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Treat wounds not only doesn't explicitly require a free hand, but it doesn't even specify that you have to be holding or using the healer's kit...merely that you "have" one.Because it's a downtime activity and it doesn't matter.
As such, nobody on either side is referencing it as supporting material.Since a gesture certainly doesn't require a free hand, per the RAW a character can treat wounds without using his hands in any capacity whatsoever.I like how you jumped from "doesn't require a free hand" to "does not require hands at all" which is absurd.
Not to mention the whole having a capable limb thing. I mean needing nothing in hand and having no hands are 2 completely different things.
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@Draco:
Actually, I'm referencing treat wounds.
Why? The only part of Battle Medicine that deals with anything Treat Wounds says are the DCs to attempt and the amount healed. Nothing else matters.
Battle Medicine does not say "Treat Wounds in 1 action" it says "You do some stuff as one action. Use the DC and result table from Treat Wounds so we don't have to print it twice."
Not to mention the whole having a capable limb thing. I mean needing nothing in hand and having no hands are 2 completely different things.
Indeed. Which is why I refer to opening doors while carrying groceries. I only need two fingers to twist a door knob (though three is preferred). Its not necessarily easy or fast, but its still faster and easier than putting things down and picking them up again.
I like how you jumped from "doesn't require a free hand" to "does not require hands at all" which is absurd.
It is absurd. It is also literally the RAW. Which. is. my. whole. point.
Frankly, at this point only logical conclusion is that some of you guys just like arguing for arguing's sake. So...enjoy, I guess?
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It is also literally the RAW.
No, its not. Manipulate requires that you have hands (or other suitable appendage) not that they be empty.
It is also literally the RAW.No, its not. Manipulate requires that you have hands (or other suitable appendage) not that they be empty.
Cool. Too bad what I actually wrote in the post you replied to was "per the RAW a character can treat wounds without using his hands in any capacity whatsoever."
So like I said...arguing for arguing's sake. Shame on me for playing along for as long as I did.
Cool. Too bad what I actually wrote in the post you replied to was "per the RAW a character can treat wounds without using his hands in any capacity whatsoever."It is also literally the RAW.No, its not. Manipulate requires that you have hands (or other suitable appendage) not that they be empty.
Cool, then this applies to you too:
@Draco:
Actually, I'm referencing treat wounds.Why? The only part of Battle Medicine that deals with anything Treat Wounds says are the DCs to attempt and the amount healed. Nothing else matters.
Battle Medicine does not say "Treat Wounds in 1 action" it says "You do some stuff as one action. Use the DC and result table from Treat Wounds so we don't have to print it twice."
Treat Wounds is an exploration activity and no exploration activities mention hands because in exploration mode it doesn't matter.
The errata states that Healer's Tools are now required. Full stop. No more excuses or shenanigans there. To those saying you don't need hands for Battle Medicine while it now requires wearing or holding Healer's Tools:
If you are wearing your Healer's Tools, how are you using them when they're held? Do you need your hands to reach into any tools or tonics or panaceas stashed in your kit?
If you are holding your Healer's Tools, how are you holding them? More accurately, how are you using your Healer's Tools for Battle Medicine if you do not have hands with which your Healer's Tools can be used with, which the Manipulate trait requires an appropriate appendage for use?
Are you using feet? Tails? Prehensile hair? Psychic powers? Divine powers? Mage Hand? All of those are patentedly absurd, about as absurd as the current developers stating shields as primary or effective weapons are ridiculous, and most of those apparent options usually require feats, spellcasting (with sustaining the spell), or an ancestry with the appropriate physiology (and most likely feats as well).
People arguing for arguing's sake is precisely why this crap has persisted for as long as it has, and it's sickening. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion this is the very exact reason why non-magical healing options weren't published in PF1, and as it stands, non-magical healing options in PF2 are proving to be more of a mistake than an actual help to the game.
Hell, the Cure Light Wounds wand was less of a debacle than this, and all it proved to be was an annoying HP manipulation trick in PF1. In PF2, it's now changed to something that's now even more annoying because now it's brought levels of idiocy I'd rather not have to deal with at a table.
Guess what else? I'm throwing the PF1 CLW "Wand" back up on the table and banning Battle Medicine so stupid crap like this doesn't happen at my table.
Rod of Healing. Has 50 charges. Each charge can be cast as 1 to 3 actions, 1D8 for 1 action, 1D8+8 for 2 actions, modifier for 3 actions. Costs 150 gold. 1 bulk. Easy fix, no more stupidity.
