D&D 5E Rarity of Healing for the Common Man in the 5e Implied Setting

[Mistwell]

When we're talking about curing diseases and poisons, that's one thing. But let's remember that in 5e, Cure Wounds has the same effect as a nonmagical good night's rest. (Which is to say, by default hit points are NOT meat.)

If your boy falls off a tree besides the local temple and is unconscious and dying, you run and grab a cleric in that temple close enough to help them, who can cast cure wounds, right? The cure wounds spell will bring them back to 1 hit point instead of dying.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If your boy falls off a tree besides the local temple and is unconscious and dying, you run and grab a cleric in that temple close enough to help them, who can cast cure wounds, right? The cure wounds spell will bring them back to 1 hit point instead of dying.

And you'd better only let him play on trees that are immediately adjacent to the temple, while the priest is out front, because half a minute would be too late to help.

 

[Paraxis]

If your boy falls off a tree besides the local temple and is unconscious and dying, you run and grab a cleric in that temple close enough to help them, who can cast cure wounds, right? The cure wounds spell will bring them back to 1 hit point instead of dying.

Just make a DC 10 Wisdom(medicine) check to stabilize the kid, or use a healer's kit on him.

From PHB
Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify , is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components).

So it seems pretty common if a cure wounds costs 10 gold and is easy to get in a town.

 

[Mistwell]

And you'd better only let him play on trees that are immediately adjacent to the temple, while the priest is out front, because half a minute would be too late to help.

And that is part of the implied setting, the sort of thing I am getting at here. If the setting implies you need a doctor nearby when doing dangerous activities, then you try to center dangerous activities near the doctor if you can. But, "how common are those doctors?", is my question.

 

[Mistwell]

Just make a DC 10 Wisdom(medicine) check to stabilize the kid, or use a healer's kit on him.

From PHB
Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify , is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components).

So it seems pretty common if a cure wounds costs 10 gold and is easy to get in a town.

OK, but I was asking about village size places, and asking if people had to go to towns or cities to get healing. I think it's granted they are found in cities - rare things are found in cities.

 

[Andor]

OK, but I was asking about village size places, and asking if people had to go to towns or cities to get healing. I think it's granted they are found in cities - rare things are found in cities.

Well, if we assume that a good nights rest heals all, for whatever reason, then logically the only really critical thing is making sure the injured survive to morning. IE, stabilizing them.

A healing kit lets anyone auto-stabilize someone. 5 gp for 10 uses or 5 sp per use. Even an unskilled laborer can afford that. Or the Medicine skill, as absurdly useless as it is for adventurers, lets you do it for free.

Basically unless you're alone, or with a pack of unprepared and unskilled idiots, a group of teenagers out doing something stupid say, mortality should be pretty minimal in 5e for anything short of an attack by murderous forces or an avalanche.

Incidently, I haven't seen this mentioned much but I'm under the impression that in 4e HP were sort of temporary hit points and your real wound points were the healing surges. This has been sort of retained in 4e. The healing HD, usable during short rests do not fully regenerate in a single night. Granted it only take 2 days to get them all back but it's still a sign that something has happened to you. Another damage related 4eism in the basic rules is that the bloodied condition is not there in the rules as a significant thing, but it's retained in the fiction in the "describing wounds" sidebar. (page 75 of the basic rules)

So in sumation, I don't think magical healing will be common place in small hamlets or the like unless you as the GM have placed an empowered cleric or druid in the town. But everyplace ought to have healing kits, and in anything decently sized you'll also have herbalists making healing potions.

It's interesting. Magical healing seems to be less needed outside of combat than in any previous edition of D&D. I, in my own game, will come up with some fictional reason for the rapid healing overnight. I think I'm going to go with a commonly known magic, something like a Mudra, where maintaining the gesture and keeping mostly still will induce rapid healing. This regeneration does draw from bodily reserves however, which is why it's capped by HD during short rests, and why the HD don't come back in a single long rest. I think with that in mind I will add the additional restriction that each level of exhaustion recovered counts as a HD during long rest recovery. That has the side effect of upping the value of Potions of Vitality and making exhaustion, already bad, even worse. I can live with that.

Thanks for prompting me to think that out.

 

[mlund]

On topic, we know from some of the backgrounds that magical healing is something temples will hand out freely to those in good odor.

Well, that explains everything. Medieval peasants are stinky as a matter of course. No healing for them!

In all seriousness, though, NPC and PCs don't have to operate under the same rules at all. The player's handbook tells us how PCs work. PCs are assumed to be able to recover from any sort of typical adventuring hazard that doesn't kill them outright on the spot. When you stick something sharp into a peasant and he doesn't bleed out or lose a vital organ the odds are he'll get an infection of the blood or gangrene and die a slow, painful, lingering death. Maybe a rarely gifted healer whips up something with medicine / herbalism to give the poor fellow a fighting chance to shake it off. Perhaps a miracle-worker is able to convince his or her deity to intervene. Heck, even minor wound-healing magics that could fix mid-combat trauma aren't going to regrow limbs, save a woman dying in labor, or cure the maladies of old age - so unless the villagers are being peppered with arrows from orc raiders your average PC Cleric isn't exactly equipped to raise the local standard of living all that much.

PCs don't get diseased or maimed unless the circumstances are exceptional, while these things are the leading cause of death and incapacity among everyday people in a given setting.

I guess the bottom line is this: PCs are exceptional, not mundane. Don't take what PCs can and can't do and what does and does not happen to them as a measuring stick for some sort of universal physics that applies to everyone in a setting.

- Marty Lund

 

[Warbringer]

On topic, we know from some of the backgrounds that magical healing is something temples will hand out freely to those in good "odor"

Well, godliness is next to cleanliness

 

[Minigiant]

I once wrote a short story for high school of what would happen if people could learn to cure diseases and poisons and wounds a few times a day like D&D divine casters.

Basically mostly of the restorations would be purchased by the rich or kidnapped by the criminal or desperate.

The heals would be useless as healing magic is only good for war and adventuring.

 

[jadrax]

Outside of a Clerical spell, one example from the newly-available DM Basic file is the "Potion of Vitality." It doesn't heal directly, but cures disease or poison.

It's also listed as "very rare."

Wow. You are going to be very upset when you roll that on a random treasure table rather than some nice 'rare' item like the +3 AC Bracers.