How likely is it that a doctor, or at least a medically-skilled character, would go shadowrunning? Or would they just set up a clinic somewhere?

Well, depends on whether you mean a fully-credentialed doctor who didn't get busted for drug use, performing unorthodox procedures on patients, etc.; or med school students and interns that failed out for doing the same, or veterinarians passing themselves off as such...so on and so forth.

You can use a lot of the same reasons for a doctor to be a Shadowrunner that you can for a magician to be a Shadowrunner. They're both people who are desirable and you'd expect them to find a nice, secure life somwhere. But sometimes they're wanted for past misdeeds. Sometimes they just don't fit in (e.g. mentally unstable, grudge against the corporate world, thrill-addicted, BTL habit). Maybe the doc just killed one too many patients. Or maybe in a world where autodocs and skillwires exist, they just don't cut it in the corporate world anymore (if you want to do a pretty dystopian take on things).

I'll say this, anyway. Nobody better knows how to kill someone than a doctor.

K,

One could also be to gather experience and capital for opening one's own clinic. What better place to learn about gunshot wounds and alike injuries than to be near when they happen. Or one is little goody two shoes and wants to help the needy for those street level games.

Well, that's true. For people under anesthesia on an OR table... I suspect they have less experience kicking people to death in bars that the average thug.

*Sigh* Helping out the unfortunate didn't even occur to me as one of the possible reasons. I need to go and recharge my soul. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

An SF medic (19D) is a 'doctor' in SR, though they don't have a medical license.

Having spent so long fighting diseases and wounds to save lives, the doctor has realized it is the humanity as a whole that's sick, not the individual. Now, the doctor is actually out there to fight the good fight and get rid of the diseases haunting humanity known as the megacorps.

Good luck, doc.

I play a Doctor in one group and there is one in the group I run.

My characters motivations have *nothing* to do with his skills but they cannot be accomplished through legal channels, so he found another way. He is a proud, active and unstoppable Human itarian.

The character in my group was a living cliche

* a member of Lone Star Medical
* Two months from retirement
* framed for a crime


But he likes playing cliche and who the heck am I to stop him?

BlueMax

They might also have graduated medical school amidst a government takeover of the healthcare system and decided they didn't want to be a government employee with $200K in school debt... oh wait thats RL... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Seriously though, I will concur with many of the ideas posted above. Its unlikely that a top notch doctor would end up on the streets because their training and skills would be far to valuable. But even today there are some "doctors" of questionable esteem out there. Some are "excused" from their residencies after their intern (first) year because of poor performance (which by the way doesn't preclude one from practice). There are also a lot of licensing issues regarding doctors who are trained in one country and immigrate to another. Sometimes they have to re-do large portions of their training. I can easily imagine a situation wherein the foreign medical school graduate simple decided to forgo licensing and open a shadow clinic.

Beyond that, any of the myriad of reasons why a good corporate citizen would take to the shadows would work for a doctor. Lost their license and SIN in the Crash? Maybe. Couldn't take to drudgery of corporate wageslavery? Probably. Fed up with the amoral waste of life dictated by corporate policy? Definitely. They might have also been involved in unethical human experimentation and needed to "disappear". Maybe they still know things that the corporation doesn't want to see the light of day...

I would say that as a character concept its definitely feasible. Like any other character you just need to put a little thought into the background story.

There is a phenomenal old doc here in Seattle- Dr. Copass. A legend in the field he ran the emergency department at Harborview for decades. He pretty much single-handedly innovated the EMS system in Seattle, which is among the best in the world. Anyway, when he teaches medical students he talks about how important it is to ask people exactly were they live because if you know what's going on in that area you'll understand what they go through. The guy knew what drugs were hot where, which gangs were killing each other, and apparently there is a whole "culture" which revolves around stabbing people in certain ways so as to send a specific messages. His level of "street knowledge" was impressive.

Here is a profile of him from many years ago. The guy would be an amazing basis for a SR contact.

hi hi

I played a doctor once, gave him a good logic, maxed out the biotech skill group, got a rating 6 medkit, then proceeded to fail almost every medical roll I ever attempted, sometimes to the detriment of the patient. It got to the point where the other players avoided my "care" like the plague. Not sure how legitimate doctors in shadowrun are supposed to avoid killing their patients on a regular basis, perhaps I was missing something.

It all worked out in the end though as the character evolved into a hacker.

Just to point out, if you want to be taken seriously as a doctor in SR, you need to have skills higher than what the best skillwires can produce or you're easily replaced. That means those docotrs with less than a skill of 6(!) are still in training and their skills can easily be slotted by anyone with the wires (or an appropriate drone).

