i am a little confused by medkits. if i have a lvl 6 medkit and i roll 8 successes then do i heal that many points? i read something about thresholds and i am not sure where they come from. if i have 8 successes do i only heal 4 because there is a threshold of 4?? i am confused adn my question may make no sense. if you need more info let me know.

Unless I am mistaken, here you go...

1. Threshold to heal is 2, so subtract 2 from your net hits...
2. Cross check with your First Aid Skill... You can only heal as many boxes as you have ranks in the skill...

So... if you had 3 ranks in the skill (Professional) and had 8 hits, you would only heal 3 boxes of damage, and would lose the remaining 3 hits that had been rolled... (8 Base, -2 for the Threshold, and 3 for the Skill, leaving 3 remaining non-useful hits)

Keep the Faith

Not quite. The Medkit REPLACES your skill rating if you don't have one, or ADDS TO it if you do happen to have one.
Thus, if you rolled 8 successes and had 3 skill rankings with a rating 6 medkit:
The threshold is two. You have 6 hits left. You have a maximum of 9 hits, and have less than that, and so heal 6 boxes of damage.
If you have NO skill rating, you only have 6 hits maximum. You lose two to the threshold. Thus, you heal only 4 boxes.

Technically, you never need buy First Aid since the Medkit will both add to your DP, and replace your skill on the roll if you lack it. Though if you try this, you are liable to be beaten by your GM for the level of cheese in your argument.

It may be a bit of a house ruling, but I would say use the higher of the two between the medkit's rating and the first aid skill. Otherwise you have someone with a low first aid skill using a Rating: 6 medkit being able to heal less damage boxes than someone with no first aid skill using a Rating: 6 medkit.

@Heath Robinson:
It might seem cheesy, but someone with the first aid skill gets the first aid skill, their Logic, and the medkit's rating for their dice pool, which matters when you have to get more than two successes to heal any damage at all.

Thanks Heath... I was pretty sure that the MedKit just added Dice to the pool OR replaced if no skill... I had no references easily available, so thanks for the SR4A Reference...

You're reading neither what I said nor what the rules say.

The Medkit rules text says that it gives you a bonus to First Aid rolls, and replaces the skill if you do not have it. It can do both on the same roll, thereby giving you twice its Rating on top of your Logic.

Further rules quote: (I figured I'd pre-empt arguments that this page counters my point)


Unfortunately, the first sentence specifies that a "trained medtech" using a Medkit/Autodoc receives a DP modifier equal to the devices First Aid or Medicine autosoft. However, the first sentence refers to First Aid or Medicine Autosofts, therefore making this another rule entirely to the rules text in the Medkit gear entry. We can't discount gear entry rules because they also contain the rules text for Cyberware and Bioware, such that claiming gear entries contain no real rules renders all Mundanes doomed to uselessness forever.

We have a rule stating that we can get both effects on the same roll, and no rules stating that we do not get this bonus (even by reflection). The only compensation that the utterly literal RAW allows us to load a First Aid or Medicine autosoft into a Medkit and get extra dice on First Aid checks.

Uh, no, the first sentence is talking about autodocs and medkits, not autosofts. You don't get the medkit bonus twice - you either roll skill + medkit rating + Logic, or, if unskilled, you roll medkit rating + Logic.

The text that it adds to the dice pool of all first aid tests is still accurate - you either get it added to your skill + Logic, or get it added to your Logic.

lots of useful information. can someone tell me where they found the threshold of 2 at?

Right, so the potential pools are:

Trained medic: Logic + First Aid + Medkit/Autosoft Rating

Untrained (no First Aid skill) user: Logic + Medkit/Autosoft Rating

Actually it doesn't say that. What it does is increase the dice pool. Adding to the die pool is not the same thing as increasing the skill, which is the limit on how many points of damage you can heal. So there really isn't any reason to take first aid skill at less than than 6, as having a pool of skill 1 + 6 medkit + logic 3 gives me a pool of 10 dice, with which I can heal at most 1 point. If I have no skill I have 9 dice with which I can heal at most 6 points.

SR4A
252
"The maximum damage healable with the First Aid skill is equal
to the skill's rating."

257
"If a trained medtech uses a medkit/autodoc when healing a character,
she receives a dice pool modifier equal to the device's First Aid or
Medicine autosoft rating. If the character is untrained, she can still make
the test using her own attribute and the device's rating in place of her
skill."

337
"The medkit's rating adds
to the dice pool of all First Aid Tests, and replaces the character's skill if the
character doesn't possess the skill (Medkits and Autodocs, p. 253)"

Does this make any sense to you? I think it's pretty crazy. But the way first aid works in SR is pretty much totally crazy....

... hence my earlier suggested house rule.

From Augmentation (pg. 124) " The maximum number of boxes that First Aid can heal is a the
Rating of the medical equipment (Medkit etc..) or the First Aid skill of the character whichever is higher"
..by that rule you can heal 6 boxes of damage (rating of Medkit)

I missed that bit. So my proposed "house rule" was actually the real rule. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif)

SR4A contradicts that and was published later.

then in SR4A, is there still -1 default penalty when untrained charc. is trying to use med kit
(rating of the equipment is replacing the skill ??)

Trained: Logic + First Aid skill + rating of med kit..

a) Untrained: Logic + rating of medkit
or
b) Untrained: Logic (-1) + rating of medkit

Rules from "Augumentation" make more sense IMHO.
Maybe SR4A needs a litle errata too... I'm waiting for the book, so I hope I'm wrong (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) .

Oh, and I think that -1 modifier for untrained "doctor" should apply.

..if rating of medical eq is replacing the skills of First Aid and is acting as max number of healable damage
it means death of trained medic as it only needs high rating of medical eq. for
untrained person to be better medic than highly trained doc.
(just buy mobile medical shop which is considered as rating 8 medkit..)

First aid, the skill where you can succeed and do nothing by only getting 2 successes.

But trained skill still adds dice to test (and you want to beat this treshold 2, right?).
Besides:
- medkit costs a bit, and must be refilled. It's possible that runners will not have enough nuyen or find themselves in the middle of wastelands, where are no supplies for empty medkit.
-medkit may be destroyed (or stolen, or lost) during shadowrun.
- or worse: probably medkit may be hacked.

...and try to take it at 130th floor of corporate skyscraper (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) . And I am sure as a hell that it is possible to hack a medical (or another) shop/facility.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) !! i wonder is specialization of combat wounds would help to raise the skill die pool..
gunshot wound: check, knife/sword/axe slashes: check, enemy mage's spells: check, all of them
are combat wounds and team's mage/shaman can heal rest..(..you do have him/her in you team, do u ??..)

I'm sure it is. There is nothing about it in "sr4a changes" document, so it should be actual (it's specified at First Aid description, "Skills" chapter in corebook).
So better don't kick your medic out of team...

Unless you are rolling to Stabilize, in which case you would have stabilized the patient with only 2 successes.