Roleplay battle medecine

[RagingBarb]

We are playing a game where we roleplay our actions in combat but I struggle to find a way to roleplay a 1 action medecine check which takes 2 seconds.

Anyone has any idea how to make this seems coincidental an not magical since it's not magic? What can anyone heal in 2 seconds while being coincidental? I understand time is flexible but still.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

You grab an organ that's dangling outside the body and shove it back where it belongs; that should take about two seconds. :)

[Deriven Firelion]

I roleplay this like orc medicine in Lord of the Rings or smelling salts in a variety of fiction. Hit points are a nebulous idea that combines a combination of fatigue, wounds, shock, and the will to keep on fighting. So I have battle medicine as some very fast acting combination of medicine that gives the character a boost of adrenaline either by being painful or being an analgesic that lets them fight on a bit longer.

[graystone]

Hit Points, Healing, and Dying
Source Core Rulebook pg. 459

"Your maximum Hit Point value represents your health, wherewithal, and heroic drive when you are in good health and rested."

Blow them a kiss to increase morale or pat on the back or a thumbs up or... Take your pick: anything that could encourage drive, morale and the like can work.

[Watery Soup]

I usually say I'm slapping on a bandage.

[KrispyXIV]

A fast acting cocktail of stimulants and painkillers, possibly delivered via poultice, pill, or even injection is my favorite.

Medicine on Golarion is apparently not particularly primitive - per the Bestiary, a successful blood transfusion is a DC 20 Medicine check. Thats a technique that in the real world only became reliable in the 20th century.

Therefore I have little issue assuming this an area where pharmaceuticals and medicine are more advanced than you'd expect based on the 'Fantasy' veneer in Pathfinder.

...if my players/fellow players question any of the above, I remind them that Golarion also has visitors from both space and other planes on a regular basis, and in general is not as primitive as it appears :)

[Tender Tendrils]

Put a bandage on the last place they got stabbed then kiss it better.

[Matthew Downie]

Slap on an alchemically treated self-adhesive bandage. (Alchemical is a good word for justifying things that aren't magic but work pretty much like magic.)

[Wheldrake]

I agree with the slapping on a bandage or making a quick injection trope.

But then again, I also require one free hand and a medkit in a bandolier for battle medicine to be effective in a single action, contrary to the ambiguous RAW description of this excessively generous feat.

[Deadmanwalking]

Wheldrake wrote:

I agree with the slapping on a bandage or making a quick injection trope.

Agreed. That's generally the descriptions I'd go with, too.

Wheldrake wrote:

But then again, I also require one free hand and a medkit in a bandolier for battle medicine to be effective in a single action, contrary to the ambiguous RAW description of this excessively generous feat.

Per current errata, only the free hand is a House Rule, there. I'm cool with it being thematically a quickdraw and not requiring that, personally.

[Deriven Firelion]

I require a free hand as I figure the Battle Medicine user keeps a lot of packets of medicine ready each day.

[RagingBarb]

Thank you for all the suggestions. It does indeed gives a few good tips on how to rp this :-).

[Watery Soup]

Injection is better for roleplaying critical failures. :)

It's hard to imagine crit-failing a bandage so hard as to cause 1d8 damage.

[Loreguard]

Watery Soup wrote:

Injection is better for roleplaying critical failures. :)

It's hard to imagine crit-failing a bandage so hard as to cause 1d8 damage.

Actually, it could be that the damage is caused when the person says... wow... that feels better, stretches out taking in the feeling, and then they feel it go way wrong as they hurt themselves worse than they got fixed.

Certainly one way of helping the story along is to allow there to be a certain degree of the ability to 'rewrite' the apparent history.

If you are careful to generally make most strikes be descriptive from a perception standpoint, not prescriptive from an absolute authority standpoint, you have the ability to make adjustments as perceptions improve. That means, avoid having a sword blow described as chopping off the players arm, simply because they took 70% of their HP, as they honestly might be able to bounce back and attack in a round or two.

