D&D 5E How would you handle a healing economy?

[5ekyu]

Also, you might want to consider having lesser clergy be allowed to gain access to limited healing by ritual on holy days. That adds in the touch of magic beyond the few "clerics" without an impact on the larger picture.

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[cbwjm]

It sounds like it might be too late, but for this specific situation remember 'specific trumps general' for 5e. If remove curse affects all curses, but a specific curse says remove curse doesn't work, then I'd say it doesn't work. You could also play it like this house rule for lycanthropy (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?524927-5E-Curing-Lycanthropy) where it requires a progressively higher slot to cast each month until after 6 months it's incurable (adjusting speed as required), or it requires an additional component which is rare or expensive and consumed in the casting.

That is a really cool idea.

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[machineelf]

Remember though, not all people who can cast healing spells are Clerics. Acolytes can cast Cure Wounds, and Priests can cast Cure Wounds, Lesser Restoration, and Dispel Magic. Reading between the lines a bit, the spells listed in their MM entries are just the ones they typically have prepared; an Acolyte is a 1st level spellcaster and the Priest a 5th, so you might rule that they can prepare and cast other Cleric spells of up to 1st and 3rd level respectively.

That is if I go with the MM entries as canon in my world or not, which is the very thing I am questioning/considering. But yes, you're right!

 

[machineelf]

The rules in the Players' Handbook are a conceit designed to allow the players to interact with the game world. They are not designed to model a socioeconomic system.

In short: the rules are for building stories, not for building worlds.

Totally agree. My goal is to have those rules and my world fit together. I'm using the rules as a tool, not a master. But I'm after the lightest touch I can make while being true to my world.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Remember though, not all people who can cast healing spells are Clerics. Acolytes can cast Cure Wounds, and Priests can cast Cure Wounds, Lesser Restoration, and Dispel Magic. Reading between the lines a bit, the spells listed in their MM entries are just the ones they typically have prepared; an Acolyte is a 1st level spellcaster and the Priest a 5th, so you might rule that they can prepare and cast other Cleric spells of up to 1st and 3rd level respectively.

They might be referring to acolytes of a religion in the general sense rather than the acolyte entry in the MM.

For example in Eberron, most priests are basically commoners with the Acolyte background and proficiency in medicine, performance, insight etc. The Priest NPC in the MM is going to be much rarer.

Eberron does actually have a healing economy, in the non-church Dragonmarked House Jorasco. They do charge for their services, and have a limited number of them however. And again, most members of the house just have proficiency in medicine rather than actually being able to cast healing spells.

NPCs of the level capable of raising the dead are extremely rare, and generally less interested in cash. They're more likely to deal in favours/quests.

 

[Blue]

Just to make this even more problematic - every paladin can cure disease with Lay on Hands, up to paladin level times per day.

 

[delericho]

This isn't 3.x where there are high level characters everywhere. PCs are special.

A decade ago, back when they did the "Curse of the Crimson Throne" adventure Path, Paizo wanted to do an adventure featuring a plague. And they did an analysis of the demographics, assuming 'normal' numbers of high-level PCs (normal in 3e terms, that is) and the size of a major city.

The upshot was that even in 3e, a plague scenario is entirely feasible. All you need is for more people to become infected in a day than can be cured.

Some things to bear in mind:

- The spells that cure disease generally say nothing about giving any ongoing immunity. A character could well be cured and then infected again later that same day.

- Most diseases have an incubation period where the victim may well be contagious but not symptomatic. That being the case, by the time people start seeking healing, the plague could be more widespread than the healers can deal with.

- Access of magical healing is unlikely to be evenly distributed, and indeed those most likely to suffer a plague are amongst those least likely to have access to healing. The powers-that-be are likely to keep a Cleric on standby at all times, just in case, while also being able to isolate themselves from infection - you only need a fairly small elite to each do that before there's no healing left for the rest.

- For best effect, consider having the plague start amongst a group that are considered undesirable or immoral for some reason. The local society are then likely to respond by indicating that this is just them getting what they "deserve". Then, when the plague expands beyond that group, it's just a sign that these new groups are also immoral... and then suddenly it turns out it affects everyone, by which it's too late for the bigots to realise their mistake...

 

[toucanbuzz]

You could enforce divine ethos, but only if your players are aware in advance.

In short, a deity doesn't just open the door to rare subsets of mortals and permit them to draw upon its divine essence to alter the fabric of creation, including the natural order of life and death, on a whim. A deity persists because of the beliefs and actions of creatures in alignment with that deity's ethos. As such, its powers are granted to further that purpose.

If everyone is aware in advance, it's easier to understand why NPC clerics don't heal every ailment that comes their way, why the god of knowledge doesn't hand out Cure spells to the well-to-do for cash. Even a god of healing must limit its use of powers to preserve the natural balance of the universe, acknowledging that life and death are the natural order and that too much healing disrupts that balance, even to a harmful extreme.

In short, healing may be reserved for special occasion and purpose. A player who uses divine power might, in an role-play heavy world, be asked upon return to his/her temple (or druidic grove, etc.) what they've done to justify use of their powers, to further their god's ethos. Were you in the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of craft, the pursuit of justice?

Or, I too like the idea of a Curse that gets progressively harder to cure.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Amount of wealth in the world today: 241 trillion USD
Number of people in the world today: 7.6 billion

Wealth/people = 31,000 USD

Yet there's an awful lot of people without enough money to eat, or have fresh water, or get any kind of medicine.

I think that pretty much covers any "If there's X in D&D, why doesn't everybody have Y"

 

[FrogReaver]

My solution:

Let the curse be cured. Make those that are cured very likely to wind up with the curse again.

Possible explanations may include
1) Those afflicted have such a link to the magic that causes the curse that even when the curse is removed that magic finds them out again and recurses them.
2) The afflication is a curse but there is another underlying curse that cannot be removed by traditional means that reapplies the affliction every so often.

In other words, all you need to do is determine how many clerics you have and sit a timer on the disease such that the clerics could slow down the affliction but wouldn't be able to help everyone with it all the time.