Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Basic] Skill of the week: Esoteric Medicine

Pursuivant · 09-12-2018, 06:04 PM

Remember that Esoteric Medicine is the GURPS 4E "generic" version of various GURPS 3E low-tech medical skills such as Moxa Burning or Ancient/Medieval Galenic medicine.

It combines a mixture of practical (not necessarily effective) medical treatment with "non-scientific" or assumptions about how the body, and sometimes the universe, works. As such, its effectiveness depends on campaign assumptions about culture and the supernatural.

Realistically, it's going to be a grab bag of practical low tech First Aid, Pharmacy, and Physician techniques and treatments which are dangerously misinformed by modern standards. In a campaign where supernatural elements work, it can be the equivalent of First Aid or Physician skill, or even a form of super-healing which can treat ailments that conventional medicine cannot.

09-12-2018, 06:04 PM	#60
Pursuivant Join Date: Apr 2005	Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Esoteric Medicine Remember that Esoteric Medicine is the GURPS 4E "generic" version of various GURPS 3E low-tech medical skills such as Moxa Burning or Ancient/Medieval Galenic medicine. It combines a mixture of practical (not necessarily effective) medical treatment with "non-scientific" or assumptions about how the body, and sometimes the universe, works. As such, its effectiveness depends on campaign assumptions about culture and the supernatural. Realistically, it's going to be a grab bag of practical low tech First Aid, Pharmacy, and Physician techniques and treatments which are dangerously misinformed by modern standards. In a campaign where supernatural elements work, it can be the equivalent of First Aid or Physician skill, or even a form of super-healing which can treat ailments that conventional medicine cannot.