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[Rogmasha-argent-dawn (Rogmasha)]

ARGH! - Arakine’s Roleplaying Guide to Healing!

I realise that this is a topic that has been done before a number of times. Why do I think that my guide is so special and wonderful? Because I am, by training, an Actual Scientist ™. So yes, I’m trying to involve my Dirty, Dirty Science (biomedical science with a focus on anatomy and toxicology) into WoW’s magic.

Summary

1. Introduction & Theoretical Background
2. Common Types of Injury
3. Diseases, Poisons, Blood Loss & Fever
4. Where I Got Hit, Getting Shot, and Herbalism & Pharmacology
5. RP Considerations

Introduction & Theoretical Background

There are three fundamental problems with trying to conduct a medical / scientific review of WoW healing:

-It’s magical
-It’s abstract
-It’s fantastical

To my mind at least, roleplaying should be governed by two rules:

1. Wheaton’s Law: Thou Shalt Not Be A Dick.
2. Tell beautiful stories. Let reality, rules, science, and so on take a back seat when the story demands something special. My view here is that something is special if it happens one in a million times. It stops being epic if it happens every Tuesday.

Given these constraints and considerations, my approach is as follows:

• Your healing should be appropriate to your character, and should be another way to express your character’s beliefs, ideals, and philosophy
• Injury and illness should promote RP and story-telling, rather than serving as an inconvenient speedbump on your one-person quest for badassitude
• Healing should not trivialise danger and the consequences of danger. You should not go from “I have a sucking chest wound” to “back in the fight” over the space of five minutes unless your story demands it. Yes, your game-mechanical character can do that, but where’s the fun of that? The whole point of danger is that it poses a risk to your character. If there’s no danger, then you’re not really a Big Damned Hero, and someone might want your brown coat back
• Magic should be able to alleviate the really rubbish bits of living in a low-tech world or being sick (like getting tetanus, cholera, or being rendered paraplegic). The aim of this game, RP, and story-telling is to have fun. I don’t want to spend 8 weeks RPing Arakine’s burn injuries after one of the officers in the Gilded Blades tried to set her on fire.
• Some psychiatric issues have clear and unambiguous causes (e.g. tau protein in Alzheimer’s disease). But we’ve had to come a long way to get there. Others are kind of touchy and may upset the people you play with. Don’t make light of things like depression, addiction, or PTSD by curing them easily and with no cost.

So. What if you don’t want to play the kind of gritty / realistic healer that I favour? You may of course want your healer to be more powerful, to be able to re-attach severed limbs, or snatch patients from death’s jaws every single time. That’s entirely up to you - I do not want to tell you how to play your character. Should you still read the guide? Well, yes. You’ll see what your magic is saving the poor normal mundanes from. It also might give you some ideas as to what your healing looks and feels like.

2) Common Types of Injury

Contents:

1. Wounds, Cuts & Other Injuries (or, I’ve just been stabbed in the …)
2. Burns (or, I’ve just been burned in the …)
3. Broken Bones (or, My I’ve just been crunched in the …)
4. Concussion

Wounds, Cuts, and other Injuries

I would strongly urge you to use the following search terms in an image-search to get a clear idea of what you’re dealing with. Fair warning - most of them are NOT going to be for the faint-hearted.

There are four broad types of category, increasing in severity (and grossness):

• Clean: This is a sterile wound. You’re probably not going to get one of these outside of some kind of magical ritual
• Contaminated: This means that there’s ‘stuff’ in the wound and it needs to be cleaned. This could be anything from soil to clothing.
• Infected: This is bad news, and usually results from a contaminated wound not being cleaned. It will be red and swollen, and pus will probably be evident.
• Colonised: This is a chronic condition where an infected wound has become long-term. Think something like a bed-sore.

There are then eight general kinds of wound. Go do an Image Search on your search engine of choice:

• Incision: Something caused by a sharp, edged weapon like a sword. You’ve been cut open.
• Laceration: This is where your skin as been torn in an irregular way as a result of blunt-force trauma. It is NOT the same as an incision.
• Abrasion: Your skin has been grazed. Like when you trip and skin your knee, or if you’ve ever managed to sandpaper yourself.
• Avulsion: Your limb or bodypart has been ripped off. This generally happens when a wookiee gets angry after you beat them at a boardgame.
• Puncture / Penetration: This is where something (usually sharp and narrow) goes into you. You end up with a bloody hole in you.
• Haematoma: A bruise. Basically, you’ve managed to rupture blood vessels and blood is leaking around inside you.
• Crush injuries: This happens when you get mashed flat or suffer blunt force trauma.
• Gunshot Wounds: These combine aspects of a number of the above. Unless you’ve been shot with a high-powered rifle (in which case, you’ll have a nice, neat hole going through you), the bullet will probably cause hydrostatic shock, tumble, and do terrible things to you. Pro tip: don’t get shot.