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To those saying you don't need hands for Battle Medicine while it now requires wearing or holding Healer's Tools:
If you are wearing your Healer's Tools, how are you using them when they're held?
Who knows? Who cares? Either we're going by this version of the rules, in which case wearing the tools is enough and you don't need to hold them (which has the advantage of making it a fun and well balanced ability), or we're going by 'realism' in which case you need some number of free hands; GM ruling required.
People arguing for arguing's sake
Most people are either arguing for the sake of making the gameplay fun, or arguing for the sake of realism.
Are you using feet? Tails? Prehensile hair? Psychic powers? Divine powers? Mage Hand? All of those are patentedly absurd, about as absurd as the current developers stating shields as primary or effective weapons are ridiculous, and most of those apparent options usually require feats, spellcasting (with sustaining the spell), or an ancestry with the appropriate physiology (and most likely feats as well).
Or maybe, your character is using their hands - and the gameplay mechanic 'The Feat' is abstracting and handwaving the action cost of emptying your hands, healing your ally, and re-obtaining your gear.
You know, because gameplay mechanic in a game.
People arguing the Free Hands thing is absurd are ignoring the fact that its already Mega-Absurd that you could provide meaningful First Aid in six seconds anyway without magic.
Battle Medicine is a good skill feat while it costs 1 action and isn't onerous to deal with. You rapidly cripple it by adding additional action costs to it, which doesn't seem to have been the goal of adding approachable non-magical healing to the game.
It is also important to remember that the game mechanic about having to re-grip a two handed weapon is not a verisimilitude decision but a power balance one as well. Two-handed weapons have certain limits with other actions related to the massively increased value of having a large damage die, not because the developers carefully considered how long, in number of seconds it would take to put your hand back on it, when dropping your hand away is a free action.
In PF2 the mechanic of hand usage is very much more about power than about the realism of the actions that interact with it.
To those saying you don't need hands for Battle Medicine while it now requires wearing or holding Healer's Tools:
If you are wearing your Healer's Tools, how are you using them when they're held?
Who knows? Who cares? Either we're going by this version of the rules, in which case wearing the tools is enough and you don't need to hold them (which has the advantage of making it a fun and well balanced ability), or we're going by 'realism' in which case you need some number of free hands; GM ruling required.
People arguing for arguing's sakeMost people are either arguing for the sake of making the gameplay fun, or arguing for the sake of realism.
If I'm a creature with no arms or other similar appendages with the Battle Medicine feat, how am I using the feat, which has the Manipulate trait, with no appropriate appendage with which to make use of the feat? That's why the argument of "It only requires wearing, so it doesn't matter" falls flat on its face. You can have a creature with no arms or other appropriate appendage with this feat and still not be able to use it because it cannot follow through with the manipulate trait. It says it right there in the trait:
Creatures without a suitable appendage can’t perform actions with this trait.
No arms, tentacles, prehensile tail, etc.? Sorry, no Battle Medicine. I'd honestly even be fine with just one arm requirement at this point, even if just to stop the complete absurdity I'm seeing.
On top of that, I don't really think people are arguing not needing hands to "make fun gameplay," I think these are people trying to cheese the feat so that they don't want to have to drop items to use it. Is it a valid complaint? Somewhat, depending on who is using the feat. But those who are specialized in Medicine probably don't have much to do with their hands to begin with (Spellcasters, Clerics, Druids, etc. aren't going to have their hands occupied with anything melee-efficient), and it's not like dropping items takes an action these days. Picking them up does, and I suppose stashing tools does, but you can just as easily drop the Healer's Tools as any other item, so that's not an issue there, either. In short, their argument is such a non-issue based on my actual gameplay experience thus far that I'm not seeing how mundane actions cheating the laws of physics way worse than any magic or spell does is "making fun gameplay."
Are you using feet? Tails? Prehensile hair? Psychic powers? Divine powers? Mage Hand? All of those are patentedly absurd, about as absurd as the current developers stating shields as primary or effective weapons are ridiculous, and most of those apparent options usually require feats, spellcasting (with sustaining the spell), or an ancestry with the appropriate physiology (and most likely feats as well).
Or maybe, your character is using their hands - and the gameplay mechanic 'The Feat' is abstracting and handwaving the action cost of emptying your hands, healing your ally, and re-obtaining your gear.
You know, because gameplay mechanic in a game.
People arguing the Free Hands thing is absurd are ignoring the fact that its already Mega-Absurd that you could provide meaningful First Aid in six seconds anyway without magic.
