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TL;DR: Currently, mundane healing is unable to stand in for a magic healer, even suboptimally. And if you have a magic healer, it's so weak in comparison that it's not worth investing in. To solve this, allow medicine to heal hp without Battle Medic as a 10 minute activity, let each creature benefit from mundane healing once per hd per day rather than the current limit; and reduce the DC and/or remove the critical failure effect.
For various reasons, it looked like the playtest game I'm participating in was going to be without a class that could use healing magic. Initially we thought this would be fine. Perhaps suboptimal, but we could always rely on the medicine skill, and perhaps later someone could multiclass into cleric.
But we then realised that the equivalent of Treat Deadly Wounds from PF1 is locked behind a skill feat. Without that feat (battle medic) there is no way to use medicine to heal hit point damage (other than bringing people from 0hp to 1hp). This is a serious problem, since nonhumans can't get their first skill feat at level 2. Thus, at level 1 a party without a caster with healing will have no way to recover hp other than bed rest, or items/NPCs the GM plants in the adventure. Obviously, this is a problem, as it means that every game starting at first level will need a divine/primal caster.
The obvious solution to this is to shift the action that Battle Medic offers into an activity under the medicine skill, that takes a long time to do - perhaps an hour, like Treat Deadly Wounds in PF1, or perhaps ten minutes like Natural Medicine's option. Battle Medic would then turn that into a single action, allowing it to be used in combat.
In a separate but related complaint, the amount healed by Battle Medic doesn't scale properly with level. Since at each level everyone gains an extra hit die, your healing should also increase by about a hit die's worth of hp to remain effective. The Heal spell does this; it starts with (a little more than) 1d8hp, and each level it's heightened increases it by 2d8. On the other hand, Battle Medic just remains fixed. Unless you make the skill master/legendary and get a high enough bonus to meet the greater DCs, but even then it can only do a maximum of 4 dice of healing which is worse than a third level Heal spell.
This could be solved by simply allowing each creature to benefit from mundane healing once per day per hit die of the creature. Battle Medic would still be of limited value mid-battle, but at least it would be possible to play the game without someone being stuck playing a healbot caster.
This also solves another exploit/problem: since Bolstered only prevents you getting healing again from the same person, you can get more healing if you go round asking lots of different people to heal you one after the other.
A cleric would still be the best healer, since they a) have magic to augment their medicine, and b) they'll have a high wisdom naturally.
Oh, and either lower the DC for Battle Medic, or ditch the critical failure effect. Preferably both, at least for the ten minute option I suggested above. Currently Nature is better than Medicine for healing people outside combat!
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I also think battle medic needs buffed in some manner.
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I was going to make my own thread but I'll just add to yours. I agree completely.
Battle Medic
Paizo says they want to get rid of CLW wands because it’s immersion breaking, but Battle Medic allows you to apply band aids and heal someone in 1 action (2 seconds), while in combat! Battle Medic is immersion breaking. Waving a CLW wand over an injury until it is healed feels more plausible and realistic and using Battle Medic in combat.
Also, the healing done by Battle Medic is laughable and the DC to use it is too high.
MATH
On average a level 2 character with 14 Wis trained in Medicine (+4) can heal (5.5+2=7.5) damage 25% of the time, which means on average she will only heal 1.875 damage!
But wait! You also have a 25% chance to do 5.5 damage (average = 1.375).
In total on average you heal 0.5 hit points of damage with Battle Medic as a level 2 character with 14 Wis.
Sorry, for a feat, this just isn’t good enough.
My suggestion is to make Battle Medic take 1 minute or perhaps 10.
Reduce the DC to 15.
Change it so it doesn’t have a crit failure condition.
Make it heal 1d10 + Wis Mod + 2 hp per level of the target being healed. At least it will scale with your level and not just your proficiency.
If you made all of these changes, the same medic would be able to heal an average of 7.75 damage on another level 2 character, which is at least worthy of a feat.
