Let's Have a discussion about healing magic

[BiggusBeardus]

Hello!

I'm developing a new setting and something I've never considered before now are the implications of healing magic.

I have basically "magic doctors" in this setting and I'm wondering how that would impact society.

I would assume people would live longer. There wouldn't be disease. Broken limbs wouldn't be as much of a problem...

What else?

Should there be limitations to healing magic? If so, what might some limitations be?

 

[Queshire]

I love healing magic. Order Mages in my setting are basically ripoffs of Final Fantasy's White Mages.

However, if you've got healing magic then you'd best know where the story's tension and plot complications come from.

If a paladin can lay hands on a fallen soldier and close up the sword wound through the gut then that’s a soldier that you're not getting plot from rushing them off to the medical tent, have overworked medics try to save his life and even if they succeed have the soldier deal with the process of recovering afterwards.

On the other hand, even if you give that same paladin self healing abilities that would make Wolverine jealous you can still get plenty of tension if the whole goal is a race against time to stop the evil Lich from opening a portal to the underworld. Sure, the paladin isn't at risk of dying, but that doesn't mean much if everything within 100 miles is blasted into a death blighted wasteland.

Loosely speaking, you can get away with fewer limitations if something causes more problems for the story than they solve.

Got an orphaned waif with healing powers that's hunted by corrupt nobility on one side who think her flesh grants immortality and a military order of battlemages on the other side who want to use her blood as a component in crafting powerful magic weapons that drain the life from the blood instead of their users? Well the limitations of the healing magic don't matter as much since any time they're used risk blowing the girl's cover.

The description of them as magical doctors suggests that they're there to solve problems in the story rather than cause them. To that point you should certainly know what the capabilities of healing magic, but the limitations of healing magic should naturally come from how the healing magic and magic in general works.

 

[ThinkerX]

'Magic' in my worlds is basically 'enhanced PSI ability.' Broadly, PSI abilities, affect either the mind (ESP, Remote Viewing/Scrying, Charm/Hypnotism on steroids,) Body (Healing, enhancements/issues with strength/speed and what not) and Objects (telekinesis, including levitation/manipulation of fire, plus a few other things.) There is substantial overlap and a few oddball things like illusions, teleportation and summoning, but those are not relevant here.

A typical middling mage will have a fairly good grasp of two or three or four of these knacks, and a not so good grasp of two or three or four others. Wizards who apply themselves learn additional knacks, eventually reaching the point to where they see how everything ties together.

Healing is a mind/body issue in this system - the wizard convinces the patient's body to help heal itself, providing a bit of a catalyst. Basically, far faster healing than normal, including spontaneous remission of disease. This requires that the patient accept that the Healer has the ability to do these things. One big crossover with mind 'magic' is the 'sleep' spell.

The wizard's personal ethos is of vital import. Healing magic is considered to be a gift, one offered without expectation of gain. Wizards who do charge for healing spells find their healing knack will become stunted or diminish over time, something that applies to various other knacks as well.

 

[Prince of Spires]

There are a few sides to this. The first is that you need to figure out the availability, cost and limitations of your healing magic.

For starters, how many are there (and are capable of said magic)? Just for reference, in the netherlands, about 3% of all working people are a doctor of some kind. If only 1 in 10.000 people is capable of said magic, then they'll either be overworked, or it will be something only the rich can use or is used for life and death situations (or more likely, both). On the other hand, if 10% of all people can do this, then if you stub your toe on the sidewalk you're very likely someone will walk past and just handwave the pain away.

Same with cost. If every time you heal someone, you have to give up a body part, then you'll be carefull about who you heal and why. If it requires some special herb, then you can expect that to be a major commodity (or for it to be harvested to extinction). On the other hand, if you can basically just wave your hand and you're done, then that directly impacts how people view it.

Limitations should be obvious. If you can only heal what the body could heal by itself, just faster and better, then you're limited in the types of wounds you can heal. If it doesn't matter as long as the patient still has a pulse, then all bets are off.

All those impact your world. You can have a situation where the rich are super healthy and basically only die of (very) old age while the poor are the same as they would be without magic, creating a big class divide. Or you could just have our world, except that you have mages instead of farmaceutical companies. Or any other situation you could come up with.

One other thing to consider is what your story is about and how much it actually impacts your story. If you're writing a tale about an orc who has started a coffee shop, then healing magic can be whatever you want and it has little impact on your tale. If on the other hand, you're writing about an epic war against the forces of darkness, where your hero has to wade through scores of opponents before meeting the final end boss for an epic showdown, then you had better make sure that your healing magic makes sense and that your reader understands what it can and can't do.

 

[Finchbearer]

In my story most of the mages are of the healing type. The world is a sort of Middle Ages - early modern inspired era and so I’ve worked out that the limitations for my healing mages must be that of a modern day doctor using modern medicine, with a few fun exceptions.

