My players were just awarded some random loot, and one of them came across a box of krak grenades with 10 medikits in it. I figured he would use the medikits as haggling items during a logistics/commerce test, but instead he decided to hand one out to each squad member.

Since our medic is awesome and already has a best quality med kit, this is a pretty useless gesture. To counter it - or at least make it worth doing - I was thinking of granting a limited number of uses per medikit. This way, the doc can actually run out of supplies in the field.

Has anyone else done anything like this? If so, how many uses/kit did you end up settling on?

Thanks.

Well they are usefull for when the medic gets shot. And don't say "they can just use his medkit". Shot as in bolter rounds trough his high quality medkit (destroying it) Or even better tyranid weapons...

Guardsman: "Hey doc, your sterile bandages have borer beetles in them!"

Medic: "gimme your medkit, trooper."

Only through incredible contrivance would that come up more than once or twice. It's not a viable way of turning medkits into consumables without constantly invoking GM fiat.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that this is warranted based on common injury and how many times the medic had to work on a team of 9 after one battle. Because that is exactly what happened, and I expect it to happen many more times in the future. Not to mention, if I also allowed the medic to bring comrades up from wounded to healthy with a medikit use now we are dealing with what/who is more important for those supplies to go to.

So, constructively speaking, I am thinking 4 uses for best quality med kits and 2 uses for standard.

Depends on how simple or complex you want to make it. For simple, X uses is fine.

For complex, think of the supplies a medkit might have, and how many of them you'd need for what kind of injury. Once you determine what the doc has got, and how much he needs, he can keep track of it himself. Some things, like surgical tools, of course, won't run out, and can be used for as long as you have needle and thread to stitch someone back up, and some kind of disinfectant.

Given how sodding unreliable acquiring anything is through the Logistics rating, working to the assumption of a base of 15 logistics, I think my squad would be dead if this rule was in force for our game.

Standard kit supplies are automatically replenished in base afaik, which includes a medic's medkit.

Nope. Medkit is Specialist Equipment and needs to be requisitioned.

Depends on how simple or complex you want to make it. For simple, X uses is fine.

For complex, think of the supplies a medkit might have, and how many of them you'd need for what kind of injury. Once you determine what the doc has got, and how much he needs, he can keep track of it himself. Some things, like surgical tools, of course, won't run out, and can be used for as long as you have needle and thread to stitch someone back up, and some kind of disinfectant.

Yup. For a medium between "X uses per kit" and keeping track of every single item, you could also assign a larger number of uses to a kit, and then guesstimate how much a treated injury would deplete it.

Example: Each medikit has 10 points. Treatment of minor injuries (1-5 Wounds) remove 1 , medium injuries (6+ Wounds) 3 , and critical injuries (stabilising a lethally wounded patient, performing a field amputation) 5 .

Optionally, you could even expand upon this by allowing the Medic's skill to affect the ratio of kit usage, such as defining what counts as minor injuries by counting the combined tens bonuses of the doc's Intelligence + Medicae skill, so that for example a medic with 32 Int and +10 Medicae could treat up to 4 Wounds (3+1) as a minor injury, thus only costing 1 point of their medikit.

Thanks, Lynata. That was exactly what I was looking for as far as feedback. That's a great idea. I'm going to run it by my players, and by "run it by them," I mean screaming in their faces that this is the new rule after making them pour honey and wine on each other and dance like monkeys for my amusement.

Dance, monkeys. Dance.

Nope. Medkit is Specialist Equipment and needs to be requisitioned.

Does that mean the Sergeant has to roll for his laspistol ammo? The Weapon Specialist and Heavy Gunner for theirs?

Nope. Medkit is Specialist Equipment and needs to be requisitioned.

Does that mean the Sergeant has to roll for his laspistol ammo? The Weapon Specialist and Heavy Gunner for theirs?

It seems like common sense rules would apply here.

Justify it how you want in your game. The situation could simply be that medical supplies are low and players must requisition them in order to get them at all. If they can't the pickings are slim. Oh well.

However, Medipacs as written are pretty **** powerful in that they grant a freaking +20 bonus simply for being on someone's person and.. as written... are seemingly limitless. Thus the reason for this thread and a substantial argument for why they would need to be requisitioned in the first place.

