Can you take 20 on Treat Deadly Wounds?

[Markov Spiked Chain]

This got mixed in with the "Treat deadly wounds sucks" thread, but never got answered, so I'm creating a separate thread (that hopefully gets FAQed!) It seems vital to how useful Medicine is at lower levels (Until advanced medkits and +10 skill bonuses are common.)

Can you Take 20 to Treat Deadly Wounds?

Take 20 wrote:

Taking 20 means you are making multiple attempts at the

task until you get it right. It also assumes that you are failing
many times before you succeed.

Medicine, Treat Deadly Wounds wrote:

A creature can receive this treatment only once every 24-hour period, unless it is delivered in a medical lab.

Not directly relevant, but here's the version from Pathfinder Heal skill, which seems to make taking 20 an option (Treat Deadly can only *benefit* once per day, and you can retry as long as you know they weren't healed) :

Pathfinder Heal Skill wrote:

A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day.

...
Try Again: Varies. Generally speaking, you can't try a Heal check again without witnessing proof of the original check's failure.

[The Mad Comrade]

No reason why not under non-combat circumstances. The checks are hard enough as-written.

[The Mad Comrade]

Vanulf Wulfson wrote:

Treat Deadly Wounds takes an hour, therefore "Taking 20" would take 20 hours.

Nawp. Takes 1 minute, with taking-20 requiring 20 minutes.

[The Mad Comrade]

Vanulf Wulfson wrote:

The Mad Comrade wrote:

Vanulf Wulfson wrote:

Treat Deadly Wounds takes an hour, therefore "Taking 20" would take 20 hours.

Nawp. Takes 1 minute, with taking-20 requiring 20 minutes.

Where did you come up with that?

Medicine skill, p. 143. :)

[Ithnaar]

Since there is no possible adverse effect listed for failure (failing the roll by 5 or more is the common one), you wouldn't be breaking the 'no adverse effect upon failure' clause that precludes Taking 20, So I'd think that the answer would be Yes, you can.

[The Mad Comrade]

Specifically,

Starfinder rulz wrote:

Treat Deadly Wounds You can use Medicine to restore Hit Points to a living, wounded creature. This takes 1 minute, [stuff about check DC]."

[Quantum Steve]

There's not a penalty for failure, but there is a penalty for not beating the DC by 5 or more: You don't get the bonus.

You should be able to take 20, but you wouldn't get to add your Int bonus to the amount healed. It is assumed you fail to beat the DC by 5 or more several times, and as soon as you successfully use the skill you cannot use it again on the same subject for 24 hours.

[The Mad Comrade]

Unless you use a medical bay or spray-flesh via Medical Expert or anything similar which explicitly permit additional treatments of deadly wounds per day.

Taking 20 does not presume failure ... it presumes rolling each number on the d20. For most characters this will result in what you say ... for some, however, especially at higher level play, this may well not be the case.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

Sounds like the consensus is that the 1/day limit on Treat Deadly Wounds only applies to *healing*, not attempts. It would still be nice if it were clarified officially.

Failing to get your Int mod on the heals is a weird interaction, since the rules on taking 20 when marginal successes are involved aren't clear. If failure isn't an issue because you can take 20) I guess you're better off just rolling a bunch until you either succeed or succeed by 5. With a +15, you're about even odds on getting a 10-14 before a 15-20.

[EC Gamer Guy]

I'd say taking 20 would take 20 days. Since "receive treatment" doesn't imply it succeeds. Cancer patients receive treatments, not all are cured.

[The Mad Comrade]

EC Gamer Guy wrote:

I'd say taking 20 would take 20 days. Since "receive treatment" doesn't imply it succeeds. Cancer patients receive treatments, not all are cured.

Not sure where you're getting a base time of 1 day from, unless that's aimed at providing long-term care instead of treating deadly wounds.

[Quantum Steve]

The Mad Comrade wrote:

EC Gamer Guy wrote:

I'd say taking 20 would take 20 days. Since "receive treatment" doesn't imply it succeeds. Cancer patients receive treatments, not all are cured.

Not sure where you're getting a base time of 1 day from, unless that's aimed at providing long-term care instead of treating deadly wounds.

I would imagine they're suggesting that you can only attempt to treat deadly wounds once per day.

[The Mad Comrade]

Quantum Steve wrote:

The Mad Comrade wrote:

EC Gamer Guy wrote:

I'd say taking 20 would take 20 days. Since "receive treatment" doesn't imply it succeeds. Cancer patients receive treatments, not all are cured.

Not sure where you're getting a base time of 1 day from, unless that's aimed at providing long-term care instead of treating deadly wounds.

