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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Pendragon" data-source="post: 2896733" data-attributes="member: 707">Well, it's a rant, so I'm not going to debate with you too much.  Everyone's allowed to vent.However, I will say that I don't find the idea that historical peoples would see a jet plane as a giant silver bird preposterous in the slightest.  Indeed, they look a lot like giant silver birds to me, and I know what airplanes are.  I imagine that in a time before airplanes or submarines or cars or bicycles or anything that has a pilot, I would be highly likely to believe it to be what it very much looks like.  A giant silver bird that flies really fast.________________________________________________________Regarding the topic at hand, if there is very little medical knowledge in the world, then I'd allow a Heal check for rudimentary information, but nothing so complicated as a time of death, which requires study of the dead to develop a means of measuring.In a world with more medical knowledge, I'd introduce a new skill:  Knowledge (Anatomy).This is in fact what I did in my most recent D&D campaign.  The world was set in an early-Renaissance styled period, where heretics were making inroads into the medical sciences despite religious taboos.  So PCs were informed that, with the proper background, they could take ranks in Knowledge (Anatomy) which would provide information regarding bodies, deaths, etc.Heal allowed one to care for the injured and ill (with extremely high ranks allowing for rudimentary surgery).  Knowledge (Anatomy) allowed for the drawing of conclusions based on physical evidence.The new skill saw a great deal of use, as my campaign was focused on the return of magic to the world, and a growing number of supernatural events.  The PCs were able to use Knowledge (Anatomy) to determine details regarding aberrant creatures, stitched undead, etc.It also gave rise to a new kind of gear.  I created a new "mundane magic item": the reference book.  One of the PCs managed to get hold of a heretical text detailing a certain scholar's studies regarding the inner workings of the human body.  Having it available to refer to while making a Knowledge (Anatomy) check gave her a +2 reference bonus to the check.  However its bonus came at a price.  The Church had decreed that possession of the book was a crime punishable by death.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /></blockquote>

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