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Assurance and Risky Surgery are incompatible.
You can't get the Success to Critical Success effect from Risky Surgery while using Assurance.
It says you need to ROLL a Success in order for the result to be upgraded, and since Assurance makes it so you don't roll anything at all, you don't meet the requirement for the effect.
You wouldn't get the +2 bonus either since Assurance precludes all bonuses.
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I think its just icky to have "assured" and "risky" in the same procedure.
As risky surgery cannot be used for Battle Medicine and in most other situations the outcome of a treat wounds above a failure doesn't matter much, i really wonder why people would go down there.
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Uh, there is tree being lost in the forest here.
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If you are a Chirurgeon, you do not need to take Risky Surgery, nor Ward Medic, unless you are doing so for role play reasons.
You have access to recharging VVs, and your free QVial is also usable as 1 p 10 min heal*.
Between Soothing Tonics, and perhaps even a Healing Vapor if 4 creatures are in need, you will find over-time Medicine skills to be a poor choice for your limited skill feats.
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The main perk of choosing Alchemist is that you have your out of combat healing needs covered from L2 onward.
A Chir can still make great use of the Medicine skill, but it is Battle Medicine and other combat actions they want to enhance. Every time you do a combat heal, and it *doesn't* burn your VVs, that is a nice way to reduce the burden on your limited alchemy supply, perhaps giving you a chance to throw a Skunk Bomb, etc.
To get anyone that looks at this on the same page I am a chirurgeon alchemist and took Assurance (crafting) at lvl 3.
I'm looking at what I might be taking for my lvl 7 feat and I'm thinking of taking Risky Surgery based on what people say here.
With Risky Surgery it says that if a success is rolled to Treat Wounds then it is treated as a critical success. How does that work with Assurance, if at all? If I were to use Treat Wounds at expert level would I be healing for the crit amount or would I still have to actually roll and get a success?
That is hotly debated. As seen in this thread already. Check with your table to see how they rule on it.
IMO This problem is because of language limitations. There isn't a succinct way of phrasing 'making a roll' or 'rolling a check' that doesn't run into ambiguity and language interpretation problems.
'"making" a check' runs into ambiguity with
* making => attempting
* making => succeeding at
'"rolling" a check' runs into ambiguity with
* "rolling" => using an ability that involves a check
* "rolling" => actually dropping a d20 on the table
My ruling: You are still 'rolling a check' any time you use an ability that requires a check, even if you have an ability like Assurance that lets you skip the part about dropping a d20 on the table.
Another question based on this. I took Ward Medic at 4, if I heal multiple people would I have to roll for each person healed or roll once and apply that to all for the damage that Risky Surgery does?
It doesn't actually specify. So again, check with your table for their ruling.
My ruling is that you would roll once and apply the results to all of the treated characters. But the wording of the rule also supports rolling separately for each of the characters treated.
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Fortune effects alter how you roll your dice, In this case by giving you a fixed result. Not calling it a roll is quite litterary arguing over semantics.
Its still by definition of the trait, a check with a roll that has been altered in some manner, no matter how you cut the RAW. Yes any bonuses or penalties to the check doesn't apply but any other effects should.
Well, it is hard for me to imagine there is a roll when the feat states that "You can forgo rolling a skill check for that skill to instead receive a result of 10 + your proficiency bonus (do not apply any other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers)."
Forgoing rolling means there is no roll, I believe.
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I'm looking at what I might be taking for my lvl 7 feat and I'm thinking of taking Risky Surgery based on what people say here.
With Risky Surgery it says that if a success is rolled to Treat Wounds then it is treated as a critical success. How does that work with Assurance, if at all? If I were to use Treat Wounds at expert level would I be healing for the crit amount or would I still have to actually roll and get a success?
As you've seen here: ask your GM. There is no consensus and no official ruling on if they work together or not.
IMO they do not, since Assurance says "forgo rolling", so you're not rolling a success. Assurance by design doesn't play nice with buffs or other modifiers on purpose, so it makes sense it also wouldn't work with this one.