I would imagine they're suggesting that you can only attempt to treat deadly wounds once per day.

Ah HAH! Thanks. :)

Edit: 'though if that is the case ... there's no point to even bothering with it until about 10th level ...

[Patryn-]

I think you can take 20 on treat deadly wounds. There are two other actions for medicine (First Aid and Long Term Care) that specifically say you cannot take 20 on those checks. The rest of the medicine actions don't have that language. This is pretty consistent throughout the whole skills chapter.

[Kitsch Zero]

EC Gamer Guy cut to the heart of the matter. But even if you disagree, I'm still fairly certain you cannot take 20.

While you can rule either way, the language that matters is the meaning of the words 'receive treatment'. If failing a roll means that you've wasted your daily (or twice daily) use of the skill, then it cannot qualify for taking 20. This is a negative effect, but even if you want to handwave and say that it isn't, Taking 20 explicitly requires you to make multiple attempts, which is incompatible with Treat Deadly Wounds if 'receive treatment' includes failed attempts.

HOWEVER, regardless of this, you still probably can't Take 20. Because despite how you interpret 'receive treatment', a successful use of Treat Deadly Wounds takes up a use. And there are *two* possible successful uses: a regular success, which heals the character's level in hitpoints, and a better success, which adds the healer's Intelligence as a bonus. A regular success would shut down further uses of the skill, which means you'd lose that intelligence bonus, so even if you interpret 'receive treatment' as a successful roll, there's still a negative effect that would preclude Taking 20.

Consider two cases:
1) You Treat Deadly Wounds in the regular manner, and succeed. But you didn't get the best result, so you'd like to try again, to add your intelligence. The Medicine rules prevent you.
2) You Treat Deadly Wounds in the Take 20 manner. Apparently, you keep trying 20 times, failing many times, as per the description of Taking 20. But when you do finally succeed, it is the best result, adding your intelligence.
How does this either make sense, or seem fair?

This goes beyond Rules as Written and Rules as Intended. Because exceptionally high rolls heal more hitpoints, you wouldn't want players to be able to keep checking until you got the best result. Take 20 would become the default way to treat wounds, as it would make reaching the higher DC significantly easier. A regular roll would be a risky waste, which defeats the purpose of it being a skill roll in the first place.

[Kitsch Zero]

Regarding your argument, Patryn, I'm of two minds. I don't think it is necessary to restate a rule if its implication in a specific case still matches the general case. So, for example, if Operative's Edge doesn't stack with Skill Focus, despite the fact that every 1st level Operative will start by assuming they do, the Starfinder writers didn't bother to mention it because the general rule is enforced automatically.

So if First Aid and Long Term Care theoretically could Take 20 in the general rules for Taking 20, but they wanted to preclude you from doing so, they'd have to mention it, but since Treat Deadly Wounds can be inferred not to function with the base rules, they didn't have to mention it.

But then, they mention you can't Take 20 on a Jump Check, which seems unnecessary to me, so I'm not sure. At any rate, appeals to the consistency of the authors are persuasive, but the rules would be VERY opaque if resorted to such mind-reading techniques.

[Kvetchus]

I would also point out the cost/benefit of taking 20 is that it takes 20x as long. RAW is ambiguous, so it falls back to an interpretation of RAI. If you think about it from a non-game perspective, a medic/doctor that takes extra time to assess a patient, work up a treatment, prep the patient, and then, ultimately, proceed with a treatment would me more likely to succeed than someone frantically grabbing random drugs and wrapping ace bandages around a bleeding wound.

So, yes, the RAW for Take 20 does say "assumes many failures" I would argue that the RAI with regards to some skills, such as Medicine, are really that the Take 20 notion is that the character simple takes a very long time to make a single, much more precise, skill attempt. I wouldn't make this assumption for every skill attempt, but in the case of Medicine, at least as far as games that I'm running go, this will be my interpretation.

That is to say, for me, and my group - the interpretation for Take 20 as it relates to Medicine, is that YES it's allowed, and it does not assume any failures or previous attempts (despite the RAW).

WHY? Because, generally speaking, I agree with the other thread: Medicine skill in SF is of extremely limited use anyway, so I see no reason to limit it any further than it already is.

[SirShua]

In my party i say that you cannot take 20 because taking 20 implies many failures until you succeed. When you normally fail a treat deadly wounds check, you cannot try again. Some stuff lets you attempt twice a day but it's still many failures. That's my reasoning.
FWIW, in my party there's a level 6 mechanic with a +16 to medicine and an advanced medkit. So he can take 10 and get the bonus healing.

[Jhaeman]

I've gone with the "receive treatment" isn't "receive *successful* treatment" interpretation. But I agree a FAQ would be useful.

