Battle Medic skill

Hi all. Would someone be able to link me the latest version of Battle Medic and what is does exactly?

I'm thinking about taking versatile heritage and perhaps grabbing Battle Medic if it's good. Is this an ability that's better paired with the Assurance feat which I also may need to spend a feat to grab?

Here is the new text for Battle Medic (Note, it still only takes 1 action as before):

You can patch up yourself or an adjacent ally, even if you’re in the middle of combat. In order to do so, you must attempt a DC 15 Medicine check. If you succeed, the target is bolstered against your use of Battle Medic. If you’re an expert in Medicine, you can instead attempt a DC 20 check to increase the Hit Points regained by 2d8, if you’re a master of Medicine, you can instead attempt a DC 25 check to increase the Hit Points regained by 4d8, and if you’re legendary, you can instead attempt a DC 30 check to increase the Hit Points regained by 6d8.

Success The target regains Hit Points equal to 1d8 plus your Wisdom modifier.

Critical Success As success, but target regains 1d8 additional HP.

Critical Failure The target takes 1d8 damage.

Assurance can be used with this at certain levels (If you are Expert it gives you auto success on the trained-tier healing, if Master it auto succeeds on the Expert-tier healing, and if Legendary then you auto-succeed on the Legendary tier healing.), however I'm not sure it's worth bothering with Assurance here. It can be useful though. In early levels (Like 3 or 4) it can be tricky to meet the Expert-tier DC, so being able to auto-take the Trained tier isn't bad, though the healing is a bit weak by that level.

By the time you get Master you should have like a +13-15 to Medicine, so the Master-tier check is pretty tricky now, while the Expert one is more manageable but can still be failed. So again, Assurance isn't bad here if you want to be able to do a heal one step down from your best without risk of failure. But again that lower healing isn't great by this level.

And then by the time you get Legendary you would have like a +26 if you are specialized, so it's easy to hit the Legendary DC now, but Assurance still removes any fail chance.

So if you are specialized in Medicine (High Wis and a skill item) then Assurance is questionably useful and even then only at certain levels. HOWEVER, if you are not specialized in Medicine then it is much better! If you are not specialized then until the highest levels it will always be hard to hit the highest DC you can try, and even tricky to hit the one below that. So being able to auto-take a success, even on a lower heal, is much better.

But if you specialize in Medicine then it's less necessary, there's just a bit of risk involved. But given it only takes 1 action, if you really need it you can probably try multiple times in a round if needed. Even if you aren't specialized Assurance isn't -necessary- either.

Assurance or no, this is definitely a useful feat.

Just to pip in
My Alchemist and Rogue have gotten a lot out of this feat.

By the time you get Master you should have like a +13-15 to Medicine, so the Master-tier check is pretty tricky now, while the Expert one is more manageable but can still be failed.

For a couple levels, sure. My 12th level paladin had a +19 (vs the DC 25) which is not "tricky." Ignoring the horrible unluck on the dice last night (rolled 2 6s while Frightened 2, falling the DC by 2, then rolled 14 for the damage healed on 5d8 on the third attempt).

Assurance

You realize that Assurance is not 10+skill, but 10, right? There are no skills for which Assurance gives you a success.

Assurance vs Battle Medic
Trained: 10 vs 15
Expert: 15 vs 20
Master: 20 vs 25

Quote:

By the time you get Master you should have like a +13-15 to Medicine, so the Master-tier check is pretty tricky now, while the Expert one is more manageable but can still be failed.

For a couple levels, sure. My 12th level paladin had a +19 (vs the DC 25) which is not "tricky." Ignoring the horrible unluck on the dice last night (rolled 2 6s while Frightened 2, falling the DC by 2, then rolled 14 for the damage healed on 5d8 on the third attempt).

Quote:

Assurance

You realize that Assurance is not 10+skill, but 10, right? There are no skills for which Assurance gives you a success.

Assurance vs Battle Medic
Trained: 10 vs 15
Expert: 15 vs 20
Master: 20 vs 25

Yeah, I meant that the checks are tricky at certain levels, namely shortly after you get a proficiency increase. Then it gets easier before getting harder again at the next level.

On Assurance, you are correct. Assurance will never give you success on the highest Battle Medic healing option except for Legendary (auto 30 vs. DC 30).

But what I said was that you can use Assurance at levels where the highest option is tricky and the second highest is not certain to get an auto success on the second highest option you have.

Trained you can make a DC 15 Medicine check.
Expert you can make a DC 20 check.
Master you can make a DC 25 check.
Legendary you can make a DC 30 check.

But you can still opt to try the lower DC checks even when you have a higher rank. So when you are Expert Assurance gives you a 15, which means you auto-succeed if you opt to make the DC 15 check for 1d8+Wis instead of DC 20 for 3d8+Wis.

At Master Assurance gives you a 20, so you can auto-get the DC 20 check for 3d8+Wis instead of trying the DC 25 check for 5d8+Wis.

And as mentioned, at Legendary you automatically make the DC 30 check for 7d8+Wis.

So Assurance can be used at Expert and better to get a success on Battle Medic. It'll be lower healing than the best you could do, but depending on your level and degree of specialization in Medicine it may be worthwhile at times to ensure getting at least some healing (On a dying ally perhaps) rather than taking a less than favorable chance at getting more healing.

