Definitely needs clarification, but Manipulate is either using an item, or using a gesture. Since nothing indicates that this feat empowers you with Magic (where gestures are provided an exception that you can do it without a free hand), and presumably you have to have an item to “patch”, I’d say the common sense rule applies regardless of whether or not that makes the feat a poor feat.
Nothing indicates either gesture or item use: IMO, that's a wash. If we're talking common sense, one action isn't enough to heal someone with either method, so that'd a wash. If we talk about the medicine skill, we're specifically NOT using one of the actions under it, so looking at actions it's not is IMO a wash...
Look up definition of manipulate: item or gesture. Nothing under the feat accesses gestures
or an item either: it mentions neither.
or magic where gestures are given their free hand exception
Not true at ALL: look at the Point Out action that requires "gesturing in a direction and describing the distance verbally". Totally non-magical, not a spell and uses no tools but manages to have the manipulate trait.
but the skill (literally every use of the skill apart from Recall Knowledge) uses a healers kit in each instance. Occam’s razor here says use the healers kit. Anything else sounds like a stretch to me.
Since it's it's own unique action, it seems a stretch to ignore the other possibilities out of hand.
This is something that desperately needs some developer commentary. I built a whole character concept on a sword and shield battle medic. If I have to use two hands to heal he will be dead in the water. Dropping or sheathing my sword I can buy but surely it is not intended to need two hands.
Seems like there are two valid ways to interpret it which isn’t great.
Unless you are using heal potion that you will smash against your target's forehead, I would say that medicine should require 2 hands.
Drops arms-free action
Medicine-how many it takes,
Pick up arms from the floor- 1 action
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Adding things that a feat does not use is not usually a wise use of space in a book.
It is if one would instinctively expect it to use those things. If there's an action called Lay on Hands, we expect hands to be involved. If there's an action called, "Emergency Bandaging", we'd expect it to require hands and bandages. If the book doesn't say anything about how many hands are required, it looks like an accidental omission.
Battle Medicine is vaguer than that, but it's hard to visualise a form that requires zero hands.
Battle Medicine is vaguer than that, but it's hard to visualise a form that requires zero hands.
Telekinesis?
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Battle Medicine is vaguer than that, but it's hard to visualise a form that requires zero hands.
LOL I find it hard to imagine/visualize adding a second hand to a weapon is an action, or that the same number of actions is needed to heal someone with this feat as adding a second hand but there they are in the rules. We're already stepping outside what's normal with 1 action mundane healing IMO, so since we're already coloring outside the lines I'm not sure why we should expect the other parts of it to fit nicely in with normal mundane healing methods.
It's like agreeing that a golf cart can go 500MPH and then quibbling over how many hands you'd need to drive it: we're already far outside the normal understanding of how 'normal golf carts' work, it's clearly an abnormal one, that pointing to what a normal one can do in one area seems odd when you've already established it's NOT normal...
It is if one would instinctively expect it to use those things.
True, but like the old PF1 feat Elephant Stomp proves, names are often more evocative than informative: That feat neither required a stomp nor an elephant... The actual Battle Medicine text says you "Patch up" someone which means "to give quick and usually temporary medical treatment" by the dictionary. Example "The doctor patched him up, so he's going to be as good as new." I'm not really seeing how a 1 round action [2 seconds] gives rise to an expectation of tool use with multiple hands.
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Adding things that a feat does not use is not usually a wise use of space in a book.It is if one would instinctively expect it to use those things. If there's an action called Lay on Hands, we expect hands to be involved. If there's an action called, "Emergency Bandaging", we'd expect it to require hands and bandages. If the book doesn't say anything about how many hands are required, it looks like an accidental omission.
Battle Medicine is vaguer than that, but it's hard to visualise a form that requires zero hands.
But that is exactly the issue. Laying on hands does not require a free hand in PF2. Trying to force it to destroyed the sword and board paladin (a mainstay of the fiction) in the playtest, and hence why it was dropped.
I don't have a problem with that, I'm just saying that in this case, Lay on Hands ought to say so explicitly, because that's contrary to expectations. (Similarly, PF1 said, "Despite the name of this ability, a paladin only needs one free hand to use this ability.")
The actual Battle Medicine text says you "Patch up" someone which means "to give quick and usually temporary medical treatment" by the dictionary. Example "The doctor patched him up, so he's going to be as good as new." I'm not really seeing how a 1 round action [2 seconds] gives rise to an expectation of tool use with multiple hands.
As opposed to what? Spitting on them? If you heard, "The doctor patched him up," wouldn't you expect her to use her hands at some point?
