Healer's toolkit and the meaning / limits of "draw and replace"

[Daelarid]

Source Player Core pg. 288 2.0
Price 5 gp
Hands 1 or 2; Bulk 1This kit of bandages, herbs, and suturing tools is necessary for Medicine checks to Administer First Aid, Treat Disease, Treat Poison, or Treat Wounds. If you wear your healer's toolkit, you can draw and replace them as part of the action that uses them.

I'm having a hard time finding other game rules that use the word "replace" for reference, so I'm unclear what replace means and what it's limits are.

Another tread about this subject is located at https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/yo3peh/what_does_drawn_and_r eplace_mean/ but I'm not satisfied with answers found there. Some people there say that replace means you can stow the item, but why isn't the word stow used instead then? It seems unlikely to me that this rule would say replace when they intend you to use that replace only to stow.

Would the following scenario be possible: I am playing a character that uses 2 handed weapons and wears a healers toolkit. I am holding my 2 handed weapon in both my hands. I use the release free action to remove 1 hand from my weapon giving me 1 free hand.

You can use the Release free action (page 417) to:

Drop an item to the ground.

Change your grip by removing a hand from an item.

Then I use my healer's toolkit for battle medicine, drawing it as part of the action, using battle medicine as part of the same action and then replacing it by adding that hand back to my 2 handed weapon.

Would that be possible I would assume not due to the rule in Draw, put away, or swap

Draw, put away, or swap an item. You must be holding the item to put it away or wearing it to draw it. Swapping allows you to put away one item and draw another in the same action (such as putting away a dagger and drawing a mace). Abilities that specify what you do when you Interact only allow this if they say so; the Quick Draw feat lets a rogue Interact to draw a weapon, but doesn't allow them to stow one as well. Swapping lets you swap only one item for another; if you were wielding two weapons, you could put away one of them and draw a different item, but you would need to put away the second weapon separately.

Specifically the part that says

Abilities that specify what you do when you Interact only allow this if they say so;

My rules as written interpretation is that, because it is never explicitly stated that replace does something to interact, it does nothing. Which seems weird because why even put the replace there in the first place if it does nothing.

If any of you know for sure what the rules as intended are please tell me in the comments because it's confusing me.

[Dr. Frank Funkelstein]

"as part of the action" means that no other action (interact, draw, whatever) is required.

There is a limit to the amount of tools you can wear (2 bulk), but with only a healers toolkit you just need the free hand.

Placing a hand back to a 2h weapon is not part of the described interaction, it is an interact ation to "Change your grip by adding a hand to an item"

[Daelarid]

Dr. Frank Funkelstein wrote:

"as part of the action" means that no other action (interact, draw, whatever) is required.

There is a limit to the amount of tools you can wear (2 bulk), but with only a healers toolkit you just need the free hand.

Placing a hand back to a 2h weapon is not part of the described interaction, it is an interact ation to "Change your grip by adding a hand to an item"

My question then is, what does "replace" mean in the context. If you need a free hand to draw and then use the item with the action to use the healer's toolkit and you can do nothing outside of that, you don't "replace" anything, making the term redundant as I understand it.

[Errenor]

Daelarid wrote:

Dr. Frank Funkelstein wrote:

"as part of the action" means that no other action (interact, draw, whatever) is required.

There is a limit to the amount of tools you can wear (2 bulk), but with only a healers toolkit you just need the free hand.

Placing a hand back to a 2h weapon is not part of the described interaction, it is an interact ation to "Change your grip by adding a hand to an item"

My question then is, what does "replace" mean in the context. If you need a free hand to draw and then use the item with the action to use the healer's toolkit and you can do nothing outside of that, you don't "replace" anything, making the term redundant as I understand it.

It means nothing. Only that you can use the item freely and don't need any additional actions for healing. Re-gripping a weapon takes another action still.

[Dr. Frank Funkelstein]

I would think re-place as in place the bandages, herbs etc back into the healers toolkit you are wearing. Just fluff-text.

[Agonarchy]

As stated, it means to empty your hand again without needing to drop it on the ground. This also saves you from running around with a medkit in your hand.

[Finoan]

Daelarid wrote:

Another tread about this subject is located at https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/yo3peh/what_does_drawn_and_r eplace_mean/ but I'm not satisfied with answers found there. Some people there say that replace means you can stow the item, but why isn't the word stow used instead then? It seems unlikely to me that this rule would say replace when they intend you to use that replace only to stow.

Because the words are equivalent.

Yes, they could - and maybe should - have used the word 'stow' instead of 'replace'.

But since there is no other proposed interpretation of the rule that makes any sense, I would go with the one that does.