Natural Medicine
Same thing as Battle Medic, on average it only heals 1.3 hit points of damage at level 2. It should scale with the target's level and the DC should be 15. It would heal 6.75 damage on average (a little more in the wilderness).
Administering First Aid
There shouldn’t be a crit failure condition.
In one of my playtests, one of the PCs "helped" another PC and ended up killing him in a single turn with two crit failures (Fumbus!!!). While it was kind of funny and this was only with pregens, I’m not so sure it’s funny going forward.
It’s not as much of a problem after level 5 (crit failure will only happen on a 1), but ironically that’s when you need it the least, you can afford Raise Dead by then.
Also, drop the requirement to have a healer's kit. There are times when it's not possible to get out. The penalty of not having it (-2) is enough of a reason to use it if you have it.
I guess it depends on how deadly you want levels 1-5 to be, but killing them is the best way to lose new players.
Ritual
I would also be OK if there was a healing ritual that cost the caster or group resonance.
Wands
With the Trick Magic Device skill feat, many characters can use wands of CLW. But I’d like to see an increase in resonance. While I agree there should be some limits on how often we can use the happy sticks, resonance is currently too low.
In PFS, I use 3-15 CLW charges per session, I would be using more in PF2. Wands of CLW cost double the converted price in PF2. That’s a huge deterrent in itself. Some say that gold is not a deterrent, but it is.
Resonance is so low that I don’t think most PCs will even be able to activate their magic items let alone have spare resonance for healing. Since healing is non-optional, it will probably mean not having enough to activate other items.
I don’t know what to do about the healing problem in PF2 right now, not having any healing is not fun, and with more damage and more hp, the problem feels exacerbated.
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The battle medic DCs resulted in our table in three characters yelling at our ranger tonever use it again. In the 4th level group, his first 2 rolls were critical fumbles - and considering how low are the checks at first, his chances to succeed were not impressive.
Static DCs are good for environmetnal options ("a tree isalways DC 10 to climb), but trouble as conditional combat options. Low level folks always fail, high level ones always succeed, both not fun )
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I like the concept of Battle Medic and Natural Medicine, but they just don't restore enough HP to warrant a 1/day use. By the time you're a Master in Medicine or Nature you've hit Level 7+, and Legendary by 15+. Adding a single die to the healing receuved doesn't even cover the HP gained from a single level, much less 6 or 8. I feel like the healing either needs to scale high enough to be worth using 1/day per person, or it needs to heal a decent amount and be usable multiple times per person.
Compare the forms of magical healing, for instance. Heal has the highest single-target healing and a variety of ranges, plus the ability to channel to heal multiple creatures for less. Soothe heals a little less and has a Touch range only but also grants a save bonus vs mental effects. Goodberry is the least useful mid-combat but it also feeds you and scales in healing at roughly the same rate as Heal (thanks to the +WIS healed per berry). Even the Elixir of Life heals a decent amount while also helping the party deal with poison, albeit at a Resonance cost. And all of those can be used multiple times a day, though they do expend a daily resource to do so. Compared to those options, Battle Medic and Natural Medicine simply aren't very useful. The low HP restored, daily limitation, and skill DCs make them hard to use at the levels they are effective and ineffective by the time you can reliably use them.
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I am currently considering the following houserule for my home game:
'Hit point damage mostly represents fatigue and shallow wounds. By resting for 30 minutes, you hit points restore to their maximum. A character trained in medicine with access to a healer's kit reduces this to 20 minutes. An expert in medicine reduces it to 15. A master to 10, and a legendary character to 5.'
Out of combat healing has never been engaging. Throughout my time loving PF1, healing out of combat has been a small gold expenditure, and a bunch of busywork keeping track of charges. The problem here was not that they had full HP every encounter. It was the busywork. The gold expenditure didn't even matter for most of the campaign. This houserule lets PF2 play like PF1 did (full HP in most combats) without punishing healers by eating all their spell slots, requiring someone to fork over skill feats, slaughtering verisimilitude by running back to town constantly, or wasting our time with PF1 style wands.
