Bards and their wacky arcane cure spells.

[pawsplay]

I don't think a cure light wounds would be impossible for a wizard. While a Bard may be in tune with the Song of the Universe or work magic with their hearts or whatever, we are fundamentally talking about a movement of arcane energy, at which Wizards are the masters. Further, many Monster Manual critters can cast even Cleric spells as arcane sorcerer spells, further suggesting that arcane power is theoretically capable of just about anything, with the right ingredients. Wizards can't cast cure light wounds for the same reason Fighters can't sneak attack. It's not physically impossible, it's just outside their expertise.

There are several obvious ways to me to approach this. First, you could say, if it could be done, it would have been already. I find that the weakest approach, because it leaves open the question of why it's so hard to do. Second, you could assume outside forces keeping such spells out of a Wizard's hands. Perhaps any time such a spell is cast, the Gods of Magic, Healing, and Death instantly become aware of it, and by pre-agreement, strip the knowledge from the caster's mind. Third, you could say, "Sure, this might be interesting." At the low end, early experiments might yield only crappy versions. In many worlds, great advances in the spell list are the work of generations with a few strokes of genius. In other worlds, experimentation and customization might be easier. Because it's outside the usual practice of magic, maybe such a spell is just a level higher for a Wizard than a Cleric. Another approach might require a Feat to acquire the necessary expertise, perhaps with a Treat Injury requirement to represent they must do with knowledge what a Bard does with intuition and a Cleric with faith. A more conservative approach, to keep such magic from being too readily available, might be an arcane healer class. Such a class might grant full arcane progression, and each of 5 levels grant increasing access to cure and remove spells.

As for the flame strike argument, that holds little water. A character created using the Book of Exalted Deeds has ready access to a Feat that allows you to empower a spell with divine energy. It raises the spell level by one. The vast difference between a consecrated fireball and flame strike, both 4th level spells, escapes me.

 

[Steverooo]

The truth about Bards and their "whacky arcane healing" spells is, quite simply, historically they were Divine casters! Y'see, it all goes back to 1e...

In AD&D, Bards began life as Fighters, then took up Thieving (ignoring all Fighter abilities, and restricted to Thief equipment, or they lost all experience for the entire adventure), and THEN entered the Bard's college, where they learned music and DRUIDIC spells!

In 2e (IIRC), they became an actual class, playable from first level on, and still cast divine spells. (I could be wrong on that, as I barely played 2e, and never a Bard).

Then 3e came along, and Bards suddenly became Arcane casters... but still retained a lot of their old spell lists... So now you have the oddity of Arcane Healing, in 3e and 3.5...

The simplest solution seems to me to be, just change Bards back to Divine casters. The spell list will probably have to be changed back, again, and Gnomes have their Favored Class go back to Illusionists, but, eh...

 

[ThoughtBubble]

First, from a "Logic" standpoint, no, I can't think of a reason that anyone who can read scrolls can't figure out any spell that can be scribed on a scroll. Maybe spell types require different types of energy or something. It'd be more arguable if there was some more basis for how magic worked.

But let's turn the question on its head for a moment. If a Bard wanted to learn the Shield spell, would you let them? It is an arcane spell after all, and bards are arcane casters. How about circle of death, chain lightning, magic missile, disintegrate, or teleport? All are arcane spells and the Bard is an arcane caster.

Or, how about letting our Bardic buddy get a few more Divine spells, Blade Barrier, Wind Walk, Restoration and Holy Sword? Or maybe stone shape and stone skin?

Exaggerated examples aside, are you willing to let Bards get access to those spells?

Bardic spellcasting is clipped fairly heavily. Bards get a maximum spell level of 6, are behind on spell progression and get fewer spells per day. They get slightly more spells known than a sorcerer of comperable rank (about one spell more). Is there any need to take the one thing they've got spellcasting wise and distribute it to everyone? If so, I hope you're using an alternate bard class. Being a bard is rough enough, don't take away some if it's uniqueness.

And besides, if a wizard really wanted to spend the time studying divine scrolls long enough to cast Cure Light Wounds, he'd wind up taking a level of cleric.

 

[rounser]

And there's no good reason why we need a cleric class, when the whole magic system is pretty similar. One magic-using class, with different paths to specialization, would suit me much better than the five different classes we have now.