I also have non-magic folk who are ordinary midwives and healers who use standard and more traditional methods of healing inspired by witchcraft and shamanism to an extent ie. dressing wounds, aiding a woman to give birth, treating sicknesses using traditional methods.

Should any of those things become untreatable by an ordinary healer then magic can be used to do more complex things such as draw out infection, stem bleeding, heal major wounds that wouldn’t otherwise be healed with an ordinary healer and anything a modern doctor could do.

Of course I have to make it so the magic does extra things, but push it too far and it would just be a glaze over, but people still essentially lose limbs, die from infection, die from childbirth, die from sickness like any ordinary society.

I have it that mages perform a magical duty to the country by taking an oath and it’s quite a socialist system whereby mages are allocated to work for various different areas or in different ways, and people don’t pay for them directly, but the rich and noble get prioritised over the peasantry and the poor.

Maybe I should add that my system in the respect of healing mages is basically like a modern day UK (lol) but hopefully readers will be able to relate to that. I’m writing about social divides too so it all ties in.

 

[pmmg]

My initial question is what would life be like for a healer in this society? Cause if there is a line outside his door for every sniffle, and stubbed toe, he will find he has no peace for himself. So, something has to put limits on it. I would also ask about story tension. If healing is easy, and wounds are not permanent, or life threatening, then the stakes of story tension get changed. Might it be that warfare consists of wiping out the healers first?

And all of that leads me into bigger questions: How might this change and shape attitudes of people. Would they become less cautious and take more risks? Would it lead to higher mortality even, as less caution may mean people don't take real dangers as serious as they should? Economics, How much is the skill worth and who pays for it? Suppose a woman has a miscarriage, is the healer blamed?

I think so much would be different, it would be hard to capture it all.

Ultimately, I think healers either need to have limitations on what they can do, making their healing spare, or, they would become sick of being healers cause the line of people wanting their service would be endless. Even if there was no limit, they might like to encourage others to think there was.

Should there be limitations to healing magic? If so, what might some limitations be?

Many ways to do this. For myself, I would make the cost high, such that it drew too much mana, or was too physically exhausting, or the results were not always assured for spending the cost.

In my own story, there is a small amount of 'magic' healing in it. To have the ability to do so is not common, the cost is usually exhaustion of the healer, and the result is usually just enough healing to achieve the goal (prevent from dying, or stop bleeding), and not more. People who lose limbs don't have them restored.

 

[ThinkerX]

Ultimately, I think healers either need to have limitations on what they can do, making their healing spare, or, they would become sick of being healers cause the line of people wanting their service would be endless. Even if there was no limit, they might like to encourage others to think there was.

In my worlds, if a person goes to a healer for something fairly trivial, even one with magical abilities, the odds are better than 90% the treatment offered will be mundane, not magical. The exceptions being the more difficult cases and emergency situations, but even there, the magic is not always successful.

 

[Queshire]

Healing magic in the Burned Heavens is complicated. It's not the hardest magic to use, but there's a number of factors to keep in mind that you don't have to worry about if you're just tossing a fireball at someone.

Now, if you're just relying on the basic, low level healing spell, various alchemical creations or elemental cantrips meant to do stuff like wash away fatigue, lessen headaches or ice sore muscles healing magic might not seem that different from other forms of magic, but when you start going beyond those basics the complexity becomes apparent.

To start with:

1) Healing magic costs a lot of mana. Not only do you need to provide mana for the spell structure and to guide the energy, but you also need to provide a big ol' lump of mana to actually heal with. All that blood you're replacing has to come from somewhere after all. There's three main ways to deal with this problem though.
A) Use an external source of mana to supplement your efforts such as drawing energy to heal with from nature.
B) Increase your mana efficiency to cut down on the amount of energy needed for the spell as much as you can.
C) Don't deal with the problem at all and instead start burning through your lifeforce or your patient's lifeforce in order to make up the deficit. Naturally this is not generally recommended.

2) The actual healing can take different forms with their own complications.
A) Basically supercharging the lifeforce of the person being healed. Can struggle with healing injuries that the body is not able to heal normally such as losing a limb and risks complications like trying to heal a bone that's not properly set.
B) Magic doctoring involving such things as using mana to perform surgergy or synthize medicine within a patient's body. Reliant on medical knowledge and even then some things are outside of a doctor's skills even with magic.
C) Using the soul as a template to reconstruct the body to match the soul. Not good with injuries that have an emotional component great enough that they've been inscribed on the soul or injuries old enough that they've become reflected on the soul's self image.
D) Weird stuff like "healing" someone by polymorphing them into the form of a healthy animal or something. Miscellaneous stuff like that exists. Either they require some special talent to use or have obvious drawbacks like the mana cost of trying to keep someone polymorphed.