[Baarogue]

replace

Definitions from Oxford Languages
verb
1.
take the place of.
"Ian's smile was replaced by a frown"
2.
put (something) back in a previous place or position.
"he drained his glass and replaced it on the bar"

In the context of healer's tools, it's #2

[Tridus]

Daelarid wrote:

Dr. Frank Funkelstein wrote:

"as part of the action" means that no other action (interact, draw, whatever) is required.

There is a limit to the amount of tools you can wear (2 bulk), but with only a healers toolkit you just need the free hand.

Placing a hand back to a 2h weapon is not part of the described interaction, it is an interact ation to "Change your grip by adding a hand to an item"

My question then is, what does "replace" mean in the context. If you need a free hand to draw and then use the item with the action to use the healer's toolkit and you can do nothing outside of that, you don't "replace" anything, making the term redundant as I understand it.

It means "put back where you got them from." That's it.

[Farien]

Tridus wrote:

It means "put back where you got them from." That's it.

"Put that thing back where it came from or so help me."

[Mathmuse]

Treat Wounds
Exploration, Healing, Manipulate
Source Player Core pg. 242 2.0
Requirements You're wearing or holding a healer's toolkit.
You spend 10 minutes treating one injured living creature (targeting yourself, if you so choose). The target is then temporarily immune to Treat Wounds actions for 1 hour, but this interval overlaps with the time you spent treating (so a patient can be treated once per hour, not once per 70 minutes).
The Medicine check DC is usually 15,...

Ordinarily, healer's toolkit is used as part of the 10-minute Treat Wounds activity. The 2-second Interact actions to draw medical supplies, put the excess supplies back into the kit, and put the kit into a backpack are trivial compared to 10 minutes of cleaning wounds and wrapping bandages, so the character can essentially have everything neatly arranged and stowed as they like at the end of Treat Wounds. At worst, the GM could insist that the character takes an extra 4 seconds before the 10 minutes (600 seconds) digging the kit out of a backpack and another 4 seconds after the 10 minutes stowing the healer's tools back in the backpack, which would make no practical difference on that time scale.

The major exception to the 10 minutes is the Battle Medicine feat, which lasts only one action.

Battle Medicine [one-action] Feat 1
General, Healing, Manipulate, Skill
Source Player Core pg. 253 2.0
Prerequisites trained in Medicine
Requirements You're holding or wearing a healer's toolkit.
You can patch up wounds, even in combat. Attempt a Medicine check with the same DC as for Treat Wounds and restore the corresponding amount of HP; this doesn’t remove the wounded condition. As with Treat Wounds, you can attempt checks against higher DCs if you have the minimum proficiency rank. The target is then immune to your Battle Medicine for 1 day. This does not make them immune to, or otherwise count as, Treat Wounds.

Because that high-speed exception exists, the healer's toolkit entry is explicit that the healer's tools are not scattered all over the place at the end of Battle Medicine. But since "You're holding or wearing a healer's toolkit" is a requirement during the entire action, the healer's kit is held or worn at the end of the action rather than stowed. It was not stowed at the beginning of Battle Medicine, so replacing it does not stow it at the end of Battle Medicine.

Exploration mode treats interactions differently from encounter mode. I recommend that anyone who learned Battle Medicine to use a healer's toolkit during encounter mode should wear their healer's toolkit.

[Ascalaphus]

This goes back to a lot and I mean a LOT of forum/rules discussion about Battle Medicine and how many hands it needs. Use the search feature if you really want to read several thousand posts arguing about it :P

What it came down to was that way back in the first print run of PF2, you needed two hands to use a medkit, presumably one to hold stuff and the other to apply. Or maybe none, because how some traits were printed or items were listed or not listed as needed. It was all a bit vague and caused a lot of arguments.

Needing 0 hands to use Battle Medicine seemed a bit implausible. Needing two hands to use it seemed so harsh that it was basically unusable because it's so expensive in action economy. Because it would mean:
- dropping or stowing a weapon and maybe a shield
- grabbing a medkit
- using it
- putting it back
- getting your weapon/shield back into action

Eventually they narrowed it down to needing only 1 hand if you were wearing the medkit instead of holding it in your hand. Basically, you grab a bandaid from your shirt pocket and slaw it onto someone. Done. So you don't need to spend extra actions stowing your medkit anymore, because you're wearing them ready for quick access.

However, you do still need to spend any actions re-gripping two-handed weapons and all that. That's part of the balancing of different weapon usage styles. On the one hand a two-handed weapon hits harder. On the other hand, going one-handed leaves you more flexible to do stuff like battle medicine or using potions.