Ranger Archive
Thread: On herbs
Page 1 of 1
Madhi
Sat Sep 25, 2004 6:40 am
#1
Hello all,
I read through the ranger post a couple of times, and saw that one of the ideas was using herbs as some sort of medicine.
Because I study natural medicine and herbal medicine is one of my favorite subjects, I decided to share my knowledge with you all and tell you what it can do in Star Wars.
[i]First of all why should rangers get herbal medicine, why not doctors/medics/combat medics?[/i]
Doctors read a lot of books, do research on medicine and how it affects people, and try to prove why their medicine works using chemical and biological theories. It is hard to prove the effectiveness of herbs as it differs from person to person. Therefor it is not medicine for the masses, but for the individual. Therefor it is not considered a great medicine for doctors.
Herbs grow in the wild. In RL Herbal medicine, you look at the plant and determine by appearance what it's healing qualities are. For example a herb with a very red flower will be good for your blood (because blood is red to). Yarrow a herb with white flowers, is good for female ailments and to purify the body of toxins (white is often associated with females and purity). As rangers live in the wild, it is logical that they will learn to identify the various herbs, and thus learning their medical usage.
[i]So how should herbs be collected?[/i]
To answer this I have thought of 3 ways.
[b]1)[/b] Through the use of a flora farm. I'm not fond of this idea, because rangers like their herbs fresh from the ground; besides using a factory can heat the herbs, thereby destroying numerous important substances.
[b]2)[/b] The system which is used in morrowind could be used. You just click on a plant and you can harvest some resources of it. Though this will mean that there will be a lot of static plants (don't know anything about computers but i guess this would lag a lot). Also plants should be able to yield a harvest, and then be exhausted for awhile. This will probably mean a lot of programming so we'd better skip this one
[b]3)[/b] Harvest the herbs using [b]/forage[/b]. This is the best option IMO. Forage increases with skill so you can harvest a bigger variety with high foraging and a slight increase in quantity (i say slight cuz when you can harvest a plant, it's not much harder to harvest it entirely). This would also give scouts the ability to harvest herbs, but it could be so that the easiest herbs need novice ranger level forage (resembling the fact that the ranger has spent enought time outside examining the enviremont to know what plant cures what disease.)
[i]So I got a bunch of herbs what do I do know?[/i]
Herbs differ from 'western medicine' in a number of ways.
1) Western medicine is very good at curing acute diseases, fast and effective. Herbs aren't good for this.
2) herbs are very good for curing chronic diseases. Western medicine isn't.
3) Western medicine works fast and effective (an aspirine can take a way your headache in a minute and keep it away for hours). Herbs take time to take effect though they will last longer (it takes 2 days before your headache is gone, but it won't come back for a week)
To put this in the game.
[b]1)[/b] Herbs should not be used to cure your HAM like stims do. It isn't powerful enough for this task, you'll have to see at least a medic.
[b]2)[/b] Herbs take time and patience to apply and to take effect. As a result herbs can only be used in camps and the like. Some herbs should take time to have an effect, more on this later.
[b]3)[/b] Herbs can cure wounds and maybe various status effects. These are the RL chronic diseases in SWG.
[i]So I just double click a herb and *poof* my wounds are gone[/i]
Nope, although it is possible to cure a lot of diseases by only using herbs and water, I like the idea of needing other professions. Some 'tools' to aide you in curing, should be available and craftable by various professions.
[b]Tailors[/b] can make a bandage which you can use in conjunction with herbs to cure healt/action wounds.
[b]Chefs[/b] can make alcohol to conserve your herbal tincture (combination of water/alcohol/herbs).
[b]Doctors[/b] could make herbal pills which act faster though have less effect.
[b]Bio-engineers[/b] should be able to make be'd herbs, though these can only used for doctor pills. Rangers only use the natural varient of a plant.
[i]what can herbs cure and how does it work?[/i]
First of all herbs should be able to cure all the wounds. The first lesson I got at school was 'you can't heal the body without healing the mind'. To cure wounds you could think of using bandages with herbs for health and action wounds (+plus substats). A relaxing herbal tea could be all you need to recover some mental strength (mind/will/focus).
Although I said above that herbs could cure status effects, it would be more appropiate for it to give a resistance bonus. As an example, we already saw that red flowers are good for the blood, when making a tincture with a red herb, it could increase you resistance to bleeding attacks for a while. A strong tincture of a relaxing herbs might give you resistances to intimidation (your mind isn't distracted).
You can only have one herbal resistance at a time. In RL the number of herbs you get is limited as it could counter eachother. Each resistance should stay for about half an hour to an hour. Also to get a resistance you should wait a while after applying it. This is to resemble the time your body needs to produce a reaction. I think that half the duration of the herb would be good (example: if you have a resistance herb that has half an hour effect, you have to wait 15 minutes before the herb actually begins working after using it).