[Metaphysician]

Ehh. . . I can't really agree with the "Take 20 assumes failures" logic. The amount of time it would take on average before rolling a 20 is the logic used for setting the time interval for taking 20, but there really isn't anything in the rules actually saying that, when you take 20, you have umpteen failures before you succeed. You just. . . Take 20, take a certain amount of time, and then get your auto-20.

Or to put it another way, a skill with failure consequence isn't impossible to Take 20 because you roll a failure first. Its impossible to Take 20, because its invalid in the first place and Taking 20 is impossible, just like you can't make an attack roll if you have no weapon and nothing to shoot at.

[SirShua]

Quote:

Take 20

When you have plenty of time to devote to a skill’s task and
that task has no adverse effect upon failure, the GM might
rule that you can take 20 on that skill check. This is similar
to taking 10, but instead of assuming your roll was a 10, you
assume it’s a 20.
Taking 20 means you are making multiple attempts at the
task until you get it right. It also assumes that you are failing
many times before you succeed. Taking 20 typically takes 20
times as long as attempting a single check would take (usually
2 minutes for a skill that takes a standard action to perform).

CRB page 133 about taking 20, emphasis mine. It clearly says you are failing many times in the attempt to take 20. The debate to me seems to be if the phrasing of treat deadly wounds task means that a creature can only be healed so many times a day, or if the creature may only recieve so many attempts per day.

If the correct ruling is that a creature may receive the healing that many times, then taking 20 should be fine. If it's the attempt may only be made so many times (the meaning I am operating on) then you can't take 20 as failure stops you from retrying.

[rook1138]

given how crappy medicine is as a skill, I'm tempted to throw it as many bones as possible. ""Receive Treatment" means you were actually treated (to me), so I'm going with the success interpretation, not the attempts interpretation.

[The Ragi]

I dunno, trying to stitch the same wound 20 times until it sticks seems like a bad move.

Lose 1 charisma every time someone takes 20 to Treat Deadly Wounds on you.

[Kvetchus]

I would argue the Take 20 rule itself is flawed. It shouldn't assume failures since that would, in most cases, mean your attempts at a success are mute and the Take 10 and 20 rules, in general, are EXTREMELY limited in usability. I would argue that, under the many-failures principle, most skills really can't Take 20.

Building/repairing something on your downtime and Take 20? Well, you can't uncut that board/strut/wire. Sorry, better go back to space radio shack for more parts.

Spending all night to carefully hack that computer? Sorry, you failed on the first try and now the cops are on their way.

Schmoozing the diplomat at a party for next hour? (Diplomacy Take 20). Sorry, you failed in the first minute and now he's calling security... what did you say?!

The list goes on. In fact, under the many-fails principle, I actually am having a harder time thinking of skill checks that CAN Take 20 than of checks that really can't. Almost no skill check can stand failures. Maybe a survival Take 20 check to scrounge for food in a dumpster... Basically, it means you can only Take 10 or 20 on skills checks that have no consequences for failure, and most do in some way.

So... Instead of making weird exceptions all the time, I just assume Take 20 really just means spending 20x as long to research/work/etc very carefully and meticulously to ensure the best possible result. Sometimes, that may mean some trial and error, but only if the skill is capable of sustaining that, otherwise it means being very careful to do the one thing you're trying to do perfectly the first time.

[SirShua]

It's only an issue if there's an actual repercussion for failing, besides not succeeding. Which is when you can't take 20 anyways. Examples in the rules are hacking a computer without disabling countermeasures(they're activated when you take 20), or repairing an object with mysticism and engineering.

[Hiruma Kai]

If the limit is on attempts, and not actual healing of hit points, and the limit is by injured person rather than the person attempting the skill check, then the following can happen:

You can have some barely trained field medic with a +1 bonus attempt to treat an injury. Rolls a 1 and fails to do any good. A world class doctor comes up with a +30 medicine skill bonus and says, "Sorry, that bandage was put on sloppily, there's nothing I can do for you today."

You can be hit by a sword that actually deals hit point damage, but that doesn't prevent a successful medicine check later. But trying and failing to put on a bandage and antiseptic (as defined in a basic medkit), which doesn't deal damage does prevent further medicine checks by anyone else for 24 hours?

I can understand if the bandaging was successful (and thus hit points were regained), as all the doctor will be able to say is, "You've been bandaged and splinted properly, only thing I can do is let it heal naturally. Change the bandage tomorrow". There's nothing better they could do.

I guess my question is, what does a failed medicine check represent happening? What has the acting character actually done when they fail? And what about that logically prevents future actions helping the injured party?