How do I maximize my treat wounds/battle medicine skill?
I'm a dwarf druid, at level 3 I'll be an expert in medicine and I have the healers kit. My wisdom is 16.
So to treat wounds with DC 15 I believe I get bonuses of +3 (wis) +7 (expert trained + level) + 1 (healer's kit) = +11 so I need to roll a 4 or higher to heal 2d8 HP? And if I want to continue treating the patient for 1 hour that becomes 4d8 HP healed?
Is that correct?
If I use battle medicine, can I get the bonus for the healer's kit? Does that also heal 2d8 HP?
Is there any recommendations to make my roll even higher so I can try to heal more HP with the higher DC rolls?
Do you have the expanded healer's tools already? (costs 50 gp or I suppose you could have found it?) if not then you don't get a +1 from healer's tools. You have it right on the DC check to heal 2d8 and then if you keep treating them for the rest of the hour it doubles which I believe is technically whatever amount you rolled for the 2d8 doubled instead of rolling 4d8, though your group could go with the 4d8 if they want.
I've actually noticed that battle medicine doesn't even require healers tools, so I would say you aren't using it unless your DM lets you (I personally might allow it if they held the tools). Keep in mind that the healers tools require two hands free to hold, which would make it kinda hard to use in a battle anyway unless you tend to keep your hands free. Battle medicine heals the same as treat wounds, except I don't think it will remove wounded status.
As for boosting your rolls, allies could use aid on you, though this would be harder to succeed at lower levels. There are spells that could boost your skill checks, like the guidance cantrip, though I don't know what all is available in that regard. If you failed a check that you really needed to succeed, you could reroll it with a hero point to try for better.
Thanks for the detailed reply!
Is there no magical items which may be able to help the DC rolls?
At level 2,4,6,8 skill feat levels I was going to take:
2. Battle Medicine
4. Continual Recovery
6. Ward Medic
8. Robust Recovery or Assurance (for medicine)
Would you take assurance (medicine) for over ward medic or robust recovery at feat levels 6 and 8?
Does that cover pretty much everything healing/medicine wise?
There's a Crying Angel pendant that affects your Medicine checks.
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There is also a pair of healer's gloves
https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=444
And the Crying Angel Pendant that Joe mentioned is here:
https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=203
Keep in mind the pendant is a talisman, which are one use items. So you could possibly stock up on them but it would be expensive.
As for the feats, that looks pretty decent to me, if you really wanted to focus on healing you could consider the field medic background if you haven't already picked one. That would give you battle medicine at level 1 and then you could pick up the rest all sooner.
I personally would probably prefer ward medic over assurance as once you hit level 7 you could get medicine to master and treat 4 people. Robust vs assurance is a little harder, but at level 8 you are probably better off taking Robust over assurance, cause at that point assurance just guarantees you succeeding at DC20 rolls (it gives you an auto 24 if you boosted your medicine to master at 7). However if you boosted your wis at 5 and have a +4, plus boosted medicine to master rank, then you have a +18 to your rolls anyway so you easily get the dc20 roll unless you roll a 1.
That said, if you did roll a 1 it is also an automatic crit fail. :P Though you could also just roll for dc15, which would mean that you never crit fail, and have a decent chance of critical success.
I'd say it is ultimately up to your preference though, robust could be rather situational on how useful it is so you may prefer the sheer reliability of assurance if poison and disease hasn't been much of an issue up to that point. Other people could easily have different opinions than me too.
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Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
That's a pretty good set of bonuses, and crit successes are well within your reach, which will double healing on a lucky roll.
All without magic. I really, really like the Medecine skill.
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Well you could start with an 18 wis, that would help.
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Not my idea but others have come up with a way for anyone to be a good healer.
Level 1 train in medicine and take Assurance for Medicine.
Level 2 bump your Medicine skill to Expert and take the Continual Recovery skill feat. Your treat wounds is at 10 + lvl + proficiency bonus (4) =16 so you can't fail the check and you can heal one person every 10 minutes.
Level 4 you can take Ward Medic and cure 2 people every 10 minutes.
Two cool things about this.
It uses Assurance + skill proficiency so you don't need good wisdom to do it.
And each person is only immune to your Treat Wounds for 10 minutes. If more party members do it more healing gets done every 10 minutes.
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Bigguyinblack wrote: Not my idea but others have come up with a way for anyone to be a good healer.
Level 1 train in medicine and take Assurance for Medicine.
