I noticed in my play session this weekend that the rules limit the use of First Aid to "once per encounter." However, no mention is made that I could find of how out-of-combat healing works. In our case, we had an encounter where someone got hurt and was able to heal a couple of points of wounds, but still had some damage afterward. I combed over the rules and didn't see a mention of how to handle healing outside of an encounter short of the recovery stuff that seems to cover natural healing.

Has anyone else run into issues with this? Am I missing some bit of text that explains it?

It takes a specific Difficulty, medicine check to remove any critical injuries.

And it also says that a Triumph (or maybe it was X Advantages) can be used to remove hours from some time frame, but the Beta book does not say what that time incrament is.?? I've been guessing its 24 hours for natural healing / removal of crit injuries.

Venthrac said:

We haven't had a problem with this. Mainly because we found the rules that explain healing to be very clear. See the Recovery & Healing section on pages 143 & 144. The only rule we saw any need to add is "Any successful medicine check on a player allows them to regain consciousness in addition to other effects". We needed a way to get people conscious after wound or strain thresholds were exceeded without healing an obscene number of wounds in combat.

Gamerunner said:

Pg 143 of the Beta Book makes its very explicit what the time frames are for these skill checks. Briefly, for critical injuries:

• 1 Medicine check/week
• 1 Resillience check/week of rest
• 1 Resilience check/24 hrs in bacta

Obviously, there's more information than just these There are guidelines for wound recovery in this section, as well.

-WJL

The issue we were having was not critical injuries, just regular wounds. So, we had a character that had taken I think 6 damage in the course of a battle. When the combat had ended, the team's medic asked me (the GM) if she could heal some of the wounds, and I looked in the book to see how healing worked. I'd read it before but I didn't have it completely memorized.

What I read was this segment on page 143:

"A character may attempt a Medicine check to help a character heal wounds. Each character may only receive one Medicine check per encounter as there is only so much good first aid can do to help a character."

So this rule appears to be designed to prevent multiple uses of the Medicine skill during an encounter, which makes good sense. However, once the team medic had finished using her Medicine skill to heal the wounded character, she had only healed two of his 6 wounds. He still had 4 wounds of damage, so she asked me when her character could attempt another use of the Medicine skill to heal more of the damage.

I once again looked in the book and started reading from the section I quoted above and onward. I could not find any rule that states that a character can use the Medicine skill to heal someone other than the above-stated "once per encounter" instance, creating the odd situation where a wounded character seeks desperately to get into an encounter to the doctor can try to use Medicine on him again. The only other healing rules I see cover natural rest, bacta tanks and stimpacks, so I guess the Medicine skill really can be only during encounters?

What I would have expected to see is a rule along the lines of "A character can only receive the benefits of first aid once per day," (or some such) which would allow a character with Medicine to use first aid on her wounded crewmates even if no encounters took place that day.

Well, I'm eating my words.

I don't see a limitation on the number of times it can be used/day. I'd say there ISN'T a limit on the number of times medicine can be used. I'd moderate the [ab]use of the skill by credit expense, e.g. 10 credits/wound healed, to represent the use of medical supplies (suture, antibiotics, bacta, etc). A medpac (400 Creds) could be used to heal 40 wounds.

But it should be adressed by the devs. Good catch.

-WJL

I like your solution there. I might adopt that or place some other limit on it.

My group has pretty much been using the rules to mean you get one attempt at healing after a battle, and after that its down to natural healing to deal with what is left over. Of course it hasn't really become an issue as my group seem to be carrying an entire chemists worth of Stims and use them to rid themselves of any wound damage between battles.

I first thought the Stims were a bit too much like magic potions, but having played 4 sessions now and realising how often players can take wounds, I see them almost as essential to support an action packed game which may have multiple fights in one session.

Mara.

Yep, that's playing by the rules are they're written, Marachai. And maybe that's by design, though it seems to diminish the usefulness of the Medicine skill a bit, and make stimpacks almost a mandatory bulk purchase for any crew of PCs.

Maybe the rules are built this strictly because any character can attempt a Medicine check in EorE (whereas in many game it can't be use untrained),

Actually, a different, better, would be to assign a set cost to each attempt. For example, an attempt to heal a wound costs 100 credits of supplies. Emergency packs are one-shots, med-pacs have four uses before they're spent. This way failed attempts will still incur a cost.

Again, not saying it needs to be or should be this way, just spit-balling an temp solution until they change it or we find out they neglected to address the issue in the final product.

