I've been playing 2E since it released and have since participated in maybe a half dozen player groups, and hosted two of my campaigns as a GM.
In every single case after the playtest, the moment everyone leveled up to level two, someone in the party took Battle Medicine (if they didn't have it already at level 1 from a background).
Oftentimes, players would double up, with two people bending over backwards to make sure the party had it. People also made a habit of expanding on it at later levels, either taking Continual Recovery and Ward Medic, or going whole ham and taking the Field Medic background, the Medic archetype, all the medicine feats they could, AND begging the GM for the Rare Medicine skill feats. I'm curious to know if this is also occurring at other tables.
Do your players (or fellow players) practically bend over backwards to make sure someone has these feats and abilities, oftentimes even when there is already a dedicated healer (such as a cleric) in the party, or is it largely unique to the groups in my play area?
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Yes, they pretty much are. Using spells, even from a cleric, for all of your healing, instead of just the emergency work, would be really rough.
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While there's generally someone who levels Medicine in every party I've been in, I've only seen one character take more than one Medicine feat. Now, that character was an absolute healing monster that helped the party go much farther in a day than they would otherwise, but the other parties did fine.
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You definitely should have more than one dedicated healer.
Medicine with a 10 minute downtime to reset just has a really high amount of healing throughput that GMs would actively have start ambushing players if they didn't want the party topped up at all times.
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Continual Recovery and Ward Medic are the only ones that I like and more because of quality of life, the rest of the medicine feats are not as good as those two.
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Continual Recovery and Ward Medic are the only ones that I like and more because of quality of life, the rest of the medicine feats are not as good as those two.
I hear Doctor’s Visitation is also really popular.
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Exactly half of my players think Battle Medicine is mandatory. The other half enjoy that the first half feel that way.
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Yes, they pretty much are. Using spells, even from a cleric, for all of your healing, instead of just the emergency work, would be really rough.
Blessed One offers an alternative to Medicine based healing with it giving lay on hands you can cast every 10 min.
I've been playing 2E since it released and have since participated in maybe a half dozen player groups, and hosted two of my campaigns as a GM.
In every single case after the playtest, the moment everyone leveled up to level two, someone in the party took Battle Medicine (if they didn't have it already at level 1 from a background).
Oftentimes, players would double up, with two people bending over backwards to make sure the party had it. People also made a habit of expanding on it at later levels, either taking Continual Recovery and Ward Medic, or going whole ham and taking the Field Medic background, the Medic archetype, all the medicine feats they could, AND begging the GM for the Rare Medicine skill feats. I'm curious to know if this is also occurring at other tables.
Do your players (or fellow players) practically bend over backwards to make sure someone has these feats and abilities, oftentimes even when there is already a dedicated healer (such as a cleric) in the party, or is it largely unique to the groups in my play area?
Three out of five PCs in my current group had Battle Medicine, and two of them went the Assurance: Medicine Route + Expert Skill to guarantee a success result at 6th level. One of them also took Ward Medic and Continual Recovery for doing Treat Wounds outside of combat.
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Yes, they pretty much are. Using spells, even from a cleric, for all of your healing, instead of just the emergency work, would be really rough.Blessed One offers an alternative to Medicine based healing with it giving lay on hands you can cast every 10 min.
By a similar rationale, take Medic and have bigger heal numbers and bypass the once a day restriction to Battle Medicine.
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By a similar rationale, take Medic and have bigger heal numbers and bypass the once a day restriction to Battle Medicine.Yes, they pretty much are. Using spells, even from a cleric, for all of your healing, instead of just the emergency work, would be really rough.Blessed One offers an alternative to Medicine based healing with it giving lay on hands you can cast every 10 min.
But that's using medicine based feats: I was trying to point out non-Medicine based ways to heal since the question was about how popular medicine feats are.
Myself, an Investigator [Forensic Medicine]/Medic offers the best Battle Medicine use with 2/hour/person in addition to +level to hp healed if you want to lean into the Medicine feats: Skillful Lessons also lets you take those skill feats faster which also includes some of those Medic feats. Now if you want healing overkill, at 6th level add Blessed one. ;)
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I've had individual players try for all of the above for their character!