Level 2 bump your Medicine skill to Expert and take the Continual Recovery skill feat. Your treat wounds is at 10 + lvl + proficiency bonus (4) =16 so you can't fail the check and you can heal one person every 10 minutes.
Level 4 you can take Ward Medic and cure 2 people every 10 minutes.
Two cool things about this.
It uses Assurance + skill proficiency so you don't need good wisdom to do it.
And each person is only immune to your Treat Wounds for 10 minutes. If more party members do it more healing gets done every 10 minutes.
You can't get assurance in medicine at level 1 unless you are a Rogue or playing as a human, which the person here is playing a Dwarf Druid.
Other than that, yeah it is a pretty good way to quickly become good at healing. :)
Edit: Oh, I did overlook it at first but. You said 'each person is only immune to your treat wounds for 10 minutes' I assume you are implying that you could treat one person and then someone else could proceed to treat that person? I don't believe that is what continual recovery actually means.
Here is the text:
You zealously monitor a patient’s progress to administer treatment faster. When you Treat Wounds, your patient becomes immune for only 10 minutes instead of 1 hour. This applies only to your Treat Wounds activities, not any other the patient receives.
I believe that last line is in reference to the one right before it (I bolded both).
I'm pretty sure when it says this applies only to your treat wounds activities, it means that when you treat someone they are immune for only 10 minutes. However if your ally treated someone and they don't have continual recovery then you can't treat them 10 minutes later because they are on the full hour immunity.
An example of the interpretation I have:
Someone else in your party without continual recovery uses Treat Wounds, this sets the target on the 1 hour immunity. Even though you have continual recovery, this target is on this 1 hour immunity since you don't get to apply continual recovery off someone else's treat wounds activity. You now have to wait the entire hour to actually treat them.
Now, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.
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The Scholar background gives the Assurance feat to any skill you want.
You might be right about the interpretation. Which feat you want first would depend on how often your party fights. In a dungeon crawl healing 1 person after every fight might be better then healing 2 people every hour.
Ah yeah, I figured a background might but quickly looking over them I overlooked that one. :) So that is an option too!
Though assurance at level 1 doesn't help you a lot anyway, cause at best you would only get a 13 in treat wounds, and you need a DC 15 check for even the basic treat wounds check. That becomes viable at 2 if you boost medicine to expert, plus you get a skill feat at 2, so if you wanted assurance for early medicine checks you'd probably be better off getting battle medicine or something from background and then picking up assurance at level 2 when it actually helps.
Unless you're rogue, you can only increase skill proficiency every even levels.
Anyway, Medicine is fine, and Battle Medicine is actually a very competitive in-combat healing ability that every character can get (even if you have to at least go to Expert in Medicine for it to be good at high levels).
SuperBidi wrote: Unless you're rogue, you can only increase skill proficiency every even levels.
Anyway, Medicine is fine, and Battle Medicine is actually a very competitive in-combat healing ability that every character can get (even if you have to at least go to Expert in Medicine for it to be good at high levels).
Actually it's every odd level for classes that aren't Rogue, not even.
That said, that actually made me notice another flaw in the assurance at level 1 thing. You actually can't boost your medicine up to expert rank until level 3 on most classes, which means assurance even at level 2 is not actually helpful for treat wound checks, since you can only get to 14 on your check. So having assurance on medicine is basically pointless until level 3, unless you are a Rogue.
It slipped my mind that you couldn't actually boost to expert at 2, oops.
Battle medicine is pretty awesome, doesn't require healers tools either, so even people who didn't want to spend their beginning money on tools could make use of battle medicine. Course it can only be used once per day.
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As a druid I'd always be tempted to take Natural Medicine, but if you are going for the higher proficiency skill feats I guess you need to increase your Medicine rank anyway so the benefits aren't as pronounced. Still, +2 circumstance bonus is nothing to sneeze at if you're in the wilderness a lot and don't have someone very good at Aiding.
Archives of Nethys has a typo then.
In the Cleric entry it says under level 3
"At 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter, you gain a skill feat. Skill feats can be found in Chapter 5 and have the skill trait. You must be trained or better in the corresponding skill to select a skill feat."
So 2 ways to achieve this. The easiest is with a Rogue.
Level 1 rogue. Either take Scholar for Assurance or be versatile Human and take it.
Level 2 skill increase Medicine and one of the 2 skill feats of your choice.
Level 3 use a skill feat for the other feat.
Anyone else
Scholar background or versatile Human for Assurance medicine.