The way you treat a wound will naturally depend on the type of wound in question, but it basically boils down to:

Clean it
Close it (with stitches, adhesives if necessary)
Dress it

Obviously, if your patient is about to bleed out, stop that first. Generally, do whatever you need to do to stop your patient dying by whatever means necessary! See, for example, this article on medical glue.

Certain kinds of wound are going to need surgery. The aim of surgery will usually be to open something that’s become closed, or close something that’s become open. It will involve being elbow-deep in your patient, and a lot of blood. Remember that surgery will inflict another kind of trauma on the patient. Certain kinds or obvious and clear - if someone is choking, you’d “trache” them with your dagger. If their brain is swelling? Drill a hole into the back of their skull to trepane them.

Natural Healing of wounds. The following is a gross over-simplification:
Clotting (5 minutes)
Swelling & Immune response (1 to 48 hours)
Tissue Growth (2 to 14 days). The new skin is going to be tender, soft, and pink. If a scar forms, it’ll do so at this stage.
Maturation (2 to 28 days)
Remodelling (1 to 12 months) For larger wounds, it can take up to 3-4 months for tissue to reach 50% of its original strength.

One thing to note is that cauterisation is a way of turning a blood-loss problem into a burn trauma problem. You’re not doing anything to solve the cause of the underlying bleeding, and instead you’re inflicting 2nd (maybe even 3rd) degree burns on your patient. This is last resort territory, because infections come with burns.

Once a wound has been treated doesn’t meant it will stay treated. Depending on how active you get, you may suffer dehiscence. This is where a previously sealed wound reopens.

How could magical healing work? I would imagine that magical healing of a wound would either have the wound regrow in front of you (Healing over Time effects) or reveal fresh, new skin after a suitable special effect (think something dramatic like Holy Shock). I imagine that this process would be unsubtle and direct - noticeable, and the resulting flesh would still be weak and tender. Strength of tissue comes through time rather than necessarily ‘healing’. Dev Q&A suggests that it doesn’t generally hurt, but that may just be because the Devs never had a particular sadistic healer!

Burns

Not the national poet of Scotland in this context, sadly.

Burns are injuries caused to skin and underlying tissue usually caused by heat (but chemicals and radiation cause them too). They are characterised by how deeply they penetrate into underlying tissue:

First Degree Burns (1-3 days to heal) are basically superficial damage to outer layers of the skin. They tend to cause redness and some blistering.

Second Degree Burns (4-8 weeks to heal) causes damage to deeper layers of the skin, but the deepest layers of the skin are untouched. These HURT.

Third Degree Burns (does not heal), or full thickness burns, kill your skin. They don’t actually hurt because you no longer have nerves.

Fourth Degree Burns (does not heal, and probably has fallen off) is catastrophic, and usually involves damage to underlying muscle / bone / tendon. This is where the tissue is reduced burned black. You’re going to lose the limb.

You treat 1st and 2nd degree burns with pain relief, cleaning and dressing the wound. 3rd degree burns will require skin grafts and extensive surgery. The real problem with 2nd and 3rd degree burns is that you’ve breached the skin, and therefore exposed the body to infection.

A key aspect of treating burns is keeping someone hydrated. If you survive the initial tissue damage, but aren’t cared for properly afterwards, you may well die from dehydration. See: Parkland Formula for Burns - Burn Percentage in Adults: Rule of Nines

Smearing honey over first and second degree burns has been practiced since Ancient Egypt.

Magical treatment would depend on severity, perhaps easing pain, hastening recovery, or downgrading a wound by one classification. I could easily imagine “Lay on Hands” or other ‘extreme intervention’-type emergency spell turning a 3rd or 4th Degree Burn into a 2nd, for example.