Come to think of it Poison and diseases should be curable by herbs. As a matter of fact these are the things which herbal medicine is very good at in RL. A bad tasting 'detox' tea should be able to eliminate the toxins of a poison. and treading you patient with teas, tinctures and bandages would cure the disease. Though this should take time. A way to do this is that after you apply herbs to a poisoned or diseased person it is not instantly cured. The poison/disease will instead stop doing damage. If you enter combat the poison/disease will return, because you don't take time to rest. If you rest (not just sitting around againgst a tree, I do mean camping) the herbs will continu to work until the disease/poison wears off). Of course you can think of various herbs to cure various diseases/poisons.
So in short:
Bandages heals Health/action wounds.
Relaxing herbs in tea heals mind wounds.
Various tinctures give various resistances.
Detox tea heals poisons.
For diseases anything can be used, don't know which would be best.
Doctor pills can be used to cure all wounds, though they aren't effective (unless be'd but then rangers can not use them).
[i]How about helping others with herbs?[/i]
Well you're not a schooled healer so I would limit the use of healing others. I'd say you can cure poisons, and health/action wounds (+substats). The other wounds, giving resistances, and curing diseases asks to much of medical knowledge to apply to others.
[i]Teas, tinctures, raw herbs; what about food/drink filling[/i]
This could be a good way to make herbs weaker. If you read through this post herbs can seem to be overpowered (especially considering how strong we rangers already are
). It should have a fill but just a very small one as herbs will speed up your digestive system.
[i]which herbs can be found where?[/i]
Herbs differ from planet to planet. In rl certain herbs are common where the disease it can cure is common. I don't know if this can be integrated in to the game. Or you can make the herbs scatter around all planets. Thereby giving tatooine high level herbs (which you can't harvest untill you have a high forage skill) and low level herbs on dath (which you can harvest as a novice ranger.
This is all I can come up with right now. If you have any comments post here and i will update it, if you got a point. Also all typos and errors are welcome. I'm not english so, I could always use some help to learn it
I read through the ranger post a couple of times, and saw that one of the ideas was using herbs as some sort of medicine.
Because I study natural medicine and herbal medicine is one of my favorite subjects, I decided to share my knowledge with you all and tell you what it can do in Star Wars.
[i]First of all why should rangers get herbal medicine, why not doctors/medics/combat medics?[/i]
Doctors read a lot of books, do research on medicine and how it affects people, and try to prove why their medicine works using chemical and biological theories. It is hard to prove the effectiveness of herbs as it differs from person to person. Therefor it is not medicine for the masses, but for the individual. Therefor it is not considered a great medicine for doctors.
Herbs grow in the wild. In RL Herbal medicine, you look at the plant and determine by appearance what it's healing qualities are. For example a herb with a very red flower will be good for your blood (because blood is red to). Yarrow a herb with white flowers, is good for female ailments and to purify the body of toxins (white is often associated with females and purity). As rangers live in the wild, it is logical that they will learn to identify the various herbs, and thus learning their medical usage.
[i]So how should herbs be collected?[/i]
To answer this I have thought of 3 ways.
[b]1)[/b] Through the use of a flora farm. I'm not fond of this idea, because rangers like their herbs fresh from the ground; besides using a factory can heat the herbs, thereby destroying numerous important substances.
[b]2)[/b] The system which is used in morrowind could be used. You just click on a plant and you can harvest some resources of it. Though this will mean that there will be a lot of static plants (don't know anything about computers but i guess this would lag a lot). Also plants should be able to yield a harvest, and then be exhausted for awhile. This will probably mean a lot of programming so we'd better skip this one
[b]3)[/b] Harvest the herbs using [b]/forage[/b]. This is the best option IMO. Forage increases with skill so you can harvest a bigger variety with high foraging and a slight increase in quantity (i say slight cuz when you can harvest a plant, it's not much harder to harvest it entirely). This would also give scouts the ability to harvest herbs, but it could be so that the easiest herbs need novice ranger level forage (resembling the fact that the ranger has spent enought time outside examining the enviremont to know what plant cures what disease.)
[i]So I got a bunch of herbs what do I do know?[/i]
Herbs differ from 'western medicine' in a number of ways.
1) Western medicine is very good at curing acute diseases, fast and effective. Herbs aren't good for this.
2) herbs are very good for curing chronic diseases. Western medicine isn't.
3) Western medicine works fast and effective (an aspirine can take a way your headache in a minute and keep it away for hours). Herbs take time to take effect though they will last longer (it takes 2 days before your headache is gone, but it won't come back for a week)
To put this in the game.
[b]1)[/b] Herbs should not be used to cure your HAM like stims do. It isn't powerful enough for this task, you'll have to see at least a medic.
