As it's written a medic is probably more useful to a larger party than a small one. Although I can also see a use the wider use, healing comrades and NPC's.

I have a couple of questions with how it works now. Firstly, is stabilising a critically wounded character included in the 24hour limit? It shouldn't be and that's enough reason to have a medic around in a dangerous game like OW.

Secondly does a successful diagnosticatior use actually help further First Aid tests? I can see that it would useful in other situations than directly healing but I'd normally give people bonuses to tests if they had correct supporting information but it's not mentioned in the description of the Diagnoticator or in the difficulty of the Medicae tests. If it doesn't mention it anywhere I'd be inclinded to give a+10 for a successful test and an additional +5 per DoS (up to +30 max).

Personally I can a lot people using house rules until it's gone into more detail, I think there's a good chance of that being included in Hammer of the Emperor if they flesh out the specialisation. The simple answer would be that a character that had first aid used on them cannot be treated again untill they are wounded again . More realisticaly, once treated they cannot cannot be treated again untill they are wounded again and this cannot remove more wounds than they have taken since being treated.

Face Eater said:

It all comes to down how big the player group is and what sort of game they are running. In a smaller game, the medic eats into combat potential so isn't as useful as a Techpriest or even a psyker, however in a bigger group where there is already sufficient combat potential and where there are more squad members to be injured (comrades included!) then the medic starts to shine.
Similarly in a low-tech regiment the medicae can take over from a techpriest. In an armoured regiment, the types of weapons that can take out your vehicles will likely instantly kill your characters so a medic becomes less useful than operates and techpriests.

Ultimately everything has its own niche and uses in a group.

In the first combat, before we even landed on the planet, I lost my eye to a righteous fury rolled from the 3rd ork I engaged in melee. On his next strike I landed on the same critical (rending 4, head) by "natural means" and had to roll another toughness or loose my other eye. I make it, keeping my only eye left. After we finish up the combat, get some improvised medical attention we need to take a valkyrie down to the planet. In mid air we get shot down and have to jump out, loosing one of our weapon specialists (me being the other) in the valkyrie going down. We land in the middle of the jungle and need to get to him and see if hes still alive. The other members being a sergeant, medic and tech-priest leaves me (one eye, no awareness skill yet) as the scout. Long story short, we find him, go through the jungle for days to get back to the city we were supposed to aid so we can start the real campaign.

Righteous Fury crits are temporary, are they not? You should have regained the use of both eyes if you passed the Toughness Test vs. the "real" crit damage.

Edit: Just looked over Righteous Fury rules and it doesn't mention they're temporary at all. I wonder where I got that idea… hmm

Flail-Bot said:

Actually I thought it was something like that too at first and have heard it mentioned before but can't find anything on it anywhere either. It was kinda funny as I was being a bit arrogant and when he says he hits, I can't remember if I already dodged or just failed but I was just like "Ah well whatever bring it", he says it a head hit, same reaction and he says OOOOOH Righteous Fury and I do the same reaction cause I thought it couldn't be anything too serious,

Then he says "roll thoughness or lose your eye" and I'm more like "WHAAAAT???" , then looks at my 31 Toughness… Roll a 98 or similar… Bye bye eye. Of course the next attack, head hit again, and I count the damage and see it comes to 4… (same result)… Say WAIT it COULD be the same eye! and he rolls random, and it isn't… Got a bit nervous

Sent on scouting missions with so much penalties wasn't too fun either

Anyways to get back onto the medic thingy, I'm pretty sure that the 24 hour limit is for First aid, which is the actual healing part. Stoping someone from bleeding to death is just a medicae roll. As for Diagnosis, I'm pretty sure you can see the guy is bleeding because he was shot by an Ork other than that, I think it would, at least in theory, grant some bonus on treatment for any kinds of diseases or similar.

Keep in mind, big group or not, the Medic has the ability to heal with his comrade at range, and in addition START with the medikit. So unless you, as players, are allowed to buy things with the 30 points for regiment creation, and make sure you have one in each group, you will need a medic to start with a medikit. No matter how good you are at medicae with your other type of character, I'm sure it'll be severe penalties for having no equipment to use at all.

That being said, I'm pretty sure the best medic ever would have to be a tech-priest with one of those arms and a megabrainthingy (cerebral implants or something)..