Broken Bones

Closed: There’s no bits of bone sticking out of the patient.
Open: You have bits of broken bone sticking out. Infection becomes a real problem here

The general method of treatment is as follows:
1.Clean it if need be
2.Relocate (this will HURT). This is called ‘reduction’.
3.Immobilise
4.Wait. It takes aaages

Common healing times:
-Fingers & Toes: 3-6 weeks (thicker / bigger bits take longer)
-Wrist: 4-6 weeks
-Lower Arm: 8-10 weeks
-Upper Arm: 6-8 weeks
-Femur (Upper leg): 12 weeks
-Tibia (lower leg): 10 weeks
-Ribs: 3-6 weeks

The major contributions magical healing could make here would be to drastically accelerate healing times, and also reduce pain. Overnight is a nice idea from making your character playable for RP, but that’s almost a 90x acceleration.

A brief side-note on how to set a Broken Nose:

Breaking your nose hurts, and will most likely put you into shock. Expect nausea, dizziness, and maybe even vomiting. Re-setting it will probably hurt about as much.

You have 20-30 minutes to reset it after the injury before swelling becomes too much.
1.Have the patient blow their nose. This will hurt, and it’ll be gross. A mixture of blood and snot will come out.
2.Put your fingers together to form a triangle, like you were praying.
3.Wrap your hands around your nose, but not too tight
4.Take a deep breath. This next bit is going to hurt.
5.Drag your fingers down your face, exerting pressure on both sides equally.
6.Apply ice.

This is a cosmetic injury. I would imagine the major role here would be to reduce pain and swelling, and re-knit the bone. Unless you’re a Blood Elf - we take cosmetic matters VERY seriously

Concussion

Concussion is bad. It happens when your brain gets mashed into the inside of your skull. Needless to say, your brain wasn’t designed for such deceleration in mind.

Symptoms:
-Nausea
-Dizziness
-Lack of coordination
-Light sensitivity
-Headache (No? REALLY?)
-Blurred / Double Vision
-Memory Impairment
-Confusion

Treatment:
-Rest

The really sad thing about concussion is that it can cause dementia. You get a whole lot of people (athletes and soldiers) getting a dementia that looks very much like Alzheimer’s diseases WAY too early. This is called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Recently in the news with the NFL. Also common with people who have endured blast injuries, and boxers.

Magical healing wouldn’t do much here, other than make the patient sleep more easily.

Diseases, Infection & Poison

We live, in a modern world, in a wonderful place - we have antibiotics and even a few antivirals. Azeroth doesn’t have such things. Without access to antibiotics, public sanitation, and a wholesome and nutritious diet, getting any kind of disease is basically a crapshoot. Here are a list of diseases from our world to show how dangerous mother nature can be:

• Influenza (1918): 50-100 million worldwide (about 3%-6% of the global population)
• Cholera: 50% lethality rate in those without access to treatment]Dysentery: 1 in 1,000 mortality rate. You crap yourself to death.
• Smallpox: 30% lethality. You die of being utterly gross.
• Measles: 1 in 10,000 mortality in the modern world.
• The Plague: 40-60%. Necrosis, bubers. It’s just nasty.
• Dengue Fever: 1-5%
• Typhus: 1 in 5,000,000. Fever, coma.
• Leprosy: Negligible. Grossness
• Ebola: 50-90% lethality rate. You dissolve and then die.
• Malaria: 10-20% without treatment. Gin and tonic is actually an almost-viable treatment here.
  The take-home message here is that we live in a very sanitary and safe 21st century, with access to antibiotics. Azeroth has none of this.

Some brief thoughts on diseases:

• Contagious v Communicable: A contagious disease is something that will probably infect you merely by exposure to the relevant agent (e.g. virus, bacteria, fungus). A communicable disease is one that has a special mode of transmission (e.g. a vector). You don’t get malaria by being in the same room as someone. You get malaria by being bitten by an infected person, for example.
• Poor Sanitation: A number of diseases arise from what is called faecal-oral transmission. Basically, don’t poo where you eat.

Cure disease and disease immunity are staples of fantasy roleplay. Your magical intervention might lessen the severity of the disease (for example, you turn influenza from medical apocalypse as it was in most of our history into something that means you just take a few days off work for as it is now), or treat the symptoms. I LOVE the idea that even magic cannot cure the common cold

Poisons, Toxins & Venoms

Everything is poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison
Animal-derived poisons delivered by bite or sting are called venoms. Non-animal biological poisons are called toxins. They generally work by interrupting biological processes. You treat them by giving an antidote. Antidotes are rarely pleasant, but generally less likely to kill you than the poison. Some poisons simply have no antidote. Activated charcoal is usual given to someone who’s eaten a poison. For injected poisons, you constrict supply to the area, limiting circulation of it. Magical healing applications are obvious.