If someone takes a critical hit with a spear, that takes them down almost to dying. You describe the blow as hitting them in the stomach and appearing to nearly kill them, and just barely avoiding passing out. Then when the medic comes up and restores half of the HP from the blow with a bandage. You need not describe it as being a magical healing of the blow, but perhaps with the combination of the bandage staunching the blood flow, and the poor pained ally being reassured by the medic that the blow just missed his vital organ, which based on the pain, they thought had been hit, was enough to give the warrior a boost to dart back into the combat with refreshed vigor.

It means that the original description didn't turn out to be entirely accurate from a technical accuracy, but it can still be true about what the party perceived in the fog of war. If the next blow was another critical, and the person went to dying 2, and they weren't able to get to them in time, then there is no reason for them to know the first perception of the one would was either wrong or not. If they died, they died from one of the wounds. If they don't something wasn't quite as bad as it 'might' have been.

You are building a story as you go. The future of the story may well clarify the details of the past in ways that might not have been apparent, in the past. But the perception of that past, even if perhaps askew, helped drive the story in the way it eventually fell. So the story is richer, even if not everything in the story is entirely accurate the entire time. And, if anything, that might make the story even more believable in the long run. How many stories that you hear don't have something in them that makes you wonder, "Was that really what happened?"

[jdripley]

I tend to describe the effects of HP loss in terms of how the character is holding up through the fight, rather than describing a crippling wound just because the HP loss was big.

So an enemy that is at 75% HP is "still doing pretty good."
An enemy that is at 50% HP is "starting to get worn down."
An enemy that is at 25% HP is "looking pretty ragged and has a look of panic in their eyes."

Or something like that.
I'm not opposed to getting descriptive with a particularly good hit. The Barbarian's club "smashes into their foe which reels back from the impact." The rogue's dagger "bites deep, leaving a weeping wound in its side."

But I do avoid anything overtly crippling.

What I DO try to do is if a character takes their target to 0 HP on a critical (success attack, or failure spell), I ask the player to describe their critical kill. THIS is where incapacitating injury description comes in. Hmm, now that I'm thinking of this more, I think I'll start having players describe the wounds that bring THEM to 0 HP, critical or not. That might be a good way to solidify the impact of the moment and keep their attention on the RP..

I feel as though this approach leaves the door wide open for Battle Medicine, Treat Wounds, and magical healing of all forms to be a bit more reasonable. It's a pretty far stretch for Battle Medicine to reattach an arm or cure a sucking chest wound. But if all damage prior to "the big one" that brings you to 0 amounts to small cuts, scrapes and bruises, then all forms of healing feel pretty reasonable. Magic washes over the target character and small scrapes knit back together. A dash of alchemical powder clots a weeping cut across the cheek. An elixer dulls the pain and puts a gleam in the eye.

[Rikaya Softclaw]

IMO, while Battle Medicine isn't magical it is superhuman. It is an ability well-beyond what can be achieved in our world, and that's fine. I'd say that they're applying medicine that helps them draw in positive/negative energy to heal themselves with, or something along those lines; they were badly wounded, now they're notably less-wounded.

As for the one-day limitation for that particular medic/patient pairing: Each medic's medicine uses somewhat different ingredients, and using too much of the same type of medicine has negative health consequences that outweigh the positives, so they refuse to do so. (As for why a medic can only have a single type of medicine... one of the ingredients is their own superhuman energies, and these energies work with different ingredients better; they cannot prepare two different types effectively, nor can somebody else apply their medicines properly because the energy signatures conflict)

So, for roleplaying it.. medic applies a poultice, or has them drink some liquid, or they slap on a bandage... and then the wounds close up significantly. Not perfectly, even if they're brought to full hit points they're still notably damaged, but brought up to mostly-full functionality.

[Megistone]

The Pulp Fiction scene is golden. While not realistic, it gives me a very good picture of what could be happening with battle medicine in the PF world: a risky injection with an instant effect on the receiver, who is unlikely to survive a second one.