Street Docs?, Does anyone play them? Options

[Doctor Rat]

Okay, basically all I'm going to do is ask questions on these forums, mostly out of curiosity. Here we go.

Does anyone use street docs as a character? It seems to be the idea of them is unused, since magical healing is instant, as supposed to the time surgery likely takes. It seemed like a cool player idea to me, but it wouldent be much use to a group (Except for possibly some small ammounts of weapons training), and would probably be NPC's more than anything.

Does anyone use them, and if so, how do they avoid being rendered useless by spellcaster healers? Besides patches, of course.

[Gigapulse]

IMHO, make the doctor Magically active, that way he has the mundane skills plus the healing spell.

-Gig

[Fygg Nuuton]

they do exceptionally well, i wish i had a street doc PC in a game im going to run on AIM (fyggnuuton if your interested hehe)

they work exceptionally well if they know how to repair cyberware, also remember magic can work after surgery too, IIRC but not before

[Gigapulse]

[Gigapulse]

Another question that just pop in my mind. For example a runner gets hit and has serious damage (6 boxes), then the magician heals him reducing the damage to 2 boxes. Then the runner gets hit again for another serious wound plus the 2 boxes remaining from his last wound. If the magician scores 8 successes and has the heal spell at 8 how much boxes does he heals? 6 from the last wound or the 8 boxes?

I'm inclined to think that only the last 6 boxes since you can only heal a wound once. Is this right???


-Gig :cyber:

[Herald of Verjig...]

That book quote is not a reference to mundane healing, but the (body vs. wound severity) test to see how well the person will recover (time needed, quality of life needed, etc.)

The maximum healing benefit (without regeneration) goes as follows: first aid, heal spell, bedrest.

[Gigapulse]

Thanks for the clarification

-Gig

[ShadowGhost]

That's right. Magic cannot heal previous wounds already treated by magic.

The second spell could take care of all the new boxes of Damage, but not the damage that wasn't removed by the previous heal/treat spell.

My current Character (Harrison) is a Street Doc on the outs with Docwagon. He current makes extra ¥ as a street Doc applying first aid with a Savior Medkit and 5 skill, + enhanced Articulation bonus (+1 die for all Technical Skills), for a total of 12 dice to roll.

PS - for first aid (as opposed to surgery) a Serious wound only takes 15 uninterrupted combat turns (divided by successes) - so 45 seconds max.

Also, Biotech cannot help once magical healing has been applied - so Biotech first, then Magical treatment (Heal/Treat spells).

As for why he's on the outs with Docwagon? His backstory is that his previous team was slaughtered by gangers when their air support was called away to help some sissy Corp Exec with a "shaving cut" type of wound, leaving their ground vehicle open to attack. My character was applying first aid in the field when the ground vehicle was hit by a Great Dragon ATGM.

For revenge, Harrison used his Electronics B&R to rig up a Biomonitor set to go off with a "Serious Wound", and his computer skills to program a ficticious Platinum account to go with the rigged Biomonitor.

After waylaying a member of the street gang, he planted the biomonitor on the ganger, sent him away with a moderate wound and serious stun. Following the ganger back to the gangers HQ, Harrison waited until the ganger was inside and set the Biomonitor off by remote. Waiting until just before the DocWagon response team arrived, he started a fire-fight so the High Threat Response team went in guns blazing.

End result - one gang with drastically fewer living members. :D

Harrison quit before DocWagon figured out the scam he pulled, and has been on the run from the remaining gangers ever since, as they believe he knows who pulled the set-up... and not that he actually set them up, so Harrison has the Hunted Flaw level 1.

[Moonstone Spider]

The problem with most medics isn't that the healing takes time, Biotech takes effect usually faster than Magical healing becomes permanent since it's easy to get a dozen complimentary die on a biotech test.

The problem is biotech can only heal 1 wound level in the street, then another level once you get to a clinic. So if you've got an S wound you can't get below M until you go home, and then not below L with medicine alone, while the Mage can heal all six boxes with one spell and be done with it.

[Gigapulse]

[Apathy]

This always bugged me about healing with Biotech:
Say I've got nine boxes of damage (three boxes above base Serious damage, one box below Deadly), and make a successful biotech role to reduce the damage a level.