Battle Medicine is a good skill feat while it costs 1 action and isn't onerous to deal with. You rapidly cripple it by adding additional action costs to it, which doesn't seem to have been the goal of adding approachable non-magical healing to the game.
Except everyone in this thread is saying "You don't need hands to use the feat." Which is, as I've stated above, patentedly absurd. It's even worse than a lot of the examples I've given as potential ways to use the feat without hands. Hell, even Mage Hand, which is a hand, should be usable with Battle Medicine if you sustain the spell for the round, or if you cast it prior to performing the action and just don't sustain it next round.
If that's really how the feat is intended to work, they could have spared the additional word space for it. Plus, it wouldn't need the Manipulate trait, which does state a requirement of appendages available for the entirety of the action. It says it right in the trait description.
Stretching credibility of mundane abilities is fine; Fighters wrestling dinosaurs to the ground and Monks leaping 50+ feet at a time is fine, it's no more crazy than teleportation or telekinetic magic. Stretching it to levels that not even magic can match is where I draw the line. If you can do it faster without the help of magic than with the help of magic in this case, I'd call shenanigans. Mage Hand counting as a hand for the purposes of manipulate is probably the most genius use of the spell I can ever conceive, and that would either require the spell going away at the end of your turn, or sustaining it for future use, which takes its own actions.
As for "rapidly crippling" it, my existing gameplay in an actual setting would disagree. We have Clerics and Druids using the feat with their hands full and having to drop their stuff just fine. It might be worse for other classes, like Fighters or Rangers, but that's the price they pay for their hand usage mattering more.
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Except everyone in this thread is saying "You don't need hands to use the feat."
This is a misquote of more or less everyone in this thread - at least by their intent.
They're arguing you don't need a Free hand, which is absolutely, massively, a different thing.
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One of the reasons this discussion has continued with so much fervor is that we all want it to work. Battle Medicine is such an incredibly powerful ability that has essentially never existed before and allows our divine casters to do a hellova lot more than pumping out healing every turn. The argument points we have now are exactly the same as the ones we had months ago. We really need to stop arguing with each other and collectively apply pressure to Paizo to make up their damn minds already. They’ve had a year, AN ENTIRE YEAR, to discuss this feat and how it relates to manipulate actions. Are they really trying to suggest that they cannot decide how this feat is supposed to work? Either they are unwilling to resolve the rule, something they should tell us so we can stop arguing about it and just house-rule it for our games, or they are unable to resolve the issue, which is beyond my ability to process given their collective experience an intelligence. They are simply not that inept. That this continues to be an issue, and that the only meaningful response we’ve received was a half-assed stealth FAQ that barely resolved one of the least important aspects of the issue is incredibly disappointing. Paizo has been applauded for years for being open and communicative with their gaming community. It is increasingly apparent that is much less true in the recent past.
Except everyone in this thread is saying "You don't need hands to use the feat."This is a misquote of more or less everyone in this thread - at least by their intent.
They're arguing you don't need a Free hand, which is absolutely, massively, a different thing.
It might seem like a massively different thing, and technically it is, but it's deflection at best, and moving goal posts at worst. My question still remains the same because the end result (not having an appropriate appendage available to perform the action) is exactly the same even if you phrase your question that way. You can not have hands, or you can have hands that are occupied; it doesn't matter when the end result is "You don't have an appropriate appendage for the action". If your hands are occupied, you can't use those hands for other things until they are freed up to do so.
And I think with this, we are now finally down to the true question that should be asked: Is a person's occupied hands a valid fulfillment of the Manipulate trait?
Obviously, with this we have two camps. We have "The book doesn't say, so it isn't," camp, and we have "The other parts of the book say otherwise," camp.
Of course, I believe in the latter. As an example, If I'm a Fighter with a sword and shield in my hands, I cannot utilize actions that require manipulate traits unless those same manipulates either state they can be done without free hands (a specific exception to the general rule), or they utilize shields or swords as part of their actions. On top of that, I likewise would not expect a GM to rule "You can totally use Battle Medicine at this time," because I feel like the spirit of the Manipulate trait is that you are devoting your hand(s) to that activity, something that must be available before you do so, and for the entirety of the time of the activity in question.
We have precedent for that being the case, such as Shields expressly preventing it and requiring feats from Combat Style dedications to overcome those restrictions, we have Somatic components, a special type of Manipulate action that states the hand free isn't necessary, and we have Material components, another type of Manipulate action which states that a hand free is required.
