Can we finally get additions to the MEDICINE skill to allow folks with it to be able to aid in healing. Even just, Doctor makes a skill check and on a success patient gets advantage to roll for recovery of hit points from hit dice (natural healing) or saves from diseases and poisons.
The addition of the HEALER feat was great, maybe have a skill check to allow you to roll for other hit dice so they gain the healing rerolls affect, and make it so that the benefit from having both skill and tool proficiency (advantage) applies to the actually roll of the hit dice.
Ideally I'd like something that extends the theme that the Medicine skill aids natural healing rather than be another source of magical healing. maybe helping remove long term conditions like exhaustion
I just feel, at the moment Stabilize dying and diagnose illness is not enough to warrant the skill
The Heal skill in D&D 3.5 would do exactly what you describe:
Treat Poison
To treat poison means to tend a single character who has been poisoned and who is going to take more damage from the poison (or suffer some other effect). Every time the poisoned character makes a saving throw against the poison, you make a Heal check. The poisoned character uses your check result or his or her saving throw, whichever is higher.
Treat Disease
To treat a disease means to tend a single diseased character. Every time he or she makes a saving throw against disease effects, you make a Heal check. The diseased character uses your check result or his or her saving throw, whichever is higher.
The Heal skill could also be used to double the healing rate of Hit Points and ability score damage after a long rest, and to treat caltrop damage that impaired movement. Much of the utility of this skill was lost with 5e rule changes. In 5e, a Long Rest now heals all Hit Points, and ability score damage is very rare. Needless to say, caltrop damage remains rather niche.
I wouldn't mind if the new Medicine description included: identifying and foraging for medicinal plants; identifying and crafting certain kinds of potions, poisons and antitoxins; and forensic investigation to identify cause of death and similar.
I wouldn't mind if the new Medicine description included: identifying and foraging for medicinal plants; identifying and crafting certain kinds of potions, poisons and antitoxins; and forensic investigation to identify cause of death and similar.
My thoughts exactly. Right now, medicine is probably one of the least useful skills together with perform and animal handling. Everything medicine can do is covered by a single cantrip, which can do it unfailingly. Herbalism kit and poisoners' kit should be fused into it.
How useful any skill is depends on the DM. Campaigns I have been in, animal handling has come up a lot. Performance is very underused, IMHO. I have yet to have a DM who really likes or accepts the concept of a PC posing as an NPC or having an alternative identity, which is where performance can get an actual active role.
But wouldn't impersonation fall under deception? Frankly, I'd fuse deception and perform into one skill, "acting".
Could fuse them together to acting... what really needs work is the musical instrument proficiencies, since they are sort of left hanging by performance. And there is no singing skill other than performance. There is an issue between overlap of cooking utensils and survival as well, herbalist kit and survival and medicine....
Completely agree. Many tool proficiencies feel like they're very narrowly specialized, and torn out of corresponding skills. WotC had to write a whole section of Tasha's with guidelines on what to use tool proficiencies for (or rather, how to make any use of them). Then there's tool feats, like poisoner and cook, that provide stuff that should be base functionality of those proficiencies.
I've generally used medicine as the skill for diagnosis and autopsy, which has been far more relevant than its first aid application.
This.👆I allow Wisdom (Medicine) checks to diagnose things all the time. After all, there is no such thing as a “Medicine check” in D&D, it’s a Wisdom check that just gets to apply a Medicine proficiency to it. Since all the checks to notice stuff are Wisdom checks anyway, why wouldn’t a “notice medical stuff” situation call for a Wisdom (Med) check. I also am a big proponent of the optional Skills With Different Abilities system, so Intelligence (Med) checks come up too, but I can think of reasons to use Int with any skill, even Athletics, so that’s not surprising.
If I were to use it he Medicine skill for actual healing applications in the next iteration of D&D, I would set them up one of two ways:
Whenever a creature spends alone or more Hit Dice to heal during a short rest, you can apply your Medicine skill to the task of helping them heal. The creature can roll each Hit Die twice and use the higher roll when determining how many Hit Points each Hit Die restores. You can only apply your Medicine skills to one creature as part of a short rest, if you apply your Medicine skill to more than one creature you cannot claim the benefits of a short rest.