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I've literally not run a single game since it came out where at least one or two members of the party didn't take battle medicine.
I've run at least two games where EVERYONE in the party took battle medicine.
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Blessed One offers an alternative to Medicine based healing with it giving lay on hands you can cast every 10 min.
All my Oracles have Blessed One just so that juicy focus pool is put to good use. That and access to a focus spell that isn't cursebound, all for the price of one feat.
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Battle Medicine + Assurance seems to have become a bit popular in my group. Considering no one is playing a healing caster like Cleric, they end up being the group's primary form of healing and it has worked out pretty well. Especially now that more than one of them invests in it so that the group isn't screwed if the one person with Medicine is the one who needs healing.
In parties with clerics and champions, it is a bit redundant to go feat crazy on it.
In parties with only a bard or a Druid for magical healing, it starts to feel pretty much mandatory for someone to have battle medicine, as well as continual recovery/ward medic. I am not a big fan of how it basically becomes expected of the rogue to go all in on medicine feats for the first 3 levels in parties with limited magical healing, but it does take everyone else way too long to cover. I have seen three separate parties where the rogue basically had to take battle medicine, ward medic and continual recovery because the party lacked a cleric or a champion. At least the rogue gas enough other stuff going on where it doesn’t feel character defining for very long to have 3 mandatory skill feats.
I was really hoping not to have to do it with my rogue, but when our party ended up ranger, wizard, rogue, and bard, it became clear pretty quick that we needed more in combat and after combat healing support more than any of the more situational but fun skill feats I wanted to take at low levels. Continual recovery in particular is just such a game changer for a party, getting it by level 2 or 3 instead of 4 is a pretty big deal.
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IME, people over fixate on in combat healing. It is a lot more viable than it was in PF1, but I think players get so fixated on patching up their friend's boo boos that they don't focus on actually winning the fight.
When the draconic sorcerer in our party took crossblooded to pick up Heal, the party started doing worse. Spell slots and actions started being spent patching up the giant instinct barbarian's poor tactics, when before they were used to do huge blast damage, or shift the battle dramatically with a dispel or wall spell. There's a certain personality type that gets tunnel vision when an ally is on trouble.
Blessed One offers an alternative to Medicine based healing with it giving lay on hands you can cast every 10 min.All my Oracles have Blessed One just so that juicy focus pool is put to good use. That and access to a focus spell that isn't cursebound, all for the price of one feat.
LOL My oracle ONLY uses lay on hands and other non-oracle focus spells since I'm not a big fan of the whole curse mechanic.
Each of my groups has a dedicated medicine character in them. Usually only the one though.
One of my parties has the Wizard's Sorcerer Dedication and our Rogue's trained medicine checks as our only ways of healing, and we are doing fine (level 10 party, it has been like this since level 6).
Not mandatory, for sure, but they make your life far easier. We have to buy lots of healing potions and be very careful.
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To answer Ravingdork's question and to illustrate, our group with 6 PCs (no cleric) has the following healing resources:
Fighter/Druid (16 WIS) with Battle Medicine, Continual Recovery and will be picking up Ward Medic at the next level.
Primal Sorceror with Battle Medicine and I think Continual Recovery - not sure if the player is picking up Ward Medic, BUT he did go with Assurance (Medicine). Also, Healing is a signature spell and he uses it and Battle Medicine in combat to good effect. The player is very experienced and knows how to balance heal versus attack.
Witch with Lessons of Life for out of combat healing using a focus spell, though he's used it in combat to good effect a few times.
I don't think the other three PCs (all martials) have any significant healing ability, though one or two of them might have Medicine trained.
So far, at level 5, we've been able to keep up with the hit point damage.
OBSERVATION: People focus on hit points, but "healing" in my mind includes dealing with other afflictions/conditions as well. Our group found it VERY USEFUL that Medicine also covers treating poison and disease, especially as no one in our group has spells to deal with those - I think we might have lost one, possibly two PCs if the two Medicine guys didn't treat them. As for other afflictions/conditions, like permanent blindness or a curse or whatnot, time will tell whether we have problems dealing with those without a cleric - I guess it depends on what spells the Witch and Sorceror take.