You can argue that it should specify like Somatic and Material components do, and that's fine. At this point, I agree because it creates these kinds of shenanigans here. But we have people arguing hands aren't required whatsoever, occupied, free, or non-existent, and the latter is what I'm most concerned with quelling here.
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Is a person's occupied hands a valid fulfillment of the Manipulate trait?
Yes.
See also: all of the actions with the manipulate trait that don't require free hand.One of them uses your feet for gods sake.
Is a person's occupied hands a valid fulfillment of the Manipulate trait?Yes.
See also: all of the actions with the manipulate trait that don't require free hand.
One of them uses your feet for gods sake.
To which I would say it depends on the activity. If a manipulate activity involves an item, I would say if a hand or appropriate limb possessing said item would be appropriate, such as if they are dropping said item. If it involves a certain limb, I would say it works in relation to a character using that limb for qualifications.
But then it goes back to my initial question of "What limbs are you using to fulfill the manipulate trait with your Battle Medicine?" If your hands are occupied, and your hands are primarily used for operating tools, like Thief's Tools or Healer's Tools or Disguise Kits, etc., then I don't think using feet or imaginary mental powers counts as an "appropriate appendage" for that action.
But then it goes back to my initial question of "What limbs are you using to fulfill the manipulate trait with your Battle Medicine?" If your hands are occupied, and your hands are primarily used for operating tools, like Thief's Tools or Healer's Tools or Disguise Kits, etc., then I don't think using feet or imaginary mental powers counts as an "appropriate appendage" for that action.
KrispyXIV pretty much covered that already:
Or maybe, your character is using their hands - and the gameplay mechanic 'The Feat' is abstracting and handwaving the action cost of emptying your hands, healing your ally, and re-obtaining your gear.
You know, because gameplay mechanic in a game.
But then it goes back to my initial question of "What limbs are you using to fulfill the manipulate trait with your Battle Medicine?" If your hands are occupied, and your hands are primarily used for operating tools, like Thief's Tools or Healer's Tools or Disguise Kits, etc., then I don't think using feet or imaginary mental powers counts as an "appropriate appendage" for that action.KrispyXIV pretty much covered that already:
Or maybe, your character is using their hands - and the gameplay mechanic 'The Feat' is abstracting and handwaving the action cost of emptying your hands, healing your ally, and re-obtaining your gear.
You know, because gameplay mechanic in a game.
If that was the case, the game would have to actively state that free hands aren't required to use the feat. Otherwise it leads to the shenanigans of people performing heart surgery with their feet. Or tail. Or whatever crazy crap people want to make up.
This is the same exact complaint people made about spellcasting requiring two free hands in the playtest because both somatic and manipulate each required their own free hand. This is why, when PF2 was released, they changed Somatic to just require a non-free hand for gesturing. And it is spelled out as such in the respective activity.
Tell me, did they do this very exact thing with the errata to Battle Medicine? No? Then you're just making stuff up to cope with a very similar complaint made previously.
If that was the case, the game would have to actively state that free hands aren't required to use the feat.
That's not how the rules are written. The rules are written to assume no requirements and no prerequisites, and then explicitly state them when they are needed. "Free Hand" is a requirement that must be met (see Combat Grab, Dual Handed Assault, Quick Alchemy, Dueling Dance, Sabotage, and the other 19 or so references).
This is the same exact complaint people made about spellcasting requiring two free hands in the playtest because both somatic and manipulate each required their own free hand.
Somatic explicitly listed a free hand in the playtest. I just looked it up, its on page 195.
Manipulate (as a trait) has not changed (the glossary entry is word for word identical).Tell me, did they do this very exact thing with the errata to Battle Medicine? No? Then you're just making stuff up to cope with a very similar complaint made previously.
False pretense.
One of the reasons this discussion has continued with so much fervor is that we all want it to work. Battle Medicine is such an incredibly powerful ability that has essentially never existed before and allows our divine casters to do a hellova lot more than pumping out healing every turn. The argument points we have now are exactly the same as the ones we had months ago. We really need to stop arguing with each other and collectively apply pressure to Paizo to make up their damn minds already. They’ve had a year, AN ENTIRE YEAR, to discuss this feat and how it relates to manipulate actions. Are they really trying to suggest that they cannot decide how this feat is supposed to work? Either they are unwilling to resolve the rule, something they should tell us so we can stop arguing about it and just house-rule it for our games, or they are unable to resolve the issue, which is beyond my ability to process given their collective experience an intelligence. They are simply not that inept. That this continues to be an issue, and that the only meaningful response we’ve received was a half-assed stealth FAQ that barely resolved one of the least important aspects of the issue is incredibly disappointing. Paizo has been applauded for years for being open and communicative with their gaming community. It is increasingly apparent that is much less true in the recent past.
