So… I'm playing 41-VEX and trying to figure out how medicine is supposed to work. Forget the beginner's book; I'm more or less rebuilding VEX using the updated beta rules and all.

And I can't make head or tail of it.

In the Medicine skill, it says I can use the skill to do "routine first aid". Well and good. It explains that there's a difficulty, and I heal wounds equal to the number of successes, but I can only try to fix a critical wound once per week.

But that's where it gets weird. It says additional successes above what's needed for healing can "be spent to reduce the target's healing time by 1 hour per success spent". Okay, so what's the normal healing time? And what does healing time mean exactly? No information.

So I flip to Recovery and Healing (p 143), and I find that "a character may attempt a medicine check to help a character heal wounds" once per target per encounter. Okay, that makes sense, I guess; I can heal each ally once per fight as a single action, and my Surgeon talent will enhance that. Cool. But what's that thing about reducing healing time then? And how often can I attempt medicine checks outside combat to help heal wounds? Can I bring my whole party down to zero wounds, given a few hours to work (assuming no critical injuries to deal with)?

And then there's medical equipment.

The emergency medpac says it allows me to heal others "without penalty, as detailed on page 143". I checked 143 and it makes no mention of medpacs whatsoever. And what does "without penalty" mean, exactly? Are we talking about without the difficulty dice, or does 143 fail to mention something about setback dice if you lack proper tools?

Because the full medpac has the same text about "without penalty" but refers to page 77, which also doesn't refer to any penalties for lacking equipment (but the section on 'complex medical procedures' does mention needing proper materials for those sorts of checks).

So I guess I'm totally confused about when I can do medicine, how long it takes, and what materials I need on hand to do so.

pg 143 Tells how characters recover from wounds. Read the chart on that page to determine the check difficulty. The section titled natural rest tells you how characters regain wounds without medical attention, bacta tanks speed this process up, see the bacta tank section on the same page for more info.

If the character tries to use the medicine skill to heal themselves add 2 purple dice to the check. If it's a droid using mechanics on itself add 1 purple dice.

Proper equipment in this case means a medpac or emergency medpac. If you don't have one of those on hand when you do the check add 1 purple dice to the check.

Pages referenced for all this information are 77, 117, and 143.

Here is a link to a very handy reference sheet of the rules. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9077657/SW-EotE-Reference-Sheets.pdf

and for Critical, he can only do once a week, is that mean that he and the patient are not available during that time?

Ref said:

Nope. That makes sense. You want to recover from those Criticals faster, that is what Bacta tanks are for.

Droma said:

This is the only piece of new information I got from the post; I did miss that note on p143. Honestly I was hoping for some insight on the whole time question, since it seems absurd that I could bring the party up to full health in a few hours when a good night's sleep is only worth 1 wound. The book doesn't really seem to explain how to go about healing outside of the encounter structure.

Ref said:

It doesn't take a full week of constant work to try to fix a critical wound, if that's what you're asking. It's just that you can only make the attempt that often -- a serious injury like that has to heal on its own, and short of full bacta immersion, there's only so much a doctor can do for it.

You can only use a Medicine check to heal wounds (not long term care style) once per encounter.

I took this to mean that outside encounters, you can still only heal someone once per encounter. That is to say, until you fight something else and get some fresh wounds, you can't heal them anymore.

This makes sense as the Medicine check you performed in the heat of battle or right after did everything you could for those particular wounds. The rest will just take bed rest/bacta. If you get in another fight, now you've got fresh wounds and someone can work on those, too.

Ref said:

I would say yes and no. A week of treatment would mean that the doctor would probably be treating the patient on and off at regular intervals. This, of course, assumes that the party has a week of nothing hectic to do - if they're going on adventures, then treatment wouldn't be possible (in my opinion), unless both the patient and doctor remained behind.

Darth Pseudonym said:

Or, rather, this.

Lunatic Pathos said:

Was there any commentary in the Rules on what exactly an "encounter" is defined as? The Beginner Box makes every scene an Encounter, and my players wished to heal themselves again in the next "encounter" after the previous fight ( when players had used their one/per, but still had remaining wounds ). I am inclined to agree with the above statement, that a PC only gets one Medicine check per damage dealing encounter, to be used during or directly after. A couple hours later during a negotiations encounter, they can't whip the med-kit out and keep working on the previously wounded. Am I reading this right?

>>> Was there any commentary in the Rules on what exactly an "encounter" is defined as?<< <

While I don't have the beta book in front of me, but speaking f rom a broader RPG perspective, it can be loosely defined, and is ultimately up to you as the GM. In this case I'd say within reason, as its hard to define a specific time limit to an encounter. If theyre rushing from combat encounter to combat encounter, it might be less amount of time, but from a gameplay perspective it'd be important to allow it. It's also important to remember the narrative element of this game. So if they want to medicine check during a negotiations encounter, have it affect the way the NPC acts and alter the dice rolls. Eg: You could add a setback die if the group is trying to Charm the NPC or even add a boost if they're trying to Coerce (Check out my scars!)

Only allowing to heal the wounds sustained in the same encounter is a good way to handle it, but allow them some leeway (like if they start an encounter on 1 wound). You could also change the amount healed on success depending on how soon their last one was. So if there's been 2 encounters in the space of a really short time and they want to medicine in both, have the first act as normal. But when it comes to the second, you could increase the difficulty or add a setback die as they're trying to heal the wounds they already have. Alternatively you could change it so that in the 2nd encounter, they heal 1 wound for every 2 successes. Once you sterilise a wound and bandage it, trying to do so again would have a somewhat lessened effect. Or you might just want to give them more stimpacks through advantage or loot

TL;DR: It's your game, do what seems right for the story in the moment.

So just to make sure…

I can use Medecine once on each of my buddies at the end of each encounter to heal their wounds.

Can you use Medecine during the fight has your action ? or do you have to wait at the end of the fight ?

JP_JP said:

Absolutely, but I'd consider using it during the encounter to use up your once/encounter (so you couldn't do it during the encounter, then again after the encounter).

Thanks for the answer.

I forget where I read it, but I was also under the impression that an emergency medpac is CONSUMABLE, whereas a regular Medpac is not. Wish they hadnt used the same name for each. I think SAGA called consumables medpacs and reuseable medKITS, makes more sense.

At the very least, only a support healer is going to use the 2 encumerance to carry around a reuseable medpac. Othere characters should keep 1 emergency kit on themselves.