There has been a lot of loose talk lately
about how peasants in a fantasy world
would be much better off than their reallife
counterparts, due to the availability of
magic; chiefly clerical healing magic.
Except in the most magic-rich worlds, this
will not be true for the common people,
especially those in rural districts.

Given the great potential for receiving
fatal injuries in the AD&D® game, it is
surprising that little emphasis has been
placed on the ability to heal. This healing
ability is one of the hallmarks of being a
cleric, and druids partake in it to a lesser
extent. Even paladins and rangers get into
the act at very high levels. But healing
spells are generally treated as just another
kind of magic.

This lack of emphasis is illustrated in
The Best of DRAGON® Magazine Anthology,
Volume II. In the first section is a
description of a new character class: the
healer. From the name, one would think
that this class concentrates on healing
spells, perhaps to the exclusion of all else.
This is wrong! Not only does the healer
use some nonhealing spells such as haste
and slow, but the class has no healing
spells at all at first level! All it has is a host
of detect spells (detect magic, detect poison,
etc.). The so-called healer cannot heal
anyone until he reaches third level, when
he can use second-level spells of his class.
A generalized cleric can do better than
that at first level with cure light wounds,
plus some specialized spells such as
remove fear and bless. The idea of a healing
class is good, but this particular one is
less than satisfactory.

Oriental Adventures offers the only
bright spot when it comes to an emphasis
on healing: the shukenja. Although he gets
healing spells in the same slow manner as
regular clerics, he has more reason to use
them in nonadventure situations. Every
time a shukenja uses a curative spell on
someone not associated with the party, he
gets 100 experience points per level of the
spell he used. Although he does not get
more low-level curative spells, at least the
shift in emphasis is refreshing.

Every cleric-type character in the game
system, no matter what emphasis is placed
on healing, is limited by his ability to gain
curative spells. Here is where the healing
power of clerics is most nullified in all but
the most magic-rich worlds. Many of the
small villages out in the country are
unlikely to have a cleric; in areas without
a temple, of course, no one could train to
become one. Not only that, but the overwhelming
majority of clerics in any campaign
world will be low-level. In many
worlds this means that keeping a cleric
around would not be worth the bother to
peasant farmers; there?s just too little good
he can do. This is due to a combination of
magical limitations and the needs of peasant
farmers.

Level limitations
The needs of a farming village are often 
quite different from those of a party of 
adventurers.  Leaving out the specialized 
curative spells bless and remove fear, an 
Acolyte has only 1 true healing 
spell: cure light wounds.  This spell is fine 
for adventurers who engage in combat all 
the time, but unless a peasant accidentally
belts a fellow reaper with his scythe at
harvest time, it won?t be needed much in
the everyday life of a farming community.
Peasants don?t get involved in battle much,
and with their poor weaponry, lack of
training, and low hit points (all peasants
discussed here are NPCs by definition),
they would generally be killed if they did.
The real killers of peasants in peacetime
are starvation, disease, and poison (due to
both tainted victuals and poisonous plants
and animals). This requires higher-level
spells, and hence higher-level clerics, to
remedy. The situation is aggravated by the
fact that there are no true curative spells
of the second level of power. With no
antidotes or neutralize poison spells available,
slow poison is rather ineffective as it
only delays the inevitable.

Thus, to peasant farmers, the first really
useful curative spell, cure disease, is a
third-level spell, requiring at least a 5thlevel
cleric to cast it. So we can see that
any village of people living the same general
life-style as that of ancient or medieval
Earth will not find it worth their
while to maintain a cleric of less than 5th
level. Actually, this is cutting things finer
than they should be, for there are times
when the ability to cast one cure disease
spell will not be enough.

As in the real world, plague can be a 
devastating evil in a fantasy world.  If 
villages are spread rather far apart, their 
isolation could prove to be an asset, as this 
could limit the spread of a contagious 
disease.  Let one disease get a foothold, 
however, and a major disaster is at hand.
Depending on the disease (fantasy worlds,
needless to say, are not limited to our
known diseases), several people might be
infected before anyone actually shows any
symptoms. The more people have the
disease, the more cure disease spells are
required. Remember, too, that the spell is
not called immunity from disease. The
germs infecting the victim are destroyed
by this spell, but there is nothing to keep
one from catching it again. Quarantine
helps, but if symptoms are slow to appear,
it might not be instituted until it is too late.
There is really no way the cleric can tell
people are ill until the symptoms appear.
Not even the highest-level clerics can cast
enough detect disease spells to cover the
population of an entire village at one go,
and previously covered people might catch
the disease from someone else while the
cleric is praying for "refills." Needless to
say, the highest-level clerics all live in
major cities or towns; they don?t hang
around dinky little villages out in the
boondocks on the off chance that a plague
might start. Even if they did, the highest level
cleric allowed in the AD&D game
could only cast nine cure disease spells per <check H4>
day. Unless quarantine is used (and even if
it is, in some cases), the possibility of reinfection
by uncured victims is everpresent.