Whenever a creature spends alone or more Hit Dice to heal during a short rest, you can apply your Medicine skill to the task of helping them heal. The creature can roll each Hit Die twice and use the higher roll when determining how many Hit Points each Hit Die restores. You can only apply your Medicine skill as part of a short rest to a number of Hit Dice equal to your Proficiency bonus. If you apply your Medicine skill to more than that number of Hit Dice, you cannot claim the benefits of a short rest.
Essenteally it grants the equivalent of “advantage” on their Hit Dice.
Currently, the only time I see medicine be even slightly useful is for role-play aspects, like coming across a corpse to diagnose what likely killed them being a disease or checking some sickly peasant before using <insert healing method here> to cure them. It's very under utilized as of 5E for sure. Just changing the Healer feat so that Battle Medic does the creature's hit die +your medicine skill (instead of proficiency) would be a big buff to the skill.
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Can we finally get additions to the MEDICINE skill to allow folks with it to be able to aid in healing. Even just, Doctor makes a skill check and on a success patient gets advantage to roll for recovery of hit points from hit dice (natural healing) or saves from diseases and poisons.
The addition of the HEALER feat was great, maybe have a skill check to allow you to roll for other hit dice so they gain the healing rerolls affect, and make it so that the benefit from having both skill and tool proficiency (advantage) applies to the actually roll of the hit dice.
Ideally I'd like something that extends the theme that the Medicine skill aids natural healing rather than be another source of magical healing. maybe helping remove long term conditions like exhaustion
I just feel, at the moment Stabilize dying and diagnose illness is not enough to warrant the skill
The Heal skill in D&D 3.5 would do exactly what you describe:
The Heal skill could also be used to double the healing rate of Hit Points and ability score damage after a long rest, and to treat caltrop damage that impaired movement. Much of the utility of this skill was lost with 5e rule changes. In 5e, a Long Rest now heals all Hit Points, and ability score damage is very rare. Needless to say, caltrop damage remains rather niche.
I wouldn't mind if the new Medicine description included: identifying and foraging for medicinal plants; identifying and crafting certain kinds of potions, poisons and antitoxins; and forensic investigation to identify cause of death and similar.
My thoughts exactly. Right now, medicine is probably one of the least useful skills together with perform and animal handling. Everything medicine can do is covered by a single cantrip, which can do it unfailingly. Herbalism kit and poisoners' kit should be fused into it.
But wouldn't impersonation fall under deception? Frankly, I'd fuse deception and perform into one skill, "acting".
Completely agree. Many tool proficiencies feel like they're very narrowly specialized, and torn out of corresponding skills. WotC had to write a whole section of Tasha's with guidelines on what to use tool proficiencies for (or rather, how to make any use of them). Then there's tool feats, like poisoner and cook, that provide stuff that should be base functionality of those proficiencies.
I've generally used medicine as the skill for diagnosis and autopsy, which has been far more relevant than its first aid application.
This.👆I allow Wisdom (Medicine) checks to diagnose things all the time. After all, there is no such thing as a “Medicine check” in D&D, it’s a Wisdom check that just gets to apply a Medicine proficiency to it. Since all the checks to notice stuff are Wisdom checks anyway, why wouldn’t a “notice medical stuff” situation call for a Wisdom (Med) check. I also am a big proponent of the optional Skills With Different Abilities system, so Intelligence (Med) checks come up too, but I can think of reasons to use Int with any skill, even Athletics, so that’s not surprising.
If I were to use it he Medicine skill for actual healing applications in the next iteration of D&D, I would set them up one of two ways:
Essenteally it grants the equivalent of “advantage” on their Hit Dice.
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Currently, the only time I see medicine be even slightly useful is for role-play aspects, like coming across a corpse to diagnose what likely killed them being a disease or checking some sickly peasant before using <insert healing method here> to cure them. It's very under utilized as of 5E for sure. Just changing the Healer feat so that Battle Medic does the creature's hit die +your medicine skill (instead of proficiency) would be a big buff to the skill.