I'm quite confident it will improve gameplay significantly, I do not expect to miss the old system.
Traditional healing resources will still have their place in combat, and in short breaks between combats where the full respite is impossible.
I too am underwhelmed by battle medic and the heal skill's utility at low levels. This is what I've been kicking around in my head as a possible solution:
1. Reduce the DC. Either make it something like a flat 15, or something like 14 plus the level of the recipient.
2. Make the general function of the skill a trained use of the Medicine skill which takes 10 minutes per attempt.
3. Instead of being once per day, simply increase the DC by some incriment (2?) for each attempt made on the same target. This DC increase resets from resting and becomes official during daily preparations.
4. Allow any trained medic, regardless of proficiency rank, to essentially go into "emergency mode" by allowing them to add a die to the amount healed by adding some number (4 or 5?) to the DC in trade.
I think these would fix Medicine skill healing, and the 10 minute duration still allows battle medic to be relevant because of the duration reduction, but having to wait until level 2 for it isn't back-breaking because you can still do the basic task as a longer duration activity before then.
Battle Medic isn't a good feat. Until L10 there is a non-negligible chance that you will fail or cause harm vs. heal your party. I wouldn't grab battle medic until L12 and then Assurance medicine at L14. Then you can use assurance to hit the DC 30.
Where are you getting your Legendary Medicine rank from?
If she’s at least 15th level,
she can use this increase to become legendary in a
signature skill of which she’s already a master.
Or did you mistake how Assurance works?
You can forgo rolling
a skill check for your chosen skill to instead receive a result of
10 (do not apply any of your bonuses, penalties, or modifiers).
I think that was shortcut from Red Griffn meant to list on what level you get Assurance, and then, when you hit Legendary Medicine you could be using it in that way.
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I must be missing something for those who are saying this is under-powered. It only takes one action in combat, which means you can spam this three times in a round, healing 3d10 points of damage (plus whatever Wisdom bonus you may have) without provoking an attack of opportunity, or requiring a specific class/item/resonance/consumable/etc.
It doesn't take many levels for the proficiency bonus alone to make this a decent percentage of success for any class, even those without a high WIS score. By 7th level, I can become a master at Medicine. Then I take Assurance in Medicine which means I can get a 20 result automatically, making it possible for me to auto succeed in healing myself without any consumables being used. Also, at the end of every encounter, I can simply state that I heal the entire party. No spells, potions, or wands will every be needed for this party again.
If the idea of resonance points was to limit spamming of healing, then they just introduced a new spammable ability (which costs nothing, unlike a cure light wounds wand) which negates the purpose of resonance points.
Because we get skill feats regularly in 2nd edition, I can't imagine any of my PCs won't eventually have this as an ability. I really think this needs to be limited to how many times you can use it (or make it longer than 1 action; perhaps 1 minute or more).
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I must be missing something for those who are saying this is under-powered. It only takes one action in combat, which means you can spam this three times in a round, healing 3d10 points of damage (plus whatever Wisdom bonus you may have) without provoking an attack of opportunity, or requiring a specific class/item/resonance/consumable/etc.
It doesn't take many levels for the proficiency bonus alone to make this a decent percentage of success for any class, even those without a high WIS score. By 7th level, I can become a master at Medicine. Then I take Assurance in Medicine which means I can get a 20 result automatically, making it possible for me to auto succeed in healing myself without any consumables being used. Also, at the end of every encounter, I can simply state that I heal the entire party. No spells, potions, or wands will every be needed for this party again.
If the idea of resonance points was to limit spamming of healing, then they just introduced a new spammable ability (which costs nothing, unlike a cure light wounds wand) which negates the purpose of resonance points.
Because we get skill feats regularly in 2nd edition, I can't imagine any of my PCs won't eventually have this as an ability. I really think this needs to be limited to how many times you can use it (or make it longer than 1 action; perhaps 1 minute or more).
