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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tectuktitlay" data-source="post: 6862022" data-attributes="member: 82812">Ok, the PHB is clearly carefully and meticulously written such that each class describes its abilities using the existing mechanical framework, not the other way around. They quite blatantly took the core mechanical assumptions, and wrote them into each class. That sentence is not itself evidence of anything more than the authors writing the fluff to fit the preexisting mechanic. It does not in and of itself point to that actually making sense within the context of a campaign setting, or a living, breathing world, however. At all. I didn't say focus. I simply said better at. And they are, merely by being a class focused on Wisdom. Hence the point: Why does it make sense for a warrior-priest to, by default, be better at survival, animal handling, and medicine than just about everyone else, instead of being better at diplomacy, or intimidating enemies, or storytelling?So a very wise 1st level warrior-priest is going to be better than a wizard who is actively TRAINED in medicine, or in animal handling. They will be better than a soldier trained in survival, with a background in long bouts of survival in the wilderness. Because having a high Wisdom automatically makes you better than that. As for medicine, are you under the mistaken impression that medieval people didn't understand anatomy? Were they perfect? No, definitely not, not even close. With many incorrect assumptions. But anatomy was studied in ancient Egypt, quite a bit in ancient Greece, and the texts from Galen in Rome, who was the physician to gladiators, and who studied anatomy, was the go-to text for over a millennia after his death. With understanding of how the heart works, and a beginning understanding of kidneys, and certainly quite a lot about musculature, and how to properly close wounds so they heal, due to his study of ANATOMY. Medieval medical scholars still studied anatomy, they simply dissected and vivisected animals and applied what they learned to humans due to a ban on human dissection. But anatomy was still a very important part of their studies. They weren't actually some bass-ackwards, woefully ignorant hacks. What skills do you think it would take to stabilize a person who is bleeding out or otherwise dying? To close the wounds? Sutures are over 5,000 years old. We have writings about sutures from 3000 BC in ancient Egypt, and actual physical evidence of sutures from 1100 BC. Medieval medical practitioners also used sutures to close wounds, and splints to set bones, and bandages, poultices, and herbs to try to keep wounds from getting infected. Yes, some of their ideas were incorrect based on centuries-to-millennia-old ideas of humors and the like. But it was still considerably more in touch with anatomy and physiology than you appear to believe.Also, the Medicine skill using Wisdom as the stat it feeds off of strikes me as another example of writing the fluff to fit the preexisting mechanical framework. It's likely based on Wisdom not because that makes sense (no, not even from a perspective of medieval people's approach to medicine), but because having it based off Wisdom means that clerics and druids would be best at it. When Intelligence, imho, would make a whole lot more sense. Even Dexterity would make more sense, for surgical applications of the skill.</blockquote>

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