THANK YOU! I am past tired of beating this drum alone.
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You know, because gameplay mechanic in a game.People arguing the Free Hands thing is absurd are ignoring the fact that its already Mega-Absurd that you could provide meaningful First Aid in six seconds anyway without magic.
Totally true. Only with magic does rapid healing make sense.
Battle Medicine is a good skill feat while it costs 1 action and isn't onerous to deal with. You rapidly cripple it by adding additional action costs to it, which doesn't seem to have been the goal of adding approachable non-magical healing to the game.
Precisely it is as much a game design as anything else.
I'm not a super fan of it. It breaks verisimilitude a bit for me. I would have been quite happy for non magical healing to be much slower. For me Continual Recovery is enough, Battle Medicine is not required.But this is a choice to make parties without divine magic more possible. It parted with reality a while ago.
If that was the case, the game would have to actively state that free hands aren't required to use the feat.That's not how the rules are written. The rules are written to assume no requirements and no prerequisites, and then explicitly state them when they are needed. "Free Hand" is a requirement that must be met (see Combat Grab, Dual Handed Assault, Quick Alchemy, Dueling Dance, Sabotage, and the other 19 or so references).
This is the same exact complaint people made about spellcasting requiring two free hands in the playtest because both somatic and manipulate each required their own free hand.Somatic explicitly listed a free hand in the playtest. I just looked it up, its on page 195.
Manipulate (as a trait) has not changed (the glossary entry is word for word identical).Tell me, did they do this very exact thing with the errata to Battle Medicine? No? Then you're just making stuff up to cope with a very similar complaint made previously.False pretense.
They could have just as easily forgotten it as a requirement, just like they forgot that Healer's Tools was a requirement, and it was errata'd in. I'd definitely like to see a surgeon work while his hands are occupied with a sword and shield, or a big axe occupying his hands that he would be using scalpels, snips, thread, etc. and successfully fixing up a patient. If you can post a video of someone doing that, I'll concede this and never bring it up ever again. I highly doubt one exists, though.
I do apologize here, I did mean Material components, not the Manipulate trait. They both start with M and have the same synonyms, so...oopsie. But I do remember this being a chief complaint in the playtest forums though, and I think it was in one of the updates or the actual release, Somatic was changed to just require a non-free hand instead of a free hand, with Material still requiring a free hand full stop.
That being said, with that rectification, the complaint is still similar; a Wizard having to drop his staff or wand to cast spells was super lame, just like how someone trained in Medicine has to drop their gear to use Battle Medicine.
They could have just as easily forgotten it as a requirement, just like they forgot that Healer's Tools was a requirement, and it was errata'd in.
"They might errata it" does not itself create rules text. Until they do the feat does not require free hands (and until the errata, did not require a healer's kit).
You might not like it, but...them's the rules.
I'd definitely like to see a surgeon work while his hands are occupied with a sword and shield, or a big axe occupying his hands that he would be using scalpels, snips, thread, etc. and successfully fixing up a patient. If you can post a video of someone doing that, I'll concede this and never bring it up ever again. I highly doubt one exists, though.
I would too, but its not really relevant when discussing the rules of the game. The rules as written might not conform to reality, but again, the rules aren't meant to simulate reality.
I'd love to see a video of a dwarf fighting a dragon with a handaxe, but...
I do apologize here, I did mean Material components, not the Manipulate trait. They both start with M and have the same synonyms, so...oopsie. But I do remember this being a chief complaint in the playtest forums though, and I think it was in one of the updates or the actual release, Somatic was changed to just require a non-free hand instead of a free hand, with Material still requiring a free hand full stop.
Yes, it did change during the playtest. It was changed from "requires a free hand" to "remove the sentence 'requires a free hand'" and add at the end some additional text reminding the reader that free hands are not required.
That being said, with that rectification, the complaint is still similar; a Wizard having to drop his staff or wand to cast spells was super lame, just like how someone trained in Medicine has to drop their gear to use Battle Medicine.
Wait, what?
You agree that a medic having to drop their gear to use Battle Medicine is "just as lame" as a wizard having to drop his staff and yet you argue that the feat requires a free hand?
They could have just as easily forgotten it as a requirement, just like they forgot that Healer's Tools was a requirement, and it was errata'd in."They might errata it" does not itself create rules text. Until they do the feat does not require free hands (and until the errata, did not require a healer's kit).