As per your example above you can get reliable success at higher levels, but your example is 5 levels after reaching Master and has a 75% success rate. Lowered to 65 by debuffs. At that level you would be almost guaranteed to pass the DC 20 check for 3d8, but a few levels before you would have had about a 50% chance on the DC 25 check, not great, and only a 75% chance on the DC 20 check, as opposed to 100% from Assurance. And again Assurance isn't hampered by debuffs either, which bears considering.

So Assurance can be used successfully with Battle Medic. It's not great but at certain levels it could save someone in the right situation.

(And yes I know that heavily highlights the design flaw in Assurance, that its usefulness fluctuates so wildly over level, but I'm not arguing the design of Assurance, I'm pointing out that it can be used here to some effect.)

For a couple levels, sure. My 12th level paladin had a +19 (vs the DC 25) which is not "tricky." Ignoring the horrible unluck on the dice last night (rolled 2 6s while Frightened 2, falling the DC by 2, then rolled 14 for the damage healed on 5d8 on the third attempt).

Wait, you failed the DC by 2? WHy did you roll damage?

Draco18s wrote:

For a couple levels, sure. My 12th level paladin had a +19 (vs the DC 25) which is not "tricky." Ignoring the horrible unluck on the dice last night (rolled 2 6s while Frightened 2, falling the DC by 2, then rolled 14 for the damage healed on 5d8 on the third attempt).

Wait, you failed the DC by 2? WHy did you roll damage?

In the current version damage is only on a crit fail no?

He's saying that after failing twice he succeeded on the third attempt, rolling 14 on the 5d8 (highlighting again the bad dice luck since the average of that roll is 22.5) healing. Even if he had crit failed, that only does 1d8 damage, not 5d8.

Ah.That is what I get for forum trolling while high stressed.
Makes far more sense~
Thanks.

Zwordsman wrote:

Draco18s wrote:

For a couple levels, sure. My 12th level paladin had a +19 (vs the DC 25) which is not "tricky." Ignoring the horrible unluck on the dice last night (rolled 2 6s while Frightened 2, falling the DC by 2, then rolled 14 for the damage healed on 5d8 on the third attempt).

Wait, you failed the DC by 2? WHy did you roll damage?

In the current version damage is only on a crit fail no?

He's saying that after failing twice he succeeded on the third attempt, rolling 14 on the 5d8 (highlighting again the bad dice luck since the average of that roll is 22.5) healing. Even if he had crit failed, that only does 1d8 damage, not 5d8.

Bingo. Statistically there is a ~96% chance of rolling better than 14 on the 5d8. The GM was giving us the shrine-bonus on all forms of healing, not just magical, because it got murky as to what the "effect level" of some abilities were (do potions have an effect level? How duo you figure out out?) So I'd actually healed 20 hp, putting me at.....25 of 165. Hooray.

That wasn't the only unluck that session either. Someone else got 33 on 10d10 (10d10+10?) and there was a...42? on 11d8+6 for a healing wand use as well. Both on the order of 95% (or higher) odds of rolling better. I'd have to check my notes at home.

It was right about them that my group--nearing 10pm on our FOURTH session of chapter five--called it. We were done and wanted to move on to chapter 6. We did the math and thought we'd *just* win against the litch and ghosts until the GM read off the litch's remaining spells. At which point we went "nope, we're dead here and now."

on the topic of insane luck...
In this playtest. I have rolled nat 1 about 20ish times?
In the last year of my normal playing (1/week. or so) I've rolled a 1 maybe 10 times.

Playtest be cursed in roll20 with how bizzarely often I've seen 1,
20 seems to show up oddly often as well..
otherwise its mostly 7-9.
Weirdest luck.

Playtest be cursed in roll20

No, that's just roll20. roll20's dice are always weighted in ways that skew against the players. Somehow, I don't know how. It isn't just the playtest.

(As in, I've seen the GM roll two 20s in a row immediately after/preceding a player rolling two 1s in a row)

I could see that.. but in my long term game (also roll20.. cause I live middle of nowhere villes) they don't show up much. and its almost always fairly fair spread.

just every time I tried a 2E game.. the RNG Dice god/desses hate it

Wait, battle medic doesn't bolster? Holy starknives! I've been playing this wrong!

Edit: oops, forgot I was posting in the no cursing forums instead of my group chat :p

Wait, battle medic doesn't bolster? Holy starknives! I've been playing this wrong!

Edit: oops, forgot I was posting in the no cursing forums instead of my group chat :p

It bolsters if you succeed, but not if you fail anymore.

Holy starknives... might have to steal that. XD

Wait, battle medic doesn't bolster? Holy starknives! I've been playing this wrong!

Edit: oops, forgot I was posting in the no cursing forums instead of my group chat :p

Um

Page 163—This change makes Battle Medic easier at low

levels and more significant overall. Change the text of Battle
Medic to the following.
You can patch up yourself or an adjacent ally, even if you’re in the middle
of combat. In order to do so, you must attempt a DC 15 Medicine check.
If you succeed, the target is bolstered against your use of Battle Medic.

I thought is bolstered regardless, Idk why

it use to be that way that's why