Why can't wizards heal?

[SSquirrel]

In 3e, bards can heal. Either you come up with some very compelling backstory for bardic magic, or arcane healing is not that hard.

*3E design brainstorming*
"Hey Bob, what do we have for Bards so far?"
"Well they have almost as many skills as Rogues, they buff their allies, and they have some wizard spells."
"Hmm, they still seem like they suck"
"What if we gave them some healing magic?"
"Aren't they arcane?"
"Yeah, but isn't that better?"
"Well they still suck, but I guess they suck less with a bit of healing thrown in"

 

[Lurks-no-More]

This is logical, since the gods decide which spells they grant to their followers. But pure magical energy should do anything if the wizard is powerful enough to manipulate it.

Why?

 

[med stud]

Since the subject is magic, I don't think logic enters the picture. The reason can be anything, no matter how contrived compared to our natural laws and logic it might sound.

A wizard can change your shape using Polymorph. You would think that the wizard could use that spell to Polymorph your wounded arm into a whole arm. Yet he can't. On the surface, this is illogical. But there may be stuff under the hood that only the Gods know about. It might be a case of only the Gods being able to decide when someone lives. A wizard therefore can't heal since that would encroach on divine territory. But that leaves out the bard; why can the bard heal with arcane magic?

There are a whole lot of questions from an in game perspective and I wouldn't say that any one of them is wrong, really. My personal POV is that our own world is hard enough to make sense of, trying to make magic make sense would be very hard

 

[CountPopeula]

So people will play clerics.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

In 3e Sorcerers & Wizards can heal. First they need to worship a deity with the Healing domain, have 4 ranks in Knowledge (Religion) & Spellcraft. This makes them eligible for the Arcane Disciple feat, which lets them add the spells from the healing domain to their repetoire. The wiz/sorc needs a Wis score equal to the level of the spell to be able to cast it though.

On top of this add the Spontaneous Healer feat and they can sacrifice a spell to cast a cure wounds spell.

The resource for thes abilities is Complete Divine.

 

[Doomhawk]

There are any number of technobabble explanations for why wizards don't heal. My favorite is that not all magic is the same, and wizards spend most of their time studying how to throw fire around and make things fly, not how to knit arteries back together.
But really, the reason is "for game balance". And if a wizard wants to heal, he can get it easily enough with multiclassing.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't even think it is a game balance reason, to be honest - as someone said earlier, the divine caster/arcane caster has been in D&D since the very beginning (and I don't know why!) and healing has always been one of the key differentiators.

Every other RPG that I've experienced doesn't distinguish between divine and arcane magic and 'magic users' can just do stuff by magic.

I'll admit, that is my preferred approach

In 3e Sorcerers & Wizards can heal.

In the core rules they can heal themselves a little via polymorph and they can summon creatures with healing (3.0 was best for this) or use planar binding to get creatures with healing.

When they get access to Limited Wish (7th level spell) they can then duplicate any cleric spell of 5th level or lower, which includes Raise Dead.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Seriously, the same argument can be made as to why can't clerics cast fireballs... the basic casters are specialized to some extent.

Just like I wouldn't bring my kid to a mechanic when he is ill, I wouldn't be asking a wizzie to heal me.

Flame Strike, etc.

 

[Joe Sala]

Do you know if any D&D/AD&D campaign setting explains why wizards can't cast cure wounds? For example, "the goddess of magic forbids it".

 

[hamishspence]

Faerun high level wizards had a "heal" spell

The Simbul's Synostodweomer (in Spell Compendium as well without the personal name). 1 swift action, the next spell cast in the same round is converted to healing.