I suppose it makes sense that medkits should be treated similar to specialist ammo (such as the aforementioned Sergeant's laspistol chargepacks) once you render them depletable, given they did not function this way in the RAW and were meant to be kept indefinitely.

I'd probably make it depend on whether or not you want to experience a theme of supply shortages in your campaign, and if so have it affect both medikits and all sorts of ammunition. Forcing the players to hold their shots until they can make 'em count, and (even better for the atmosphere) throw each other spare clips in the heat of battle, might be fun after all.

Plus you get to teach people why las weapons are the go-to arms for the Imperial Guard: chargepacks (of lasguns and laspistols) can simply be recharged at a generator, only stuff like heavy bolter, plasma and melta ammo as well as grenades etc do not "auto-refill". Although you could probably control and limit the amount of charge packs, still, by pointing out how recharging them takes time. Perhaps there's a long queue at the generators as not all of them are online, so the squad can only recharge part of their packs? (1d5 charge packs for the entire squad +1 per squad member .. then let the players sort out who gets how many - this too should help generate a "battlefield family" sort of feeling for the game)

They don't have to roll for their initial ammo on entering the specialism, but they need to roll to requisition any replacements they might require. However, I could see a lot of groups houseruling in added availability of specialist ammo.

Cheers, I always thought it was the same as standard regimental kit ammo. But yes, I'd play medikits need refills

I would say require refills on your medkits. Our group runs with 2-3 use medkits, depending on gravity of injuries. As the medicae trained squad member, there is a critical difference between having or lacking a medkit.

Worth keeping in mind that the Common medkit is only usable by a guardsman trained in Medicae, while the Rare medkit is usable by anybody (and only serves to offset the penalty in that case). This creates a huge swing between having or not having a medicae-trained guardsman - and First Aid is incredibly powerful, even usable in combat. I feel the rules were set up in this way to distinguish if not make mandatory the medic's role in a game otherwise about blasting orks.

While I don't agree with the limited uses of Medkits due to how cack-handed the Logistics system is at times (yay to never getting any gear, ever.) without thoroughly exploiting the Commerce mechanic, which regrettably strikes me as incredibly jarring, it is important I think to watch your Medicae trained guardsmen. It actually hit me at one point that for the cost of something like 200xp or 300xp, any soldier in your unit can be a stand-in Medic with the kit, allowing units to pseudo-function without a Medic.

I'm going off on a bit of a ramble here, I suspect. The point I guess I'm trying to get at is that unless you want a meatgrinder game where people roll up a new character after every second or third encounter, then the Medikit is absolutely crucial to a team's continued functioning.

Nonsense. They can always stuff dirt in it.

Our medic is already rolling stupid high. He can make due.

As long as you have charges in your lasgun you can make that bleeding stop.

As long as you have charges in your lasgun you can make that bleeding stop.

You are not treating my head wound with a lasgun!

Thats almost as bad as making an ogryn medic!

Guardsman: "aaaaaagh!"

Big Doc: "Wot da matta."

Sergeant: "He took some shrapnel in his leg."

Big Doc: "Roight lemme av look at it."

Guardsman: "Ayuauauauauuauauuauaaaaaa!"

Sergeant: "Shouldn't you use some dissinfectant?"

Big Doc: *poors entire bottle of bleach over guardmans leg*

Guardsman: "Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!"

Big Doc: "Ok now jus git meh fingerz in dere..."

Guardsman: "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

Sergeant: " Doc please use some anesthetics!"

Big Doc: "No i iz gud."

Sergeant: "Doh! On him!"

Big Doc: "Oh okay. Were iz me amma?"

Seregant: "What?"

Guardsman: "Aaghaagaaaghaaaaa-what?"

BOINK!

Big Doc: "Dere! Ee all kwoit an relaxed!"

Sergeant: *facepalms*

I'm currently running alongside a Mad Dok atm.

I know those feels.

"Nurse. Prepare da pashunt. Oi gotz ded sens-uh-tiv' work ter be doin' and oi dun want 'im squirmin'.

Zog it. Pass me dat choppa."

[...]

Thanks... my imagination is way too vivid when reading such shenanigans.

...

ANAESTHETIIIC!