How useful is a medic and is really worth having one in your party. While I was GMing a game one of the players chose to be a medic. Then during game he found out medics can really only heal each player once per day with the value of their intelligence bonus (in his case 4). This seems fairly useless unless someone were dying.

Is there something I am missing or is that it for medic's healing ability?

If there is nothing I am missing and that is really all medics can do I have made some home rules for the medicae skill's first aid ability:

- Medicae: the medic player may heal any character at any point in the game, however, the medic may only heal up to 2d10+Intelligence bonus per day (reroll for a new value each day, excess healing does not carry over).

This way the medic gains a sort of health pool that they can designate which characters are in the most critical condition and heal them accordingly.

I've changed how first aid works slightly (way back in DH) and I think it makes the medicae skill more useful.

Whenever you take damage you write it down seperately. For example if you take 3 damage in the first round and 2 more in the second round you write that down as 3, 2 as opposed to 5. Each wound can be treated once. The medicae test can only restore as much health as the wound has cased per wound.
Your "damage status" (lightly wounded, heavily wounded, critically wounded) applies to all wounds so getting treatment earlier is better than getting treatment later.

Overall I think the Medicae skill is useful but having a dedicated Medic isn't always neccesary.

Another thing to remember with the medicae skill is that any degree of success when making a first aid check also adds to the number of wounds healed, a med kit can also help giving you a bonus of +20 to skill checks. You could also try and get a Cebebral Implant for your medic to give him some unnatural intelligence.

Also the game by its nature is trying to be a bit on the gritty side so can't have people healed to easy each fight as it takes away a lot of the threat of combat, but while a starting medic may only be able to heal 3 to 4 HP with every test before DoS to start with, eventualy with some bonus gear or more skill points it can be increased a bit.

Robomummy said:

Okay, first, everyone with Medicae can heal. The medic's advantage is the +5 Int, starting aptitudes (he has both cheap Int and cheap Medicae) and the starting equipment. Especially the starting equipment.

Second, with First-Aid you heal your TB+number of Degrees of Sucess on the First Aid Test. The Medic has an overall +25 bonus (+5 Int, +20 Medi-kit) to his Medicae Test, this is potentially +2 Damage removed.

i think the Medic is kinda' like a compulsory member. Yeah, others can learn Medicae too, but the Medic starts with a huuuuge boost that is nigh-impossible to make up for other characters. And a party without someone with good Medicae is a dead party .

I don't have my book with me, but isn't the medicae skill be used once per encounter rather than once per day?

Isn't it once every 24 hours for the person BEING treated for first aid? ie an injured soldier can only be treated by someone with Medicae once per 24hours, whereas a medic with Medicae can treat as many soldiers as long as he counts the full action taken

Braddoc said:

Braddoc said:

OW style Medicae can only be used to Treat (that is attempt, not necessarily successfully) someone once per 24 hours - and that's First Aid or Extended Care, not both in the same period. The PCs are very much merely mortal and quite likely to die from wounds; for instance the -50 penalty that would apply to a First Aid attempt to heal a Crit 5 injury. I believe the quote goes "A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down."

Were are you getting this?

sorry Ignore above post, I meant to ask where you were getting the information that a medicae can heal at anyone multiple times.

Robomummy said:

The isse you're going to see with this thread is that Medicae as a skill has changed drastically in OW as opposed to the other 40K RPG games. Even more so, it has changed quite a bit during the OW beta. Not everyone has their rules on them at any given point in time (obviously those speaking with authority do have their book with them).

I don't have my book with me right now but I'm with jdubb in that I coulda sworn the wording was that the 24 hour wait was for the patient of First Aid, not for the healer. You're definitely going to want to read through the medicae black box in the skills section, paying close attention to the First Aid action.

All that said, I can definitely say a medic is better than your average guardsman at healing. If there is no medic/medicae trained character present, a GM will really need to make sure there is some way to remove damage from the squad, or encourage players to not be attached to their characters.

Part of the problem is that unless you're a medic, a tech preist, a psyker or an operator, training in medicae is going to be pretty costly.

KommissarK said:

Actually, you need to be either a Medic or an Operator to get the cheap Medicae as a basic option. STs, Ratlings and Weapon Specialists can also get it if they acquire the Intelligence aptitude. tech Priests and Psykers only have a cheap Int Advance, what won't be enough on the long run.