Something along the lines of "pulling an alchemical plaster from my belt pouch with a free hand and slapping it on to a wound" makes sense to me as a two second action; it's not real-world plausible, but it's stretching reality rather than breaking it.
If it's magical, I'd like to know how the magic works, how it interacts with antimagical counters. If it's non-magical I'd like to know how it works. If there's a 500mph golf cart, I'd like to know exactly how it's controlled, because that sounds dangerous. The further away it is from normal conditions, the more I want an explanation.
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At this point in the conversation it is probably best that we all admit that the problem is not with this feat in particular, but that, despite intense efforts to the contrary, the language of the rules around what actions require one or more open hand, and how to tell if a skill action requires the use of a tool feels unclear to many people.
I would contend that the rules are pretty clear on this in that the action must state what it requires to use, and lack of a stated requirement is absence of a requirement.
But the change to the manipulate trait in the playtest has a lot of people feeling like it is necessary to question whether or not the effort to implement that change was thorough and complete. If not (because developers are human), then some players clearly want to force that revision process to be public in the sense of wanting developer feed back on whether or not each action is working as intended.
This is a pretty big ask, and you need to give them some time to shake out the whole book rather than making a patchwork of fixes to each individual action that has the trait, because that is going to create an inelegant solution that looks patchwork and might require further revision down the road (as evidenced by the updates from the playtest).
If the intention of the battle medicine feat was for the action to require a free hand, and that the assumption was that that would be made by the manipulate trait alone, the issue is much bigger than this one feat/action.
Imo, the best solution would have been a specific Errata on the "manipulate" trait stating that it DOES require a "free hand" EXCEPT on spell casting actions.
If this is true, then yes it would be a good Errata. However, I still think there are balance/value issues to the way the manipulate trait was given out during the playtest with that assumption vs what happened when they took it away. It is entirely possible that many skill related feats were balanced around being as restrictive as spells in terms of what you were carrying in your hands. Letting spells off the hook but keeping skills on it is doing something that the developers were trying hard to get away from: making magic just better than doing the same thing with skills.
And honestly, I don't really understand why the head cannon of what a somatic casting action is can be fulfilled with a shield in hand, but the idea that the manipulate action includes the actions of quickly freeing up enough fingers/hand space to accomplish the task, and then return the original items to hand?
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Unless you are using heal potion that you will smash against your target's forehead, I would say that medicine should require 2 hands.
Drops arms-free action
Medicine-how many it takes,
Pick up arms from the floor- 1 action
Correction: 1 action per dropped item.
Suddenly your Battle Medic feat became actively worse than a 3-action Heal spell.
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I just want to point out that the manipulate trait never required an open hand in the playtest
Manipulate You must physically manipulate an item or make
gestures to use this type of action. Creatures without a suitable
appendage cannot perform actions with this trait. Manipulate
actions often trigger reactions.
the only thing that changed was somatic no longer requiring a free hand.
Unless you are using heal potion that you will smash against your target's forehead, I would say that medicine should require 2 hands.
Drops arms-free action
Medicine-how many it takes,
Pick up arms from the floor- 1 actionCorrection: 1 action per dropped item.
Suddenly your Battle Medic feat became actively worse than a 3-action Heal spell.
you can't pick up 2 item at the same time with both hands?
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Unless you are using heal potion that you will smash against your target's forehead, I would say that medicine should require 2 hands.
Drops arms-free action
Medicine-how many it takes,
Pick up arms from the floor- 1 actionCorrection: 1 action per dropped item.
Suddenly your Battle Medic feat became actively worse than a 3-action Heal spell.
you can't pick up 2 item at the same time with both hands?
No more than you can strike with two items at the same time with both hands using only one action.
Of course there are class feats to allow just that, so maybe in the future you can take a class feat called Double Retrieval to help you out.
i'd say the main issue is indeed the Manipulate trait.
It went live as "you use your hand, but your hand may be wielding stuff on it"
probably to adress spellcasting while holding a staff and a shield or something.
This made the other, more "physical" abilities like Lay on hands* and Battle medicine "weird".
*if memory serves me right, in the playtest, you could do "hand-less" lay on hands, but it required a feat to do so, so that got removed as well.
You still use your hands, but...
The manipulate trait was changed specifically to save Champions from handedness issues.
I really don't see the issue here. If this was PF1 we'd just be going through all sorts of "free action change your grip standard action do the thing free action put your grip back the way its supposed to be" nonsense that circumvented these problems and we'd be just fine with that. PF2 and the way the manipulate trait is written just streamlines those actions and the end result is exactly the same.
