in a game!

Joe Siegel
Resident Jerk
History Buff and life long Reenactor
Despiser of hindsight
 
When I think of physicians in this game, and to what extent they can draw their knowledge from. I tend to draw from discoveries only up to the extent of medieval and early renaissance medical science plus what knowledge that can be learned strictly from magical/supernatural observation. I would say a fantasy setting does not "inhibit" scientific discovery, but it definitely changes its direction. Practical healing is left to earth magic. Physicians deal with either the superficial or theoretical healing/medicine.

/aside
There is also a certain level of IG cultural stigma of handling the dead if you are also an earth caster. My doctor does not know earth magic mainly to avoid that stigma. (I know exactly which zealots will start banging on my laboratory door if I ever knew how to cast a life spell)
\aside

Cheers,
Mike
 
Simon said:
Mike if that is true then why is there not a Cure Disease Poison? It would really make a tremendous amount of sense.

That said my dictionary distortion sensor has gone off on this one.

A Physician in any sense that we now understand it really should be comeplete foreign to any medieval setting. Fantasy retards the ability of what we perceive as physicians to spring forth because of the simplicity of magic. Even Alchemy is a massive cheat as opposed to what real early chemists had to deal with. But then there would be no fun if we did it the way they did it back then. We like to see results after 1-10 minutes...not 1-10 centuries. Allot of this is as it should be for fun. After all, if any of this were actually fun we would all be doctors and soldiers for real instead of just playing them for a few days in a game!

Joe Siegel
Resident Jerk
History Buff and life long Reenactor
Despiser of hindsight
Click to expand...

I AM a soldier in real life and, while not a doctor, I am a medic :P I really would love to pull in some of the more esoteric, interesting and insane things about real medicine into the game, I just don't want to push the boundaries of the rules TOO much. I'm interested in treating patients with interesting, fantastic diseases. I'm interested in augmenting the "be all you can't be" with "I already am" and see what I come up with. I know most of it will jsut be in my head, but that's the fun of LARP, right? :D

However, in a society that has so many quirky advances, I like to imagine that there had to have been a Galen or a Andreas Vesalius by now, dissecting, understanding, expounding upon what already was. Maybe there hasn't been yet, and Tvard will be the first! How interesting it would be to be one of the first people in a fantastic setting to really profoundly explore the things that physical medicine can do. That's so exciting to me!

Mike Ventrella said:
Hey, I dealt with this in my first Fortannis novel. ;)

Seems to me there should be a need for doctors for all sort of things, and that doctors would be alchemists. Not everything destroys body points and needs magic healing, after all.

"Elixirs" can also include things that don't require production points because they don't affect body points or game abilities. An alchemist can also make an ointment to treat a rash. Aspirin and other pain-killers can be made by alchemists, too. IG, my character has referred to having to take his "allergy prevention elixir" when it was time for my allegra. The Ashbury Healers Guild always has Tylenol and emergency minor first aid stuff and IG we pretend that the Guildmistress (who has a lot of levels of alchemy) has made them.

So yes, there should always be a need for "doctors", some of whom have first aid and also lots of alchemy.
Click to expand...

This really adds a lot of perspective to me. Thanks so much for the heads up! It gives me a lot more ideas of what I can and should be doing with my character as he grows and learns. I'm also (shortly going to be) a member of the medical staff at my chapter, and I would love to do some of those interactions in-game (if the injured or sick party wants to put up with that nonsense :P). My lofty-headed eventual goal is to actually bring in a small medical tent for IG purposes.

Poalo said:
So Yeah... I am that doctor that Stephen mentioned.

So my character is a doctor with training in surgery and veterinary medicine. My physician plays the role of scientist rather than straight up healer (although he makes a regular supply of antidotes with his alchemy skill). My character's reason to have basic knowledge of the scientific method and forensic procedures stems from that training as well.

Physicians can be played a variety of ways: Some ways supplement the magical healing community (like a research hospital), and others do things that earth magic are ill equipped to handle...

"Just my luck that I have had two dead racial elders on ice in the last month" - is something my character has said out loud.

Finally, physicians can play the role of "non-magical intellectual" from a greater society perspective (and character community perspective at well).

Hope that helps a bit.

Cheers,
Mike D. / Dr. Paolo Oscarot
Click to expand...

This was one of the directions my character is really really looking to head into. I want to do a LOT of research and a LOT of intellectual input. That's like, my favorite real world thing to do and it cannot help but bleed into my mortician/physician.



All of you guys have really opened my eyes and made me really really hopeful for this character's future!

ALLIANCE 4 LYFE
 
The best advice I can give you if you are going be play a nerd/knowledge based character is this:

Your credibility is your best skill. You need to make sure that you can be depended on for answers. I would recommend very strongly that you get a method of taking notes in game and record everything that you think might be valuable. That way even if you forget you'll be able to consult your notes. This helped Paolo a LOT.

Stephen
 
RiddickDale said:
The best advice I can give you if you are going be play a nerd/knowledge based character is this:

Your credibility is your best skill. You need to make sure that you can be depended on for answers. I would recommend very strongly that you get a method of taking notes in game and record everything that you think might be valuable. That way even if you forget you'll be able to consult your notes. This helped Paolo a LOT.

Stephen
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've got a note book and then a journal on top of that, so I hope I can keep on top of that aspect of the thing. It'll be fun to try and figure out where everything goes!
 
Also... read everything your chapter plot staff publishes. Every. Last. Word.

We should all do this since it is typically awesome, but nerds really need that information in order to function.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top