Can Clerics Cure Cancer?

[Greenfield]

D&D doesn't mention casual illness. It also doesn't mention outhouses, or the bodily functions that make them necessary. I'm pretty sure all of these occur anyway.

People catch the cold or flu if they don't look out. People get Typhoid when they put the outhouses too close to the well.

What the rules do mention is that spell casting services cost money. Yes, even from the church: Not all churches are Lawful Good, but all churches hBut ave expenses.

It's in the best interest of the church, and the local nobility and/or wealthy class not to have highly contageous plagues running around, so things like Black Death probably get dealt with, one way or another. But something like cancer, that isn't contageous? Will that be cash or charge?

 

[KenNYC]

I think, as per Expedition To The Barrier Peaks, the short answer is "no".

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If in D&D the resurrection is possible, or to create cloned body organs, why not healing cancer? But sometimes some diseases can't be healed by "ordinary" divine spells. Other times is a divine punishment or a last warning to a sinner after a life of bad actions. And the most of times the healing magic is too expensive for most of mortal civilians.

 

[Greenfield]

I guess the base question is this: Is cancer a "disease"?

If the answer is yes, then Remove Disease removes it. So do Heal and Hero's Feast.

If cancer isn't a disease, what is it? A curse? A "condition"? Some new and unnamed class of disability?

The text of the spell says that certain "specialized diseases" might not be subject to the spell. As noted in another thread, specific tops general, so there can be exceptions.

Lycanthropy would be an example. It specifically says that Remove Disease alone won't do the job.

There is nothing that makes Cancer, or Lupus or Multiple Schlerosis or Aids a "specific" example.

Lacking anything that cites them as exceptions in the rules, I'd say they're magically curable.

 

[Wiseblood]

Cure disease. Don't overthink it.

 

[CapnZapp]

Cancer doesn't exist in my fantasy game.

It's called "old age" or "curse from the gods" or something.

Nobody expects Cure Disease to work against that kind of ailments, so nobody worries about it.

Especially since we're talking about a world where escaping death really does work. You just use other tools than medicine.

(Such as, idunno, necromancy or Reincarnate or Wish, or even more esoteric solutions)

 

[Tywyll]

Of course it can. Cancer=Disease it's that simple.

A cleric can heal wounds at 1st level, poisons and diseases at 5th and bring back the dead at 9th.

If you want it to not be curable by Cure Disease, then at worst you can cure it by 7th level with Cure Weirdly Specific But Not Quite Disease, a 4th level spell.

 

[Greenfield]

Yeah, this thread seems a lot like, "Is two plus two always four?"

 

[Henry]

Albeit a thread necro, I'd say one of three things should fix it, given the 3.5 or Pathfinder versions:

-Remove Disease
-Heal
-Greater Restoration

If I were GM, I'd go with "heal" could do it. Basically, as others said back in the day, if a cleric can cast 6th level spells, they're in "raise the dead" territory, so why not?

Besides, it's not like "Cancer" has ever been statted out in an official D&D product, so GM carte blanche!

 

[Greenfield]

Greater Restoration? That fixes stats, level drains and/or conditions like fatigue.

So, while Restoration might reverse some of the debilitating effects of a disease, making someone appear healthy, I don't see it actually removing the disease.

I figure that some debilitating diseases, like Cancer, kill by slowly draining stats, such as CON. Multiple Schlerosis drains DEX. Altzheimers drains INT, etc. These can be reversed (but not cured) with Restoration effects. Other diseases may kill through toxic effects, or kill by driving a fever to a killing level.

That's just my view, of course. There aren't any real diseases described in the rules.