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Old 03-07-2018, 02:03 AM   #46
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Esoteric Medicine

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
No, it really isn't. Two skills that do the same thing are the same skill, and most claimed benefits of esoteric medicine are firmly in scope for conventional medicine (though conventional medicine may not claim to have effective treatments); if it actually works, it's just Physician (or a related skill) via an alternate tech path.
They're not doing the same thing. Just like what Pharmacy and Surgery do are not the same thing as what Physician does, even though all three can e.g. stop bleeding. You don't use Physician to stop internal bleeding (Brain/Vitals/etc.), you don't use Surgery to make a bloodclotting gel. You also don't use Surgery nor Pharmacy for long-term care through traditional rational reductionist approaches.

I'm totally sympathetic towards a game system having skills split by what they're trying to achieve (so that Lockpicking, ElOps (Sonic Screwdriver) and the Locksmith Spell would all be different familiarities of a single skill), but that's not the way GURPS works.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Massage therapy, to the degree it does anything, fits under Physician (specifically, physical therapy. GURPS can be odd about what it requires specializations for, having mandatory specialization for esoteric medicine and no specialization at all for physician is... silly).
That's begging the question, X is Y because X is Y.

But the fact is on the contrary, massage is firmly a Professional Skill (Masseur) or a subset of Esoteric Medicine specialties (LT154).
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