Situation #1: Untrained Guy whips out his Rating X medkit to help his buddy. He rolls Logic + X and can heal up to X boxes of damage.

Situation #2: Trained Guy with First Aid skill at X whips out his Rating Y medkit. Since X > Y, he rolls Logic + X + Y and can heal up to X boxes of damage.

Situation #3: Trained Guy with First Aid skill at X whips out his Rating Y medkit. Since X < Y, he rolls Logic + X + Y and can heal up to... how much damage?

Basically this situation is going to come up with a character of mine. I have a First Aid of 3 and a medkit of 6. Does that mean the most I can ever heal someone is 3 or 6 boxes?

I'd initially say that it was a 6, since the medkit can effectively act in the place of an untrained person's skill and therefore govern the maximum healing possible. However, once you get a hold of a rating 6 medkit you're invalidating the presence of almost any field medic ever.

In other words, the way the RAW reads you can potentially fix someone better if you're untrained with a great medkit than if you're actually trained. A trained guy might be able to do it faster (by spending the surplus hits on time reduction), but never better.

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My guess is that the heal cap should be your skill or the medkit rating, whichever is higher. You still roll Logic + First Aid + Medkit Rating (that part doesn't seem to be in conflict) since you're trained, but you aren't handicapping your effectiveness because you're skilled and have good tools.

Anyone else have another solution or better RAW interpretation?

Yes.

Should the rules have done something like stipulated that the cap of boxes healed was the greater of the Skill or the Medkit? Or instead give the option to "go Private"; forget what they know and just do what the CO Medkit tells them to do? Probably.

Dutifully translated from SR3 to SR4 mechnics. I'm beginning to think it's actually intentional. Although having the skill still does help when the kit run out, or it just fell off the boat, etc. Oh, and it is listed as Default: Yes...but without a Medkit the limit on the boxes you can heal would be zero.

Why not? A skillsoft does the same thing.

yes, but you could do it really fast

mind you, i suppose i could see a use for that... if you want to make sure the guy you just shot can't be helped with first aid, then default to logic - 1, and he can't be healed anymore.

while you're at it, cast heal and don't sustain it... as i read it, that would make it impossible to heal them in core rules (barring GM fiat, that is)

Generally, If I want to be sure the guy I just shot can't be healed I shot them again.

The kit doesn't need anyone. Someone trained in first aid helps, but someone with no skill whatsoever can still hook it up to do its thing automatically, as long as they can read the instructions on the screen.

.... For a more money while capping at rating 4.

Yea, this was the part I was confused about as well -- if you default, you can heal a max of zero boxes.

So as written, we have:
1) Untrained, no Medkit: Roll logic -1, heal zero boxes max?
2) Trained, no medkit: Roll logic + first aid, heal a max of first aid boxes
3) Untrained, Medkit: Roll logic + medkit rating, heal medkit rating boxes (this'll pretty much always be six...)
4) Trained, medkit: Roll logic + first aid + medkit, heal a max of first aid boxes.

Of those, only 2 and 3 make any sort of sense, really.

1) means that any fool off the street is completely unable to apply a tourniquet or staunch some bleeding, 4) means that a person with a bachelor's degree in first aid is better off if he forgets his years of training in favor of the autodoc.

I believe this was done intentionally. Look at the first sentence of Using First Add, page 242:

There is another two uses for First Aid. The first is given for further down on page 242, and it appears that it can be Defaulted to (EDIT: basically Triage). Also an untrained person can contribute to a Teamwork test, but since they are Defaulting if they don't have a good Intuition or don't use Edge they could easily mess things up.

EDIT2: Ah, and Aza just pointed out use #3.

EDIT: But ya, if they were crazy enough to try, as a GM i'd give them the chance to heal a single box.

*shrug* Not if the Medkit isn't there. Also it is just the box cap it limits. If you have Intuition (4), First Aid (4), and Medkit (6) you'll hit 4 boxes with consistancy. If you take away the First Aid (4) and go with just the 10 dice (assuming other conditions are optimal) you are less likely to even patch 4 boxes, muchless realize the full potential of 6 boxes. So trading off top-end for consistancy. *shrug* Get into less than optimal situations, such as the First Aider is hurt himself, and he'll want to toss in that Skill of his.

It's just when the Skill gets down to a 1 or 2 rating that it's a lot better to forget what you know (and i think should have been given as an option).

P.S. I would hardly call a Medkit (6) a "toy". <-- to be clear, this was for Azralon because, hey a 550 shotgun isn't a toy....well maybe in places like where i grew up, but i'm not sure that's applicable to civilization

Actually Just because an untrained person cannot heal any boxes of damage without a medkit, I can't see any reason they can't still do stabilisation

Unfortunately with situational modifiers (ie bad conditions, you might be wounded as well) the chances of getting at least 2 successes using just your logic-1 is gunna be damn near impossible.
Of course you could always permanantly burn a point of edge to buy a critical success and save your fellow shadowrunner, but if we're talking burning edge your shadowrun pal should be burning their own to save against death

A figure of speech used to reflect the comparatively low cost of a high-performance medkit compared to the overall financial value of your average shadowrunner and his/her gear.

In other words, Blakkie, 600 nuyen are just a drop in most people's figurative buckets. Hence: "toy."

Oh, i thought you were using "toy" to evoke an emotionally loaded characterization. My bad.

P.S. Ya, that tech stuff sure got cheap somehow.

Or just drop the cap altogether is another possibility. But that can make already fairly cheap healing cheaper yet.

I'd allow logic -1 boxes max, since he'll almost never get that many hits and probably glitch anyway.