I'm interested in lore on the limits of Restoration magic, including alchemeical potions on Tamriel.

I've read several sources lately including the biography of one of the Emperors which seems to indicate that there are wounds which the best healers available simply cannot fix.



The specific injuries the late Emperor Uriel VI sustained during his accident are not elaborated upon, but I am picturing internal wounds probably accompanied by bleeding and possibly spinal injuries.

The fact that Divayth Fyr perfected a cure for Corprus which worked on at least one individual sometime in 3E 427 would seem to indicate that medicine in Tamriel, much like our own world, is forever evolving and being perfected. Similarly some cures are lost or nearly lost. Certain tribes of isolated witches whose populations are shrinking appear to be the only mortals capable of curing Vampirism or Lycanthropy for instance.

Do we have any other solid lore sources about what Restoration can accomplish within the mythos of the Elder Scrolls?

What can be done and what absolutely cannot?

Would limb reattachment be possible? Does "cure disease" work on any non-blight disease? Would it work on something really horrible like cancer (assuming something similar exists.)?

Apparently Ayleid sorcerers were able to cast a spell on Pelinal Whitestrake's head which kept it alive for some time after his decapitation. Assuming this story is more than myth, it raises a serious question about the upper limits of Restoration.


This is sort of a disjointed and vague topic and I apologize for that. Restoration covers a wide range of topics.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Shivering:Clanfather_Malifant figured out how to combine http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Shivering:Notes#Letter_Draft (specifically shock) to do something that Restoration could not seemingly do alone; restore someone to life.

Oh right. I remember that dungeon.

That raises another interesting question.

How would the religious and legal authorities of Tamriel treat this research if it somehow made its way back? Would it be suppressed as another form of Necromancy? There's a real world precedent for certain religious and government institutions suppressing certain types of medicine for coming close to "playing god." I won't name any instances in particular but I'm assuming we're all familiar with them here.

I always thought that a skillful user of Restoration can act as if having physical superpowers, a bit like in DBZ when they go super-sayan? In the game at least, when your skill is high enough, you can fortify every single one of your attributes and skills by considerable amounts, and its quite easy to achieve superspeed, or superstrength that way (and even things like "superluck"?), or gradually fortify your intelligence and magicka to have an endless supply of it, but the thing with fortifying skills sounds quite weird in some cases. I mean, its like restoration spells can also give you knowledge of the thing and the guy you are trading with (mercantile), or of how to correctly wield a weapon for example. You can even fortify your restoration skill!

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:The_Four_Suitors_of_Benitah of what a master in restoration can teach to even a dummy. The protagonist's only weakness ends up being his dependence on spells. The thing with fortifying intelligence sounds as if everyone intelligent enough (duh) would try their best to have a constant fortification to it. I'd imagine the Telvanni and the Mages Guild higher ranks keep their IQs abnormally high 24/7 through spells or enchantments, and probably also members of the nobility who can afford it, since the ones who don't are probably in even more disadvantage against smarter opponents in the political game.

Given that "restore health" can repair any wound to the body, its probable that limb reattachment is possible. I imagine (a.k.a. no source) that the effectiveness of restore health depends on how the caster focus it to repair. Superficial cuts and and crushes could be healed by anyone knowing restoration, but big or inner ones would require some diagnosis and knowledge of the body before applying healing, so only someone with extensive knowledge of the anatomy of the wounded area (like a necromancer) can probably isolate the different things to repair in reattaching a limb to do it correctly.

Cure disease magics seem so effective that medicine is little beyond that. In Morrowind there were some quest that only involved fetching potions to sick people in isolated places. And "something like cancer" really sounds as "something like corprus" in TES. I even remember a concept art of a corprus beast that was basically a tumor with two legs!

Ayleid sorcerers were and probably still are light years ahead of current magic research, or maybe the altmer know enough to be at their level. As for a living head to talk and be heard, you also need air to circulate through its throat, so it probably was some serious magic what kept Pelinal alive.

I used to believe that Corpus was basically radiation poisoning from the Heart of Shor. So following new player logic, it could be cancer.

I don't know. It might depend on who's in charge at the time.

The magical authorities as of the novels seem to be the College of Whispers and the Synod. The name Synod is often attached to religious conclaves when used in a real world setting. I suspect it may be a branch of the state religion or something. Apparently the Mage's Guild is defunct during the early years of the Mede dynasty. If I had to guess I'd say the College Of Whispers is more or less like the Mage's Guild was but that the Synod is a more official organization tied with the government, possibly with religious elements. That's just my guess taken from context clues in the book and from etymology. I may be wrong.

That doesn't tell us much about how Necromancy is viewed currently. That's a blank slate.

I'd assume that is is still legal, and now that Morrowind and the mages guild is out of commision, it is likely that Necromancers have rejoined society.

I'd assume that is is still legal, and now that Morrowind and the mages guild is out of commision, it is likely that Necromancers have rejoined society.

You might as well ask what magic is limited to doing. Restoration isn't an inherent class within magic, it's just how a conjurer applies magic. So what's the limit of the conjurer?

Cancer isn't known to make you immune to age or give you abnormal strength, though, but it does kill you, which corprus can do.

