Thanks.

With only the medkit, you only roll 6 dice.
With skill+Attribute+medkit, you get >6 dice.

Which one is better to use?

You always get the attribute.

I just took a panther to the chest. See this 3" hole?
With just one easy step using the 'First Aid' brand band-aid, I'm able to cover the hole like so... Tada, good as new!
Errr.... NO.

You need more: Effectively, two Hits are substracted.

So it matters even less that the healing cap is 6 then.

Which is cool and all, but somewhat irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

with poor tools you are looking at on average 3-4 boxes (6 stat + 7 skill - 2? penalty gives between 3-4 success) the reliable 7 in that instance is witrh edge IE the hollywood deal fo it is dramatically appropriate so House gets it right with shit tools

Here's fun in healing.
IN d6 starwars by charater with us Uber tech skill. Used a medkit on an ally an inch from death brought him to full health while driving a speeder.

wtf?

... and ...

I get both of these points, but they are not really the issue. Edge could be used in almost all situations, and I'm not really talking about averages, but potentials.

As to the Threshold thing, I believe that the First Aid test has a Threshold of 2, and each success after the threshold is reached heals one box. So rolling only 9 dice, you could potentially heal 7 boxes (barring Edge use).

I'll try to illustrate my problem better ...

In the following I am really only interested in the potential maximum result. I understand averages, but that isn't my point. Here we go ...

Dead Meat Dan is lying in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by the shattered remains of his favorite McHugh's. He has taken 9 boxes of damage from a grenade, leaving him alive and conscious, but very badly wounded. His options are ...

* He can use his undamaged, top-of-the-line rating 6 Medkit on himself. If he does this, he either lets the Medkit do the work itself, or help out with his Logic of 2 and First Aid Skill of 1. If he helps the Medkit, he takes any appropriate Pool modifiers for Wounds. In this case, either way (Medkit 6 alone or Medkit 6 + Logic 2 + First Aid 1 - 3 Wounds = 6) he could potentially only get 6 successes, thereby healing 4 boxes (6 - 2).

* Wally Slobberthumbs has a Logic of 1, is Incompetent in First Aid, Illiterate, Uneducated, Uncouth, etc. He lumbers in from taking out the trash and is leaning against the shrapnel-pocked wall watching our wounded hero. If he were to slap the Medkit onto Dan, he wouldn't have the option to lend it assistance, but he could still let it run itself. Only 6 possible successes can be achieved, so the net potential healing of this option is 4 boxes (6 - 4).

* Average Jane Quicktypist just happened to be pulling her Jackrabbit into the parking lot, ready for a fast lunch, when the grenade exploded, and is peeking surreptitiously through the broken window. If Dan were to call her over to help, she could apply the Medkit. Of course, leaving it running by itself will net the same results as the first two options, but if she can force herself to touch our bloody hero, she could use her Logic of 3 and untrained Skill rating of 0 in First Aid, to help (Logic 3 - 1 Defaulting = 2 dice). This could result in 8 successes, and therefore potentially heal 6 boxes of damage.

* The blare of an alarm announces the arrival of Eric the Paramedic, still sipping on his Stuffer Shake™ and glad that he never eats at McHugh's while he's on the job. He could rush in and lend the wounded Dan a helping hand, using the wounded man's Medkit because it is better than the one he is supplied with. Again, just letting the kit run would gain the above results, so he goes right to work putting his Logic of 3 and First Aid Skill of 3 to good use. This could potentially garner 12 successes, which would unfortunately translate to only 6 boxes of healing (the other 4 net successes being wasted).

* As it happens, Doctor Rob M. Blind saw the whole incident from the back seat of his taxi, which is now, of course, stuck in traffic. Realizing he'll never get to his conference on time, he pays off the cabbie and strolls over to see what can be done. Spotting our bleeding friend, he makes his way to the wounded man, gingerly stepping around the debris in order not to scuff his polished leather shoes. He grabs Dan's Medkit and immediately puts his formidable talents to work on the injuries. Adding the doctor's Logic 6 and First Aid 6 to the test, we could potentially come up with 18 successes (16 net successes), but would still only be restricted to healing 6 boxes of damage.

If the Medkit was not available to the doctor in the above example, he could still have garnered 12 successes on the test (barring other modifiers), or 10 over the Threshold, but could still only put 6 of them to use.

It's only when you get into the realms of the superdoc does it make a difference, and not much of one. The greatest living non-awakened doctor in the world, using the best equipment money can buy, can only ever heal 7 boxes from First Aid, only 1 better than most of the options above.

Of course, we have the Adept with his Improved First Aid Power, potentially adding up to 3 more boxes of healing, but maxed-out Biotech-Adepts are somewhat few and far between in my experience.

The wonders of technology my friend. To take a "primitive" example, it is like spelling and spellchecker. A guy with spelling 1 could spell very well with spellchecker, you could say the spelling skill is useless with spellchecker.

I don't necessarily want to make it better. I want to make using First Aid 6 with the appropriate tools mean more potential healing than First Aid 1 with the same tools.

Because, hey look, he has the skill to do the job. Probably much better than the guy with only 1 in Computer, but not as good as the guy with Computers 6. That 'high Logic' should have some small effect on the end product as well. And all of these people should have a better end result than the default workshop assembly unit could do on its own, without their input.

why? what logical reason is there for a person with first aid and a medkit to do more maximum healing than a medkit alone? why isn't the increased average healing enough of a bonus?

Yeh i total agree

Because as it stands, there's not much OOC reason to take anything other than First Aid 1 (Combat Wounds +2) ... if indded any Skill at all The small increase in dice is not really a big enough reason when you don't even have the possibility of healing even one extra box of damage.

I am not asking for instant heals each and every time someone is wounded. Even if using both skill and tool in conjunction aloowed an extra box of maimum healing over and above the use of either individually, the test would still have to be made, and a large number of net successes would still be needed.

I just think that there should be the potential ... maybe just for flavor, or out-of-game reasons.

Except that is not what I am trying to say at all, as I have stated on more than one occasion.