Robomummy said:

I don't have the book in front of me, but I believe based on the wording, it is implied that using the First-Aid-Medicae skill can heal mutliple people during a given day; however each person can only be affect by First Aid-Medicae skill ONCE per 24 hours.

It is different for whatever it's called, extended care?, where a Medicae skilled person can only treat a certain number of individuals at once over a 24hour period.

KommissarK said:

thats what I meant, I thought someone said the medic can heal anyone at will multiple times. I know they can heal once per day per player.

The medic can heal the same person several times, BUT there are some restrictions…

Each "group" of wounds that you attempt to heal can only be healed once/24 hours.

So, if I am playing a Stormtrooper with 16 wounds, and get shot twice in the first round of combat for 4 and 5 wounds (after armor and such), and take cover behind a wall while the medic tries to heal me.. Lets say he heals me for 5 points of damage. Out of the first 2 attacks i had taken a total of 9 damage, then got healed for 5. This means I have 4 remaining wounds that are TREATED.

So if I in the few rounds of battle, or a bit later within those 24 hours, take another hit for 2 wounds (putting me at 6wounds of damage), the medic rolls and again would be able to heal 5, he would still only be able to heal those 2 later wounds, because the first 4 have already been treated.

So basically everytime you attempt a first aid, you treat ALL the wounds currently on that character. They are ALL treated, no matter how many of them you remove or not.

If I had taken 4 wounds, then gotten healed and then shot again for 5 wounds and healed, the medic would probably have been able to remove them all.

So yeah, a good medic of some kind is more or less essential in this game. Preferably one that will do it's best to heal wounds ASAP, to make sure there wont be too many treated, but unhealed, wounds.

A medic on the other hand could just as well be a Tech-priest, an operator or even a weapon specialist trained in the skill (or using an advanced kit). How ever, a group not starting with a medic should, in my personal opinion, not have as easy to get hold of first aid kits. Especially not advanced ones. But it depends on the group a bit as well. A droptrooper regiment might not be able to afford a properly trained medic, and might instead use advanced first aid kits on a designated medicae weaponspecialist. Biggest advantage of medics is they start with the kit.

Healing only 4 points of dammage sounds kinda low to me.

Im playing a medic myselve and he is able to do a lot more.

1) In 50 ( rolled maximum, +5 for medic, +5 cheap raise)

2) medic +10

3) medkit (+20)

so I roll normaly against an 80%

You heal In bonus ( 5 ) + any numer of degree of sucess

normaly he gets every player back to near Maximum after they got hit in battle.

Even heavy and critical wounded chars are at least back to fighting ability

A Medic's best friend is a Psyker with Endurance. The Psyker can't handle the squad's healing on his own unless people only ever get very minor damage. If the Psyker can turn Critical or Heavy wounds up a grade, the medic himself spikes rather nicely in effectiveness.

Characters in Only War are expected to have a couple of days to recuperate, or to try and find the time for it when they can, even if that's just lying down a few more hours in a foxhole. This may be a pacing we've not seen since DH Biomancers, DnD3.x casters and the such, but "we'll lick our wounds" is a perfectly acceptable use of your character's time.

Not literally though. Could result in acid, mutagens or shrapnel-cuts across your tongue. Then the medic will get angrier.

Well, my example was just for showing how it works.

Also an average roll would've been about 10 less, meaning 1 less point of base healing + most of the time one less DoS, so 2 points less healing than your medic does on average.

On another note, you know that you get -10 for each critical damage taken? A character with 5 critical damage would require a -50 medicae roll, quickly removing most of your bonuses

You might also get a -10 penalty on heavily injured characters, though I'm not entirely sure that's the case.

.113 said:

Just to clarify, and I've pulled out my OW rules now: its meaningful to note that the idea of "treated" wounds is no longer present. No matter what, you can only have one First Aid action performed on your character per day. But it can be confirmed that the Medic can perform First Aid on multiple characters.

Instead of "these wounds have been treated by the First Aid action," its just an idea that "this PC has had First Aid performed on them in the last 24 hours." Its actually possible to solely use First Aid as a means of healing a character, given enough days (i.e. you don't actually need to use extended care after the first use of the First Aid action).