-WJL

Marachai5 said:

Yeah, that was kind of my take on it as well. One shot at first aid to try and patch up the last batch of wounds, then natural healing or bacta. I can see this being intentional on FFGs part for that gritty feel, although agreed that stimpacks kind of lessens that effect (though at least they do cost something I suppose).

I read over all the relevant rules again, and I'm still feeling like something's missing from these rules. In particular, the rules for natural healing are bugging me.

It seems to me that the rules do not provide any benefit to natural healing for a PC who is resting in a high-tech medical facility under the care of highly-skilled medical professionals when compared to a lone PC scraping by on a desert planet with no supplies. Shouldn't there be some acceleration to healing, or the opportunity to further heal with additional Medicine checks, when a wounded character spends a full day resting in a hospital? Or is it really just 1 wound per day no matter what?

(Note that I'm deliberately ignoring bacta tanks for the purposes of this argument, as my contention lies more with the "as written" natural healing rules.

I've also started to notice that the role of a full-time doctor is somewhat diminished in this ruleset. Any character can heal himself by applying a stimpack or by spending time in a bacta tank. Characters can check their own Resilience skill to heal naturally from critical injuries. The use of the Medicine skill is rather limited in these rules, at least when compared to other RPGs I've had experience with.

I'm imagining a group of banged-up PCs returning to the ship after a tough mission, with three days of travel in hyperspace ahead of them. The crew's doctor spends those three days carefully tending the crew's injuries, but without a bacta tank and with no encounters to allow the use of a first aid check, all that remains is natural healing. Despite all the doctor's ministrations, these characters are going to heal one wound a day, and that's it. It feels like the wounded PCs in this scenario should heal more quickly than that.

I realize (and appreciate) that Medicine plays a bigger role in critical injuries, but my group has not encountered one of those yet. So far we have only dealt with Wounds, and those often accrue quickly and go away slowly under the current rules. Everyone's now keen to go and buy a few dozen stimpacks, and our party's doctor is feeling very useless as a result.

My recommendation to the designers would be to allow a character to use his or her Medicine skill to accelerate natural healing under appropriate circumstances (IE, the doctor has the necessary tools and/or facilities at hand, as well as ample time to devote to taking care of the patient and the patient is doing nothing overly strenuous.) Under those conditions, I would be inclined to allow a doctor to make one "long-term care" roll per patient, per day of medical care. I'd use all the same rules that apply to the current "once per encounter" version of first aid as specified on page 143.

That's just one option, of course. Other good suggestions have already been made above.

Venthrac said:

It was also noted by our group's doctor that this was the case. Admittedly, he didn't have a particularly high medicine (from memory 1 ability die and 1 proficiency die), but he only rolled 1 wound healed with his one and only heal roll on an allied PC, and his reaction was "Is that it? Seems like a bit of a waste to be the doctor".

Venthrac said:

I'm not disagreeing that something should be done, although it could be argued this is exactly what the designers intended. After all, when in the movies to we ever see a character being given long term care by a doctor that isn't just soaking in a bacta tank?

@Gribble - I don't agree with the 'it's not in the movies' argument. It took me a bit of time to understand why I wasn't completely comfortable with it, but I'll try to explain. First, I want to make it clear that the Star Wars movies should be looked at for the tone, pacing and inspiration for any Star Wars role playing game; however, to make a certain option bad or unimportant is simply bad game design. If the game designers included an option for a player to be a doctor then that option should be a good one, and if they intended for that option to suck then that shows poor regard for their player-base. This is for several reasons, chiefly, an RPG isn't a movie, this seems obvious, but I myself have run into this problem before both in my own GMing and in the GMing of others. A movie (especially one as fast-paced and action packed as a Star Wars movie) has different character priorities and ideals than RPGs.

An RPG's goals are two-fold, creating a compelling story with collaboration between players and GM; and to have an enjoyable experience for each individual player. That second goal mean that if a player wants to play a doctor then he should feel that being a doctor is fun and worth-while. If being a doctor is more or less pointless then he's probably going to not be very happy. I've found this to be true for my own group; we have a doctor, but he seems to be more effective as a mechanic/scholar/information repository (admittedly, that's because his skill levels don't matter nearly as much as his 5 intellect, but that's another problem that's been discussed to death) I will hold this as a negative thing, he wanted to play a doctor, but being a doctor has not been very interesting or important to him. Now, he has been useful, but what he wanted to do was be a doctor but the system says that being a doctor is not important which in my honest opinion is bad for the game.