Level 2 take 1 of the 2 skill feats.
Level 3 increase medicine and use your General feat for the other skill feat.
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Some basic info on Treat Wounds that we probably know but just in case.
It takes 10 minutes to treat wounds and if you fail you waste those 10 minutes. This means it is important NOT TO FAIL as there is a good chance the party needs that healing sooner rather than later.
A critical failure results in 1d8 damage to target. This can kill the player but as long as you are not trying to heal at a higher DC than you should this should be rare.
Since it is important not to fail the Assurance feat comes in very handy. It also allows you not to focus on wis or purchasing the more expensive healers kit or the healers glove (both are item bonuses so they do not stack with each other).
As long as the player increases his proficiency rank in medicine than with assurance the following is true.
Level 1-2: Assurance will not work. Expect some fails on treat wounds with even some possible critical failures.
Level 3-6: Assurance will work fine with DC 15 to heal for 2d8.
Level 7-14: Assurance will work fine with DC 20 to heal for 2d8 + 10.
Level 15-20: Assurance will work fine with DC 30 to heal for 28 + 30.
There is also a new Medicine feat in the upcoming Omens World Guide (due out on the 28 Aug). Reduces the cooldown for Battle Medicine to 1 hour instead of 1 day. Also increases healing with Treat Wounds and Battle Medicine by +5.
Bigguyinblack wrote: Archives of Nethys has a typo then.
In the Cleric entry it says under level 3
"At 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter, you gain a skill feat. Skill feats can be found in Chapter 5 and have the skill trait. You must be trained or better in the corresponding skill to select a skill feat."
So 2 ways to achieve this. The easiest is with a Rogue.
Level 1 rogue. Either take Scholar for Assurance or be versatile Human and take it.
Level 2 skill increase Medicine and one of the 2 skill feats of your choice.
Level 3 use a skill feat for the other feat.
Anyone else
Scholar background or versatile Human for Assurance medicine.
Level 2 take 1 of the 2 skill feats.
Level 3 increase medicine and use your General feat for the other skill feat.
I don't think it is honestly all that worth it to pick up assurance on any class for medicine on your background. I mean, you could, but it isn't useful until level 3. You'd be a lot better off having something you could actually use from level 1 and on, like battle medicine. I'd say anyone wanting assurance in medicine is better off picking it up for their level 2 skill feat at the earliest. Though even then it doesn't do anything for you until you reach level 3, excluding Rogue of course.
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The Crying Angel pendant only works for First Aid, not for other uses of Medicine.
I'm not so sure that Combat Medicine doesn't need two hands and Healer's Tools: it could be argued that since Treat Wounds automatically fails without them, the DC for one-handed Combat Medicine is also "automatically fails". (If you put the Healer's Tools in a bandolier, you don't need any extra actions to use them.)
Battle Medicine doesn't specify needing the tools, though I don't know if that is intended that way or not. Might need errata to specify if that is incorrect.
It is a manipulate action, so it could be argued that you need at least one hand free. Though it doesn't really specify.
I'm not a fan of it needing two hands free and using the healer's tools personally, just because it would require dropping everything from your hands onto the ground or using interact actions to stow everything in your hands just to be able to use battle medicine in a fight. Maybe that is the intention, but it seems a bit much to use a method of healing that is intended to be for combat. I guess for now it is up to DM interpretations though.
Battle Medicine requiring a healer's kit is not intended; we know this because it is very specifically a different action than Treat Wounds, and also references Treat Wounds for DC and healing amount.
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whew wrote: The Crying Angel pendant only works for First Aid, not for other uses of Medicine.
I'm not so sure that Combat Medicine doesn't need two hands and Healer's Tools: it could be argued that since Treat Wounds automatically fails without them, the DC for one-handed Combat Medicine is also "automatically fails". (If you put the Healer's Tools in a bandolier, you don't need any extra actions to use them.)
Does that sound like a fun game to you? A combat medic would have to use an action to move to the person, spend an action to pull out the tools and then wait 1 round to spend 2 actions to administer first aid.
If you like that imagery and like the cost of taking 2 rounds to administer emergency first aid (with the possibility of monsters and NPCs being able to take down the healer before they administer first aid and then make them both need healing) then that's a good ruling.
Personally I tend to err on the side of players so I'd be inclined to allow them to administer emergency first aid in the 1 round.
[EDIT]: First aid is being used in the english sense and not the rules sense in this post.