You might not like it, but...them's the rules.
I'd definitely like to see a surgeon work while his hands are occupied with a sword and shield, or a big axe occupying his hands that he would be using scalpels, snips, thread, etc. and successfully fixing up a patient. If you can post a video of someone doing that, I'll concede this and never bring it up ever again. I highly doubt one exists, though.I would too, but its not really relevant when discussing the rules of the game. The rules as written might not conform to reality, but again, the rules aren't meant to simulate reality.
I'd love to see a video of a dwarf fighting a dragon with a handaxe, but...
I do apologize here, I did mean Material components, not the Manipulate trait. They both start with M and have the same synonyms, so...oopsie. But I do remember this being a chief complaint in the playtest forums though, and I think it was in one of the updates or the actual release, Somatic was changed to just require a non-free hand instead of a free hand, with Material still requiring a free hand full stop.Yes, it did change during the playtest. It was changed from "requires a free hand" to "remove the sentence 'requires a free hand'" and add at the end some additional text reminding the reader that free hands are not required.
That being said, with that rectification, the complaint is still similar; a Wizard having to drop his staff or wand to cast spells was super lame, just like how someone trained in Medicine has to drop their gear to use Battle Medicine.Wait, what?
You agree that a medic having to drop their gear to drop his staff and yet you argue that the feat requires a free hand?
Neither does "It's not there so it doesn't exist." It's actually the same argument behind "Dead condition doesn't do anything" back in PF1, with the same logic being applied. I'm of the opinion that the developers didn't just catch everything and made a mistake, or overlooked something and just assumed what the issue was and made a fix hoping it'd fix it.
It's not a point of perfectly simulating reality. It's about simulating it "enough," to the point that I don't question if it's possible. A lot of magic's shenanigans is "Because magic is capable of manipulating reality like that." An excuse something like Battle Medicine can't rely on.
A key distinction that had to be made. Otherwise people would be making the same arguments for Somatic components that we would be having here.
That's actually what everyone else is arguing. I'm of the opinion that 90% of characters using Battle Medicine don't have anything extremely important in their hands, and, if the situation is dire enough, would be willing to drop what is in their hands to utilize Battle Medicine. Can it be lame? Possibly. Will it be lame? Not necessarily. And there are items which lessen that problem to the point that it's not an inconvenience anymore.
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Neither does "It's not there so it doesn't exist."
Except that the game tells you that if requirements are required, it will tell you when those requirements are required and what they are.
Secret mystery requirements aren't a thing.Which isn't the same as "but dead doesn't do anything." We have plenty of rules that the game gives us about what the manipulate trait means (and its primary purpose is to trigger reactions) and plenty of manipulate actions that don't require free hands. So the trait DOES do something.
It might not make sense not to require a free hand, but its also an action/feat that's meant to take place within combat that most characters should be able to perform. And in order to do that, "1 action" is the cost. Making it have a higher cost means that it is not competitive against magical healing, leading back to WoCLW and HealBot clerics.
The community specifically asked for better non-magical healing.
We got it.
And now people are whining that "ITS TOO EASY, IT SHOULD USE MORE HANDS. WHY CAN'T IT MAKE MY VERISIMILITUDE GLAND HAPPY?"
The rule is not obviously broken (as in non-functional), so stop trying to fix it.
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...They could have just as easily forgotten it as a requirement, just like they forgot that Healer's Tools was a requirement, and it was errata'd in."They might errata it" does not itself create rules text. Until they do the feat does not require free hands (and until the errata, did not require a healer's kit).
You might not like it, but...them's the rules.
I'd definitely like to see a surgeon work while his hands are occupied with a sword and shield, or a big axe occupying his hands that he would be using scalpels, snips, thread, etc. and successfully fixing up a patient. If you can post a video of someone doing that, I'll concede this and never bring it up ever again. I highly doubt one exists, though.I would too, but its not really relevant when discussing the rules of the game. The rules as written might not conform to reality, but again, the rules aren't meant to simulate reality.
I'd love to see a video of a dwarf fighting a dragon with a handaxe, but...
I do apologize here, I did mean Material components, not the Manipulate trait. They both start with M and have the same synonyms, so...oopsie. But I do remember this being a chief complaint in the playtest forums though, and I think it was in one of the updates or the actual release, Somatic was changed to just require a non-free hand instead of a free hand, with Material still requiring a free hand full stop.Yes, it did change during the playtest. It was changed from "requires a free hand" to "remove the sentence 'requires a free hand'" and add at the end some additional text reminding the reader that free hands are not required.
