One interesting skill that I was wondering if it would get a second look at is the heal skill. The rules state about how to apply first aid, long term care, how to treat poison as well as diseas. But one thing that concerns me is how does a character diagnose an illness, disease, or poison short of detect poison? The skill description does not allow you determine a type of disease...only treat it.
One suggestion may be to treat it more like the new identify, where the heal skill can 'diagnose' an ilness or poison but at a higher DC and the Detect poison spell can either be a guaranteed result or add a +10 to the heal skill.
How else would and adventuring party or a village healer (natural) be able to diagnose the vast number and types of illnesses, diseases, or poisons?
Any thoughts or am I missing something?
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One interesting skill that I was wondering if it would get a second look at is the heal skill. The rules state about how to apply first aid, long term care, how to treat poison as well as diseas. But one thing that concerns me is how does a character diagnose an illness, disease, or poison short of detect poison? The skill description does not allow you determine a type of disease...only treat it.
One suggestion may be to treat it more like the new identify, where the heal skill can 'diagnose' an ilness or poison but at a higher DC and the Detect poison spell can either be a guaranteed result or add a +10 to the heal skill.
How else would and adventuring party or a village healer (natural) be able to diagnose the vast number and types of illnesses, diseases, or poisons?
Any thoughts or am I missing something?
A very fine point. How do you know what herbs to use if you don't know what the disease is?
But... I think the concept of an accurate diagnosis is probably subsumed in accurate treatment, behind-the-scenes-like. You roll a good Heal check, and you've figured it all out, diagnosis through treatment. It's terribly simplified and game-oriented. Talk to the healer, he makes his roll, get back to the dungeon.
If you wanted to get more crunchy you could add a "diagnose" Heal check, which then gives you a bonus to the "treat" Heal check. Some people might like a more gritty approach to Heal, particularly in a low-magic setting.
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indeed
but i would go frot he fact that without diagnosing it, well it can be tried or you could get it all wrong
threat a disease without knowing what it is i will give a -10 penalty
i would leave the same DC for diagnosing it as it is for threating it, just then after diagnosing it you would be able to treat it.
a 20 or a 1 either give bonuses or extra penalties
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For simplicity, I think I'd prefer keeping it to one Heal check, with the diagnosis assumed to be part of the skill use. If the DC is made, the diagnosis was correct and treatment applied. If the DC was failed, the diagnosis was incorrect and the wrong treatment applied *or* the diagnosis was correct and the treatment simply failed.
The GM might dictate that a closely failed Heal check might include a successful diagnosis, but inadequate treatment, and offer some sort of information as to alternate means of treatment, allowing the standard re-roll, perhaps even with a circumstance bonus, if it was a *really* close miss, representing the knowledge of the condition that the healer can call upon, while a botched Heal check might result in the healer being dead-set that he has correctly diagnosed the ailment (when he's in fact quite wrong), and have a penalty to later attempts to Heal the ailment, as his treatments are utterly inappropriate.
But this sort of stuff would mostly be a DM purview kind of thing, and not something that I feel could be adequately put into hard and fast rules.
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Contributor
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I agree that this can be handled on a case-by-case basis. However, from a "realism" standpoint, it is often possible to recognize an illness even if the observer can do nothing to treat it.
If someone wanted to add a layer of detail, I would suggest giving diseases a seperate, lower DC to allow for diagnosis, while keeping the higher DC for treatment. This effectively codifies the recommendation that the DM adjudicate "close" rolls as proper diagnosis with improper treatment.
I agree that this can be handled on a case-by-case basis. However, from a "realism" standpoint, it is often possible to recognize an illness even if the observer can do nothing to treat it.
If someone wanted to add a layer of detail, I would suggest giving diseases a seperate, lower DC to allow for diagnosis, while keeping the higher DC for treatment. This effectively codifies the recommendation that the DM adjudicate "close" rolls as proper diagnosis with improper treatment.
I agree with this option. Maybe diagnosis should be a -5 to the check or even -10 since you cant treat it without knowing what it is.