Now I believe that the designers do intend what is best for the game and for their players, so I'm confident that this will be something that will be rectified, if not in the finished rules, then in one of the future books.

I raise these issues mainly because I'm not sure if these are the rules the designers intended, or if it's possible some text was simply left out by accident. I get the feeling that's what happened in the character creation chapter, where no clear mention is made in the "steps of character creation" about how many starting credits. Mostly it's an effort to get the designer's attention so they'll look at this part of the rules and be sure that the way they're written is the way they want it to work.

I would not be terribly surprised if some text allowing a doctor to help accelerate natural healing was intended to go into the book and simply didn't make it for one reason or another. It's a beta, after all.

Venthrac said:

I would be for less use of stimpacks and more use of trained medics/doctors/hospitals. Stimpacks had their start in a video game, I really don't want to see an overuse of them in my RPG. If they exist at all I would make them limited such as very expensive or with side effects if used too much. Of course this may mean I would need to tweak the rules to make first aid and extended care take the place of stimpacks.

Han went along on a commando mission to Endor and didn't have a single stimpack to help out Leia. Han also went in search of a possibly dying Luke on Hoth, and didn't bring along a stimpack. We only see medical droids and bacta tanks in the movies. I think someone mentioned stimpacks in an EU novel, but I personally will limit them somehow or completely remove them even if it means house rules to keep the game balanced.

Come to think of it, weren't stimpacks not healing items, but combat boosters of some sort? From Star Wars Galaxies I think.

Most people know that healing does not happen overnight right? Not everyone has some sort of mutant healing factor. A human (wookie, rodian, etc) body can only take so much.

When your wound threshold is maxed out, that is when you'll get an actual wound - this is what the critical hits are. The wound threshold is to represent the heroic factor or plot armour as it were. The use of stimpacks is going to give you some temporary adrenaline, and anti-biotics to keep you going, but it does absolutely nothing to heal a broken limb, stab wounds or etc.

Perhaps the players should be more cautious when it comes to taking damage. Being shot generally has adverse effects - the chief of which is usually death. This is why it's a good idea not to get shot. Armour is not designed so a character never takes damage. It's designed to turn a lethal hit into a debilitating one.

There is probably much we are not seeing. But applying medicine/performing surgery in a field situation is not easy at all. The fact that you only get one roll seems about right - you can do what you can to get them to a hospital.

Healing in a hospital will most likely give boost dice to your roll at the end of the week (for a good hospital) or count as having the necessary tools for a small clinic in a Nar Shaddaa alley. Once again, this is because healing takes time. If you can afford bacta treatment, it takes less time.

Now, as to the player who has the doctor, the way I read a lot of the talents is they make things very easy to heal. The doctor character is going to be providing aid to all the other characters. Long term care would seem to me that the healing of 1 wound per day is increased. So long as the doctor character is checking in and providing the care, they party will heal more quickly. So, you have Bacta Specialist 1, characters are going to be getting 2 wounds per day. The surgeon talent is useful anytime they apply a medicine check to heal wounds - first aid. The master doctor talent reduces the difficulty of medicine checks - very helpful when it comes to healing critical injuries (the actual wounds of the game).

Having a doctor on board is going to make decrease the amount of down time due to healing drastically. Factor in that a doctor can then use his ranks in medicine in place of a resolve check to heal critical injuries makes them useful.

Now there isn't much about disease or poisons in the game, but a medicine check can also be used for other things, such as forensics.

Don't think of healing as an instant fix. Healing takes time, so don't rush in try to plan your actions, and by all means, avoid getting shot/stabbed/or bitten.

I'm just going to allow a medicine roll daily to replace the daily 1 point.

aramis said:

In addition to this idea, require the medicine practitioner to use a med kit, or other medical device, that is either consumable, or has a high cost (like a med bay). add boost as appropriate for full recouperation, and setback as needed for a lack of material (so the economical doctor trying to patch up teh crew with whisky and dental floss takes some draw back). If the role fails, no healing for the day. (stop scratching it and it might heal).

In this way, there is a credit cost (either fixed or consumable) there is a medicine rule that addresses natural healing without over shadowing it, and hospitals/medical facilities can be given a rating by the storyteller, and charge for it accordingly.

Also, in addition to the once per encouter rule, i would say that first aid can only be performed on a character whom has actually taken wound damage in the encounter. No hiding in the closet jsut to get more opportunities for medical care.