EDIT: And we did, when creating the PCs, set the aspirational goal of having at least one, preferably two, people with Medicine + appropriate skill feats, and one or two people with some sort of out of combat focus spell healing.
OBSERVATION: People focus on hit points, but "healing" in my mind includes dealing with other afflictions/conditions as well. Our group found it VERY USEFUL that Medicine also covers treating poison and disease, especially as no one in our group has spells to deal with those - I think we might have lost one, possibly two PCs if the two Medicine guys didn't treat them. As for other afflictions/conditions, like permanent blindness or a curse or whatnot, time will tell whether we have problems dealing with those without a cleric - I guess it depends on what spells the Witch and Sorceror take.
Agreed. I've seen Medicine (especially with Assurance) used to good effect to Treat Poison and Administer First Aid (both to stop bleeding and to stabilize). In fact, part of the reason the party increased their focus on Medicine was accidently killing an NPC they wanted to capture, because the party Medic was down and the NPC ended up bleeding to death with the rest of the party unable to save him.
Also expecting Treat Disease to come up in our next session - since one of the party is still in the onset period of a disease, which will likely start taking effect during travel.
Every group of mine has had at least one medicine user so far.
I have actively directed anyone who wasn't going to take continual healing to continual healing. Most eventually take ward medic.
Battle medicine is nice for some characters, but not good for others and if you aren't pumping ranks into medicine 2d8 or even 4d8 is not mind blowing healing potential once per character per day past a point. Sometimes good as a defibrillator but often that character either just gets a second wound because of it (enemies one hit down them) or that character still needs the primary healer to get a real heal anyway.
I don't believe options like lay on hands are very efficient alternatives to speccing into medicine, but they do have some value in the right group (especially if multiple characters have access to it and or it is used as a bridge for a half specialized healer party. Probably best in the hands of a sorcerer because of their innate refocus.
The leshy fey-blooded sorcerer in my 9th-level 7-player party has Continual Recovery and Ward Medic. She is a master in Medicine. Heal is one of her signature spells.
She mostly tops off the hit points of the party in the 10 minutes after combat with the healing feats. She is also good at tending to injured prisoners that the party rescued.
Her Heal spell is for healing in mid-battle, and that is necessary only during an Extreme-threat encounter or after bad luck with the dice. My players are good at protecting each others' characters. The leshy has enough spell slots for Heal so she never learned Battlefield Medicine.
The champion in the party has Lay on Hands. The druid in the party has usually prepares a Heal spell and has Battlefield Medicine. That was the party's healing before the leshy joined the party at 6th level.
Medicine has been monstrously popular in the groups I've been in. Many parties will have multiple people investing in the skill and only once did I see any group downplay it (and they did it on purpose).
I see Continual Recovery and Battle Medicine about as often as I saw Power Attack in PF1. Honestly it feels like it's kind of a problem.
Medicine skill and related feats are not too popular in my group.
Being the "Wisdom" character of our group and a Cleric of Sarenrae I picked it up, mainly in order to deal with poison and disease before the respective spells come online and I also took Battle Medicine for its action economy and to be able to preserve Heal slots during our early leavels.
However I later learned that patching up the party in between fights is kinda expected in PF2 and that the combination of Continual Recovery and Ward Medic is a more or less mandatory option if you want to keep up the resemblance of a reasonable pace while dungeoneering.
So I ended up boosting Medicine even before Religion and with Battle Medicine (from Background), Continual Recovery (2nd), Ward Medic (4th), Assurance Medicine (6th) and Robust Recovery (8th) as icing on the cake ended up taking all of them (also because my other maxed skill Religion has not much to offer as an alternative).
Our Ranger took Natural Medicine as a fallback solution, but has not used it much (primarily during the early levels when I could not yet treat multiple characters fast enough at once).
So in between Heal spells from my class, magical healing from items, magical healing from focus powers and mundane healing from skills and feats I can pump out quite some healing when required but it often still feels that I can not do enough healing, especially if our group wants to or needs to clear a larger or more difficult dungeon in one go.
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IME, people over fixate on in combat healing. It is a lot more viable than it was in PF1, but I think players get so fixated on patching up their friend's boo boos that they don't focus on actually winning the fight.