The following are conditions that I do not believe one should / could cure with magical healing, as they represent physiological processes rather than trauma. You therefore should use your healing / magical skills to support the patient rather than remove the condition:

Blood Loss

This is a very serious condition even today. The only reason we don’t really worry about it all that much in a hospital environment is because we have access to blood products ‘on tap’. Modern medicine generally recognises four grades:

Class 1 haemorrhage: You lose up to 15% of your blood volume (total being 5 litres for an average human, give or take), meaning 750 ml / 1.3 pints. Whilst gross, this isn’t really a problem. What else comes in 750 ml? A bottle of wine! You don’t really notice much in Class 1.

Class 2 haemorrhage: 15-30% of blood volume (0.75l to 1.5l) of blood are gone. In other words, 1-2 bottles of wine. You will start to look pale and act a bit strange (anxious, restless). Heart rate and breathing rate are both up.

Class 3 haemorrhage: 30-40% (1.5l to 2l) of blood is gone. This is where you start needing to transfuse a patient; they go into shock. Blue lips and very pale (or battleship grey if they’re black), with heart rate massively up (120 bpm). Extreme confusional state, but also may be unconscious.

Class 4 haemorrhage: 40%+ of blood is gone. You need heroic efforts and a hospital to keep the person alive. Blood pressure in the floor, very high pulse rate but also very weak.

In the real world, transfusion only really became available and viable during / after WW1, meaning that Class 3 and 4 were usually fatal. Treatment in the modern world is transfusion and oxygen. In Azeroth? Well. You’re probably stuffed.

Circulatory shock is NOT related to emotional / psychological shock. When you have insufficient blood you run the risk of death by cardiac arrest or lack of oxygen.

Assuming you donate 500ml of blood, it takes about 1-2 days to restore the lost VOLUME of blood, but about 1-2 weeks to replace the PROTEIN in blood. A (fairly heroic) assumption - assuming good care and diet - would be 1 week of ‘feeling generally rubbish’ - per litre lost. But then the point here is to have fun, not play a barely functional cripple

The only real way you can replace this is to maintain fluid balance and eat iron-rich food; steak, apricots, pate.

I suspect that the only way magical healing would work would be to mean you don’t die. The problem with ‘healing’ is that this isn’t really an injury, but rather a biological consequence of having a hole in you. Any magical intervention would basically need to create a few litres of liquid inside the patient. Metallic-tasting herbs that promote blood growth, perhaps? Or a friendly air spirit to oxygenate the blood? If you do want to go down the route of magical healing, then you’re going to have to find a way to add a few litres of liquid into a person.

Fever

Fever is NOT a disease, but rather a sign. You have fever because your body is responding to something - an infection, a poison, a metabolic disorder, cancer - something like that - apparently 75% of seriously ill adults have a fever.

Generally, if you have a fever, you’ll also have ‘sickness behaviour’. On the topic of sickness behaviour, Bed Rest and Bed Sores! Take good care of your patients, even when they’re resting. Otherwise they can rot.

You generally don’t treat a fever, unless someone is dangerously overheating. Keep the patient cool and watered. Find out what’s causing the fever and treat that.

Psychiatric Issues

I have no idea how well magical healing might work for any of the following. They probably stray beyond the bounds of the ARGH! in that they’re more long-term issues. But in general, I think the following should all be issues of character development and sensitive character portrayal:

• PTSD
• Depression
• Addiction
• Personality Disorders

I’ve just been hit in the… (Or, how to make getting hurt more interesting!)

Head: On the bright side, your skull is fairly robust. The problem, however, is that everything it contains is exceptionally fragile. Further, your scalp has lots of small blood vessels in it that will bleed a lot, even from relatively minor injuries. Think about how hard you’ve been hit - you’re probably going to end up concussed, stunned too. If you’re going to nut someone, be sure to aim for their nose, not their forehead.

Neck: The neck is a really terrible place to get hit; it contains the carotid artery and your airways. If you cut either, you’re toast. Note that the carotid carries blood more or less directly from the heart so blood will probably squirt out of your neck. Oh, and also don’t break your spine.

Thorax: Yes, you have ribs and a spine. The problem is that you don’t want to mess with your lungs, your heart, or your spine - don’t break that. A ‘good’ result of being hit in the thorax is that you’ll merely be winded - gasping for breath. A bad result is a sucking chest wound - a situation in which you can’t actually use your lungs anymore. Needless to say, getting stabbed in the heart is game-over. Not even Lay on Hands from Knight Commander Clooney can save you.

