Does medicae failure seem overly punishing?

By eriktheguy, in Only War Rules Questions

Lets say a skilled medic (say 30 or 35 int) who is trained in medicae wants to treat a patient in the field who took a bullet (we'll be generous and say only 2 points of critical damage). It looks like they would be suffering about a -10 penalty to their check (probably have assistance so no penalty, +10 base check for extended care, -20 for critical wounds). This check is most likely to fail which forces the patient to make a toughness check or take a point of damage. If they're critically wounded then they take critical damage and die.

So if a guy is recovering in the field from a minor bullet wound, the attention of a trained medical professional is far more likely to kill him than it is to help? It also seems that the worse your wounds are, the more desperately you should avoid doctors.

Well, the medic would probably have a medikit, which gives +20 to the test, and training in Medicae is extremely cheap for them (you can have Medicae +20 at character creation and still have experience to burn).

Ah, thanks. As usual the modifier for having standard equipment is listed nowhere in the skills entry, and the example modifiers (-30 to +30) listed for the skill each apply to a combination of factors, making it very difficult to determine the individual factors. I figured that if a field hospital with trained assistants is an example of a +10 bonus, that a medical kit would probably be simply required to perform the test without penalty. I guess the +10 example is also taking into account -10 for a critical wound. I think there's a -10 mod for not having an assistant and its +0 with an assistant... it's kind of annoying having to hunt through multiple chapters to find the modifiers to one skill. /rant

Edit : ah, the medicae entry says to use a medical kit for a bonus, but doesn't state the bonus, telling you to check another chapter instead. I missed this because when I'm looking for this kind of information I scan the page for bolded +X entries.

Edited by eriktheguy

If we're talking about First Aid, I would ignore penalties for "in the field." since First Aid is practically in the field by definition.

I still find it weird that even with decent medicae training and a kit, you're more likely to kill a badly wounded person with extended care than you are to save them. I understand that people with with really bad wounds are hard to treat, but it seems weird that the worse your wounds get, the more you need to avoid medical care (especially when the same person is at no risk of death by recovering naturally).

Meanwhile first aid (which is usually trying to save someone in immediate and serious danger) carries no risk at all.

Perhaps the best interpretation is that extended care is an attempt to speed someone's healing and push them to get them back into action sooner, at the expense of some risk to the patient. If you want to just ease someone's healing by performing basic medical tasks like redressing wounds and applying antibiotics you can always just use first aid on them once/day.

The penalty per point of critical damage does not apply to extended care, only to first aid.

So if we are talking about extended care 'in the field' by a medic 35 int and with medicae at just +10. A +20 comes from the medikit, another +10 per assistant trained in medicae, lets assume just one (comrade) and your roll is already at 75. You're buddy will be up and about in no time. And with a small amount of xp you can get that roll up higher easily with more into medicae, int, and talents.

For people with critical wounds they should be finding medical care immediatly to get the 24 hr period for their extended care rolls going, but the medics should be avoiding using first aid as it does take the big penalty from critical wounds and does not allow an extended care roll as well.

The penalty per point of critical damage does not apply to extended care, only to first aid.

So if we are talking about extended care 'in the field' by a medic 35 int and with medicae at just +10. A +20 comes from the medikit, another +10 per assistant trained in medicae, lets assume just one (comrade) and your roll is already at 75. You're buddy will be up and about in no time. And with a small amount of xp you can get that roll up higher easily with more into medicae, int, and talents.

For people with critical wounds they should be finding medical care immediatly to get the 24 hr period for their extended care rolls going, but the medics should be avoiding using first aid as it does take the big penalty from critical wounds and does not allow an extended care roll as well.

Say we're treating a buddy with 4 critical damage. In the above circumstance I roll my medicae check. I have a 25% chance of failure, in which case the buddy has to roll a toughness check or die. If I refuse to treat my buddy and leave him to die, his chance of death is 0%. This seems odd to me.

First aid has a 25% chance of working and no chance of inflicting any harm. Moreover, you can attempt first aid and then begin extended care if you didn't save the buddy, you simply can't apply first aid during extended care.