Medicine (sage study)

Medicine is a sage study in the fields of Power, Reality and Science, encompassing the practice of maintaining and restoring the health of persons & humanoids, in addition to treating their illness and preventing the effects of poison and magical attacks. Medicine in terms of the game should be treated as much more of an art than a science, since even by the middle of the 17th century many medical practices continued to be traditional rather than the result of experimentation and examination.

Each medical practice included in the rules of my world is a useful procedure, developed largely by the lower classes who do not have access to spells and magical cures, those things being in the possession of the upper classes (who are not inclined to share). It must be noted that while in the real world, bloodletting is a practice that offers little aid to patients, within D&D this practice can easily be reimagined as something effective in the treatment of persons injured in peculiar ways. This is in no way less credible than the game's invention of magic.

In many ways, medicine is perhaps the most universally helpful study — certainly there's room for it to expand much more widely than is supposed here at the initiation of this entry.

Sage Abilities

The sage abilities below are those acquired by a character through the study, according to status.

Amateur Status

• Aid Rest: increases hit points restored from rest.

• Binding Wounds: improves skill at ending hit point damage caused by wounds.

• Diagnose Ailment: identifies a disease or poison affecting the patient's health; does not provide treatment.

• Olfactory Acuity: ability to identify some potions and other substances by smell.

Authority Status

• Amputation: increases the likelihood of a patient surviving the removal of a limb.

• Bloodletting: ensures better health through the deliberate draining of blood.

• Minor Invasive Surgery: enables minimal cutting into the body with a likelihood of patient survival.

• Detoxification: lessens the severity of various forms of toxic attacks against the body.

• Set Injury: reduces the amount of injury damage by setting broken bones or easing bodily stress.

• Treat Disease: enables treatment of diseases to reduce their severity and probable fatality.

Expert Status

• Open Surgery: gives skill to cut open the body and provide treatment with a meaningful probability the patient will survive.
• Make Salve: enables the creation of healing salve.

See also,
Cleric Sage Abilities
Illusionist Sage Abilities
Mage Sage Abilities