How to use magical healing?

[Pharier]

Greetings.

I am curious on the mechanics regarding magical healing and the requirements to use it.

For instance does the caster require strong knowledge of the human anatomy or of herbalism and medicine when magically healing an injury or even regenerating a lost limb. Also if yes would a divine caster need that knowledge as well, even though they channel their power through the gods?

Other things

[ShadowcatX]

Nope, casters don't need to know a thing about what they're doing to do it, the positive energy (channelled or through spells) does all the heavy lifting.

[Pharier]

ShadowcatX wrote:

Nope, casters don't need to know a thing about what they're doing to do it, the positive energy (channelled or through spells) does all the heavy lifting.

Really? But then if healing was that easy why would others even bother with non-magical healing methods? Seems pointless if all you have to do is to be able to channel positive energy into the patient.

[Snorter]

Not everyone is a divine healer.

There are also other uses for the Heal skill, like giving the patient an assist on their next poison or disease save. It's not as easy to spare those higher level spell slots.

[JoeOutside]

Well, the main reason I believe is price. Magical healing will cost significant amounts of gold per casting (at least for the non-adventurer) while a physician with the heal skill would cost some silver by comparison.
Adventurers use the heal skill largely as backup and do rely largely on magical healing, in my experience.

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

I tend to think of it as dramatically speeding up the natural healing process. it's not regeneration after all. Meaning you still get scars. Adventurers skin is bound to look like a roadmap.

[Legion42]

Magical healing if where the money is for divine healers, but take that player/character out of a group and see how quickly things get dicey for the rest of the party. I've been in a few play groups that started with no divine casters, or bards for that matter. When over night healing, expensive potions, and risky UMD scroll checks are all you have to work with the Healing Skill becomes enormously important for a low level group. Even with a divine caster the previously mention additional poison/disease save is very useful/necessary before the Remove "x" spells are available.

Using Heal checks in place of Knowledge Anatomy is also very common to identify certain things with injuries and deaths creatures sustain. Noticing that a certain internal organ is missing or certain traces of poisons, i.e. injection sites or discoloring, that helps track or identify the source can move an adventurer towards an unknown enemy with greater knowledge and preparation.