(07-30-2013, 10:45 AM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: Setting aside the OOC narrative elements -- for instance, if the other player wants their character to be laid up in bed due to injuries, then healing magic doesn't fix them completely -- I usually treat healing magic metaphysically as being able to repair a person to their normal, to use a Mage: the Ascension term, "pattern." So, healing magics can't raise you from the dead (as the pattern is a dead body in this instance), correct inborn anomalies (since they're part of your pattern), or fix either long neglected injuries or injuries such as scars that you've taken as part of your identity (as they're part of your pattern through time or belief). They can correct "status effects," but not necessarily their underlying causes; Esuna and Cure might make you feel better for a time if you're dying of some disease, but since they don't deal with the underlying causative agent, mundane medical treatment is still required. The IC explanation one could use for this is that everything has a "natural" state, and the channeled Aether of Conjury simply recreates that state as the path of least resistance; requested and not commanded by its user, the Aether simply does the simplest, most natural thing for the creature so infused.
Of course, all of the above is all speculation with no support in lore (other than that it, like other explanations on this thread, can at least account for what we know exists in Eorzea). Take it with between one and several grains of salt.
I actually can't agree more with this explanation, this is pretty spot on to how I view it. This also takes into account why story deaths could happen, Raise wouldn't bring you back from the dead but instead bring you back from the brink of death. It always annoyed me how in video games where anti-death magic or items (like Raise or Phoenix Down) existed, people could still die. Like a character has a slow and tragic death while the healer stands their weeping helplessly, and I'm just like "WHY AREN'T YOU CASTING RAISE!?" That is until I subscribed to this method of thinking, at that point it kind of made a bit more sense.
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