I guess the part that I'm confused about is how to limit it's use and the part of the rule stating "you may only apply first aid to each Wound once". In the campaign I ran (my first ever) it seemed like Medicae was used a bit too much, but I wasn't sure how the enforcement of applying it to each wound once works. Is it that if you have suffered 5 wounds, that you would get 5 possible checks in which to heal said wounds? And if the person were to fail all 5 times, then too bad, no more chances to heal today? Or am I totally off? Thanks!

Perhaps can only be used once after an encounter or once per day?

Letrii said:

Well, that would help and all, I guess I was just interested in the official ruling from what's given in the book before turning to house ruling it.

I think it means Wound more in the sense of the world and not the Stat- in other world, say your fighting a Genestealer- and he slashes at you with his rending talons and rips a use gash in your leg for 9 damage.

Technically, you took 9 points of damage but in reality, its only one Wound: a giant bloody gash on your leg. So you'd be able to try and bandage and sterilize that wound once- if you fail, you failed- meaning the bandage is still wrapped, sure- but its not done very well, so it doesn't give you back a lot of (if any) health.

Saldre said:

Hm, so going off that, in the rules it says if you fail a test you only heal the normal rate... does that mean if you fail you heal just one point of damage since the daily rate of heal is 1 (unless you sleep in a bed). That would seem to be on the flip side of being able to use it too much by being nearly useless. Hmm...

Medicae works as follows for First Aid:

Once per time you take damage. I.e. you get hit trice in battle, the first one for one point of damage, the second for five points of damage and the third time for three points of damage. Alltogether you've taken nine wounds. Now there are three scenarios for healing this with first aid depending on how badly wounded you are. Lightly wounded, Heavily wounded or Critically wounded. You're lightly wounded when you've less or equal damage to twice your TB, i.e. with TB 3 you're lightly wounded at six wounds taken and heavily at seven.

For lightly wounded: Your medic gets three rolls each of which heals his intelligence bonus wounds up to the amount you were wounded in that hit. I.e. for average INT you'd get up to three wounds per roll. First wound gets one for success, second gets three, third gets three.

Heavily wounded and critically wounded characters get's one wound back on a success , two if the healer has Master Chiurgeon.

So yeah, medicae is of somewhat limited use for first aid, but it's still great to have around and once characters start running around with the talents that cause them to always be considered lightly wounded and the healer gets his intelligence bonus up it's quite awesome.

On top of first aid you've got extended care, which might not be of immediate use in dungeon crawls but really goes a lot faster than expected with a decent medic. For undercover missions and/or extended infiltration where one might not want to go to a proper hospital and turn up on the radar it's really essential.

How do you mean that failing medicae tests giving no benefit renders the ability nearly useless? Seems overpowered otherwise.

Graspar said:

Hm, (assuming this is during battle so full actions are being taken here) so if you get wounded three times from someone firing full-auto at you in one round, that would be 3 total attempts a single person could take to try and heal them? Say a successful heal for a lightly wounded character is +3 wounds back, but a fail would only be +1? I guess my confusion is if you successfully heal a crit wound that is +1 back per the rules, but on a fail you can only heal the +1 per week? The wording is vauge in that on a fail you heal at the "natural healing rate" which really doesn't help in battle first aid since it's on a scale of 1 per week, and that seemed useless to me. Honestly this system is so weird I just gave everyone the Hardy Talent and dropped critical damage so they just at 0 wounds.

I'd like to roll back in Crit damage for some flavor, but also still trying to keep Medicae from being over used and still vague on how you still heal even on a failed roll at the "natural rate".

What follows is the errata from DW but I believe it is applicable:

The following should be added to
the First Aid use of the Medicae Skill: “The First Aid use of the
Medicae Skill can be used to treat any number of untreated injuries with
a single Medicae Test. If successful, the Medicae Test removes damage
as detailed above. Once the Medicae Test is performed, the injuries are
treated (for better or worse) and cannot be treated with another First Aid
Test. They may be treated with an Extended Care Test.”

Basically it means that once you try a first aid test with Medicae all unhealed wounds become "Treated".

Once a wound is treated it cannot be healed by another first aid test, only extended care.

So you want to treat low wound players asap before they take more wounds.

Ex. Bob the Guardsman has 14 wounds. Bob takes 5 wounds in a fight leaving him with 9 wounds. He is treated with First Aid and gains 3 wounds back bringing him up to 12 wounds. Later, Bob, still at 12 wounds takes another 2 wounds from a stub gun, leaving him at 10 wounds. Another First Aid test is taken and he is healed for 5 wounds. This heals Bob back up to 12 wounds, healing the 2 wounds he just took but still leaves him down 2 wounds that were previously treated.

ItsUncertainWho said:

The errata helps out a bit. So it's limited to each time they are wounded (instead of saying "for each wound"). So If Bob's friend failed that medicae, he'd still get healed +1 for some really crappy bandage work on a cut, but you can't try again until you hole up for an extended rest. His second wound from combat is a stub hit for 2 damage and his friend rolls enough to heal 5, but your heal amount can not spill over from one wound to another. Makes a bit more sense. I tend to understand real examples better than abstract text, haha, so thanks to everyone for helpin' out.

You do not heal 1 point on a medicae failure. You heal at the normal rate. This means that the next day you would heal 1 health. Basically, if you fail medicae it does nothing. Unless you fail very badly. then you deal damage or kill your patient.

In combat, healing is a Full Action by both the healer and the healee. As per the Core rulebok p.104: "First Aid ... is a Full Action by you and your patient."

Each individual source of damage counts as a "wound" in this case, as was clarified previously.