The Surgeon talent specifically calls out medicine checks. Since there's already a control upgrade that adds ranks in medicine would it be too much of a stretch to add in the ranks of Surgeon? Surgeon states: "When this character makes a Medicine check to help a character heal wounds, the target heals 1 additional wound per rank of Surgeon." It's a force check, but also adds the ranks of medicine. So, from a certain point of view they should go together (including a narrative one to me), but by a strict RAW it doesn't look like they would.

If not, if the player had the control upgrade that allows them to roll a medicine check would you? "When the user is making a Heal power check, he may also roll a Hard (♦♦♦) Medicine check as part of the pool. If he heals one or more wounds on a target and succeeds on the Medicine check, he may also heal one Critical Injury that target is suffering." Again, narritively this looks like it should work and is closer to the wording, but by a strict reading of the talent it doesn't meet the "...to help a character heal wounds..." part because it's to heal a crit.

What would you allow? Has anyone seen a Dev answer or errata that I missed on this?

By the Rules As Written, you would only benefit from the ranks of Surgeon if you were using the Control upgrade for Heal that allowed you to roll a Medicine check as part of the pool to heal Critical Injuries. This is because Surgeon requires that you are rolling a Medicine check to gain the benefits of the talent and the only way to do so while using the Heal power is if you were using that Control upgrade.

I don't believe there are any dev answers on it because it's pretty straight-forward. Surgeon requires a Medicine check, that Control upgrade for Heal provides a Medicine check, so long as you are healing off Critical Injuries.

You'll find the game has multiple methods of achieving similar results. Medicine is one and Heal is another. Some talents work with both but some are more restricted, because they assume you're using the normal Medicine skill rather than using a Force Power.

No, I don't allow Surgeon to apply to Heal, in any capacity. Heal is already a potent enough power as it is, it doesn't need to be made even better. Also, as you noted, Surgeon indicates it's used when making a Medicine check to heal wounds. I do personally expand Surgeon's use to any Medicine check for first aid or medical care (such as long-term wound healing as well as healing crits), but not when using Heal. I just feel there's a significant difference between using high-precision medical tools to repair a body and flooding their system with spiritual energy and directing it to heal in a particular way.

While both have the same goal and much of the same knowledge applies (hence both being based off of Intellect and Medicine), the skills of using medical tools doesn't really transfer to using space-magicks.

In general, I would agree, the two are sufficiently different that they really shouldn't overlap, and they could be gamebreaking done together. One of the things this system does beautifully is make non-Force users as potent as Force users, taking the valves off some of the combinations has the potential to screw with that balance.

That having been said, I like the idea that the Force and "practical" skills are the shoes on your feet: you can go farther on both than you can on one alone. If, at your table, you want to decide that the Surgeon talent affects Heal checks, because knowing how the human (and non-human) body is put together makes it more efficient to heal it through space-magic, then go for it.

6 minutes ago, ErikModi said:

That having been said, I like the idea that the Force and "practical" skills are the shoes on your feet: you can go farther on both than you can on one alone. If, at y  our table, you want to decide that the Surgeon talent affects Heal checks, because knowing how the human (and non-human) body is put together  makes it more efficient to heal it through space-magic, then go for it.

This is really how I'm looking at it. Even flooding the body with healing energy, if you have specialized knowledge on how to heal it (surgeon) talent you should be slightly better than someone else. In the end, it's only 2 or 3 points more so not terribly game breaking. My GM has gone with the middle ground of you have to have the control upgrade that lets you roll a medicine check, so I'm good with it.

I was more curious if it had come up for anyone else and how they're doing it or if there was something that I was missing from a dev or errata.