I'm planning on starting up Phase II of my Deathwatch campaign as soon as I finish up a Star Wars Saga game I'm running for a few friends. Yesterday I received an email from one of my players (a Dark Angels Apothecary) indicating that he wanted to retire his character and make a Salamanders Devastator instead. I'm perfectly fine with him making a new character- the Kill-Team has needed a dedicated heavy weapons specialist- but I've hit a snag.

Without the DA Apothecary, the Kill-Team completely loses its medical aspect. I would just make an NPC Apothecary to serve as heal-stick, but an established Dark Angels Tactical Marine/Chaplain NPC already serves with the Kill-Team. As an Apothecary can serve as a Chaplain, I can rebuild that NPC to serve as both physical and spiritual medic. However, the less work I have to do, the better, so I'm considering assigning a pair of servo-skulls to the KT's Techmarine. Said skulls would be equipped with medical equipment (effectively a narthecium and reductor) and serve as the KT's medic. I run a pretty canonical game, excepting the rather noble-bright tone of some portions, so would allowing a servo-skull under the command of a Forge Master to perform the activities of an Apothecary be too fluff-breaking? If so, what would you suggest as an alternative fix? Rebuild the Chaplain into an Apothecary? Use a servitor instead of servo-skulls? Build an additional NPC to follow the team? Thanks in advance.

I've run adventures sans-Apothecary for quite some time now. Really, the spending, not burning, of fate points seems to be the heal of choice for my players and nobody really seems to know how to actually play an Apothecary (fluffy or otherwise) in my group.

That said, I really like your servo skull idea. I myself just got everyone back together for a reboot and nobody rolled a power-armored medic so...if need be, consider it stolen

Edit: With the additions of the follower rules it should be really easy to implement as well, heal bot servo-skulls with giant armor piercing needles just sounds awesome.

Let someone take Medicae as an elite advance.

Some friends of mine and I did a d20 home-brew years ago, and learned the hard way that, in that game, anyway, we NEEDED a medic (hordes auto-20ed skills and attacks, so we ate damage like crazy. Since we didn't have one, and our Leader-type was the most skills-driven character, he grabbed Treat Injury when we leveled, after repeatedly observing our medic NPC patch up his men (to ensure we were fighting fit, and all), and requisitioned a narthecium/reductor set. His use of chain sword and plasma pistol fit well with much of the image of an apothecary, and his tactics mandated a high Int, which helped with the Treat Injury skill points. All in all, it was one of the best things we managed to do in that game, and he didn't have to "just play the medic"; he was plenty combat-heavy, fought on the front line with me (the GK), while our Dev marine cover-fired, and our sniper was in the neighboring town, got to do lots of tactical planning, and managed other party-boosting effects in between, then patch us up after our enemies ripped us up, but died before we did. In the end, thanks to Action Points and him, he was the only casualty, when I had to use Holocaust, and it consumed him and the Daemon he was fighting.

Okay, so the above was maybe not important; just me rattling off joys of the old days. I'd say you could easily go with the servo-skulls performing medicae; they are Int-skill driven, and it sounds cool (maybe they were once top medics in life). If you don't like that plan, or fear that they won't survive battles where Space Marines need medical attention, re-purposing another character, such as the Chaplain, seems a nice way to go. Personally, I think I prefer making one of the players Elite Advance Medicae, and have them sport the narthecium; if they want to benefit from battlefield medicine, it seems appropriate that they invest in the ability, rather than drag an NPC medic along (other than the servo-skulls), but that's mostly just me, and if they have a non-Ap character grab it, they'll be more hard-pressed to pull the "but all I do is heal the party" line. I laugh because, if I were playing DW, Apothecary is one of the character types I'd be most likely to play (sitting there with Librarian and Tech-Marine).

If you wish to still have a Chaplain in the group you could just use a Wolf Priest from the First Founding book be an NPC, they are healers and Chaplains already. Then again if you are running with Dark Angels they may have an issue with the "medic" of the group being a Space Wolf.

The Kill-Team has gotten rather attached to the Dark Angels Chaplain- amusingly, the most attached one is the Space Wolves Rune Priest- so I'd rather not muck with him too much.

The big question that hasn't be asked or answered here is in your previous run of this game, exactly how important was the Apothecary in YOUR game? If you you don't need to throw down with a lot of heals, then you can probably get away with a Medi-skull or two. Possibly the inquisitorial overseers at the watch house might decided that the group is underprepared for being able to go into the field, so they forcefeed Medicae hypnotraining on everybody so the entire group can make basic field repairs.

If you need more heals, consider other equipment upgrades. Maybe the stimm injectors inside the Astartes' power armour could be filled with a solution to rapidly clot wounds, allowing people up to 5 1d5 wound healing infusions as well as the skulls or training. Maybe have the group acknowledge their new weakness and have to find the requisitions for a diagnostor helm and a narthecium for one of the team.

Gaire: I LOVE that yer Dark Angel Chaplain and Space Wolf Rune Priest have bonded so. That's awesome! Perfectly played out, i would say - congrats to you and yer players!

Prof. Kylan: Good point, I hadn't thought of that. For the most part, the team has done well about avoiding major injuries. When they do take a hit, though, it tends to be big. The Storm Wardens Techmarine in particular has a chronic case of 'Swordleg': melee attacks ALWAYS nail him in the legs. The Apothecary formerly had to put minor heals down after every second or third combat (just odds of being hit) so long as they're up against hordes with a couple Elites. A Master supported by Elites and Hordes? That'll do a bit more damage. Thanks for your suggestion on the auto-injectors, I hadn't thought of that.

Zappiel: Thanks, man. The Rune Priest's player is probably the best roleplayer in the group. She probably knows the most about 40K in general after yours truly in the group as well, and she's the only one of us who's actually played the tabletop. She built a very interesting backstory for the Rune Priest that encourages peaceful ideological disputes between Wolf and Angel. It helps that the Wolf is the youngest member of the Kill-Team (maybe fifty years old, total), while the Chaplain NPC is the oldest member of the team (~250 years old).

Gaire said:

Ouch. I've seen a more severe case in my own campaign - a Rune Priest with a bad case of Clawface. For reasons unknown, Genestealers seemed only capable of hitting him in the face. So much so that he was blinded and had his face torn off during Final Sanction, and had to have it replaced with a steel mask and a pair of bionic eyes after the mission.

Gaire said:

I immediately went to the "I used to be an astartes like you, then I took a bolt round to the knee."

Lucrosium Malice said:

Thank you, I was otherwise going to make that comment.

I rather like the idea of rigging up the armor to stick you with heals, rather than have a dedicated medic. Granted, I still very much like having a medic, and don't see quite as much the drive NOT TO, as some people do (I know that, as a progression, they don't necessarily get so many great, not-medicae increases), but if no one wants to be the healer, or the cleric (chaplain+healer), having the high-defense suit do it, rather than the fragile, floating drone, seems cool, and a nifty thing for the techmarine to say they were doing in their spare time.

I feel for the de-beared viking, but suspect he might not suffer from Space Marine Sans-Helmetitus as much as some of his peers, if he doesn't want his battle injury, and its result, to be seen by everyone.

One houserule I used before (and am digging up again) is that all Deathwatch marines have Medicae as a basic untrained skill for the purposes of performing first aid *only*. This gives kill-teams sans an apothecary a little more flexibility but still worse off than they would be with a dedicated apothecary. It also means that nartheciums, reductors and the medicae-aiding combat webbing being available to all marines makes a bit more sense.