Even if they do work together, Risky Surgery does a d8 of damage to add 2d8 healing. This will average out to ~4.5 HP per treat wounds, but around 11% of the time it'll actually reduce the healing amount (and does nothing another 5% of the time). This doesn't scale as your Treat Wounds does and becomes pretty trivial at higher levels. You're also not getting the +2 because you're using Assurance.
AND you're an Alchemist with basically infinite access to Soothing Tonic (for solo healing) and Healing Vapor (for group healing). Assurance and Ward Medic gives you healing for the group during that 10 minutes while you're getting vials back, but the vials are themselves doing substantial healing. Risky Surgery is just not worth the skill feat for what it does, especially with how many good skill feats Medicine has and how many other ways you have to do the same thing.
Another question based on this. I took Ward Medic at 4, if I heal multiple people would I have to roll for each person healed or roll once and apply that to all for the damage that Risky Surgery does?
Roll once and apply to everyone is the "standard" way it's played, but your GM can overrule that if they want. I don't know why they would because it would result in DRASTICALLY more rolling and slow down a part of the game that generally isn't interesting, but you should confirm with them.
As a GM, I would mostly pay attention to the fact that risky surgery will under optimal conditions, give you an additional 2d8 healing (critical success vs not critical success) at the cost of 1d8 damage. On average, it's a net of 4.5 hp increase. It's not worth the feat in the first place.
But it I had a player that wanted to use Assurance with it...I'd just let it work because the increased healing is so minimal anyways.
Sometimes we get so caught up in whether something is allowed or not allowed, we lose sight of how it actually impact play.
The affect of risky surgery is small (on average). Arguing over whether or not its allowed isn't really worth it.
*Although I will say I think it's not actually allowed, but if I have a player investing so many skill feats into medicine I'm still going to let it work.
Although I will say I think it's not actually allowed, but if I have a player investing so many skill feats into medicine I'm still going to let it work.
In such cases, I'm curious to know if you would inform said player that you didn't think a given rule would work, but that you were permitting it to work? So as to prevent them from going to other tables with the wrong idea of how things are intended to work.
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As a GM, I would mostly pay attention to the fact that risky surgery will under optimal conditions, give you an additional 2d8 healing (critical success vs not critical success) at the cost of 1d8 damage. On average, it's a net of 4.5 hp increase. It's not worth the feat in the first place.
While not applicable to this question, since using Assurance blocks bonuses, Risky Surgery does also give a +2 circumstance bonus.
Although I will say I think it's not actually allowed, but if I have a player investing so many skill feats into medicine I'm still going to let it work.In such cases, I'm curious to know if you would inform said player that you didn't think a given rule would work, but that you were permitting it to work? So as to prevent them from going to other tables with the wrong idea of how things are intended to work.
I likely would tell them that by strict RAW, I don't think it does, but I'm willing to let it work despite that because the gain is minimal.
Best case scenario is you gain 16 hp at the cost of 1 hp, for a 15 hp bonus. At low levels that's a big deal. At higher levels, not so much. And that's also the most extreme it can be. The chance that you roll that is 1/8^3 (less than 1%).
As a GM, I would mostly pay attention to the fact that risky surgery will under optimal conditions, give you an additional 2d8 healing (critical success vs not critical success) at the cost of 1d8 damage. On average, it's a net of 4.5 hp increase. It's not worth the feat in the first place.While not applicable to this question, since using Assurance blocks bonuses, Risky Surgery does also give a +2 circumstance bonus.
Yes, Risky Surgery increases the likelihood that you will get a success, which turns a success into critical success. But that still doesn't change the outcome beyond adding 2d8 healilng and 1d8 damage. I was focused on the outcome, not how we get there.
With assurance (kind of like rolling a 10 on the die):
Trained (level +2 proficiency bonus) you succeed on a medicine check against DC 15 (trained DC) at level 3.
With Risky surgery (but no Assurance) you on average are succeeding at level 1 because of the +2 bonus. But it has a very high variability.
If you allow both Risky Surgery and Assurance (but no +2 from RS) then at level 3 the character always succeeds, and that becomes a critical success, and nets them an average of 4.5 extra hp healing.
The variability of Risky Surgery general makes it worse than taking Assurance, because being able to confidently heal is better (IMO) than maybe getting a little more healing.