Yeah, it was a while since I read the description of the narthecium. And a diagnoster helm is really easy to get as well. So thats +30. Assuming a perfect stat roll, 50 + 30 + 10 (from 700 xp to advances on int), they can pull off at least a 90 on medicae checks. By rank 2 that can be a 100, so yeah, failure is highly unlikely. Of course, at that point, they just start performing first aid mid combat.

It's just that little problem that the team may not pick an Apothecary- then they have much trouble without your HR. Or the Apothecary get's tied up in hand to hand.

That I think is one of my biggest gripes with rulesets (not just Deathwatch- most 'higher level' games hit this too) where the powers become so uber. From a GM perspective, it becomes a lot more of a chore to manage your party and adventures because things like this come up. If you have a character with skill x (apothecary specialty, devestator, librarian) you have to totally change your game style around to present a challenge yet not off them in one accident. But then again, that's really what you get when you try to play with higher level characters, and it's kind of the GM's job description, so I'll stop whining now

Just an FYI, I emailed Joss and received this back.

Rule Question:

The rules for allowing the Narthecium is to allow for healing to be doubled. Does Enhanced Healing (+1d5) double as well or is that figured in after?

For example, Apothecary with an INT of 5 would double his INT to 10 for the heal and then add 1d5, or is it (10 + 1d5)x2?

This seems to be getting more complex by the post...

Example:

A marine (with 20 wounds), over the course of 1 or more combat encounters, sustains 17 points of damage. He is then attended by a marine (with IB 4) with the Medicae skill.

The test is successful and the marine heals 8 wounds. However, the remaining 9 wounds are still considered treated and can no longer receive any benefit from further First Aid and need to be treated by Extended Care.

The marine then takes a further 2 points of damage (new total of 11). First Aid can now be applied but it will only affect the 2 wounds recently received.

Therefore, tracking wounds/damage and healing needs to separate and taking above example could look something like this:

Step 1: Damage taken (mark with single line)

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Step 2: Fist Aid (remove/erase damage)

/ / / / / / / / /

Step 3: Treated damage (mark with second line)

X X X X X X X X X

Step 4: Further damage (mark additional damage with single line)

X X X X X X X X X / /

This seems to follow the rules (taking into account additional paragraph from Ross).

Marines need to work out when is the best time to apply First Aid. If they know their max healing (per use of First Aid) is, for example, 15 points, then healing someone with more damage will result in them having wounds that cannot be healed without Extended Care (as they will be considered treated). If they heal before this limit, they may be able to keep fellow brothers in good health for much longer (effectively forever). Not sure how economical it is to keep healing every little scratch, though.

KommissarK said:

I thought the highest check you could achieve in the game with stacked bonuses is 60%.

In the example I was giving, it was only a +30 bonus on top of base attribute. +30 from gear (narth and diagnoscter helm), and then 60 base int stat (assuming a roll of 50 on char gen, and then 2 int advances with starting 1k xp), my point being that on even at rank 1, its entirely possible to be able to push the upper limit of total success with medicae checks for first aid, where in RAW, DoS don't even matter. By rank 2 they train medicae +10, and that's it, just hope your GM doesn't treat 96-100 as a crit fail.

Wait, clear something up for me, is it max bonuses can only be 60% or is it the final check can only be 60%?

Warhawk X said:

The max bonus or penalty can only be 60%. So, either +%60 or -%60.

To clarify on top of that, let us consider the following examples:

Lets assume this is all about medicae tests (due to the thread, although this is more general). Medicae is an int based skill. Tests made with medicae are made against the full int score (as it is advanced, and cannot be used basic untrained at 1/2). For this example, you have an int score of 48. In other words, an unmodified, challenging(+0), medicae check is made against 48. Tests can range from hellish(-60), to trivial(+60). These are not modifiers, but rather, test difficulty. First aid is a challenging(+0), so that is what we use in this example.

Now, since apothecaries are usually the ones making medicae tests, they will almost always have a narthecium, and probably have a diagnoster helm. The two of these, together, provide a +30 total bonus . This is in fact the "modifier" that was talked about having a +/-60 cap. In this example though, it is just at +30. Other modifiers could add in to this, but as soon as the total modifier to the roll hits +60, that is in fact, it. If there +90 bonus modifiers, and -20 negative modifiers to a test, the cap is +60. It is not +40.

Overall, this means that a test can be as difficult as -120 (a hellish(-60) with a -60 conditional), to a +120 (a trivial(+60) with a +60 conditional). Both of these are basically pointless to roll. The overall modifier then added to the attribute. So if there is a +30 to medicae, and int is 48, and the test is +0, then the overall target number is 78.

A hellish(-60) can at best, only get to a +0, from a +60 modifier (in other words, conditional modifers and test difficulty are different for the purpose of the +/-60 cap).

Okay so that having been cleared up, jumping back to medicae tests, Apoths get +30 With gear and probably have a decent mid 40's range stat to begin with. Unless the Apoth is being shot up while attempting to heal I don't think there is a lot of situations that can impose enough penalties to make the Apoth fail by a large margin.

Unless your like GMing house rule is 96-00 on any test is auto critical fail.