When the draconic sorcerer in our party took crossblooded to pick up Heal, the party started doing worse. Spell slots and actions started being spent patching up the giant instinct barbarian's poor tactics, when before they were used to do huge blast damage, or shift the battle dramatically with a dispel or wall spell. There's a certain personality type that gets tunnel vision when an ally is on trouble.
I very largely agree with this sentiment, however, I have yet to see a party that doesn’t have at least one character who is so single focused on melee combat that they don’t tend to rush into things and force the whole party to start feeling obligated to back them up, especially when the character consistently proves to be a big damage dealer. That second or third attack with action number 3 taunts so many martial characters, and then the general sense of fair play and empathy makes it difficult for other players to just leave their friend’s character on the ground for the rest of the encounter.
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My quiet players are oddly draw towards healing, and typical their first question when their turn to act comes up, in or out of combat, is "does anyone need healing?" They do use it as a crutch sometimes though, since they get a little lost sometimes when everyone is at full. The cleric is starting to learn about her buff spells though, and her dazzling flash focus spell, and she's also happy that she can start putting fireball in her list, so she's starting to broaden her horizons.
I think one of the big reasons I personally like the medicine feats, and I suspect a lot of others do too, is that they aren't niche, and they are dynamic, even at warly levels. Battle medicine gives you a cool way to use that third action, risky surgery practically garentees a crit success, continual recover lets you patch the team uo faster, ward medic lets you spend 10 minutes to basically undo that fireball that hit your whole team, etc. Craft has to wait until level 7 and master proficiency to get what risky surgery does at level 1. Medicine feats are just plain really good
By a similar rationale, take Medic and have bigger heal numbers and bypass the once a day restriction to Battle Medicine.Yes, they pretty much are. Using spells, even from a cleric, for all of your healing, instead of just the emergency work, would be really rough.Blessed One offers an alternative to Medicine based healing with it giving lay on hands you can cast every 10 min.But that's using medicine based feats: I was trying to point out non-Medicine based ways to heal since the question was about how popular medicine feats are.
Myself, an Investigator [Forensic Medicine]/Medic offers the best Battle Medicine use with 2/hour/person in addition to +level to hp healed if you want to lean into the Medicine feats: Skillful Lessons also lets you take those skill feats faster which also includes some of those Medic feats. Now if you want healing overkill, at 6th level add Blessed one. ;)
Technically it's 1/hour/person with a once an hour ability for you to ignore immunity to battle medicine. You can't actually battle medicine multiple people multiple times in the same fight (at least not with Forensic Medicine/Medic, maybe I missed something). Still a very strong healing combo.
I will say that in my group it's rare for there to not be at least one Continual Recovery/Ward Medic party member, and Battle Medicine makes a reasonably frequent appearance as well, though it doesn't get used all that much to be honest.
The last character I made, a 2 hand pick crit fishing/demoralize based fighter made room for at least battle medicine, with plans to go into continual recovery at later levels. For a combat focused character, there really aren't that many other skill feats that feel as immediately useful as the Medicine line of feats. You have the odd outlier like the Jump feats or in my character's case things like Intimidating Prowess/Glare etc I suppose.
In most groups of 4 I've seen, at least 2 players have medicine skills. I wouldn't say it's mandatory.....but if you don't have a healing class in the party then you're flirting with disaster sans medicine feats
For all the games I've been in (GM or Player)
Age of Ashes: 2 players took Battle Med at lvl 2, with one of them (the cleric) going full down the Medicine skill feats.
Extinction Curse: Two players have natural medicine, a third player has battle med and plans to take the other medicine skill feats
Plaguestone: Nobody took any healing feats, this party TPK'd.
Plaguestone 2 electric boogaloo: Different players, different party. One player had battle med. (We beat plaguestone this time!)
Slithering: Druid had natural medicine, nobody had battle med or other healing feats.
Custom Game: nobody has battle med yet (lvl1), but the cleric is taking battle med and all the healing feats.
The essentialist of the medicine skill and the corresponding feats is entirely GM and adventure writer dependent. The amount of healing most parties can accomplish in 30 or so minutes without spells or items only matters when 30 minutes is a significantly different amount of time than 3 hours in game. Battle medicine is a pretty poor stand in for the heal spell, primarily for the reason of needing to be adjacent, but it is a whole lot better than relying on elixirs and potions, unless those things are getting handed out like candy and not holding value as a commodity ( either they are temporary, or no one is interested in buying them).