Abdomen: Your abdomen is full of squishy organs, and lacks the protection of ribs. If you’re unlucky, you might get stabbed I the liver and bleed out in minutes. If you get stabbed in the stomach, you’ll instead bleed out in hours. Generally ‘gut’ wounds are messy to deal with because you empty the contents of stomach / bowels into the body cavity.

Pelvis: Getting kicked in the fork isn’t fun for anyone. You’re going to be stunned. For those of you who wish to walk around with a box / cod-piece, they apparently chafe. Also, having one of those kicked or maced into your crotch isn’t going to make the experience pain-free.

Limbs: Impacts are quite traumatic - it’s reasonable to lose sensation in the limb (especially if you’ve just been hit with a mace). This is because they’ve got big nerve bundles. Remember also that you’ve got nice, big, juicy arteries there too.There is basically no safe place to take a hit. The following is an excellent description of the medical consequences of getting shot: Where’s the best place to take a bullet if you get shot?

Herbalism & Pharmacology

My approach has been to review clinical trial data on “phytochemistry”; that is the medicinal effects of plant extracts, and then try and apply that to Azeroth. My approach here has been to look at the pictures of the various herbs and where they’re found (swamps, Panda-land, and so on). So basically complete and utter guess-work

Liferoot (aka Marsh Mallow, Althaea officinalis) is a mouth-wash and throat-gargle, anti-parasitic, and anti-cough. It grows in salt marshes, in damp meadows, by the sides of ditches, by the sea and on the banks of tidal rivers.

Goldclover (aka Marigold, Calendula officinalis) is used to treat skin conditions such as ulcers.

Silkweed (aka Centella, Centella asiatica) is used to treat cardiac and circulatory issues.

Bruiseweed (Purple Cornflower, Echinacea purpurea) is used to limit duration of common cold. Its habitats include dry open woods, prairies and barrens, as well as in cultivated beds. Although the plant prefers loamy or sandy, well-drained soils, it is little affected by the soil’s pH.

Kingsblood - Purple Passion Flower or Maypop (Passiflora incarnate)) is used as an anxiolytic, and also to help in substance withdrawal. The maypop occurs in thickets, disturbed areas, near riverbanks, and near unmowed pastures, roadsides, and railroads. It thrives in areas with lots of available sunlight.

Peacebloom - Valerian (Valeriana officinalis) is used to treat anxiety and stress, and also as a mild sedative. It grows in moist environments in most biomes. Well. Or it could be weed. Or just daisies.

The following fruit have legit medical applications:

Pomegranate (Punica granatum) is used as a topical antifungal. Pomegranates are drought-tolerant, and can be grown in dry areas with either a Mediterranean winter rainfall climate or in summer rainfall climates.

Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) is used to treat urinary tract and other infections.

Bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) is used to treat cardiovascular disorder and clotting disorders.The following are commonly sold as herbal remedies in the real world, but are actually toxic to some degree:

Curly Dock (Rumex crispus) contains Oxalic acid, which does horrible things to your kidney, as well as causing chemical burns. 15-30g will kill you. Yet it’s still in homeopathic lists. Nice. It grows in a wide variety of habitats, including disturbed soil, waste areas, roadsides, fields/meadows, shorelines, and forest edges.

Sassafras (Sassafras genus) is carcinogenic. Sassafras is commonly found in open woods, along fences, or in fields. It grows well in moist, well-drained, or sandy loam soils and tolerates a variety of soil types, attaining a maximum in southern and wetter areas of distribution.

Snowbell (Styrax) causes contact dermatitis.

Healing Potions & RP

To my mind, there are a number of possible ways to think about this, and it all depends on how you want them to play out (and potentially where you bought them from). The only advice I’d offer is that they shouldn’t work like they do in game. That is, you’re sat on death’s doorstep, having lost both legs and are currently on fire. You drink your potion. And voila! You’re healthy again

They are fraudulent / placebo-based Here, have some of this coloured water, made by a Kun-Lai mountain princess! Contains genuine Elekk tusk! Secret recipe, for you, only 200 gold!
In this model, they ‘work’ because you take the potion, and then your body heals itself unrelated to having taken it.

They just make you feel better This is basically like having anything filled with caffeine + sugar + ibuprofen. It won’t actually cure your sucking chest wound, but it’ll make you feel better. Chicken Soup is, in my family at least, a universal curative. It has been known for EVER that willow-bark, for example, is a pain-killer and reduces fever, amongst other things.