I played a character who was a DocWagon EMT/sorceress who got disillusioned. Outfits like DocWagon, and EMTs working in all of the mini-wars and corporate maneuvers, probably result in lots of people trickling to the shadows. They would be a real meatgrinder to work for, and would probably toss you to the curb as soon as you got burnt out/too stressed/too exhausted/etc.

Yea but not being able to blow edge on that stabilize check kinda bites.

This is the difference between a top surgeon and a hack in 2073. Sure, you can get checked out by "Dr." Joe Blow at the community clinic for a quarter the price of seeing a real doctor, but if his knowsoft guesses wrong, your chances of survival just tanked to single digits. Even a lousy doctor who still actually went to med school (Logic 2, Medicine 3) has only a 2% chance of glitching. With 4 edge per month (average, +1 for a human, because metas are mostly in that "disadvantaged" economic group) to negate those glitches, thanks to the background knowledge gained by actually going to college, Dr. Dumb-but-Determined has a vastly greater chance of making the right diagnosis for you (or, at least, referring you to the right specialist instead of just prescribing you the wrong antibiotic and washing his hands).


I want this guy to be my doctor. Maybe I'll settle for having him be the patch-me-up contact for every SR character I make from now on.

On the whole a doctor as a shadowrunner is no less likely then all the elite special forces operatives that pop up from time to time?

He is pretty bad ass. His SOP for fire survivors is to xray their ankles, because you never know if they tried to jump out a window. He can tell you the most likely injury a patient will have from an MVA based on the make and model of the car they were in. I once sat for a lecture where he described in detail how femur fractures were a major cause of casualties in the Battle of the Somme. The guy is a genius. Of coarse, having him review your charts is terrifying... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/question.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dead.gif)

Hey! I'd like to think that it takes a Logic higher than 2 to finish med school... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Well you're right in that even with more nations and corps producing SFOs they would still be as rare as doctors, if not more so. But there is a flaw in your reasoning. It seems logical that a dude trained to kick ass for a government would turn to kicking ass for money when the government gig goes sideways. For a doctor the route from practice to the shadows doesn't seem like such a straight shot.

On the other hand, the doctor is moving to a less stressful career with less chance of lawsuits and lower insurance fees.

he never said the guy *finished* med school, just that he'd been there (strictly speaking, he also didn't say the guy studied at a med school either, just that he'd been to one... then again, depending on the shadow clinic, that may not be entirely unlikely either...)

on a side note, there's plenty of stupid doctors out there (and smart ones too, of course, the trick is figuring out which is which). consider how many dumb mistakes are made by doctors every year (and yes, i really do mean dumb. we're talking mistakes that are blindingly stupid. granted, such mistakes are made in most fields quite regularly, but the difference is that in welding, you make a dumb mistake, you can generally fix it without much of a problem, whereas in medicine you may have just amputated the wrong limb, or given a heart transplant to the wrong person...); sure, the drone has no protection from glitching, and no edge. but a drone with pilot 6 and a rating 4 autosoft is less likely to glitch in the first place, and possibly has a larger DP than some doctors even if the doctor does spend edge (like that log 2 skill 3 edge 4 chap earlier) just some thoughts

QFT

Which is, of course, why I qualified it by saying "or medically skilled character." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Though I think you've given quite a number of other reasons that a doc might run. He might even be out there simply to learn the neighborhood! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/proof.gif)

We have of course assumed that this is a "properly" qualified doctor. In UCAS and other places, we have now had more than one generation growing up SINless. Is it not possible that there are, for want of a better word, native schools. Or perhaps apprenticeships. I could totally see some local Barrens community have an equivalent to a doctor or something, perhaps with a couple of apprentices learning the trade. What's the population of Redmond? Half a million? It could have started with a single rogue doc who became SINless for whatever reason, and got things going. What do you need to become a doctor? Lots of medical text books? Okay - they can fit on a chip. Corpses to disect and practice on? Hello - Barrens! Lots of study.

Okay, I've done a disservice to real doctors in putting that in three casual statements, but in principle, I could see this. I find the image of some kid curled up with a Commlink and some pirated Knowsofts watching trids of bones being set an image that fits very well in the Shadowrun setting.

True, but if he just wants to avoid lawsuits and insurance there are lots of other options- administration, education, research, consulting, moving to an underdeveloped country. And the shadows have their own "insurance" system, which can be more expensive. The guy from State Farm isn't going to cut off your fingers if you don't pay on time....

This is a great point. I could totally see this happening in places like the Ork Underground and the Barrens. Plus you wouldn't even need to do everything on bodies- you could practice actual surgical techniques in VR.

Or funding your way through med school working as a chef for the 162's.