[b]2)[/b] Herbs take time and patience to apply and to take effect. As a result herbs can only be used in camps and the like. Some herbs should take time to have an effect, more on this later.
[b]3)[/b] Herbs can cure wounds and maybe various status effects. These are the RL chronic diseases in SWG.
[i]So I just double click a herb and *poof* my wounds are gone[/i]
Nope, although it is possible to cure a lot of diseases by only using herbs and water, I like the idea of needing other professions. Some 'tools' to aide you in curing, should be available and craftable by various professions.
[b]Tailors[/b] can make a bandage which you can use in conjunction with herbs to cure healt/action wounds.
[b]Chefs[/b] can make alcohol to conserve your herbal tincture (combination of water/alcohol/herbs).
[b]Doctors[/b] could make herbal pills which act faster though have less effect.
[b]Bio-engineers[/b] should be able to make be'd herbs, though these can only used for doctor pills. Rangers only use the natural varient of a plant.
[i]what can herbs cure and how does it work?[/i]
First of all herbs should be able to cure all the wounds. The first lesson I got at school was 'you can't heal the body without healing the mind'. To cure wounds you could think of using bandages with herbs for health and action wounds (+plus substats). A relaxing herbal tea could be all you need to recover some mental strength (mind/will/focus).
Although I said above that herbs could cure status effects, it would be more appropiate for it to give a resistance bonus. As an example, we already saw that red flowers are good for the blood, when making a tincture with a red herb, it could increase you resistance to bleeding attacks for a while. A strong tincture of a relaxing herbs might give you resistances to intimidation (your mind isn't distracted).
You can only have one herbal resistance at a time. In RL the number of herbs you get is limited as it could counter eachother. Each resistance should stay for about half an hour to an hour. Also to get a resistance you should wait a while after applying it. This is to resemble the time your body needs to produce a reaction. I think that half the duration of the herb would be good (example: if you have a resistance herb that has half an hour effect, you have to wait 15 minutes before the herb actually begins working after using it).
Come to think of it Poison and diseases should be curable by herbs. As a matter of fact these are the things which herbal medicine is very good at in RL. A bad tasting 'detox' tea should be able to eliminate the toxins of a poison. and treading you patient with teas, tinctures and bandages would cure the disease. Though this should take time. A way to do this is that after you apply herbs to a poisoned or diseased person it is not instantly cured. The poison/disease will instead stop doing damage. If you enter combat the poison/disease will return, because you don't take time to rest. If you rest (not just sitting around againgst a tree, I do mean camping) the herbs will continu to work until the disease/poison wears off). Of course you can think of various herbs to cure various diseases/poisons.
So in short:
Bandages heals Health/action wounds.
Relaxing herbs in tea heals mind wounds.
Various tinctures give various resistances.
Detox tea heals poisons.
For diseases anything can be used, don't know which would be best.
Doctor pills can be used to cure all wounds, though they aren't effective (unless be'd but then rangers can not use them).
[i]How about helping others with herbs?[/i]
Well you're not a schooled healer so I would limit the use of healing others. I'd say you can cure poisons, and health/action wounds (+substats). The other wounds, giving resistances, and curing diseases asks to much of medical knowledge to apply to others.
[i]Teas, tinctures, raw herbs; what about food/drink filling[/i]
This could be a good way to make herbs weaker. If you read through this post herbs can seem to be overpowered (especially considering how strong we rangers already are
). It should have a fill but just a very small one as herbs will speed up your digestive system.[i]which herbs can be found where?[/i]
Herbs differ from planet to planet. In rl certain herbs are common where the disease it can cure is common. I don't know if this can be integrated in to the game. Or you can make the herbs scatter around all planets. Thereby giving tatooine high level herbs (which you can't harvest untill you have a high forage skill) and low level herbs on dath (which you can harvest as a novice ranger.
This is all I can come up with right now. If you have any comments post here and i will update it, if you got a point. Also all typos and errors are welcome. I'm not english so, I could always use some help to learn it
Fodder650
Sat Sep 25, 2004 7:38 am
#3
Nice read. And a good way to show the devs the reasoning behind why we should have it. You even made sure there were some downsides so we dont interfere with the doctors. And everything seems really balances. Plus that we will have to have full inventory of the components to make everything. I was showing this to my wife the real life pharmacist and her first reaction was that you must be European since this is more of a euro take on medicines then we americans do.
tiberius4327
Sat Sep 25, 2004 8:50 am
#4
The only problem I can see with this is:
Herbs should be used to heal wounds, but they can only be used in camps. Camps already heal wounds so it doesn't make sense to use herbs as well.