Neutralize poison is a fourth-level spell,
requiring at least a 7th-level cleric to cast
it. Fortunately, mass poisonings are far less
frequent than plagues in peasant villages,
but unpleasant incidents could still crop
up if food is spoiled and if this fact is overlooked
until it?s too late. In addition, there
is a family of fungi which infests grains.
The most famous is ergot, but there are
others as well. These fungi do not harm
people of themselves, but they secrete
poisons (specifically, mycotoxins) which
do. Since these fungi reproduce at a rapid
rate, not noticing them in the village?s
stock of grain creates the potential for
poisons spreading with the speed of a
regular epidemic. With the victims being
poisoned instead of infected by disease
germs, cure disease is useless. These fungi
wreaked havoc on farmers from ancient
times to the 1940s, and they will do the
same in most fantasy worlds, especially in
areas where there are no clerics of 7th
level or higher.

As far as ordinary curative spells are
concerned, there are no others that would
really be useful. Heal requires a cleric of
at least 11th level (assuming he has a wisdom
of 17 or 18), and would generally be a
waste when a lower-level spell could do
just as well. Cure serious wounds and cure
critical wounds would be healing overkill
for zero-level characters. If a person with
from 1-6 hit points reached the point of
needing those spells, he would be dead.
Restoration is generally useless for the
same reason; if the typical peasant mixed,
it up with a wight or other energy-drainer,
he would be killed outright and probably
turned into a monster himself. Zero-level
characters simply can?t reach the point
where they require the fancier healing
spells, and there would be no one nearby,
who could cast them anyway. Students of
the ?healing magic advantage? school state
that clerics could cast expensive healing
spells on faithful followers even if they
can?t afford to pay. But they can?t cast the
spells if they don?t know the spells, and
that?s all there is to it! If a character needs
restoration of a drained energy level and
no cleric in the party can do it, the local
clerics probably can?t either. That character
will just have to wait until the party
gets back to the big city.

Raising the dead
With all the possibilities of death by
violence, poison, disease, etc., someone is
inevitably going to die. Now we get to the
biggies: raise dead and resurrection. These
require clerics of 9th and 16th levels,
respectively, and only clerics with a wisdom
of 18 can learn seventh-level spells.

This is a good time to discuss another
problem for villages that rely on their
cleric for curative spells. A cleric who
stays at home, as opposed to adventuring,
is not going to rise in levels, and thus is
not going to be able to improve his ability
to help his parish (the shukenja could be
an exception to this rule). As we have
seen, a cleric has to rise to at least 5th
level to be of any practical use to a community
in the healing department. This
means going on adventures. In the case of
high-level clerics, anyone who dies while
the cleric is gone will have to wait until his
return to be brought back to life. And
here we have an interesting dilemma.

Raise dead is the lower-level spell, and
hence the most common. Its effectiveness,
however, is negated if the number of days
the person has been dead exceeds the
cleric?s level. Therefore, even the highestlevel
cleric (who probably wouldn?t hang
around a village) will only be able to use
raise dead if the person has been dead
roughly a month or less. If he?s been dead
for longer than that before the cleric
returns from his quest, said cleric will
have to go on more and longer quests in
order to reach 16th level and gain the
ability to cast resurrection. Another problem
with raise dead is that the body must
be intact. If it?s not the dead of winter, and
the village doesn?t have enough salt to
preserve the body (they probably won?t),
the dear departed will have to be buried ?
not only as an act of reverence, but also as
an act of sanitation.

A village in a remote wooded area might
be able to get healing help from a druid,
but this class is less useful than clerics for
the purpose of healing. The druid doesn?t
even get cure light wounds until 2nd level,
when he can use clerical spells of the same
level. This puts the druid neatly between
the regular cleric and the healer class. The
druid also cannot bring back the dead.
Reincarnation doesn?t help if the return of
a specific person is desired. A human
widower who had a beautiful blonde wife
might not appreciate getting a half-orc in
her place. If a high-level cleric isn?t handy,
players won?t be able to bring back dead
friends unless they can get their hands on
a wish. A rod of resurrection might work,
but the players will still need a cleric, as
only a cleric can use the thing.

In summary, the advantages of clerical
healing, though vital for adventuring
parties, are mostly impractical for small
villages for two reasons. First, there won?t
be enough clerics of high enough level (at
least 5th) to go around. Second, the cleric
will often be off adventuring in order to
raise his level and thus increase the power
and number of spells he can cast. As a
result, he will often be absent when his
presence is most needed. Some campaign
worlds may have powerful clerics behind
every bush, but in most worlds, specialists
are relatively scarce ? especially specialists
in magic. This may seem cruel, but it is
nevertheless a fact of life. Besides, the
rarity of magic in a village has one advantage
for the purpose of the game: peasants
wishing to escape the inevitability of disease
are a major source of NPC recruits
for a party of adventurers who are willing
to share their healing resources with their
hirelings. After all, why else would zero-level
nobodies go on adventures that are
often lethal for even high-level, professional
adventurers?

DECEMBER 1988