Do I now have:
• six boxes (three boxes above Moderate damage)
• five boxes (one box below Serious damage)
• or three boxes (base Moderate damage)?

[Gigapulse]

I think you'll reduce the damage to the next lower damage level. That would leave you with 3 boxes.

See it the other way, what if you just had 7 boxes?? you reduce to 6? no, you reduce to 3.

-Gig

This post has been edited by Gigapulse: Jul 14 2004, 10:24 PM

[Gigapulse]

Something is not right here. What if you have 13 boxes of damage? That means that from near dead you go to serious wound.

Anyone has a house rule that makes more sense???

-Gig

[JaronK]

I made a decent doctor character. By taking resources A I was able to buy a rating 6 Alphaware clinic, plus I used contacts to give him a magical buffalo shaman assistant (she didn't go on runs, only stayed in the clinic). With aptitude biotech and microscopic vision he could heal almost anyone rather quickly, and had the advantage of being able to install cyberware for characters with plenty of positive options (5% reduced essence cost and nanotech surgery with a base target number of below 2). He also had a decent amount of electronics skills (to repair cyberware) which worked well when infiltrating compounds.

JaronK

[Herald of Verjig...]

If the character is into overflow, the only healing action is to stabilize the character. Overflow gets scaled down to stable deadly. That is true of first aid and magic. If you follow the massive healing plan, you can stabilize the victim (to a clean deadly level), then cast heal to provide actual recovery (with the fun of deadly drain), and they might get away with a moderate (more often a serious, but a low serious) for the natural healing test.

[BitBasher]

[Orky]

I just made a street doctype guy a while ago. He strays from the path a bit but he is very fun to play. He is magically active (aspected hyena shaman) but all his spells are stealthy. he has a medicine of 5 but his reason for running is not to be the groups doctor but rather to clean up the piles of bodies they leave behind and sell the good pieces for a healthy profit to his chop-shop contacts. Naturally the other characters are a bit weirded out by this but he is quite smooth. If forced to, he leaves the scene only to return under an invisibility spell a short time latter, pull out his surgical knife and surgical hacksaw, take what he wants and then disappear with his goods. He almost always comes out ahead of the other runners in terms of nuyen and has missed a lot of heavy shit by retiring from the run early. although this is a bit unscroupulous, the people he works with are even bigger bastards so he can't feel too bad. (I mean they did kill a large number of people and its not like the corpses needed those parts where they were going.)

[KillaJ]

Are there any guidelines for what the different body parts are worth?

[Glyph]

I'm playing a street doc type character, Stitch, in the Strange Days run over in Welcome to the Shadows. He's an awakened character, so he can use first aid to bring the wound down one level, then use magic to heal the rest. Mundane healing and magic work very well together. Take that example of 9 boxes of damage. First aid could bring it down to a Moderate wound (3 boxes), then a Heal spell could heal the last 3 boxes of damage. Stitch is actually more like an emergency medic than a full-fledged street doc, but he is still a valuable asset to a team - most street docs wouldn't tag along during a run.

[Orky]

the guidelines are on p.128 of sr3. of course, in actual game play a lot of adjustments are made. i use a base level of between 10 to 50 percent of what vat grown organs cost and further reduce that by the organ or parts condition. mostly what sells well though is cyber and bio parts. of which i feel half the price of the part if you were buying it used is a good base price.

[KillaJ]

Ah, thank you. That sounds like a nice moneymaker, assuming you have the stomach for it. ;)

[Glyph]

... and if you don't, just cut one out from the next dead guy.

[Siege]

For that pun, take a bowel.

-Siege

[Lantzer]

I put together a streetdoc/decker once. The two are surprisingly compatible.

The background was that he once worked for a Matrix-based home care clinic. Just plug your biomonitor and medkit into your home terminal, and the doctor makes house calls! He got fired after he discovered the other fun things you can do through a home terminal.

You just need lots of cash to do this sort - but he was able to start with a deck, and a modest RV-based clinic with resources A.

And your team is certainly going to be less impatient with your combat-worthless decker if he's also a medic.

[Phaeton]