It already has a 1/day limit, that's why it's so terrible.
Regardless of your result, the target is bolstered to your use of Battle Medic.
Look up "bolstered" if you're not familiar with that game term.
without provoking an attack of opportunity, or requiring a specific class/item/resonance/consumable/etc.
Actually yes, it does provoke (it has the Manipulate trait, so any creature with the AoO reaction absolutely gets to smack you for it).
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Another thing you are missing is that Medicine skill is signature skill only for the classes that already can heal with their magical abilities, so you are capped at 2d10+Wis (critical result) unless you are Alchemist, Cleric, Paladin, or Sorcerer.
I came into this thread of one mind, but reading through everyone's feedback, I've changed my mind a bit.
I want to echo what folks are saying here: the DC is too steep and the inability to perform healing multiple times doesn't make sense. I also quite like the solution people have come up with that healing by means of the combat medic skill feat should take some time--ten minutes sounds right to me. The kind of thing you can do between encounters to bind up people's wounds.
A d10 + Wis feels like too much healing for a single action--more than you can heal with healing magic, alchemy, potions or wands, but spread out over a ten minute action--I don't hate that.
You could use a scaling DC. DC 5 heals 1d8, DC 10 heals 2d8, DC 15 heals 3d8, DC 20 heals 4d8, DC 25 heals 5d8, DC 30 heals 6d8, DC 35 heals 7d8, DC 40 heals 8d8, and DC 45 heals 9d8.
Proficiency cound determine the size of the dice. Trained d4, Expert d6, Master d8, and Legendary d10.
Limit the use per a character base on either the medics skill level: Wisdom mod + proficiency mod.
Limit the use per a character based Con mod. Maybe 3+con mod.
Non-magic healing needs a boost. As is you require a magical healer from level one, most likely it needs to be a cleric as the other magical healers fall short.
A d10 + Wis feels like too much healing for a single action--more than you can heal with healing magic, alchemy, potions or wands, but spread out over a ten minute action--I don't hate that.
It heals more than a single cast of healing magic yes... at level 1 and 2. If you can make an exceptionally difficult check. With a high chance of damaging whoever you're trying to heal. And once the caster hits level 3, they now take the lead, and the gap grows ever wider with every spell level they gain. Add to that the fact that the caster has potentially several casts while the skill feat is only ever 1/day per target... yeah no it's just too weak.
TL;DR: Currently, mundane healing is unable to stand in for a magic healer, even suboptimally. And if you have a magic healer, it's so weak in comparison that it's not worth investing in. To solve this, allow medicine to heal hp without Battle Medic as a 10 minute activity, let each creature benefit from mundane healing once per hd per day rather than the current limit; and reduce the DC and/or remove the critical failure effect.
I like this idea, but I'd still gate it behind Battle Medic.
In addition, I'd ALSO lower the DC.
Perhaps make it so that if they are healing 1 HD of damage it is DC 10...and if it is 2 HD than it is DC 15...3 HD it is DC 20...4 HD it is DC 25...etc...and so forth.
It heals more than a single cast of healing magic yes... at level 1 and 2. If you can make an exceptionally difficult check. With a high chance of damaging whoever you're trying to heal. And once the caster hits level 3, they now take the lead, and the gap grows ever wider with every spell level they gain. Add to that the fact that the caster has potentially several casts while the skill feat is only ever 1/day per target... yeah no it's just too weak.
Uh. Okay. None of that I particularly disagree with? The thing is, a guy with some herbs and a needle and thread versus someone using the power of a god to magically do the Wolverine thing to someone's wounds: the power of a god should probably have a bigger die type?
Now do I think the skill feat *should* be limited to once per day per target? Not really. Doesn't make much sense. I also feel like the DC is currently too high. I don't hate the idea that you can damage the target on a botch--because you're fishing around in their ribcage and bad stuff can happen.
I do wish it took time to do though.