Then every party would need the equivalent of two wizards, to equal the current arcane and healing spell load. Which is arguably one too many wizards. And if they don't share the blasting and healing burden equally, we end up with one player bored because all he did was burn through his spells on healing the other PCs. Remember that the whole point of the cleric class from the start is that it's porkbarrelled with a ridiculous amount of martial prowess to make up for the fact that healing isn't very exciting or rewarding. If wizards take up that slack, parties with only a single wizard will end up burning through his spells with healing as a priority, with no melee ability to compensate, equalling one bored player.

This said, I agree that the cleric solution is awkward. I think a far superior solution to abolishing the cleric and handing healing to the wizard is to significantly bump up the healing capabilities of the druid and bard. This solves two problems (as I see them); it means not every party has to have a cleric in it in order to be optimal, and it boosts the usefulness of the druid and bard to a state whereby they're not playing second fiddle to the "big 4" in terms of usefulness (combat is always going to feature more than wilderness proficiency and social abilities in 9 campaigns out of 10). I suggest:

1) Move the "cure" spell levels for druid and bard down to the same as the cleric. Justifications, if you need them; there's nothing more natural than healing (druid) and for your world, there's much bardic lore versed in healing...and anyway, laughter is the best medicine (bard).

2) Allow spontaneous casting of healing spells, as per cleric, for druid and bard (and if playing 3.5, abolish the [IMO] silly, I'm-a-walking-zoo "summons" spontaneous casting for druid, which furthers WotC's vision of the druid with a non-optional attendant menagerie).

 

[Celtavian]

I like the idea of arcane healers...

I like the idea of arcane healers. It is like pushing square pegs into circles to think up a reason why a priest might travel with an adventuring group made up of folks not worshipping their god.

Seeing the devotion of modern religious leaders and proselytizers, it's difficult for me to imagine a fantasy priest not having the same, if not greater, fanatical attitude about forwarding his deity's religion.

Arcane healers would allow a party to adventure for the sheer sake of adventuring rather than the DM always having to come up with some reason why a cleric of a certain religion might be inclined to travel with some group of vagabond adventurers. With this in mind, I don't mind if the wizard has cure spells.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Did someone somewhere mess up by letting bards (an arcane casting class) take Cure X Wounds?

It would seem like an elementary task for a wizard to learn the spell from a bard, and create a "wizard/sorcerer" variant of it, which would break a major boundary in DnD.

Should Cure spells be divine only?

Uhmmmmmm.........you're mixing apples and oranges here.

Arcane and Divine are sources of spell energy, not lists of spells. One you get from patterns and rituals and knowledge (Arcane), one you get from just believing hard enough (Divine).

The spell lists are defined based on what you know. Wizards and Sorcerers know how to blow stuff up. Clerics know how to heal. Bards know a bit of both, and how to manipulate. A bard can't teach the song for Lullaby to a wizard any more than a wizard can teach a bard the arcane rites for a Fireball. Different classes cast spells (coming from the same source) in different ways.

Cure spells shouldn't be "Divine Only," but they shouldn't be cast by the Wizard and the Sorcerer, because then the Wiz/Sorc is filling the role of the 'healer' in the party, when they should be blowing stuff up. The cleric is the guardian/protector/advisor role, and I don't think that should be usurped by a Sorc with Cure Light Wounds. And I don't think Bards, with their delayed acquisition and lower spell power in general, pose any threat to the party's clerics, whereas a focused Sorcerer or Wizard would certainly make the Cleric player feel jilted and useless.

But, then, IMC, I don't have a problem with people wanting to play the cleric. Or the specialty priest. The Defender is a nessecary role.

Remember, D&D is built around four basic archetypes:
The Tank (Ftr)
The Techie (Rog)
The Demolisher (Wiz)
The Defender (Clr)

Pretty much every class fits into one or more of those four archetypes. The Bard fits broadly into a Rog/Clr role.

 

[BigAlzBub]

I think it is very important to remember that Bards are very different from Wizards and sorcerers, for a start they can cast spells in light armour, this is probably because somatic components are much less important than the verbal (Bards can't use Silent Spell) and even if a spell doesn't have V components the Bard version does. So while it MIGHT be possible for a wizard to learn a cure spell from a bard it would be a much higher level. Also in the Forgotten Realms there is a wizard spell that lets a wizard cure people, it's basically a reversed version of vampiric touch (Healing Touch), a wizard can avoid the loss of HP by casting a false life (or two) first.