That being said, with that rectification, the complaint is still similar; a Wizard having to drop his staff or wand to cast spells was super lame, just like how someone trained in Medicine has to drop their gear to use Battle Medicine.Wait, what?
You agree that a medic
The reason why your argument is unconvincing to me is because we have gotten at least a partial Errata. That Errata did not add any of the language that is present in other actions to make the requirement of a free hand clear. At the point that an errata has been issued, "they made a mistake with this language and we should all just pretend like it says what I want it to," is not a very convincing argument. They have fixed the wording and they did not add the components that would do what you want.
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I'm not a super fan of it. It breaks verisimilitude a bit for me. I would have been quite happy for non magical healing to be much slower. For me Continual Recovery is enough, Battle Medicine is not required.
I think its their way of simulating Stamina points in a system without them. The Envoy can restore Stamina with virtually nothing more than a look. Its similar to how Battle Medicine restore HP. The difference being we don't have the distinction in 2E between actual physical damage (HP) and short-term fatigue (SP).
I think Battle Medicine serves a very important function as it allows for competent parties without a dedicate combat healer and for those that do have one, they can do something other than spam healing spells each turn. Spending one action for BM and using the other two for an offensive, de/buff, control spell is good game design.
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Another reason why I think a lot of people are struggling with this is that, unlike magical healing which can be explained with a simple "cause its magic," BM really feels like it should be something that could be explained through a real life analysis. As it stands, its sort of a weird mix of kinda magic, kinda not magic. If the intention is that it is not magical in any way, then we want to be able to visualize how it would work in a mundane application. Spraying on some antiseptic with pain relief? Slapping on a butterfly band-aid? Rubbing some dirt on it? Whatever it is, it seems like, reasonably, it should require a free hand to apply the [whatever] and a bandolier so the [whatever] is readily available.
Some people are not going to like that because it restricts characters from doing it efficiently. If you are sword and board, or a two-weapon warrior, or a two-handed weapon wielder, etc. it mean the cost to you is higher. Whether or not that is "fair" is for *you* to decide.
In most cases combat healing does not keep pace with enemy damage output anyway so it is unlikely you will want your martial characters to be using BM during an active battle. Their attacks are much more valuable. That leaves the non-martials to deal with the healing. That's a bigger pool than the cleric from 1E, but it means the archer, casters, bards, monks, etc. became supplemental healers, which is better than what we had before.
To be perfectly honest, I care less about what the final ruling will be than I do about it being consistent across the game tables in PFS. It is extremely bad design to allow a perfectly legal character build to be significantly diminished because the GM at *this* table rules so rigidly to make it unusable while another is so accommodating it can be exploited.
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Another reason why I think a lot of people are struggling with this is that, unlike magical healing which can be explained with a simple "cause its magic," BM really feels like it should be something that could be explained through a real life analysis. As it stands, its sort of a weird mix of kinda magic, kinda not magic. If the intention is that it is not magical in any way, then we want to be able to visualize how it would work in a mundane application. Spraying on some antiseptic with pain relief? Slapping on a butterfly band-aid? Rubbing some dirt on it? Whatever it is, it seems like, reasonably, it should require a free hand to apply the [whatever] and a bandolier so the [whatever] is readily available.
Do you not believe in headbutt healing?! Shame on you! ;)
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I was glad to see in a Legends that battlefield medicine was developed by a Rhahadoumi who is very anti-gods, because God has surely forsaken this feat.
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Requiring a free hand has a very specific rules impact. I am pretty sure there are many things you can do where you need to use your hand but that will not have this impact (say snapping your fingers). Doing these will not require a free hand.
Apparently, neither does Battle Medicine. And I am quite OK with that.
This game is rife with unrealistic simplifications. I am not sure why people have so much trouble with this one specifically.
Thus Battle Medicine could even be visualized as a quick check-over and the healer saying "It's not that bad, you'll be okay" and the target having their confidence and will to press on bolstered.
So should we rule that you can't use Battle Medicine in an area of Silence, since they can't hear your inspiring words?
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Thus Battle Medicine could even be visualized as a quick check-over and the healer saying "It's not that bad, you'll be okay" and the target having their confidence and will to press on bolstered.So should we rule that you can't use Battle Medicine in an area of Silence, since they can't hear your inspiring words?
Nope. Because it doesn't have the auditory trait, so Silence effects don't work on it.