This is significantly different from how it works in the previous 40k line (at leas up through DW, I haven't run a game of BC).

As far as the usefulness of medics: as others have said, they get +5 int, and cheap access to pretty much all healing related talents/skills. Ultimately it comes down to how useful you find their comrade abilities to be (because after enough XP is earned, that +5 int isn't going to be that meaningful). They can improve their ability to make use of Extended Care (and thus makes them excellent healers out of combat), and most interestingly, the ablity to have comrades perform medicae checks at range (remember, First Aid is a Full Action). This is probably the key thing, as it frees up their economy of actions and allows them to aid allies without needlessly exposing themselves to enemy fire.

Overall I'd say they're useful, but by no means "mandatory" (given the removal of the idea of treated/untreated wounds for the First Aid action, the net healing they can perform daily is limited). Fortunately the increase to make degrees of success add to the final result does by all means make medic useful, and First Aid at range has plenty of uses. What would probably determine their usefulness as well is what the GM would provide the party in their absence. Does the GM opt to provide an Advanced Medkit as a part of mission gear? How well staffed are allied medical facilities? If the GM is too lenient in the absence of a Medic, then much of the Medic's usefullness is decreased. Of course, if the GM is too harsh on the matter, then the party will needlessly suffer for the sake of the players actually picking the specialties they want.

KommissarK said:

Doh, my bad

That's how it works then. Now I know as well

Though I have to admit it seems a bit odd. Imagine putting some stitches on some guy who got shot, then an hour later when the guy unfortunatly gets shot again you're like "nah I did you already".

.113 said:

I think it was an attempt to simplify it because you have to admit, the previous method was a bit odd the first time you read it. If I recall, @.113, you set up a thread about it as well. Its legimitately difficult to understand on the first read, yet it is a critical piece of the game, as being injured is a problem that most certainly will come up.

Personally I'm not sure what to think, but I'm just trying to clarify whats in the book.

I think the big difference is that First Aid can indeed be used on a day to day basis as a means of healing, which definitely speeds it up. So in the end, I'm not sure which is "better." It might be justifiable in the sense that during your average day to day of war you might only see one or two big battles that result in single big encounters, whereas with DH investigations that finally result in "raiding the compound" or DW kill team missions, you might have a bit more of a running battle/series of encounters.

Yeah, the previous healing methods were a bit complex, mostly because they didn't use any clear explanation at the same time, but rather spread it out in several different places (combined with a bad index which made it worse).

I did like the "treated" wounds actually, it made sense. I also liked the change from healing heavily injured and critical injuries only through a weekly basis. It did make you "out of the game" for far too long.

But this once every 24 hours thing, it removes the usefulness, or perhaps "coolness", of a medic who runs through fire and bullets, mid battle, to give you first aid. I'll imagine there is much less "on your feet soldier, the fight isn't over yet" from our medics, but more a "if you're more or less not dying, we wait until after the battle to heal you".

After all, if I take 4 damage in the first rounds of combat, and he heals 7, there will be 3 points wasted that might have been really useful before the next day.

In addition, being able to use your comrade to heal someone next to him, instead of yourself, with a -10 penalty seems like you just gave yourself another 1 point of healing wasted. Good in a really dangerous situation where the target is about to die otherwise, but if it's not an emergency it seems just wasteful.

Basically a tech-priest or Operator would easily become just as good as a medic now in my opinion (or at least close enough), if you don't count the fact they don't start with the medkit.

To be fair, the original beta for OW had the older style Medicae rules in place (Int bonus healed on lightly wounded, 1 point healed on heavily or critically wounded characters), so the comrade order was a bit more useful.

In all honesty, you "should" be able to maintain the old style of medicae checks without radically altering the system. In which case Medic is still about as "useful." A Specialization really is just a minor stat bonus, aptitudes, starting gear, and comrade orders (not to gamify the system too much). Aptitudes and gear are mitigated by adding more XP or succeeding on more Logistics rolls. Stat bonuses while nice, tend to be trivial when < 10. The big thing is specialization of skills brought about by XP efficiency (i.e. a person playing a Medic is more likely to max out Medicae than a Heavy Gunner) and the comrade abilities. The point I'm trying to make is that since anyone can pick up Medicae, and the talents that are associated with it, it is very difficult to claim a Medic as a mandatory character (@.113 not that I'm saying you are saying this, as far as I can tell you are not at all, just trying to approach the party balance argument). Now, by all means, someone in the party should be trained in Medicae (I would almost go as far as to claim that this is indeed mandatory for any party that wishes to survive).

