A medical kit is presumably covered by the "medkit" in the standard gear list. However, what if a character with medical skills wants a "clinic?" Can you buy a medical "shop" or "facility?" I see no reason why not. What sort of things would you expect in each?

Dread Polack

I would houserule the following (according to the description p.323 BBB):

kit => Medkit (portable, contains basic gear to do the job)
shop => Ambulance[truck] (transportable with a large vehicle; well the truck itself IS the shop)
facility => Hospital (immobile because of the bulky and heavy machines)

Man and Machine has some rules for varying degrees of hospitals (Alpha, Beta, Delta). I would be careful to make sure that the Facility would not include anything SOTA. Definetly "small hospital"

A shop could be an emergency or an intensive care unit, a facility an operation room with intensive care.

It looks like 4th ed carried over the actual ratings for medical gear from the earlier rules (Man and Machine). Medkit ratings are explained in the book, naturally. Shops and Facilities (clinics and hospitals) will probably be in the gear book.

But going by precedent, both clinics and hospitals will contain basically all you'd need to run a full medical practice of varying quality. At minimum, they function as their rating medkit and a stabilization unit (and Valkyrie module, in the case of hospitals) - though we lack the rules for those currently. Clinics contained a computer system (for recordkeeping and such), a number of med scanners, surgical tools, common drugs, genetech, and nanotech treatments, a hook-up for matrix access and tele-surgery, and a chemlab to synthesize the drugs it didn't come with or ran out of. The numerical rating determined the number of patients, doctors, and nurses/techs. They were also rated by the level of implant surgery/repair they were capable of supporting (from standard to Delta), with higher-grade capability increasing the unit cost by the same multiplier that you apply to the implants themselves. Most were immobile, but they could also be made portable (for putting in the back of trucks and ambulances) at cost of reduced staff space and functionality. Hospitals were like clinics on steroids - allowing for more patients and staff and possessing SOTA medical gear and a mainframe-level computer/matrix system.

If you can get a hold of Man & Machine, check it out. It has info on all sorts of medical gear, including portable clinics and high end nanoclinics and medical drones (Ie, rigged, not Star Wars). If not, I suppose you have to wait for Augmentation?

Well, I think that a medical kit, and a medkit must be different, and this is why:

A medkit adds it's dice to your first aid skill directly, so at best it's a First Aid kit. Also if you had to do a field surgical procedure would be at best inadequate tools/parts (-2 dice penalty on your build repair table), it is after all designed to use with first aid skill, not medice.

At best on the build/repair table superior tools and/or parts is only a +1 die bonus. So how could a kit ever be +5 (as a rating 5 medkit).

The kit/shop/facility for Medicine is just exactly that, a kit/shop/facility for medicine. A Medicine Kit would not have a little autodoc giving you advice, it's for someone who is using the Medicine skill, they should know some of this stuff, and being a non-defaultable skill medicine is only used by trained individuals. It has things no corp. liability department would ever allow into the general public's first-aid kit. Like scalpal, intibation tubes, morphine, etc.

Imagine a EMT carries around that big plastic toolbox like thing. That's a medical kit. Then the ambulance with the crash cart, variety of medical diagnostic equipment not in that big plastic tooklbox makes that a shop, then the facility is the Trauma room in the hospital. I'd imagine that A real hospital would be made up of a number of Facilities.

Sorry for the longwindedness, but it seems like there was a lot to say...

I would actually propose that a Medkit of sufficient rating (ie, 500+) is an adequate (+0 dice pool) medical kit while lower ratings are inadequate (-2 dice pool).

If you consider this a two-for-one deal (Medical kit and Medkit, yay!), I suggest either a medkit, regardless of rating be inadequate (-2 dice pool). I can't see how a medkit wouldn't be better than surgery with your swiss army knife (-4 or not allowed).

Well, the thing is medkit is for first aid skill.

Medical Kit/shop/facility is for the medicine skill.

So it's not about one should work for the other.

A pistol uses a different skill from a rifle. A medkit is for a different skill than a medical kit/shop/facility. Simple.

And basically a mid kit would hardly be better than doing surgery with a swiss army knife. With a med kit you'd be using those horrible scissors as a scalpel, I'll take my Victorinox Tinker over those any day of the week. Not that I'm a surgeon.

I would imagine that medical tools would be covered in Augmentation just as they were covered in Man & Machine.

Until then, however, I'd just take a leaf from old rules and rule that a medical shop or facility cost double what a "generic" shop or facility would. These things are immobile and can take care of multiple people at a time and perform advanced procedures such as organ transplants.

Also of course, a clinic is not really "man portable" the way a medkit is. But on the bright side, there's no excuse for a shop or facility adding less than 6 dice to biotech checks. It's got to be at least as good as a medkit out of the BBB.

-Frank

Is there even a biotech skill anymore?

There is a medicine skill and a first aid skill.

medkit adds to first aid. Not medicine.

medicine shop/kit/facility is required (not adds to) medicine checks.

Does a smartguin link on my med kit add 2 more dice to my first aid checks? No because smartgun links are for Firearms skills, medkits are for first aid skill, medcal shops, kits, and facilities are for medicine skill.