Other than that it is a pretty good idea
Madhi
Sat Sep 25, 2004 9:54 am
#6
tiberius4327 wrote:The only problem I can see with this is:Herbs should be used to heal wounds, but they can only be used in camps. Camps already heal wounds so it doesn't make sense to use herbs as well.Other than that it is a pretty good idea
But you could use it to speed up your own wound recovery or you could heal the wounds of party members faster.
Enoshima
Sat Sep 25, 2004 11:08 am
#7
This was an outstanding read.
My wife being from the boonies of Asia (near Cambodia), I can also relate to this myself. My wife makes me drink a weird Tea when I have a headache or soup when I have a cold, and some strange salad with onions when I am not feeling digestivly right. I only say wierd and strange, because it would be hard to explain it.
They taste ok, and they work. She has told me about other things that can be done with plants, but I am an ignorant American sometimes and prefer my daughters Elmo Band-Aids.
My wife being from the boonies of Asia (near Cambodia), I can also relate to this myself. My wife makes me drink a weird Tea when I have a headache or soup when I have a cold, and some strange salad with onions when I am not feeling digestivly right. I only say wierd and strange, because it would be hard to explain it.
They taste ok, and they work. She has told me about other things that can be done with plants, but I am an ignorant American sometimes and prefer my daughters Elmo Band-Aids.
Dark_0ne
Sat Sep 25, 2004 5:06 pm
#8
well - first off, I really like your ideas and how they might enhance the game (not sure I follow your reasoning on the Eastern vs Western medicine tho ... )
)I think it is a great idea on how to make the forage skill really useful -also I thinkthe medical forage skill could benefit from this idea too.
In my opinion this ought to be something that should be seriously considered as a game enhancing change, and one that ought to be easily added into the current designs.
(ok - I'm not sure how much use medical foraged items would be, but maybe they could be used as additives to Stims, Poison/Disease resist packes etc.)
Deadtech
Sun Sep 26, 2004 12:42 am
#9
Great ideas. Would give me a reason to /forage other than the occasional fishing trip or making a big onion display on my table at the guild hall.
Madhi
Sun Sep 26, 2004 5:01 am
#10
First of all, thanks for all the nice replies
Second, yeah I think you could also enhance the medical forage with this. It would go the same as for ranger. Medics can't forage good resources, doctors can forage better and more resources for their stims, antitoxins etc. I think right now the medical forage ability is pretty broken (my brother plays doc and never found anyting usefull.)
Second, yeah I think you could also enhance the medical forage with this. It would go the same as for ranger. Medics can't forage good resources, doctors can forage better and more resources for their stims, antitoxins etc. I think right now the medical forage ability is pretty broken (my brother plays doc and never found anyting usefull.)
BlakkStar
Sun Sep 26, 2004 5:34 am
#11
And i believe it meets its intended use. /medicalforage allowsMedics to find items needed to create theirstims that they would regularly need to /sample. Therefore this /medicalforage technique is a cheap and unreliable way for them to use another profession's (Artisan's) primary skill without the skillpoint expenditure. It exists simplly to allow non-Artisan medics to/sample resources that they need to createstims. Thus it has its purpose but investing novice Artisan is wholly more efficient in time and effortthan using /medicalforage.
As it stands now /forageperforms three functions:
1. Allows scouts/rangers to collect bait for fishing.
2. Allows scouts/rangers to have access to free buffs (that would normally fall under the artisan->chef professions).
3. Allows scouts/rangers to roleplay being masters/survivors of the wilderness.
For function #1, we can already collect bait two other ways that are just as effective and scout-specific: filetingfish and searching lairs. Therefore thatfunction is repetitive and unnecessary. The3rd function is simplytoo inadequate a reason to keep any skill andif it is the only reason for a skill then the skill should simply be made into a generable emote that everycharacter in-game can perform.
The 2nd function is the most pertinent for this discussion. Technically it is comparable to the /medicalforageskill possessed bymedics and one could argue its functionality is as is since it borrows an ability from another profession. The problem with this comparison is that the /medicalforage skill is solely a Medic skill while /forage is a scout skill that continues to the Ranger profession thru the increaseof mods. FurthermoreForage mods are increased in the FS scout line. These facts presuppose that /forage is actually suppose to be of use. /medicalforage simply allows poor and inexperienced Medics to have a way to collect some of the materials they need to level.In themore elite extensions of the starting Medic profession, the more experiencedplayers understand the game enough to simply buy their needed materials or /sample the materials themselves through acquisition of Artisan.
/foragedoes notdirectly help the scout or ranger to level in any manner.Then the scout and especially ranger is more likely to be financially fit (moreso than a MEdic)to buy any buffing items or services that other professionsmay perform./forage doesn't even provide Wilderness XP for successful finds. Therefore, /forage has absolutely no valid reason for existing in-game.
Page 1 of 1