Not taking damage is still better than healing, but it is a lot more complicated to figure out how to do in play than just picking skills and feats. New players take a beating, then figure out healing is how you keep on after taking that beating.
Honestly I think APs need more 1 big encounter per day situations than short dungeons where encounters stay separate with some healing time between them. Or have encounters pile up in dungeons with no time to heal, but plenty of ways to retreat to a secure location. Both are much more cinematic and action packed adventure designs, but they take nuanced GMs to not overwhelm a party, and are thus less common in AP design.
Thus it makes sense to me why players are placing so much value in responding to encounters by expecting to brute slog through them and then be given time to heal afterwards before moving on.
Exactly half of my players think Battle Medicine is mandatory. The other half enjoy that the first half feel that way.
The funny thing is that as soon as that equilibrium is disrupted, each side realizes how correct the other side is.
I think the mentality is a carry-over from when people were playing AD&D and made their little brothers be "the" healer.
The game balance in 2E has really shifted that. Monsters aren't constrained by AoOs so they can just walk up to "the" healer. Monster attack bonuses are oversized relative to a PC that should be fighting them, so no more AC 35 at level 3, and often monster ACs are oversized relative to the PCs' attack bonuses too.
For PFS, the vast majority of my characters have a self-healing option, even if it's just Medicine and a healer's kit. It's ranged from being literally the only healing (magical or non-magical) to being totally useless because someone else does it better.
I rarely find time pressure to be an issue so Continual Recovery and Ward Medic are decidedly less important than Battle Medicine and Assurance (Medicine).
Consumables are okay if you get them (rather than having to buy them at cost) but as people gleefully point out in every Great Alchemist Debate thread, murderbots hate spending two actions self-buffing.
I wouldn't spend a dedication on it unless it was part of a larger plan with the character. Class feats are pretty valuable and, frankly, someone needs to spend turns striking the "nat 14+ to hit" monsters so everyone using class feats to develop healing is just as bad as nobody doing it.
tl;dr Half the team thinking Battle Medicine is essential and half being glad the other half thinks that sounds pretty cool.
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I think one of the big reasons I personally like the medicine feats, and I suspect a lot of others do too, is that they aren't niche, and they are dynamic, even at warly levels. Battle medicine gives you a cool way to use that third action, risky surgery practically garentees a crit success, continual recover lets you patch the team uo faster, ward medic lets you spend 10 minutes to basically undo that fireball that hit your whole team, etc. Craft has to wait until level 7 and master proficiency to get what risky surgery does at level 1. Medicine feats are just plain really good
Oh right, Risky Surgery is another popular one with my group. Nice extra healing potential and creates great RP moments.
I think the accessibility of healing abilities contributes to their frequent adoption. Anybody can get something healing related without necessarily investing a significant proportion of their character resources e.g. getting the Battle Medicine, Risky Surgery or Natural Medicine skill feats from a background or at second level. Healing abilities are also widespread, for example three of the four magical traditions can get access to healing spells and quite a few classes get healing related focus spells or other options such as the champion, monk, alchemist, rogue and investigator. This is all before you even get to archetypes that provide healing option with the medic, herbalist and blessed once most immediately coming to mind in addition to spell casting multiclass archetypes.
This plethora of options allows players to incorporate healing into a myriad of themes and concepts mundane or magical. I had a player coming from a D&D5e background who was intrigued with the a idea of playing a rogue who could provide meaningful healing to the party via skill feat. I have a character concept of a spirit instinct barbarian with blessed one archetype who could act as a secondary or tertiary healer. Both concepts are achievable with relative ease.
Finally as a GM I actively encourage the party to have multiple sources of healing. Even if there's a dedicated healer, having a secondary certainly won't hurt and will be beneficial when the dedicated healer becomes incapacitated or otherwise unavailable, out of range or out of actions.