They have biochemical / pharmacological effects There are herbs that contain molecules that act on the diseases in question at a biochemical level, or in other ways help healing. Think of this as something like an antibiotic, or maybe something that promotes wound-closure and healing.

Magic Done it and Ran Away This could range from something like homeopathy-actually-works through to some aspect of nature magic actually working. Sadly, I’m a medical scientist, not a thaumaturgist or alchemist.

Scientific (?!?!?!) Considerations (Hah. Who am I trying to kid)

I imagine that magic can influence a biological system in four major ways:

1. Stronger. You buff the stamina or health of the patient, rather than fighting the disease directly.

2. Faster. You accelerate the natural healing process.

3. Extreme Circumstances. A lot of medicine is about probabilities. Magical intervention lets you load the dice. Think of this as Knight Commander Clooney (Dr Doug Ross from ER <3) performing CPR and saving the patient in the nick of time against the odds.

4. Miracles. This is where there’s not even a chance of life. Just been shot by a steam-tank? Pass me that Band-Aid. I’ll have you fixed up in a moment.Something like Lay on Hands is a good example of (3) and (4) in the above list.

Philosophical / Theological Considerations

To my mind at least, an Elunatic should heal in a manner that “Looks and Feels” different to a Holy Light fundy like Arakine. With regard to this, and having spent a wee bit of time browsing WoW-fluff, the following distinctions come out:

‘True’ healing seems only to be done via:
Divine: Priests & Paladins

Nature: Druids, Shaman, Monks

This divide is interesting in that nature healing spells tend to have more Healing-Over-Time effects. I therefore imagine Nature-healing to look-and-feel more like Type-2 above.

One problem I have with the whole ‘nature-healing’ thing is that natural disease is as much part of a balance ecosystem as is a human or an elf.

Cinematic Considerations

For those of you who can remember it, I imagine this is like the scene in Starship Troopers were Rico is having his leg sewn back together in the giant womb-tank. By contrast, I imagine paladin healing to be decidedly unsubtle; Holy Shock to me is rather like getting punched in the face by the Light. The result is something that looks utterly miraculous. The image that comes to mind for me is the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy pours the Holy Grail onto his dad’s gunshot wound. There’s bubbling and pain and le voila. There is no attempt at natural process.

Non-Standard Healers

Death Knights: Blood Boil could be used as an extreme measure to sterilise blood whilst its inside a patient. Yes, this is an extreme measure. Not one I’d want to have done to me personally. A less extreme variant could be to simply induce a fever to aid in fighting off a disease The whole ice-thing is extremely useful. The major use of being able to cool things down is to reduce swelling. You could also make the argument that a DK’s control over plague could let them cure disease in others; I personal disagree, with that interpretation, seeing them more as horrible pits of necromantic (therefore Arcane) undeath and infection rather, but your own mileage may vary.

Mages: To my mind at least, mages make the ideal surgical assistants. They can provide sterile surgical space and medical equipment. Clean water is also extremely valuable. Alongside this, being able to provide ice to cool things down. If you really want to push the boat out, imagine creating a micro-portal and scrying inside someone to perform key-hole surgery?

Tailors: If you can sew cloth, you can sew people. Some of the more exotic types of thread may have interesting therapeutic uses, such as allowing healing spells to work better on them, or simply dissolve over time.

Alchemy & Herbalism: I am, by nature, a Western-trained molecular medical scientist. I therefore tend to be sceptical of homeopathy and alternate medicine. But then we’re playing in a world that has wizards, dragons and elves

Rogues: A good understanding of anatomy could be turned to any number of medical / therapeutic uses; massage, setting broken bones, and so on.

Engineers: You can come up with any number of useful therapeutic devices. I think most would be anachronistic (yes, I’m looking at you, cyberware). But I’m not here to tell you how to play, but rather encouraging you to be creative.

General Magic: Tissue preservation. No longer do you need to rush a transplant. You could instead keep the tissue in stasis.

Other things to consider:

Alcohol: Water is not safe. Alcohol sterilises it. It also serves as a mild painkiller

Swearing: I read an interesting study that shows that swearing serves as a mild painkiller. I can’t find the citation, sadly [Editor’s note: This effect now has a Wikipedia page!]

Cardiac Arrest becomes a lot less scary if you have an Elemental Shaman to hand