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Arachnofiend wrote: Battle Medicine requiring a healer's kit is not intended; we know this because it is very specifically a different action than Treat Wounds, and also references Treat Wounds for DC and healing amount. Wait.
My understanding is that you need two free hands and access to your kit (best from a bandolier).
Is this not true?
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RAW you do not need a healing kit for battle medicien feat.
because it is not the treat wounds action. It is a medicine check only.
It just uses the stats of treat wounds. But it is not the same thing.
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rainzax wrote: Arachnofiend wrote: Battle Medicine requiring a healer's kit is not intended; we know this because it is very specifically a different action than Treat Wounds, and also references Treat Wounds for DC and healing amount. Wait.
My understanding is that you need two free hands and access to your kit (best from a bandolier).
Is this not true? Nope. Battle Medicine only requires you to A) be able to perform a manipulate action and B) have an action available for it. You can compare it directly to the other Medicine actions, which all list "You have healer's tools" as a requirement.
Battle Medicine doesn't make sense because if it made sense it'd be a worthless feat. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I rather like the open ended fluff.
Lets my Alchemist fluff that he's chewing random alchemical components and throwing it together to make some bizzarer patch job. Ala Clark's lie in Adventures of lois and clark season 1 episode 20 Fly Hard. Where Clark fakes healing a lex's gunshot wound by mixing bubble gum. tea, and a few other rando mcrap and then lasering his wound closed.
I love that weird kind of fluff! This feat lets a lot of fun methods that can be personalized in. Like thea bove (sans the superman eye beams)
sadly can't find a clip
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Need to point this out now because it's been mentioned on this forum a couple of times:
Scholar does NOT grant you Assurance in any skill you're trained in; you ONLY gain assurance in Nature, Arcana, occultistm, or Religion based on your choice when you have the Scholar background. Archives of Nethys has it written incorrectly:
Scholar Background, CRB Pg 63-64 wrote: You have a knack for learning, and sequestered yourself from the outside world to learn all you could. You read about so many wondrous places and things in your books, and always dreamed about one day seeing the real things. Eventually, that curiosity led you to leave your studies and become an adventurer.
Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Intelligence or Wisdom, and one is a free ability boost.
You’re trained in your choice of the Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion skill, and gain the Assurance skill feat in your chosen skill. You’re also trained in the Academia Lore skill.
Scholar Background, Archives of Nethys wrote: You have a knack for learning, and sequestered yourself from the outside world to learn all you could. You read about so many wondrous places and things in your books, and always dreamed about one day seeing the real things. Eventually, that curiosity led you to leave your studies and become an adventurer.
Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Intelligence or Wisdom, and one is a free ability boost.
You’re trained in your choice of the Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion skill, and the Academia Lore skill. You gain the Assurance skill feat.
The fastest way for a non-rogue, non-human to get the vital Medicine feats is to do Assurance (Medicine) at 2nd, Continual Recovery as a general feat at 3rd, and Ward Medic at 4th.
Syries wrote: Need to point this out now because it's been mentioned on this forum a couple of times:
Scholar does NOT grant you Assurance in any skill you're trained in; you ONLY gain assurance in Nature, Arcana, occultistm, or Religion based on your choice when you have the Scholar background. Archives of Nethys has it written incorrectly:
Scholar Background, CRB Pg 63-64 wrote: You have a knack for learning, and sequestered yourself from the outside world to learn all you could. You read about so many wondrous places and things in your books, and always dreamed about one day seeing the real things. Eventually, that curiosity led you to leave your studies and become an adventurer.
Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Intelligence or Wisdom, and one is a free ability boost.
You’re trained in your choice of the Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion skill, and gain the Assurance skill feat in your chosen skill. You’re also trained in the Academia Lore skill.
Scholar Background, Archives of Nethys wrote: You have a knack for learning, and sequestered yourself from the outside world to learn all you could. You read about so many wondrous places and things in your books, and always dreamed about one day seeing the real things. Eventually, that curiosity led you to leave your studies and become an adventurer.
Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Intelligence or Wisdom, and one is a free ability boost.
You’re trained in your choice of the Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion skill, and the Academia Lore skill. You gain the Assurance skill feat.
The fastest way for a non-rogue, non-human to get the vital Medicine feats is to do Assurance (Medicine) at 3rd, Continual Recovery as a general feat at 3rd, and Ward Medic at 4th.
Good point on the scholar background. As a note on Assurance and Continual recovery at 3rd. You get a general feat and a skill increase (not feat). You could use your general feat to grab one of those, but you couldn't get both at 3.
