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[Maolagin]

So I got to thinking, now that we have this enormous variety of surface plants available, that traditionally one of the most important aspects of herbalism was as medicine. I suggest a simple system of curable syndromes and medicinal herbs that shouldn't be too intrusive or hard to implement, and that I think ties in nicely with Toady's expressed inclination toward more procedural-everything game mechanics.

The changes would be:
* Syndromes get a tag indicating that they are cured by a given edible plant. Can be specified in the raws, but procedural (e.g. FB) syndromes get random cures as well.
* If a dwarf who is currently affected by a syndrome consumes an edible plant, the syndrome effects are removed and a cooldown timer is set preventing the dwarf from being re-infected for a period of time.
* When the above happens, an announcement is output, allowing the player to serendipitously discover the cure for a given syndrome.
* Alternately, the diagnosis job would have a skill-dependent chance of revealing the cure for a syndrome.

Optional enhancements to this mechanic could include:
* If a dwarf has been diagnosed as having a curable syndrome, the next Feed Patient or Eat job relating to that dwarf will first search for an edible item that is/made from the cure plant.
* Some reaction products (I'm thinking Golden Salve here) get a MEDICINAL tag, making them eligible to to be eaten only as part of the above special curing jobs, and possibly get stockpiled in the hospital.
* If it can be done in a suitably lightweight way, track what a dwarf has eaten recently and apply the cure cooldown retroactively, so it becomes possible to proactively inoculate a dwarf against a known syndrome.
* Make syndromes and their cures (e.g. a demon lawgiver's breath, a foul fog) things you can ask about in adventure mode or be told about by the trade liaison.

Just imagine the conversation in the dining hall, as a new migrant asks about the freakish weather outside. Quoth Urist McHealthy: "Well, this place was a stinking pus-coated hellhole for a while. But then that new doctor showed up, and since then everything's been groovy! Eat up now, a rat weed biscuit a day keeps the rotting limbs away!"

[Putnam]

Maybe the cures should be connected to syndromes rather than plants (so you can have non-plant cures)...

[Maolagin]

Maybe the cures should be connected to syndromes rather than plants (so you can have non-plant cures)...

I did think about that a bit, since plant-only cures seems like exactly the kind of artificial limitation that would infuriate modders down the road. The problem is, right now there is no general "apply medicine" job, so limiting it to edible substances seemed like a reasonable compromise. Of course, I don't see why meat, fish, or modded-in edible stuff couldn't also work, but I don't know how complicated it would be behind the scenes to implement procedural logic like "EYE_TEMPLATE has EDIBLE_COOKED, so newt's eye is eligible to be a medicine." Plants seemed simpler to grasp, since the EDIBLE tag is associated with the plant instead of a material template. But in the end it's a suggestion, so I'm sure if Toady decided to implement it he would ask that same question and do something appropriate with it.

[Putnam]

Then you could still have it on syndromes, since there's a [SYN_INGESTED] thing already and syndromes can be applied to any material.

[Bumber]

* Syndromes get a tag indicating that they are cured by a given edible plant. Can be specified in the raws, but procedural (e.g. FB) syndromes get random cures as well.

Cures for FB syndromes should have to be suitably rare and special. Something like an antivenom created by purifying the toxin with unicorn blood (or some other fanciful creature/plant extract.)

[Maolagin]

Then you could still have it on syndromes, since there's a [SYN_INGESTED] thing already and syndromes can be applied to any material.

Ooh, good point, I'd completely forgotten about those tags. So I guess the additional sauce you'd want is to add the ability to specify that a given syndrome interaction reverses some other named syndrome. As things stand now, as I understand it, you can only use syndromes to apply/remove specific symptoms or properties, or do some transformation magic to apply were-creature style restoration. I.e. right now you could totally mod plump helmets to be a magic elixir of life that cures everything, but there's no way to make them reverse or protect against ONLY, say, buzzard demon spittle beast sickness. 

Although working with the current system, now that I think about it, does provide some room for amusing medicine-style uses. Since you can target specific properties, I suppose you could have a situation where a player consults the wiki / Urist McSnakeOil and finds out that, say, fisher berries are good for fevers, but you need to eat kangaroo spleen to clear up that brain necrosis.

[Putnam]

As it is now, you can only use syndromes to apply symptoms. There's no way to remove any of them except CE_ADD_TAG, which has a reverse in CE_REMOVE_TAG.
I'm slightly desperate for cures, heh.

[MDFification]

As it is now, you can only use syndromes to apply symptoms. There's no way to remove any of them except CE_ADD_TAG, which has a reverse in CE_REMOVE_TAG.
I'm slightly desperate for cures, heh.

Yeah. Adding in a material that, upon exposure, removes a syndrome would be good.

Also beneficial would be a way to make syndromes that remove symptoms of other syndromes; for example, a plant that when processed cures fevers.

[Adrian]

If syndromes become curable, i'd like to put forward that knowledge of a cure should be found in appropriate places.

Random peasants should not have knowledge of curing rattle snake venom. Herbalists on the other hand would probably know that stuff and could probably be convinced to part with a recipe or a completed vial of cure.
The cure for a particular Forgotten Beast's syndrome might come solely from mystics or, if the beast has had plenty of run-ins with a particular civilization, be found somewhere in a tomb, in the dusty notebook of a long dead doctor.
Though nothing should prevent the player (in both fort- and adventure mode) from finding a cure on his own by either employing or being an alchemist.

(I'm anxiously waiting for the day i can start up a clinic in adventure mode and become a renowned healer by doing little surgery- and suturing minigames and feeding people disgusting tonics which may or may not be regular raspberry juice (and getting lynched for being a quacksalver))

[Mel_Vixen]

Why would you need new tags? I think a number of cures and medicine could work under the current system. Painkillers would be possible right now with temporarely adding No_Pain or the basic numbness symptom with a secondary effect that removes the tag later.

Apart from that i would suggest using negative severity for cures. This way we can get general purpose medicine (say a form of aspirin) that reduces the severity of existing pain/symptom from another syndrom by the negative quantity.

I am not sure if the "IT_CANNOT_HAVE_SYNDROME_CLASS " tag (on the FB-syndrom) would work to stop the execution of syndroms if a specific later given antidote has the exact class required. has anyone tested that?

[Putnam]

the basic numbness symptom with a secondary effect that removes the tag later.

This is the problem. There is no such thing as that. Symptoms cannot be removed.

[Mel_Vixen]

But the numbness itself can wear of, but yeah i see the problem there fore my suggestion with using negative severity on symptoms to counteract existing symptoms.

[§k]

Drug and medicine would come into being when various organs begin to have their function. Now the syndromes are probably simply placeholders.