I'm going to be GMing a scene where one of the PCs is poisoned and another PC (a Medic) has to save his life.

Are there rules in any of the expansion books for mechanics of a nail-biting medical emergency scene in a Star Wars emergency room? How would you play this out? I want it to be something a bit slower and more dramatic than just a single Medicine skill roll...

You have the PC wounded out and suffering X Wounds per round, with the Medic having to heal up all the wounds which would likely take a couple/three rounds. For every few Wounds have the PC suffer a crit. Impose a Setback or two if you like for the pressure of the scene.

The poison burns through the character's strain, then wounds, gaining a critical when you run out of strain, then starting with gradually worsening crits every round once you run out of wounds.

The poison lasts for so many rounds, more than enough to kill most people.

The doctor can reduce the number of rounds it lasts with successes on medicine checks, spend advantage to delay things a little, and triumph to not only reduce the number of rounds but also heal some wounds/strain/a crit, depending on where you are.

Hunh. 2P51 posted while I was writing mine.

Guess great minds think alike.

Cool ideas! Can you think of a way I could work some player decisions into it (aside from just deciding how to spend triumph and advantage)?

Is it an injury based poison (aka poisoned dart)?

Amputate the limb to cut a large number of rounds off the remaining time, or take the added risk and keep the limb.

One of the books - I think the Colonist sourcebook? - had some rules for medical emergencies. Can't remember what they were, though, since none of my players has ever actually played a healer.

Basically, what you're suggesting here is a new type of encounter - a Medical Encounter. What are the actions that one could take in a Medical Encounter? What effect would these have? If the only choice is "heal" then it might be a bit boring, and certainly will lack any player choice, but equally you don't want too many options. If you haven't read them, might be worth taking a gander at the Slicing Encounter rules to see how FFG came up with specific actions that a PC (or NPC) can take within the broader context of slicing a network.

The previous suggestion of amputation is really interesting - as a last resort, and with the consent of both players , it could be a really interesting character development, and a real dilemma for your medic to have to make.

A couple of things to bear in mind:

• What are the other players going to do during this encounter? If it's just a couple of checks, it doesn't really matter, but if you want to build a scene around this then they either need to be able to help your medic OR have something else they can be doing at the same time.
• Having the patient be a PC obviously carries the risk that the Medic will fail, so you need to figure out what would happen in those circumstances. Does the PC die? If so, that seems a bit brutal, unless you've been building up to it. But if not, then the penalty still needs to be high enough for it to matter. (Also keep in mind the fact that, in the case of a Medical Encounter, it could be interpreted by the player who has the poisoned PC that he is being punished for another PC's failures. If your players are cool and happy to go with the flow, no need to worry, but if they're more uber-gamey types this might cause some irritation).