Unless you are using heal potion that you will smash against your target's forehead, I would say that medicine should require 2 hands.
Drops arms-free action
Medicine-how many it takes,
Pick up arms from the floor- 1 actionCorrection: 1 action per dropped item.
Suddenly your Battle Medic feat became actively worse than a 3-action Heal spell.
you can't pick up 2 item at the same time with both hands?
No more than you can strike with two items at the same time with both hands using only one action.
Of course there are class feats to allow just that, so maybe in the future you can take a class feat called Double Retrieval to help you out.
how is that in any way relevant to each other?
You cannot attack at the same time while dualwielding as one attack draws away the momentum on another attack. You have to do it in sequence.
There is no momentum needed for drawing two shortswords at the same time.
Imo, the best solution would have been a specific Errata on the "manipulate" trait stating that it DOES require a "free hand" EXCEPT on spell casting actions.
If they did that, the Point Out action would require a free hand and IMO that makes NO sense as there is no reason that "gesturing in a direction" requires a free hand...
As opposed to what? Spitting on them? If you heard, "The doctor patched him up," wouldn't you expect her to use her hands at some point?
Something along the lines of "pulling an alchemical plaster from my belt pouch with a free hand and slapping it on to a wound" makes sense to me as a two second action; it's not real-world plausible, but it's stretching reality rather than breaking it.
I'm going with 'you make a swift jab at the targets pressure point, slowing their bleeding and numbing their pain. Plausible as an in game medical procedure [PF1 has pressure points] and it's something you could do with the hilt of a weapon in 2 seconds and it makes FAR more sense than doing first aid in that some time without the need for a free hand.
you misunderstood, i didn't mean that the "correct" thing was to "nerf" manipulate like this.
i meant that IF they decide to change something to "add a hand" in the battle medicine, they should probably address it through the Manipulate trait in general.
Or else, the next time a "non magical, physical, action" would require a manipulate action, we would have the same discussion all over again...
IMO, the best 'fix' would be to explicitly list number of hands and other requirements needed with every new action: in this feats case, it's giving access to a new unique action and should tell you in a straight forward way how it works: you shouldn't have to guess or infer it through related skill actions or traits with multiple different restrictions.
Unless you are using heal potion that you will smash against your target's forehead, I would say that medicine should require 2 hands.
Drops arms-free action
Medicine-how many it takes,
Pick up arms from the floor- 1 actionCorrection: 1 action per dropped item.
Suddenly your Battle Medic feat became actively worse than a 3-action Heal spell.
you can't pick up 2 item at the same time with both hands?
No more than you can strike with two items at the same time with both hands using only one action.
Of course there are class feats to allow just that, so maybe in the future you can take a class feat called Double Retrieval to help you out.
how is that in any way relevant to each other?
I'm sorry you're not capable of understanding the answer. Good luck out there.
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There is no momentum needed for drawing two shortswords at the same time.
There's no momentum required to thrust two swords forward at the same time either.
Unless Pathfinder 2 takes place in place where there's no friction, so you have to throw one arm behind you and one in front of you with each attack...
Oh and you can't swing your arms around when you move, either, as there's no friction, so your arms are busy jabbing your weapon into the ground in order to push against something.
Obviously.
(Less sarcastically its because the action is called "Manipulate an Item")
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There is no momentum needed for drawing two shortswords at the same time.There's no momentum required to thrust two swords forward at the same time either.
Unless Pathfinder 2 takes place in place where there's no friction, so you have to throw one arm behind you and one in front of you with each attack...
Oh and you can't swing your arms around when you move, either, as there's no friction, so your arms are busy jabbing your weapon into the ground in order to push against something.
Obviously.
(Less sarcastically its because the action is called "Manipulate an Item")
OK, since you didn't do much swordmanship:
If you attack with your right hand, you twist the torso in that direction to generate power in the swing.
If you attack with left hand in the SAME time, you remove power from your left hand swing as your torso is moving against the direction of attack.
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OK, since you didn't do much swordmanship:
Obviously
If you attack with your right hand, you twist the torso in that direction to generate power in the swing.
If you attack with left hand in the SAME time, you remove power from your left hand swing as your torso is moving against the direction of attack.
What part of "it was sarcasm" did you miss?
And besides all that, its a game, with rules, the rules say what you can do, their adherence to reality is an illusion and those rules state that manipulation allows you to manipulate one item.
