Fria Ligans forum

So, yesterday I played a session and one of the players (a medic) decided to try to stabilize the last living enemy for interrogation.

He had a critical injury to his arm after being shot by the players.

Now, here's the thing. The Medic basically asked "do I really need to use a medkit"?
And I couldn't find any reason to.

She has a pretty high Medical Aid skill (A, B) and the only thing personal medkits or other medical gear does is give bonuses to the roll.

So, without *any* tools whatsoever, she had a 79%/96% chance of stabilizing the wounded soldiers critical injury.

That just seems weird to me.

Like, the *baseline* of using your medical skill should be if you have a first aid kit. And not having one should be a negative modifier.

As it stands, I can't really find any negative modifiers to medical aid unless there's a special difficulty on the particular critical injury.

Since the players must describe their action in order to something, if they don't convince me, as the Referee, that a certain action can be done the way they describe it, then they have to change how they plan to do the action. So the way I see this when it comes to Medical Aid is that if they can describe how they do it with no equipment or just scrap that they have around them, sure, for some critical injuries I allow it, but for other critical injuries I will force them to have medical equipment of some sort in order to do it.

The rules of the game are just that, some general rules that tells you what dice to use in case there is a chance of failure, but the game is all about the describing of actions and using creativity and imagination in a fictional world.

That is true for all role playing games.

If the player doesn't tells you how the skill is used it is not really being used at all., also you as a GM should describe the nature of the wound... the critical wound is a shot to an artery? limb blown off? exposed fracture?

Describing the situation will help players do the same and start describing their actions, then situations like that start making a lot more sense.

I'm considering just adding a flat -2 to medical aid to treating any critical injury without having access to medical equipment.

Because, currently, my players are running low on personal medkits and are being very stingy with them without any negative impact on them.

I totally give minuses to treating wounds in general dpending on wound severity. And especially if there is no medical equipment at play. ("Please tell me again how you get the femoral artery stitched together with fingers only?")

If the player doesn't tells you how the skill is used it is not really being used at all.

I can only partially agree with this. Part of why we play is to do things we have no idea how to do. Should a player have to have the first clue how to rebuild a tranny for their character with Int B, Tech B, and the Mechanic specialty to do it?

To the OP, depending on the critical, I could see stabilizing without using a medkit, but it's on you to determine what that might look like. Is there enough random material for a tourniquet or is the medic pinching off an artery with their hand so the stabilization is only temporary. My own thought is that after a few years of war, why isn't everyone carrying some makeshift medical supplies, even if it's just a cravat and a stick already assembled? Rudimentary but effective medical supplies are easy enough to cobble together that using Medical Aid to stabilize trauma without the specific item Personal Medkit seems like the default mode of the world. They'll be alive; whole and healing is another matter.

1. I like to describe the outcome my PC wants, and give the best description i can "I tear off his bullet proof armour, grab his own medical kit and begin stemming the flow of blood ..." is this really the medical treatment that a real nurse would do? I don't know, but its close enough. I'm an accountant so all i really can do is say "i use my medical skill to help him".

2. I feel strongly about this one. No suitable medical kit to address the severity of wound? Then big modifiers or even not even a roll because its not possible. You can only address an injury if you have the right equipment (medical kit, operating room ...). This means medical kits and the like are precious, as they should be.

And for the player arguing against this, i give this example. I shoot my rifle at the enemy even though i don't have a rifle, using my rifle and strength dice with a -2 modifier. Doesn't make sense, does it? I need a weapon to shoot, i can't just roll the dice with a negative modifier. Its not different in my mind for medical checks and equipment.

Theres another thread where the PCs have too many rifles. Maybe they should be trading them for other equipment like vehicle tools or medical kits!

I do see a slight difference with the use of rifle and medical aid.
I mean tourniquets can easily be improvised, sometimes only hands can be used to put pressure on a bleeding wound to stench it. But you always need an actual rifle to shoot it.
While I agree with Paladin that demanding exact descriptions on what is being done from someone who has no idea of medical stuff might seem unfair, I think we can safely resort to "TV -level medical knowledge"
With this I mean I am just looking for an imaginative description of something along lines "I resuscitate him by pumping and then punching his chest and scream desperately dammit Mark not today not today!" might be enough. Just something that gives some sort of image to other players what is being done instead of: "I have EMP C and MEDICAL AID B so that is D8 and 10, right?"
Two nights ago one character in out group had head crit of brain hemorrhage. I told medic he had to lessen pressure of the internal bleeding by drilling the skull. He used electrical tools for this. IRL probably this would resort in patient death or at the very least very long recuperation. But since it is a game, I was happy with his solution: it provided dramatic imagery and was definitely more fun then "I use medical aid to stabilize him".
Also the use of descriptive actions, even if they make very little sense IRL, give medical based characters more chance to shine as well.

One thing to note is that the crits do not have difficulties pre set in them. But the general rules allow negative modifiers based on situation. Use them. No equipment, conditions etc. Brain hemorrhage was -3 at our table by the way and the use of electrical drill lessened this to -2.

Tourniquets and bandages are easily improvised. There's ... not a lot else in a standard individual medkit. If we come down to critical injuries, the medkit is not really a solution anyway. Internal bleeding? Brain hemorrhage? Spinal injury? Broken bones? None of that is medkit stuff. A better question is, where is the nearest hospital that is sorta kinda operating?

So, to the original question ... I think you can save someone from immediate death without a medkit, yes. Depending on the nature of the critical injury. Actually healing injuries is a different matter.

So, to the original question ... I think you can save someone from immediate death without a medkit, yes. Depending on the nature of the critical injury. Actually healing injuries is a different matter.

That wasn't the original question, though.

The question was, why is the baseline skill of using Medical Aid at zero negatives when using nothing but a ripped t-shirt and a prayer?


Either way, I've decided to re-tool my game a bit, since I'm using Twilight Loot and that has a *ton* of different medical kits, so from now on a first aid kit or personal medkit only lets you use Medical Aid without negative modifiers. More advanced medkits and trauma kit type stuff will give you bonuses.