Chirurgeon Field Benefit Clarification - Official Paizo Response Requested

[amalgamemnon]

Chirurgeon's Field Benefit reads:

Player Core 2 wrote:

Field Benefit

You can use your proficiency rank in Crafting for anything that requires a proficiency rank in Medicine (such as prerequisites) and use your Crafting modifier in place of your Medicine modifier for all Medicine checks.

There is a bit of a discussion going on within my group on how to apply this.

The purpose of the field benefit seems to be that your Chirurgeon is able to use Crafting in place of Medicine, which is great for acting as a support healer in place of a regular dedicated healer caster, allowing the Alchemist to fully benefit from their superior Intelligence for things like Treat Wounds and Battle Medicine.

Where things get hairy is when an ability gives a bonus to Medicine checks for Medicine skills that you're using your Crafting check for, like Risky Surgery or Graft Technician.

Some in the group argue that Risky Surgery provides a status bonus to Medicine checks, and since you're using Crafting, you shouldn't get the bonuses listed in those feats.

Others in the group argue that this is just an example of Paizo awkwardly wording the rule and it should have read something like "You can use your proficiency rank in Crafting for anything that request a proficiency rank in Medicine (such as prerequisites). Anytime you would make a Medicine check, you may make a Crafting check instead (apply bonuses as normal)." They argue that, as the entire subclass's main field benefit, it should be more powerful than the other group is indicating, and the Chirurgeon shouldn't be punished for using Crafting instead of Medicine for Medicine-based skill feats as the rules-as-written may indicate.

What is the proper interpretation here, or is there some third interpretation that we're not considering?

[Tridus]

You're not going to get an official response, just to set expectations. I've seen people discussing this for a long time and I'm not going to even attempt to make a RAW argument on it.

It's pretty clear to me that one of these feels lousy to the Chirurgeon, because the entire point is that you can use your Crafting Proficiency/Modifier in place of Medicine, meaning you don't need to train Medicine. In particular, it specifically calls out that Crafting counts as prerequisites and thus lets you qualify for Medicine feats.

Does it really make sense for something to do this and then say "you took a Medicine feat but you don't benefit from it"?

Especially if you consider that if you go back far enough in the many revisions of Alchemist in PF2, early on it didn't work this way (and some other options for this still don't, like Natural Medicine). They added language in specifically so that Crafting works for all Medicine purposes.

Given that, I feel like it's pretty player-hostile to tell them that their Medicine feat doesn't work when they are doing a Medicine check. I wouldn't pick the player-hostile ruling unless I had a reason to do so like preventing an exploit/cheese, and I don't see that as being the case here.

So, my advice here is to forget about trying to parse out what the rules intended here and just go with the ruling that lets your player have a good time.

[Finoan]

I will second all of that.

[The Raven Black]

Risky Surgery just mentions doing a Medicine check.

Which is covered by Field benefit: even though you can use your Crafting modifier, it is still a Medicine check.

So Risky Surgery applies as usual.

[rainzax]

Chirurgeon means Surgeon.

=)

[Errenor]

I wouldn't say what rules intended is unclear: "prerequisites" and "all Medicine checks" are very telling. I'd say that intent is so clear we should stop nitpicking the wording and interpret all Medicine checks as ... Medicine checks! (even if you use Crafting for it) and apply all modifiers as needed.
As The Raven Black suggested above.

[Teridax]

Errenor wrote:

I wouldn't say what rules intended is unclear: "prerequisites" and "all Medicine checks" are very telling. I'd say that intent is so clear we should stop nitpicking the wording and interpret all Medicine checks as ... Medicine checks! (even if you use Crafting for it) and apply all modifiers as needed.

As The Raven Black suggested above.

The fact that the rules were ambiguously-written enough for someone to ask a question on these forums I think suggests that it is in fact worth pointing this out, as something tells me OP is not the only person who's asked this question. For sure, it is far better here to apply bonuses and penalties to Medicine checks as normal even when they use the Chirurgeon's Crafting modifier, and doing so is valid RAW here, but that doesn't really invalidate OP's desire to make sure they're understanding the rules here correctly, and the ambiguity that led them to ask.