In either OW's Medicae rules or the older style, overall success on the First Aid check is paramount. Failing that check is about as equally disasterous, but leans towards being more penalizing in the old style of the rule (as you could only make one First Aid check on a set of untreated wounds). OW removes the necessity of making this check and gives the added bonus of extra DoSs adding in, but counters the old system by making it once per day.

The problem I've seen while using the older system is that you eventually wind up with a "minimum number of wounds to even matter" mentality. That unless an attack can put them past a point beyond where the healer can bring them back to, then an attack is more or less pointless. Obviously, multiple attacks can drain party resources as well, but the wound totals in this system are such a fine line between "perfectly healthy," "injured," "badly injured," and "OHMYGODIMHOLDINGMYGUTSINWITHBOTHHANDS!"

The newer method at least allows for some leeway with regards to how much damage the party can sustain.

One modification I would suggest, or at least find interesting, is have the total healed by First Aid also be modified by degrees of failure. That is to say, you always heal IB when using First Aid (even if you fail), but it gets decreased by failure. That way its important to roll well, but at least having the training can help prevent bad things.

Yeah, I agree a party should have a person trained in medicae without a doubt.

As for our regiment, our GM gave us the Die Hard thingy which grants us Toughness as an Aptitude. For a Sergeant and Heavy weapons guy at least, this means 1 "free" aptitude that can be put in Intelligence for quite an easier time getting that medicae to the max. But even without it, it's not that expensive for just one skill so all in all I think anyone can do it.

I might add that our previous group was also Drop troopers, which might be why I have this view of the newer healing system. We didn't end up in one fight a day, rather we had several battles each time we went on a mission. We also came from a fortress world giving us a harder time to back down from fights with our favored enemies (orks) and since that campaign was an all out ork invasion… things didn't get easier for us.

Add in the fact that orks are really hard to kill with their True grit ability…

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.

Our droptrooper style left us behind enemy lines a lot, and usually inside hostile and completely overrun orkinfested cities. A battle a day was impossible.

So, we lost a few guys during the campaign (only once to friendly fire.. guess we can't blame that on the orks). We went with untreated and treated wounds that could be treated again in the next 24 hours, but would regularily need new medical attention and by the end of the campaign the 3 out of 5 characters from the original group had all been running around with 0 fate for a while.

Our new group should play as line infantry and here I can imagine that the 24 hour regular healing might work better. During the long hours and days of waiting for battle, we should be able to heal up in time for the next battle. But yeah, doesn't need to be a medic, aside for the fact they start with a medkit. If we go with another specialisation and don't manage to requisition one in time, things might be bad. So we'll go with a medic still

yeah these reponses help a bit, I still dont really see them being that useful becuase you can just have the medicae skill and give it to anyone. Other groups get bonuses to int and whatever else is needed for medics s its not that good.

This is why in my group we play it so the medic has a "health pool" that gives them a certain amount of health per day that they can heal. this also makes them think more strategically about how often they heal and who needs it more. the health pool is 2d10+int per day.

Myself I'm trying to build a less DW 'uber Squad vs. all', and more of a procedural type game. So, if a PC takes a hit, then rather than deal with it themselves they can just yell "Medic!" The mechanic I'm currently trying to build is a Logistics Test using the Mission Gear modifiers with a cumulative -10 penalty for each request made by the Squad to its Regiment, covering medics, ammo/fuel resupply, artillery support, reinforcements and so on. DoS/F change the outcome, so for instance, a request for a medic with 3 degrees of Fail would mean that, after a minute or so, some mook with a medikit runs up and asks what the problem is. 5+ DoS and they get the EMH treatment.

Obviously, having their own Medic is still very useful, since it saves their uses for other things, and the one Medicae Test per person every 24hrs does mean that a maxed skill is really useful, plus the Medicae Auxilia comrade ability is really useful with +10 Assistance and permitting Extended Care for an unlimited number of patients - I think I'll cap it at "everyone that'll fit under one roof, of IntB radius."