Whoops, I mean Assurance at 2nd.
Haha, yeah that makes more sense. Could definitely do it that way. Though I think you'd be a lot better off getting continual recovery at 2nd with the skill feat and then picking up assurance in medicine at 3rd, since assurance won't be useful until 3rd but continual recovery would be useful at 2.
I'm glad you brought that up though, I forgot to even consider the whole general feats to pick up skill feats thing.
Arachnofiend wrote: Battle Medicine requiring a healer's kit is not intended; we know this because it is very specifically a different action than Treat Wounds An alternate explanation for why they made Battle Medicine not count as using Treat Wounds: If you used Treat Wounds in the last hour, it doesn't stop you from doing Battle Medicine (and vice versa).
whew wrote: Arachnofiend wrote: Battle Medicine requiring a healer's kit is not intended; we know this because it is very specifically a different action than Treat Wounds An alternate explanation for why they made Battle Medicine not count as using Treat Wounds: If you used Treat Wounds in the last hour, it doesn't stop you from doing Battle Medicine (and vice versa). let alone that if it was Treat wounds then you would have Ward Medic applying "battle medicine" to 2-3-4 targets with 1 action, or Continual Recovery bringing the cooldown from 1 day to 10 minutes.
and etc
Unless you're a rogue you can't get Continual Recovery until 3; both it and ward medic require expert medicine first
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Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
It doesn't seem internally consistent to be able to use battle medicine without healer's tools. I strongly suspect we will have a clarification sometime soon. If so, then it should logically require two free hands.
However, as things stand, it's simply healing by handwavium. If that works for you, great.
Syries wrote: Unless you're a rogue you can't get Continual Recovery until 3; both it and ward medic require expert medicine first Ah, true. I forgot that part.
Well in that case I guess your method is the best course. Bit sad that you'd have to pick up an entirely useless skill feat for a whole level though.
Edit: Though you could possibly retrain whatever your picked at 2 into assurance by 3 if your DM gives you enough downtime. Would need a week of downtime. :P
Bigguyinblack wrote: If more party members do it more healing gets done every 10 minutes. Don't forget the 'Continual' part of Continual recovery. Treat Wounds has a 1 hour immunity normally, this immunity starts at the start of the treatment, not the end, so you can attempt to treat wounds every hour, not every 70 minutes.
Then When you take Continual Recovery, the Immunity period reduces from 1 hour to 10 minutes. So now as soon as you complete the first treatment they are ready to be treated again. Having more people with this ability means you can heal more people at once, but it wouldn't do anything to increase the rate at which you can heal one person.
Just wanting a clarification for battle medicine feat. You can heal yourself or an adjacent ally, even in combat. You Attempt a Medicine check with the same DC as for treat wounds and provide the corresponding amount of healing, as with treat wounds, you can attempt checks against higher DCs if you have the minimum proficiency rank. Target is the temporary immune to your Battle Medicine for 1 day. Does this mean that they are immune to your Medicine skill? I read that they are two different abilities earlier in this thread, but is that true? The Lost Omens only have feats that you can gain if your a member of that fraction. I don't recall see anything that would reduce the immunity of battle Medicine down to 1 hour instead of 1 day. It would be nice to be able to heal players once / combat instead of once / session. From my very limited experience with combat the monsters pack a wallop. 1 CS hit and the level 1 dwarf ranger goes down. There was only one level 2 sewer ooze. If we didn't have an Alchemist in the party feeding us minor elixirs of life the party would have died on the first encounter let alone on the rest of the adventure. Just my two cents. Smile?
Battle medicine uses a skill check with a DC "like" a treat wounds, but it is a different skill.
Battle medicine only works 1/day on a target.
Treat wounds, by using medicine or nature ( if you have the skill feat ), allows you to treat wounds with 1h cd ( depends your feats, it could be every 10 min, 2 targets or more per session, etc... ).
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Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Unless the wounded person has the Godless Healing feat.
We still need a clarification on whether Battle Medicine requires hands or Healer's Tools. As has been discussed in other threads until we're blue in the face.
But like what Cleric would heal these Godless heathens?
rainzax wrote: But like what Cleric would heal these Godless heathens? The kind who wants them to no longer be heathens and instead sit their butts down in [Insert Religious Site Here].
Or else, because of a challenge.
Finding somebody who has lost his faith is more or less a chance to convert him embracing your own.
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