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Hello to you all,
I have few questions about Cure Spells, Regenerate and Ressurrection.
These spells have the power to close wounds, grow members back and even grow new bodies back, but what about self implied wounds - like ritual castration, scarification and tattoos - that are willingly sustained whatever the motive, they are reverted? And the loss of virginity in the case of female characters? or even self mutilation in favor of feat/prestige class requirements or magic item usage? Whow do you deal with this on your table?
Edit - Sory about that, this is not a rules question, it should be in general discussion, my second post here, sorry for the mistake.
We dont. It's usually a non issue.
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Helamen,sorry about the wording "virginity", i used it in the lack of a more objetive word to describe imen rupture, but i agree with you. Apart of that, the fact that a maiden bleed or not in our medieval times (hell, until recently, even) was a big deal, so, in the mentioned viewpoint, it is a certificate that a maiden is a maiden.
About cauterization, many cultures that use this kind of ritual do cauterize the wound (whatever the bit they riped off). And i share your opinion that a mere cure won't grow the thing again, but regenerate? In the book says that it grows back: fingers, toes, hands, feet, arms, legs, tails and heads, and grows organs back too. But they wount if aplied fire, i understand it right?
I would interpret the rules this way:
Regenerate only affects the body part that is regenerated. So it only affects scarifications/tattoos on the severed parts. And then only if the body part is regrown from scratch and not just reattached.
Cure spells affect the whole body, but mostly heal dangerous/deep wounds. So I would say superficial things like scarifications/tattoos are not affected.
Resurrection also affects the whole body and is quite profound, but again, it depends on what is left of the body.
Dragon #156 answered a similar question, "Can a ring of regeneration restore a female character's maidenhead well enough to fool a unicorn?". Basically the regeneration will restore the physical aspects, but won't help restore the mystical virgin status.
IMHO the Atonement spell feels like a nice fit for the mystical side of the issue for a campaign where it would matter.
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Dragon #156 answered a similar question, "Can a ring of regeneration restore a female character's maidenhead well enough to fool a unicorn?". Basically the regeneration will restore the physical aspects, but won't help restore the mystical virgin status.
IMHO the Atonement spell feels like a nice fit for the mystical side of the issue for a campaign where it would matter.
so...
"She is'nt fit for the King!"
*high level cleric casts Regeneration and Atonement.* "Is now."
*Unicorn nods*
"All hail the Queen!"
From what I see in the rules, I believe the spells can removes scars/etc BUT it is by choice. For instance, if you WANT to stay circumsized/ritually scarred etc you can CHOOSE to not have it affect that aspect, but if you want to get rid of scars healing magic is the way to do it. I agree with the above posts about virginity, except I wouldn't allow atonement to affect the status (i.e. not a virgin = not a virgin, even with an intact hymen)
Even a broken hymen doesn't mean you had any IRL, so...
Technically, all beneficial spells require the participant to be willing. This implies that one can accept a healing spell, but only to his or her accepted self- Meaning, scars they like, tattoos, self inflicted wounds, whatever, will still exist because it is what they are willing to accept as their true self, and nothing more. Likewise, a raise dead spell requires the dead to be raised to be willing.
Now, if someone wanted to be a complete jerk and heal those things anyway, without the character's consent, the character would have to roll a will save as though it were an offensive spell.
Characters are allowed saves on harmless spells, but once it's cast, it's cast, and if you don't want it, you have to save. Or so I interpret it.
Edit- I remember looking into this when I was making an Ogrillon barbarian who hated magic to the extend that he would almost always deny magical healing.
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The discussion was very interesting so far, so we can try to compile the options according to fantasy settings:
Low Fantasy: scars/etc cannot be removed with cure spell, nor regenerate, but full ressurrection remove those (question, even if the recipient is unwilling? if not, the spell fails?)
Fantasy: scars/etc could be removed by cure spells and regenerate, depends of the target willingness and time of cure applied.
High Fantasy: scars/etc can be removed with cure spells and can be mantained at will, even in ressurrection.
How do you think about these guidelines?
Fun trivia: what about milk tooth? they grow back?
Re: Virginity
Focus on virginity is very much a product of a patriarchal culture. The culture in Golarian is much more egalitarian than in Earth's middle ages/renaissance, so female virginity is probably less of a life-or-death matter that it was for women in the real world, and more of a social status thing like it is in the modern western world, or maybe that of 50 years ago. When women could be killed for failing to bleed on their marriage beds, those who had lost their hymens for other reasons would resort to subterfuge. In a magical society, however, supernatural lie detection, divination spells specifically focused on this matter, and, yes, the diagnostic test of 'put her in with the unicorn and see if it lets her touch it' would make this easier, at least for those who didn't actually lose it early.
Societies with easily-available magical healing would probably only keep scars they wanted to keep. E.g. Wendy and Richard Pini's Elfquest.