INTERACT
You use your hand or hands to manipulate an object or the
terrain. You can grab an an unattended or stored object, open a
door, or produce some similar effect.
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Adding things that a feat does not use is not usually a wise use of space in a book. Perhaps putting something in the description of feats that says all feats specify what they do require might be helpful but not at the individual feat level.Clarification could be as simple as adding this line:
Requirements a healer's kit and 2 (or 1) free hands.
Or this one:
Requirements None. (Unlike Treat Wounds, Battle Medicine does not require free hands or a healer's kit.)
Or something else, in case you need a healer's kit but no hands or something else.
They already did that, on page 18:
Requirements Sometimes you must have a certain item or be in a certain circumstance to use an ability. If so, it’s listed in this section.
The thing is, sometimes the lack of a certain requirement is so surprising that additional confirmation is needed that the requirement was really left out on purpose.
You don't really want to litter your book with statements that boil down to "yes we really meant it exactly like that", but occasionally it's necessary.
Because let's face it, every book, especially first printings, of every publisher, has some mistakes in it. If we see something quite odd, we're naturally wondering if that's really what was intended.
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On the Roll for Combat podcast, they relayed a comment from Mark Seifter, one of the lead designers, that the combat medic ability takes one action, and you need a free hand to pull materials from your healing kit out of your pouch as a second action.
If you put your materials in a bandolier, drawing materials to do combat healing is a free action that still needs a free hand.
At our table, this fits both the narrative and the rules.
As always, your table should play the way that is fun for your game.
Happy gaming...
On the Roll for Combat podcast, they relayed a comment from Mark Seifter, one of the lead designers, that the combat medic ability takes one action, and you need a free hand to pull materials from your healing kit out of your pouch as a second action.
If you put your materials in a bandolier, drawing materials to do combat healing is a free action that still needs a free hand.
Might you have a link I can use for Society?
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As a GM, I personally don't care what kinda rules lawyery nonsense a player tries to cook up here. You want to patch up your buddy, you need two hands and a kit.
You can access it a bit easier by putting it in a bandolier. But thats about it.
Common sense, folks.
Nah this game has nothing to do with common sense, we are talking about a fantasy setting where you got unicorns s****** rainbows, I agree with Shroudb I think he's right.
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Might you have a link I can use for Society?On the Roll for Combat podcast, they relayed a comment from Mark Seifter, one of the lead designers, that the combat medic ability takes one action, and you need a free hand to pull materials from your healing kit out of your pouch as a second action.
If you put your materials in a bandolier, drawing materials to do combat healing is a free action that still needs a free hand.
Sure. About 6:50 into the podcast video (a podcast posted on YouTube, so whatever that's called):
https://youtu.be/hVabUZPcqc8In case the link doesn't work right, search for episode 16 of the roll for combat Fall of Plaguestone campaign.
Some other good stuff in the intro as well.
Happy Gaming...
Linked and time-stamped to my profile for future use ^_^
Can't you use the same hand to pull the kit from the bandolier and perform the treatment?
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Wow! This discussion is still going?
Thanks to Malfast for the Roll for Combat reference. It's kind of indirect, but it sounds like a good ruling, and counters what I've been calling the "stern glance" version of Battle Medicine.
So it's been stated, according to the guys at Roll for Combat, by someone at Paizo, that Battle Medicine:
- requires a healer's tools
- requires one hand to use
- only requires one action IF your healer's are in a bandolier.
Although this does seem to contract the listed stats of healer's tools (requiring 2 hands) it seems like a good compromise.
Let's just hope that it makes it into print in the next errata.
It's still better than the RAW, which doesn't require healer's tools, and doesn't require any free hands. Hence the "stern glance" version of Battle Medicine.
So, assuming we accept the indirect reference, Battle medicine is now errataed.
It's still better than the RAW, which doesn't require healer's tools, and doesn't require any free hands.
I'm not seeing how having a kit or free hands makes any more sense when we're talking about a totally nonsensical action: 2 second first aid/healing. So in what way is it "better"? IMO, it makes even LESS sense the more requirements you bring in as part of that 2 seconds is now juggling materials from the kit lowering healing time even more. How is a stern glance better than a tossed bandage and some spit?
So, assuming we accept the indirect reference, Battle medicine is now errataed.
I know I wouldn't call an off comment in a random video the equivalent of errata. The reason we couldn't take Dev comments in PF1 was that they didn't want off the cuff personal opinions being taken as official rules: add to that that the comment in question is presented as a secondhand comment...