3) Healing magic interacts with other elements of the magic system.
A) The soul rejects foreign magic to protect itself. The rejection isn't as extreme as if you tried to turn someone into a toad due to generally subconsciously accepting the healing magic as a good thing, but it does make healing magic just that much harder to do unless you have some way to get around it.
B) Bad things happen if the balance of mana in someone's spirit becomes too heavily skewed. It can lead to death, insanity and mutation. Most of the time corruption like this comes from environmental factors, but the influx of mana from healing can rapidly destabilize the spirit and serves as a soft cap on how frequently someone can be healed using magic.
C) Everything is magic. A wound can be infected by the foreign mana of the one who caused it, curses or malevolent spirits and is one of the primary ways that healing someone with magic is made more difficult.

Different healing classes and traditions have dealt with these problems in their own ways. A Druid doesn't just supercharge someone's lifeforce, but shapes it to ensure it efficiently goes where it needs to. A Cleric draws mana for healing from a distant god. Etc.

 

[Fyri]

Hello!

I'm developing a new setting and something I've never considered before now are the implications of healing magic.

I have basically "magic doctors" in this setting and I'm wondering how that would impact society.

I would assume people would live longer. There wouldn't be disease. Broken limbs wouldn't be as much of a problem...

What else?

Should there be limitations to healing magic? If so, what might some limitations be?

If you want these characters to be relatable, you need limitations. When it comes to magic healing, you don't mean immortality, necessarily.

In a way, magic is just science we haven't discovered yet. So, I agree with some others here. If you want to go a hard magic route--how and why does the healing magic work? That will tell you where your limitations might be.

But if you go for soft magic system (less clearly defined), then it's up to you! Do you want these healers to be godlike or human?

Do they need certain spells for certain diseases and developing new spells to cure new diseases is like developing new vaccines here? Must they be well studied in how the body is made and works, to intigrate or direct their magic to manipulate the right things?

If the magic is super easy to learn and do, or at least very flawless and commonplace--if you are leaning toward immortality (No disease, longer life, etc), I'd look to Tolkien's Elves. Also, despite some plot holes, the Scythe series by Neal Shusterman and also The Farthest Shore, by Ursula K. Le Guin talk about a world without death and what it might be like.

You might have more reckless people, since great healers make many actions less dangerous.

Also, consider what "healing magic" means. In my books, my magic healers are more like mending or unifying things. They can mend injuries quickly, but they can't cure disease. Are there different branches of healing magic for your people in this sense?

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We lean into healing magic, and modern medicine, quite a bit, but Urban Fantasy gives us the ability to mix or match however we need to. One of our healing characters is a skilled trauma surgeon and a master of brewing potions, and another is a touch healer who can heal purely by magic but also intends on going through medical school to become a DO in General Surgery. Depending on the needs of the plot and who is available in what scenes and which books, the tools we draw on can vary wildly. It also isn't limited to surgical and emergency medicine. Our potions master can brew effective and targeted psychiatric medications, but as in our reality there is no such thing as an insta-cure. Add to that the same character tends to self-medicate with stimulants and now we're having a party.

 

[Fyri]

Ultimately, I think healers either need to have limitations on what they can do, making their healing spare, or, they would become sick of being healers cause the line of people wanting their service would be endless. Even if there was no limit, they might like to encourage others to think there was.

It could also be useful to note: If these healers are really that good, they may become sort of elite. They can charge high prices, or only work through scheduled appointments. They can hire guards and have a fair amount of security. Would they be celebrities or government officials?

Oooh. Now I want to see a story about these hypothetical healers. Do they wear disguises to protect their social life? Do they fight with each other about morality of choosing who gets healed?

 

[Miles Lacey]

In my work in progress around 0.5% of the population are gifted with magic. That includes healing powers. The magic draws upon the body's energy levels so the more complex the injury or illness the greater the toll on the mage's body. Magical healing can also be a very long process depending upon the complexity of what needs to be healed. Most mages never make it to their retirement age as they usually die either from the physical exhaustion that results from doing any sort of complex or prolonged magic or kill themselves due to loneliness because of magic rendering them sterile and therefore being banned from marriage and raising a family.

It was the mass slaughter of modern warfare that brought home the limitations of healing magic, especially when mages were specifically targeted in combat situations so it could hinder an army's ability to get soldiers back into the field. Modern medicine began to develop to enable non-mages to actively help heal those who were injured or ill in combat. Over time modern medicine moved into the civilian sphere.

Modern medicine has reached the point where it has made the healing mages almost redundant. However, the Banjari Empire is a sprawling maritime empire made up of thousands of islands, including remote ones, where modern medicine is either unavailable or too expensive for a lot of people so they still rely on mages to heal them.

