Hi everyone,

I'm in a bi-weekly game, and the party has virtually no medical support. I was thinking we could buy something like a medical droid that could follow the party around during adventures, but I can't find anything suitable in the gear section. As it stands right now, we have no staying power when it comes to combat. If we don't win in the first few rounds PC's get wrecked pretty quickly, and stim packs lose efficacy upon repeated use, as you all know. Anyone know of anything that would be immediately useful?

Additional Info: We have a ship, and it has a medical bay with a droid stationed there, but it would be a huge hassle to have to run back to the ship every time someone needs some healing.

Might want to look at purchasing a Military Medpac. It is out of Dangerous Covenants, the Hired Guns SB. It allows someone to treat a person without penalties, and if the user has no ranks in Medicine, it grants 1 free rank when being used. Not much, but at least it is something out in the field.

You could use the Medical Droid from page 410 of the FaD core book. It is listed under adversaries, so you would need to generate a cost. In WEG, med droids ran 3500 - 4500 credits.

The new Technicians book, Special Modifications, has rules for making your own droids. That may be an effective means of getting a Medical Droid if your group has decent Mechanics and Computers among them.

I'm not entirely sure where you are going with this. If you just want to buy a droid combat medic, then I suppose the above stuff might work; you might even have the one on your ship come along, as it would keep a second one less redundant, depending on circumstances, but your "typical" medic droid isn't particularly fast, durable, agile, flexible, or capable, beyond that role; what I'm saying is that, in the field, it'll get shot, like C-3PO, as an easy target, and contribute very little to the party, beyond the occasional heals (might not even be able to battle, due to type; I can't remember if FFG SW cares). If it stays back, a bit, like at camp, it's not really much better than getting back to your ship. It seems something you might need/want to make a player cover, instead, so they can also contribute other benefits.

Part of this, for me, also hinges on I don't know what all your party is up to. How often do they get into battles? What do they typically fight? Do they choose to fight, when more "diplomatic", or "stealthy" options were available? Are they bad with cover? I mean no disrespect, but if they are not so good at combat, and keep getting into it, maybe they need to weather that out.

A medical droid would be an easy target and I'm not sure you'd want to go that route. If you invest in getting one and you lose it you're likely gonna feel robbed. What would be better is picking up the military med pac and maybe one of the PC's branching off into healing somehow. So either someone goes into the Healer career (or Combat Medic or Doctor) or someone pick up the Force power Heal. But a droid in combat is just asking for it to get shot up.

Also if the party as a whole doesn't have any staying power in combat past the first round then you have bigger issues that won't be fixed by a medical droid, namely while the droid is healing one person another person will likely go down. So in addition to a PC maybe needing to pick up healing role you're going to need a more combat focused role that allows them to stand up to more damage. From experience in other games a healer is moot if the entire party is going down at the same time. In combat you are going to need someone (or two someones) who can actually take some hits. Otherwise your droid is just delaying the inevitable.

Honestly I would focus more on someone becoming more "tankable" than on the healing aspect. Unless everyone is getting their own personal healing droid you're still going to have the same core problem.

What careers are in the group? How are you guys approaching combat? Pick up a droid but fix the core problem of no one being able to survive more than a round of combat. A well balanced party can survive not having a healer.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I like the idea of exploring the technicians book more and seeing what we can manufacture. I appreciate the input. Happy adventuring!