And for me personally, I have 0% interest in podcasts and don't want a precedent that we have to do so for rules updates. I know I'm not going to games and asking people to watch podcasts to get the updates...
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Don't be a grumpyface :P
For Battle Medicine to be fun and useful, it needs to be not too hard to use, but also not too unbelievable.
Having to drop everything and maybe take off your shield goes too far into hard to use.
Not needing any hands goes too far into unbelievable.
So 1 free hand hand and a medkit in a bandolier is a good compromise.
Since the RAW is totally unclear, we do need an FAQ/Errata on this. Life and death importance rules should be crystal clear.
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This and other people's statements are incorrect. The video makes no mention of being able to do anything one-handed. According to this you can pull out your healers kit and use it from a bandolier as one action. Using a healer's kit still requires two hands...Wow! This discussion is still going?
Thanks to Malfast for the Roll for Combat reference. It's kind of indirect, but it sounds like a good ruling, and counters what I've been calling the "stern glance" version of Battle Medicine.So it's been stated, according to the guys at Roll for Combat, by Jason Buhlmann that Battle Medicine:
- requires a healer's tools
- requires one hand to use
- only requires one action IF your healer's are in a bandolier.Although this does seem to contract the listed stats of healer's tools (requiring 2 hands) it seems like a good compromise.
Let's just hope that it makes it into print in the next errata.
Are you listening to the same video everyone else is?
Don't be a grumpyface :P
For Battle Medicine to be fun and useful, it needs to be not too hard to use, but also not too unbelievable.
Having to drop everything and maybe take off your shield goes too far into hard to use.
Not needing any hands goes too far into unbelievable.
So 1 free hand hand and a medkit in a bandolier is a good compromise.
I disagree that it makes more sense with a hand and a kit... IMO it makes LESS as you're now trying to get tool use into that 2 second action. IMO there is nothing believable in the no hand, one hand, 2 hand and/or kit so to me it doesn't matter how it shakes out as we've already left real life actions far, far behind: one unrealistic method is as good as an other unrealistic method to me.
Seriously... put a bandaid in your hand and try to put it on your arm once. It'll take you a second to get the wrapper open let alone stick it in the correct place and that's with a modern prepackaged bandage. I can't take any argument of fun and usefulness seriously that's based on it being 'realistic' in any way as none of the options are that in any way.
EDIT: If the issue is optics, then IMO that has nothing to do with the actual rules: describe it however makes you and your group happy. Hitting pressure points, tossing poultices, cauterize wounds with a torch, jedi mind tricks, ect.
Since the RAW is totally unclear, we do need an FAQ/Errata on this. Life and death importance rules should be crystal clear.
On this I agree: I just don't want that FAQ/Errata to be based off a second hand internet video comment...
Seriously... put a bandaid in your hand and try to put it on your arm once. It'll take you a second to get the wrapper open let alone stick it in the correct place and that's with a modern prepackaged bandage. I can't take any argument of fun and usefulness seriously that's based on it being 'realistic' in any way as none of the options are that in any way.
Having recently had a minor problem* with my left hand that required bandaging, I can assure you that wrapping it up with a bandage roll with one hand is quite doable.
Can I do it in six seconds? No. But I *can* do it one-handed.
*The picture is from 3 weeks after the injury, the obvious mark there is about a half inch long and took the better part of a week to scab over. There were also punctures on my palm and have healed to the point where a photo would be useless and not show anything. Total: 10 individual punctures on my left hand, 3 on my right.
Can I do it in six seconds? No. But I *can* do it one-handed.
As I pointed out, number of hands really doesn't matter as there is no way to realistically render first aid in 2 seconds: this is why I'm saying it's moot when arguing needing hands for 'realism'.
And my point in what you quoted was that using both hands and a bandaid would take more than the 2 seconds you have for the action to unwrap and place it... That's what makes the action on it's face unrealistic no matter the hands or items needed: it's quibbling on varying degrees of impossibility and that doesn't seem super productive.
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This is a crazy thread.
Had a good laugh from the guy righteously screeching about how one handed battle medicine would single handedly ruin an entire campaign, though.
A thought though, 'zero handed' manipulate actions don't necessarily mean your hands never touch someone. It just means that the totality of the actions involved doesn't necessitate having a hand free to begin with.
Just say the feat lets you quickly relax your grip on your weapon, grab and then apply a salve before smoothly getting back into a combat stance.
It doesn't exactly jive with the rules mechanics of the rest of the game, but it's a feat and the primary complaint here seems to be more about roleplaying than actual mechanics, so it seems as reasonable as anything else.