Can Dhampir (and other undead) be healed with Medicine skill?

[Oni Shogun]

How does that work exactly?

[Castilliano]

Let's clear up a misconception, Dhampir are not undead. They are not treated as undead except for sharing Void Healing which only addresses Vitality & Void effects.

As for the question, it's whether or not the Medicine skill uses Vitality (which it doesn't) or specifies only living targets. Most uses work on any creature though notably Treat Wounds does say "injured living creature" so that usage won't work on undead. Yet you could use Treat Wounds on a Dhampir fine since they remain living creatures (at least until they go exploring their roots and adding undead qualities via feats and such).

[HammerJack]

Additionally, if you're talking about undead, not dhampirs, the Stitch Flesh feat allows you to Treat Wounds on undead.

[Oni Shogun]

Castilliano wrote:

Let's clear up a misconception, Dhampir are not undead. They are not treated as undead except for sharing Void Healing which only addresses Vitality & Void effects.

As for the question, it's whether or not the Medicine skill uses Vitality (which it doesn't) or specifies only living targets. Most uses work on any creature though notably Treat Wounds does say "injured living creature" so that usage won't work on undead. Yet you could use Treat Wounds on a Dhampir fine since they remain living creatures (at least until they go exploring their roots and adding undead qualities via feats and such).

That's not what the Void Healing and Negative healing says. They have the negative healing attribute so I was told Treat Wounds does NOT work on them fine?

[Oni Shogun]

Is there any official answer on this somewhere? My DM said Dhampir cannot be healed by Treat Wounds and need the Stitch Flesh feat?

[graystone]

"You have the negative healing ability, which means you are harmed by positive damage and healed by negative effects as if you were undead." In the remaster, negative healing was changed to Void Healing: "A creature with void healing draws health from void energy rather than vitality energy. It is damaged by vitality damage and is not healed by healing vitality effects. It does not take void damage, and it is healed by void effects that heal undead."

Treat Wounds only has the Exploration, Healing and Manipulate traits so it's unaffected by Void Healing [it's neither Vitality or Void]. the only thing that matters is that the target has to be an "injured living creature". This means a Dhampir can have Treat Wounds work on them normally but a non-living undead needs Stitch Flesh.

[Castilliano]

Oni Shogun wrote:

Is there any official answer on this somewhere? My DM said Dhampir cannot be healed by Treat Wounds and need the Stitch Flesh feat?

Your DM/GM is wrong. There's no official answer because there's no question: Dhampir are living creatures & Treat Wounds works on them whether reading from Negative Healing or Void Healing.

Link them to this conversation if needed.

[Oni Shogun]

But there is no official response in this conversation yet. Does PFS have a ruling on it? Cause he DMs for PFS too.

[Perpdepog]

I mean, if dhampir were undead, they'd have the Undead trait, no? All other undead do, even when they're a form of undead that has its own trait, like Ghoul or Mummy. If dhampir haven't got the Undead trait then they aren't undead; end of story.

There's also this, if your GM needs more convincing.

Dhampir wrote:

Despite being living creatures, dhampirs respond to positive and negative energy as if they were undead, making them unwelcome in many holy communities and often driving them toward necromantic arts. Dhampirs aren't immortal, but age far more slowly than most mortals, with a lifespan similar to that of an elf. Dhampirs have difficulty producing children of their own, and those few born to a dhampir are never dhampirs themselves.

Emphasis mine.

[graystone]

Oni Shogun wrote:

But there is no official response in this conversation yet. Does PFS have a ruling on it? Cause he DMs for PFS too.

Why would there be an official response when it answers is self evident? Why would PFS rule that the words in print actually mean what the words mean? It's like saying 'why isn't there a ruling on strength being used in Athletics check'... the answer is 'because that's what the rules say' and there isn't a need to clarify further.

You can check the PFS documents and forum to see what there is, but all I saw was that PC's with Void Healing get the option to get Void healing items from the pathfinder society when healing items are offered: that's it.

[Errenor]

Oni Shogun wrote:

But there is no official response in this conversation yet.

To add to what graystone wrote, there almost certainly won't be an 'official' response. The designers don't answer mechanical questions on the forum. Again, almost never, but don't wait. We are all you get.

And yes, the case is very clear, as others say.

[Captain Morgan]

So do they let preteens play in PFS? Cuz that would make a lot of threads make more sense.

[Easl]

Captain Morgan wrote:

So do they let preteens play in PFS? Cuz that would make a lot of threads make more sense.

In this case it appears to be the GM that's being overly restrictive, not the player.

[Finoan]

Oni Shogun wrote:

But there is no official response in this conversation yet. Does PFS have a ruling on it? Cause he DMs for PFS too.

Attempting to stitch the rules together here. Starting with listing them out:

Dhampir: "Despite being living creatures, dhampirs respond to positive and negative energy as if they were undead"; "You have the negative healing ability, which means you are harmed by positive damage and healed by negative effects as if you were undead."

Void Healing: "...is damaged by vitality damage and is not healed by healing vitality effects."

Treat Wounds: (Exploration, Healing, Manipulate) You spend 10 minutes treating one injured living creature (targeting yourself, if you so choose).

-----

Treat Wounds is a Healing effect since it has the Healing trait, but it is not a Vitality Healing effect since it does not have the Vitality trait. (Vitality is an energy type and Treat Wounds is not an energy ability. It is purely mechanical and mundane.)

Dhampir is a living creature. It has Void Healing, but that does not cause the creature to not still be a living creature. It would need to have the Undead trait or be stated to be an undead creature in order to not be a living creature (or be a construct creature or something else like that, but that isn't as relevant to this conversation).

