LORE - Why don't Wizards study the school of restoration?
Even if Wizards just don't care about studying restoration to higher levels, being able to heal small wounds during battle is really powerful. I know Wizards don't have access to healing spells mostly for balance. I think most wizards would have a basic heal spell or two otherwise.
If Wizards had access to easy heal spells the class would go from Strong to OP, but is there any reason in lore that Wizards can't (or don't) study restoration?
Tradition. Wizards had the best spells except for healing back in the beginning. There are some options for you:
One level of Cleric, Bard, Druid, or Artificer can give you some healing and access to scrolls, even if you can't learn any healing spell above 2nd level
Abjuration Wizardry gives you the Ward, which is in many ways almost as good as healing. Easy to restore, at higher levels you can grant it to others, and stacks with temp hitpoints.
Magic Initiate feat can grant you a single 1st level healing spell once per day.
Some Necromancy spells help, such as Life Transference and Vampiric Touch.
Restoration spells don't have their own school of magic. If you look at restoration spells in the game, they mostly fall under the traditional schools of Evocation, Necromancy, and Abjuration.
It is my understanding that healing is divine magic and gifted by divine sources. A sort of exception is the bard, whose origin of magic is described as "Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers." So when you talk about arcane caster who learn about such things, you're talking about a bard, not a wizard.
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So Lore wise its how they study it then? Wizards study how to manipulate the weave to produce a result and Bards 'nudge the flow' so to speak.
A good lore explanation then would be healing magic is too complex to understand through the lens of study/science. Understandable honestly if you think about it, you're trying to cast magic on a living creature, without adverse effects, to close a wound (and every wound is going to be different). Clerics get around it by effectively having their god cast it on their behalf and bards somehow manipulate the primal magic from creation to cast their spells.
Precisely. It makes me think of Fullmetal Alchemist. They dabbled in human transmutation from a scientific perspective without understanding the full implications of all the nuances involved. Bards basically weave the echoes of the gods into their magic. It's something they feel, rather than study or understand logically.
Although for clerics, it's not so much that the gods are casting it on their behalf, so much as it's the cleric's connection to their god that allows them to use such magic.
From a theoretical stand point Arcane versions of curing spells do exist in as much as the Bard, Celestial Warlock and Divine Soul Sorcerer all get access to the cleric spell list and any spell they chosoe becomes arcane magic not divine. So you could have a wizard attempt to research arcane magical healing after seeing one of those classes cast a spell. Bard would imply that a "divine" source is not required to action any healing or restoration magic and spells such as Remove Curse, Vampiric Touch and Life Transference already exisit in the Wizard playbook so they could also be used to research or create an arcane spell that heals or otherwise restores vitality or removes conditions.
Sadly though I think most DM's might just make it a firm no on Wizards being able to heal etc.
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Sadly though I think most DM's might just make it a firm no on Wizards being able to heal etc.
That's exactly how I would do it. My perspective is wizards can do pretty much EVERYTHING else. If you want healing magic too, there's always multi-classing. Wizard should /not/ be one-stop shopping to be better than the specialists in the party at their specialization.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
It would make clerics feel lackluster, but if a wizard could heal, they would not have armor making using healing spells that you need to touch the target your healing dangerous
It would make clerics feel lackluster, but if a wizard could heal, they would not have armor making using healing spells that you need to touch the target your healing dangerous
Multi-classing to have your familiar face plant into the back of the barbarian to deliver a cure wounds is kinda fun. Just don't do it to the Battlerager.
“Healing magic is too complex to understand through the lens of study/science.” Doctors would like to have a word with you XD.
I think it is a parallelism to how religion (from shamans to monks and priests) were the only ones with the knowledge on how to heal people, this is why clerics and druids have healing spells, the option of getting the medicine skill, and why druids have proficiency with the Herbalism Kit. People like Hippocrathes opened the school of thought (literally, he opened a school) that health is attributed to lifestyle, rather than curses, although this died for a bit during the Middle Ages, monks would have a monopoly on knowledge, this included access to books with knowledge to stuff like herbolary, the rest would be traditional remedies (and perhaps a few or more being killed under the accusation of witchcraft). It wasn’t until the renaissance that people outside religion would practice healing techniques (it would still be a far cry from modern or even last century medicine, but it was a start). Despite this, people still had the taboo of opening cadavers (this made to many crazy theories about how the body worked), but people like Leonardo Da Vinci opened cadavers and begin to learn how the human body works (very likely to how necromancy is bad because of desecration and reanimation of corpses).
In previous editions, healing spells were classified as necromancy, instead of evocation. My headcanon is that the churches placed a prohibition on wizards to refrain them from learning healing magic, for that would be considered necromancy (or association with fiends and other extraplanar beings), and anyone . In previous versions, healing spells were classified as necromancy instead of evocation, so it would make sense that any wizard that cracked the code on how to heal would be accused of practicing necromancy (whether they did or not).
You could always take the Healer feat. It's not a lot of healing per person, but you can do it every single person you meet once per long rest so it will add up. When you heal a 4th level character you'd heal them for 1d6+8, that's better than Cure Wounds. And you're doing it with your smarts rather than mumbling to some god.