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I don't believe options like lay on hands are very efficient alternatives to speccing into medicine
I have to disagree. Since you can recover a spent focus point in ten minutes while performing other actions, it is perhaps the most effective healing source in the game. Though I could see an argument for a Medicine expert with Assurance and both Continuous Healing and Ward Medic, but that is a much higher investment than just taking the Blessed archetype.
Generally, I think the Medicine skill has replaced all others as THE most important and powerful skill in the game. The ability to heal damage with essentially no investment in resources is amazing. In a home campaign where the GM can tailor the game to the PCs, I can see a party without any healing, magic or otherwise, being able to survive, but in org play where the GM has to run the adventure as written, it is a near mandatory requirement to have at least one PC at the table that is either a dedicated magic healer, or one spec'd for the Medicine skill suite.
Every game I have played/GMd whether home campaign or org play has had at least one, often 2-3 PCs with emphasis in Medicine. Its almost reached the point where no one asks if a cleric is playing, they ask if anyone is an expert in Medicine and if so, do they have the boost feats.
Its almost reached the point where no one asks if a cleric is playing
Hear that?
It's the sound of little brothers everywhere crying out, "MOMMMMMM!"
I don't believe options like lay on hands are very efficient alternatives to speccing into medicineI have to disagree. Since you can recover a spent focus point in ten minutes while performing other actions, it is perhaps the most effective healing source in the game. Though I could see an argument for a Medicine expert with Assurance and both Continuous Healing and Ward Medic, but that is a much higher investment than just taking the Blessed archetype.
A) assurance isn't necessary so that leaves ward medic and continual healing. Blessed one takes a class feat and dedication slot, this is pretty expensive for many builds and drastically reduces options.
B) it heals a single target and for much smaller numbers, you are also not guaranteed to be able to refocus while doing something useful. Each class needs to refocus based on where their focus pool came from.
E.G. a level 10 character investing in medicine will heal an average of 39 to each party member with the chance of more in a 10 minute span. Vs a lay on hands which can target one character per 10 minutes for 30.
This gets worse if someone has medic or is legendary.
I've had individual players try for all of the above for their character!
I blame Wand of CLW/Vitality withdrawal.
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E.G. a level 10 character investing in medicine will heal an average of 39 to each party member with the chance of more in a 10 minute span. Vs a lay on hands which can target one character per 10 minutes for 30.
May I ask how you reliably beat the DC30 check at level 10 already? If I am not entirely mistaken its 10 for level, 6 for skill, 5 for attribute and 2 for item, so a +23 check (which still leaves 30% failure chance). I always thought level 14 would be the milestone for that, but we play CRB only and perhaps I am missing something.
I agree however that mundane healing will ofter still be better than magical focus healing. Using Assurance, Ward Medic and Continual recovery I usually recover 76 points (4x19) in 10 Minutes versus 50 points of magical healing using the Positive Luminance focus spell (we just hit 9) .
I've had individual players try for all of the above for their character!I blame Wand of CLW/Vitality withdrawal.
Well, one option would have been to just rule your HPs full after a 10min rest, however this would a) deny the Medicine skill many a feat and b) eliminate variances in pacing, considering that your party may not be at full health even after a 10min rest.
E.G. a level 10 character investing in medicine will heal an average of 39 to each party member with the chance of more in a 10 minute span. Vs a lay on hands which can target one character per 10 minutes for 30.May I ask how you reliably beat the DC30 check at level 10 already? If I am not entirely mistaken its 10 for level, 6 for skill, 5 for attribute and 2 for item, so a +23 check (which still leaves 30% failure chance). I always thought level 14 would be the milestone for that, but we play CRB only and perhaps I am missing something.
I agree however that mundane healing will ofter still be better than magical focus healing. Using Assurance, Ward Medic and Continual recovery I usually recover 76 points (4x19) in 10 Minutes versus 50 points of magical healing using the Positive Luminance focus spell (we just hit 9) .
You don't need 100% chance? You could fail 3 times in a row and still out heal 3 consecutive lay on hands in most cases. Heck just take an expert check 3 times with 95% success on every roll if necessary :P.
As for modifier people are often looking at
10 level, 6 master, 4 wis, 2 item, 1-3 circumstance, 1-4 status
Ap combat seems tuned to assume full health before encounters so I don't have much issue with pcs taking medicine feats to top off the party between fights