There are numerous visualizations, all of which are as easy as visualizing anything else in the game, and they fit numerous different situations - all it takes is making the choice to say "it works because..." instead of "I don't want it to work because..."
I still disagree with this because this is something a player has to argue when it comes to doing things that the rules either don't cover or can't cover.
Consider that, as a GM, you have to provide reasons as to why something does or doesn't work that the rules don't cover because otherwise you piss off your players and then they leave the table and call you out on shenanigans. Conversely, as a player I have to provide reasons why something the rules don't explicitly cover works or doesn't work or the GM may call shenanigans and either disallow my actions or boot me from the table.
In PFS, you don't get the ability to handwave stuff like that and just say "It works," when you're incorporating elements that the rules simply don't cover. You have to argue the "because" of things simply due that it's the only way to persuade someone to either rule in your favor or to not get overly upset about a player's/GM's reasoning or ruling, or because as a player, you want to incorporate something that the feat doesn't let you do, but you want to do it because [reasons], or to bypass some arbitrary restriction (such as needing to be adjacent to apply the feat to, something that's silly if you're using something that can be heard from hundreds of feet away).
It depends on the severity of the argument.
If it's a case of a player's outlandish way of tackling a situation at the beginning of an encounter, they can brush off from it and move on, formulating a different plan of attack. This is usually the cases that come up in the middle of gameplay that create some good tension.
If it's a case of a player's character risking death itself, thereby killing off said character that may have had major investments in it, and disrupting the storyline quite a bit, or if it's something that completely invalidates a player character itself in an encounter, it can definitely create overly high levels of tension, to the point of frustration overcoming players' desires to play the game. It's basically what happened back in PF1 with a player whom I'm now playing with in a second group in PF2.
But at this point, people running Battle Medicine need to apply the rules of simplicity to it to avoid the frustrations coming, and I might as well do the same. No need to abstract anything out of the feat, no need to add anything to the feat that makes it function differently than what it is/does, nothing. You just do a thing for a thing and it gives things to this thing.
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They could have just as easily forgotten it as a requirement, just like they forgot that Healer's Tools was a requirement, and it was errata'd in. I'd definitely like to see a surgeon work while his hands are occupied with a sword and shield, or a big axe occupying his hands that he would be using scalpels, snips, thread, etc. and successfully fixing up a patient. If you can post a video of someone doing that, I'll concede this and never bring it up ever again. I highly doubt one exists, though.
Sure i can look for that and while I do you find the video of a surgeon patching up the basic Damage from 2 crossbow bolts in roughly 2 seconds. Since Realism is so important I'm sure your gonna wanna change the time to use the feat to match real world doctors as well.
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I am not sure why people have so much trouble with this one specifically.
Taken strictly in home games, I would agree. Just make a ruling and move on, but it affects organized play arguably even moreso. In a home game you will know how the GM will rule and can therefore make appropriate choices for your character (eve if you disagree with the ruling). OTOH, in PFS where the GM changes each time, you could invest a lot of your character build resources into using and maximizing Battle Medicine only to have it be virtually impossible to use if the GM takes the most rigid approach. That is not fair to the player who built their character in good faith. The PFS leadership should make a temporary ruling for consistency until the designers decide on a more permanent solution, but they are unable/unwilling to do so. It continues to be a significant point of conflict.
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As long as it doesn't get stuck under the nebulous "gm interpretation" theme this edition has going I'm fine with any set ruling. It may be that the feat is only good if I'm gonna have a free hand(s) or it might be that anyone could make some use of it. But for the love of all pick one and give a ruling.
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I'm pretty sure that if they were going to errata it to require a free hand they would have done so when they added the text about the healer's kit. Of note, casting used to require a free hand for somatic components, but it was changed due to complaints from players (such as myself) that it was unfair to Clerics of Gorum and other concepts that naturally called for 2-handed weapons.
Battle Medicine requiring no free hands is the RAW and is consistent with other, comparable rules. Frankly I doubt an FAQ that plainly states "yes, the rules say what the rules say" would satisfy GM's that are just complaining about verisimilitude. I won't deny it's weird from a realism perspective but discarding realism when it gets in the way of a good game was a design tenet of PF2.
Frankly I doubt an FAQ that plainly states "yes, the rules say what the rules say" would satisfy GM's that are just complaining about verisimilitude.
An FAQ completely devoid of meaning would be unsatisfying? You don't say...
Meanwhile, I see that both sides are still talking past each other, and there is still no ruling in sight. *sigh*