So yes. A Dhampir creature can be targeted and healed with Treat Wounds.

-----

If the GM does not agree with this, can they explain what rules citations they are using to come to that conclusion?

[Farien]

Healing a Dhampir with Treat Wounds pretty clearly works.

Now, healing a Dhampir with the Heal or Harm spells - that's some gray area there.

[Captain Morgan]

Easl wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

So do they let preteens play in PFS? Cuz that would make a lot of threads make more sense.

In this case it appears to be the GM that's being overly restrictive, not the player.

Sure, but there's still an unrealistic expectation for an official response to a thing which requires no response. And apparently an inability to convey this very basic premise to the GM.

[Easl]

Finoan wrote:

(Vitality is an energy type and Treat Wounds is not an energy ability. It is purely mechanical and mundane.)

Well, aside from it being action-hero fast and easy to do, yes :)

That may be where the GM is missing the trick; he may be thinking of all healing effects as fitting into a binary - either life force or death force oriented - when in fact it's triplet; metaphysically magical lifeforce effects, metaphysically magical death force effects, and bog standard sewing people up and the movie classic "pour rum on the wound so it doesn't get infected." A dhamphir has the magical forces flipped so that the life force stuff ("vitality") hurts them and the death force stuff ("void") helps them, but the bog standard sewing people up stuff works on them the same way it does other people.

Or put another way: it may be a natural assumption for someone who doesn't go 'deep' into game lore to intuit that healing people via medicine bears some similarities to healing them by spell. But in the game's metaphysics, one is some weird outer plane magic while the other isn't. Very different, even if they both result in "PC gains HP."

[Oni Shogun]

Captain Morgan wrote:

So do they let preteens play in PFS? Cuz that would make a lot of threads make more sense.

Don't be rude and childish like that.

[Errenor]

Easl wrote:

all healing effects as fitting into a binary - either life force or death force oriented - when in fact it's triplet; metaphysically magical lifeforce effects, metaphysically magical death force effects, and bog standard sewing people up and the movie classic "pour rum on the wound so it doesn't get infected."

It's close to quintet actually, there're also simply metaphysically magical effects. Like Soothe.

And also metaphysically non-magical effects, specifically alchemy.

[YuriP]

Oni Shogun wrote:

But there is no official response in this conversation yet. Does PFS have a ruling on it? Cause he DMs for PFS too.

There's no official response because this wasn't put in question before because it's pretty simple:

Are Dhampir a living creatures? Yes they are!

Dhampirs have undead trait? No. They just cannot be healed by healing with Vitality trait/energy instead the could be healed by healing with Void trait/energy.

Treat Wounds have Vitality or Void traits or uses these energies? No it just requires that the target is an injured living creature what's is the case of an injured Dhampirs.

There's no doubt or contradiction here to require an errata/faq or any other official positioning.

About you GM being a PFS GM you can call for your Venture Captain for help probably he/she/it will agree with us that's your GM is understanding wrongly the thing and that's there's no need an official positioning about it because the thing is already clear your GM is just misunderstanding it.

[St!llborn]

Farien wrote:

Healing a Dhampir with Treat Wounds pretty clearly works.

Now, healing a Dhampir with the Heal or Harm spells - that's some gray area there.

There's no grey area there either.

- Heal is Vitality and Harm is Void. Both spells are clearly tagged and include such wording in their respective spell descriptions.
- Dhampir had the Void Healing effect, which states they are healed by Void and hurt by Vitality.

[NorrKnekten]

St!llborn wrote:

Farien wrote:

Healing a Dhampir with Treat Wounds pretty clearly works.

Now, healing a Dhampir with the Heal or Harm spells - that's some gray area there.

There's no grey area there either.

- Heal is Vitality and Harm is Void. Both spells are clearly tagged and include such wording in their respective spell descriptions.
- Dhampir had the Void Healing effect, which states they are healed by Void and hurt by Vitality.

Bit old of a post to respond to but, yes there are absolutely gray areas when the spells themselves are written to have different effects depending on if the target is alive or dead. For example Dhamphirs are living creatures and as such are invalid targets for anything that targets undead, and spells that alternate effects depending on the target's traits is also treating them as alive. (Or else Vitality Lash wouldnt have been changed to say "undead or otherwise has void healing" in the remaster)

Its a repeated topic as seen from 4 years ago in Are Dhampirs Harmed by the Heal Spell?

[Indi523]

Perpdepog wrote:

I mean, if dhampir were undead, they'd have the Undead trait, no? All other undead do, even when they're a form of undead that has its own trait, like Ghoul or Mummy. If dhampir haven't got the Undead trait then they aren't undead; end of story.

There's also this, if your GM needs more convincing.

Dhampir wrote:

Despite being living creatures, dhampirs respond to positive and negative energy as if they were undead, making them unwelcome in many holy communities and often driving them toward necromantic arts. Dhampirs aren't immortal, but age far more slowly than most mortals, with a lifespan similar to that of an elf. Dhampirs have difficulty producing children of their own, and those few born to a dhampir are never dhampirs themselves.

Emphasis mine.

IN PF1E they were half undead. Is that still the case in remastered?

[Errenor]

Indi523 wrote:

IN PF1E they were half undead. Is that still the case in remastered?

You kind of got the citation in the post you answered to. No, they are not, they are living creatures. With a specific quality "void healing". Mechanically, that is. In fiction they are still living creatures: they need to eat, breath, they function as living creatures and respond to normal medicine. It's just ther internal magic works differently (in the sense life essence has two sort of aspects, void and vitality, and is part of the world's magic, also being fundamental force). That can be interpreted as being half-undead I suppose, but this is more an in-game philosophy and doesn't matter for playing.