As magic is gifted upon a privileged few by the gods when they turn sixteen years old mages are seen as having been called by the gods to serve others and that includes going forth and healing people. A sizeable number of mages are nomadic but many are now working in medical clinics and hospitals where both healing magic and modern medicine are utilised to heal the sick and the injured.

Society tends to be divided into three factions:

Traditionalists believe that modern medicine is a fad. Traditional healing magic should always take priority.
Rationalists believe that healing magic has done its dash. It's time to stop relying on mages to do the healing and let the doctors take over.
Egalitarians believe that healing magic and modern medicine aren't mutually exclusive. They can be used to compliment one another to achieve the best possible outcomes for the sick and the injured.

Sometimes the disagreements between these groups can turn violent.

 

[Fyri]

or kill themselves due to loneliness because of magic rendering them sterile and therefore being banned from marriage and raising a family.

Off topic, but I definitely hate this as a common outcome. Marriage and raising a family is not the only way to live a successful, happy life. Also, it spins a depressing narrative for homosexual and asexual people, mages or not. Sterile mages could also be compared to eunuchs, who generally lived longer than the other males of their time.

The early death by physical/magical exertion is interesting though!

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

You could add consequences to using healing magic.
Maybe make it so that the only species that can use it are long life species (like elves, kitsune etc)
But it seriously drains their life force to do so. That way they can be renowned for being able to perform these miracles, but there's a cost. It can open the door for character development too. Have the oh so stoic member of the party who doesn't seem to do much open up to the party member they actually give a shit about and heal them. That'd be the perfect point to explain how and why healing magic has consequences too.

So often in video games, and other media, the white mage is the most powerful member of the party when handled well enough, so let's add some risk to that narratively.

 

[Finchbearer]

Off topic, but I definitely hate this as a common outcome. Marriage and raising a family is not the only way to live a successful, happy life. Also, it spins a depressing narrative for homosexual and asexual people, mages or not. Sterile mages could also be compared to eunuchs, who generally lived longer than the other males of their time.

The early death by physical/magical exertion is interesting though!

Funny you should mention this but I was thinking why is magical power always at the expense of fertility? I don’t have my mages as sterile, (unless they happen to have fertility issues that are otherwise unrelated to magic), and I’ve never understood why they’d be some sort of magical eunuchs.

You can be asexual but not necessarily sterile too.

To extend on this slightly - in The Witcher, Yennifer gets her ovaries and womb removed when she’s ’made pretty’ and yet still has a sex drive - it don’t work like that. Biologically she would have gone through premature menopause, which for a female if you’ve had all your reproductive organs removed in a full hysterectomy, you go on hormone replacement therapy or otherwise you just don’t have the hormones there to have that sex drive.

Anyway, that’s me saying if you have your mages as infertile, it wouldn’t make sense for them to have crazy sex drives as part of a plot, otherwise make them ordinary people that just have magical powers!

 

[pmmg]

I was not aware magic causing sterility was a thing. Maybe in a story or two, but...that never seemed to be an issue for most wizards I have read. But...it seems like it could be a viable side-effect if you want limitations.

I think Mr Lacey was just stating that as part of 'his' story.

 

[Finchbearer]

I was not aware magic causing sterility was a thing. Maybe in a story or two, but...that never seemed to be an issue for most wizards I have read. But...it seems like it could be a viable side-effect if you want limitations.

I think Mr Lacey was just stating that as part of 'his' story.

Not saying that you couldn’t have it as part of the story, I was just saying that in The Witcher I think it has been poorly thought out. You can create that suspension of reality in any number of ways, but it needs to be believable for the story too, I think.

 

[pmmg]

I agree that things that make people sterile will likely affect other aspects of their life style, such as libido. Witcher never hooked me, but I think they are presenting it as Mr Gerault is not really human anymore, so maybe he has both no reproductive ability, and desire (though I dont think i've seen him sleep with anyone). If other characters are the same, it could be they need more investigation. If they are the ones who introduced this, and now it is catching on...guess its becoming a thing.

But witcher is just one among many. Most wizards I read dont seem to have partners, but they are not presented as sterile.

 

[Finchbearer]

I agree that things that make people sterile will likely affect other aspects of their life style, such as libido. Witcher never hooked me, but I think they are presenting it as Mr Gerault is not really human anymore, so maybe he has both no reproductive ability, and desire (though I dont think i've seen him sleep with anyone). If other characters are the same, it could be they need more investigation. If they are the ones who introduced this, and now it is catching on...guess its becoming a thing.

But witcher is just one among many. Most wizards I read dont seem to have partners, but they are not presented as sterile.

Geralt gets down to it plenty!

 

[pmmg]

Well....good for him. Probably does not hurt the ratings But...he's never appealed to me.