By Felipe Lohan Pinheiro da Silva
Magic is the key to open the source code of the cosmos. İt produces a random result inside a given range of possible ones, as the multiverse is the greatest True Random Number Generator (TRNG) ever.
Many RPG systems derived from or inspired in Dungeons & Dragons/D20/OGL/Retroclone/Old School divides supernatural powers between psionics and arcane and divine magic. Simply put, it’s a “D&Dism”. Let me introduce a new concept here: that all magic is arcane and psionic is also magic. Yes, it’s hard to deconstruct a sacred cow (“sacred cow”, “divine magic”, you got the pun), but open your mind.
İf you think twice, it’s not absurd. For example, Pathƒіnder and the later editions of Dungeons & Dragons use the base class of the Warlock, who have a pact w/ such beings, and they’re distinct from the cleric class. İn DCCRPG (Dungeon Crawl Classics) the wizards can make a pact w/ Supernatural Patrons. Keep in mind that this would have implications in your setting: if the aforementioned supernatural patrons can create the source code of healing spells to later give such spells to their followers/clerics/paladins, so a wizard could also create it in an independent way, in a process of convergent technological evolution. For the sake of comparison, two programmers writing two programs w/ different source codes to execute the same Algorithm; the human “programmer” (mage) simply have the less powerful “hardware” (magical raw capacity).
¿ So why arcane casters can’t cast healing spells, besides game balance? İn the “Creating a Spell” section in the chapter 09 – “Dungeon Master’s Workshop” of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition – Dungeon Mater Guide (DMG), is written:
“Wizards and sorcerers don’t typically have access to healing spells, for example, and adding a healing spell to the wizard class list would step on the cleric’s turf.”
¡ My fucking ass! Looks a fucking niche protection. ¿ How many times you heard that the clerics are the “party’s bandage”? Look, Wizards aren’t morons. So some of them could have good knowledge in physiology, anatomy, and general biology, so they would make a magical research to create healing spells. Or made they could make such research together w/ doctors/surgeons/biologists/naturalists/whatever, if they didn’t have that knowledge themselves (basically an interdisciplinary research team).
People tell some blah blah blah that only gods can create life. But that argument simply doesn’t work for most of the healing spells, since you’re not creating life out of nowhere, just making tissue regrow in an already living body, and sometimes only sealing an open wound, or coagulating a hemorrhage, or reattaching a broken body structure (like broken bones), or even just healing a plain haematoma.
Also, in some game systems, necromancy, a magical school that deals w/ life and death, is an arcane magical school. ¿ So why healing can’t be?
Also, the concept that only gods can create life can’t cope w/ a realistic rational and scientiƒіc conception/worldview, as the news published in the scientiƒіc media are showing that the scientists are everyday closer to use purely synthetic methods to successfully create DNA and life forms, so you can expect for it the far future.
İf you want some restrictions to the healing magic in your setting, just make it expensive for some reason: it’s harder to learn or needs specialized personnel (it’s easier to doctors and/or nurses to use healing magic), uses expensive alchemical components, etc. So a peasant that lose a leg will never have the money to make it grow back, but an adventurer, noble or wealthy merchant have. So it’s cheaper to use protective gear (both in battle and industry) than contracting a mage to make a limb grow back or make a large scar disappear.
That said, wizards can also develop the power of creating life. And they’re not “playing god”, they’re just making fucking magical science. So, open the divine spells to other classes (Supposing that you’re running a game w/ the obsolete concept of classes. – “To deƒіne is to limit.” – The Picture of Dorian Gray – Chapter 17/XVİİ – By Oscar Wilde).
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