You are an able physician, allowing you to mend wounds quickly and get your allies back in the fight. You gain the following benefits:
When you use a healer's kit to stabilize a dying creature, that creature also regains 1 hit point.
As an action. you can spend one use of a healer's kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6 + 4 hit points to it, plus additional hit points equal to the creature's maximum number of Hit Dice. The creature can't regain hit points from this feat again until it finishes a short or long rest.
LORE - Why don't Wizards study the school of restoration?
Even if Wizards just don't care about studying restoration to higher levels, being able to heal small wounds during battle is really powerful. I know Wizards don't have access to healing spells mostly for balance. I think most wizards would have a basic heal spell or two otherwise.
If Wizards had access to easy heal spells the class would go from Strong to OP, but is there any reason in lore that Wizards can't (or don't) study restoration?
Tradition. Wizards had the best spells except for healing back in the beginning. There are some options for you:
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ModeratorRestoration spells don't have their own school of magic. If you look at restoration spells in the game, they mostly fall under the traditional schools of Evocation, Necromancy, and Abjuration.
It is my understanding that healing is divine magic and gifted by divine sources. A sort of exception is the bard, whose origin of magic is described as "Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers." So when you talk about arcane caster who learn about such things, you're talking about a bard, not a wizard.
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So Lore wise its how they study it then? Wizards study how to manipulate the weave to produce a result and Bards 'nudge the flow' so to speak.
A good lore explanation then would be healing magic is too complex to understand through the lens of study/science. Understandable honestly if you think about it, you're trying to cast magic on a living creature, without adverse effects, to close a wound (and every wound is going to be different). Clerics get around it by effectively having their god cast it on their behalf and bards somehow manipulate the primal magic from creation to cast their spells.
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ModeratorPrecisely. It makes me think of Fullmetal Alchemist. They dabbled in human transmutation from a scientific perspective without understanding the full implications of all the nuances involved. Bards basically weave the echoes of the gods into their magic. It's something they feel, rather than study or understand logically.
Although for clerics, it's not so much that the gods are casting it on their behalf, so much as it's the cleric's connection to their god that allows them to use such magic.
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From a theoretical stand point Arcane versions of curing spells do exist in as much as the Bard, Celestial Warlock and Divine Soul Sorcerer all get access to the cleric spell list and any spell they chosoe becomes arcane magic not divine. So you could have a wizard attempt to research arcane magical healing after seeing one of those classes cast a spell. Bard would imply that a "divine" source is not required to action any healing or restoration magic and spells such as Remove Curse, Vampiric Touch and Life Transference already exisit in the Wizard playbook so they could also be used to research or create an arcane spell that heals or otherwise restores vitality or removes conditions.
Sadly though I think most DM's might just make it a firm no on Wizards being able to heal etc.
That's exactly how I would do it. My perspective is wizards can do pretty much EVERYTHING else. If you want healing magic too, there's always multi-classing. Wizard should /not/ be one-stop shopping to be better than the specialists in the party at their specialization.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
It would make clerics feel lackluster, but if a wizard could heal, they would not have armor making using healing spells that you need to touch the target your healing dangerous
Multi-classing to have your familiar face plant into the back of the barbarian to deliver a cure wounds is kinda fun. Just don't do it to the Battlerager.
“Healing magic is too complex to understand through the lens of study/science.” Doctors would like to have a word with you XD.
I think it is a parallelism to how religion (from shamans to monks and priests) were the only ones with the knowledge on how to heal people, this is why clerics and druids have healing spells, the option of getting the medicine skill, and why druids have proficiency with the Herbalism Kit. People like Hippocrathes opened the school of thought (literally, he opened a school) that health is attributed to lifestyle, rather than curses, although this died for a bit during the Middle Ages, monks would have a monopoly on knowledge, this included access to books with knowledge to stuff like herbolary, the rest would be traditional remedies (and perhaps a few or more being killed under the accusation of witchcraft). It wasn’t until the renaissance that people outside religion would practice healing techniques (it would still be a far cry from modern or even last century medicine, but it was a start). Despite this, people still had the taboo of opening cadavers (this made to many crazy theories about how the body worked), but people like Leonardo Da Vinci opened cadavers and begin to learn how the human body works (very likely to how necromancy is bad because of desecration and reanimation of corpses).
In previous editions, healing spells were classified as necromancy, instead of evocation. My headcanon is that the churches placed a prohibition on wizards to refrain them from learning healing magic, for that would be considered necromancy (or association with fiends and other extraplanar beings), and anyone . In previous versions, healing spells were classified as necromancy instead of evocation, so it would make sense that any wizard that cracked the code on how to heal would be accused of practicing necromancy (whether they did or not).
Halfling Mark of Healing allows Cure Wounds, and various other healing spells, available as a Wizard without multi-classing.
I blame Mystra.
You could always take the Healer feat. It's not a lot of healing per person, but you can do it every single person you meet once per long rest so it will add up. When you heal a 4th level character you'd heal them for 1d6+8, that's better than Cure Wounds. And you're doing it with your smarts rather than mumbling to some god.