As to the exact limits of what one can do with restoration magic, it's hard to say, since in general, while certainly, in game, of course, what magic can do has its limits. But in lore, the limits of magic don't seem to be clearly defined, if there are any at all beyond what the caster's skill, knowledge and imagination allows, and if there is any logic to the matter, since people are still researching magic, one could assume that over time, people's knowledge of magic may expand, and they may find ways to do things once thought impossible, so even whatever current "limits" there may be on magic may not actually be hard limits on the actual capabilities of magic, but rather, the limits of the caster. Just as how there are things which modern technology can't do that aren't physically impossible, just beyond what the technology we have can achieve.

Now that we've good that out of the way, we should look at what we know restoration can do first. The most obvious things are what it can do in the games. We've had spells to heal wounds, restore attributes, heal diseases, even fortify attributes, and some other effects. But what, exactly, is it capable of in lore? Can restore health spells reattach severed limbs? This I don't know. It's true that it can restore a character who is near death to perfectly good health in the game, but no matter what kind of injuries the player recieves, you can't actually lose any limbs, so unless there are instances in lore of it being used to heal dismemberment, I'd say we really can't be sure if it can do that or not. As to cure disease, in the games, it can cure any disease instantly, aside from blight disease in Morrowind (That needs a different spell.) and some special conditions like vampirism and lycanthropy. But in those two cases, it might be because once you get to the point where you can't be cured by a simple potion, the condition goes beyond a simple disease, after all, one condition makes you become a blood svcking monster with special powers and weakness to sunlight, the other makes you transform into a beast under the right condition, I'd say that at that point, it has already changed you into something different from what you were before, so naturally, normal cures still work on it. The fact that several quests involve the use of normal cure disease potions or spells to cure diseases suggest that a generic "cure disease" effect may really be as versatile in lore as it is in the game, though, as at that point, it's already become a plot point, and the general rule of designing games is that if you don't want an aspect of gameplay to also be considered to reflect how thungs are in the story, you should not have characters acknowledge it. Still, I would imagine there's probably some other special diseases that can't be cured using normal cure disease potions.

Some diseases out of Black-Marsh spring to mind. After all, Argonians must still fall ill (if you want an arbitrary in-game example, an Argonian PC can contract Lycanthropy), it's just that those pansy diseases elsewhere in Tamriel are not strong enough to take down a Lizard-man.

But it makes the cancer cells immune to age, so if all your cells would be cancer cells and you manage somehow to survive the all the negative effect it would theoretically make you immune to age. So I can definitely see the parallel between corprus and cancer.

and the tumors. Also, somewhat-cancerous muscle cells could easily increase you 'strong' you are.

One scamp at a time.

but with mods...

I'd second that "depends on the caster" proposition. The magical application of healing isn't going to be that different from the non-magical one we know. If you understand the injury, you can fix it by undoing it. If you don't understand it (e.g. spinal damage repair is beyond us) then you can't fix it. Those with more understanding of the nature of disease and injury would be able to undo more than those with less knowledge, no matter whether it's by magic or otherwise.

So a fall from a horse causing unknown internal injury might be incurable simply because nobody could determine what needed to be fixed.

That seems pretty elegant. An Adventurer would know mostly what that sword stab did to her because she knew where she got stabbed. And too much misapplication/blind pumping full of restorative energies causes cancer or bones to grow at odd angles or something like that.

I would think that true Restorative magic uses are knowledgeable in alchemy as well as being more than adept at anatomy. Even without modern science of the real world, I think it should be easily discernible, if not near common knowledge in a world where riding horses is incredibly common, the normal types of injuries sustained from falling off a horse. And any one Restorative magic user with knowledge and experience should be able to work through being "blind". I do not believe they simply say "Be healed!", holding out their hands. They prepare the body (in cases of more than minor injuries), examine it. They may even cut it open depending on what it may be, using their spells to stop bleeding, scaring, etc.

So, when I am asked on the limits of Restoration and what all it can do, without continuing more on my above paragraph, I say that there are no limits to Restoration except for bringing souls back into bodies, in which case, Restoration turns into Necromancy (another topic of mine).

Some virus may always be mutating, similar to the real world, and thus may be difficult to cure by magic.

EDIT: Also, how do healers diagnose patients in Tamriel? Putting the game mechanics like the extremely generic "Cure Disease" spell aside, wouldn't different ailments need different magical procedures? What about misdiagnosis, could the wrong procedure cause problems with the patient?

maybe he died because the falling off a horse snapped his neck...thats pretty lethal

well most diseases are caused by antigens, and so removing all foreign bodies may be the real effect of "cure disease."

and i agree with the idea that restoration magic functions by he user understanding the issue, and then can magically fix it by applying magic channeled to regenerate tissue to the area. Using it with full health would potentially hurt you by giving you some extra (insert cell type)

There's a flaw with that line of reasoning. Assuming human bodies in Tamriel are identical or even similar to our own, then their bodies are filled with benign and in some cases essential foreign bodies. Any spell or potion which eliminated everything non human in the body would be extremely dangerous or even fatal to the patient, since the body cannot function properly without these bodies. This is why the over prescription and use of antibiotics and other medicines in our world often cripple or destroy the immune systems or digestive tracts of the people they're administered to.

I think that cure disease potions and spells are probably more complicated and somehow target only malicious foreign bodies somehow. They obviously have limitations as they can't cure certain diseases or forms of diseases which have advanced beyond a certain point. (For instance Vampirism and Lycanthropy can only be cured by obscure and more potent spells or potions and the Blight in its various forms required a different spell effect to remove.)

Perhaps it could be Alteration on the cellular level.

Maybe those Cure Disease spells simply increase the potency of the body's immune system temporarily, enough for all savage antibodies to be purged?