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.

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 .

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 . And I am sure as a hell that it is possible to hack a medical (or another) shop/facility.

!! 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.

hmmm..so if charc have First Aid (Combat wounds) 6 (+2),max damage what can be healed is 8 boxes
if it is combat wound, 6 boxes if not..

Do specialization by definition count as skill, or does a specialization grant a dice pool bonus to the base skill?

Personally I think it should be treated a modifier to the base skill rather than a dice pool bonus. 5 longarms (+2 Sniper Rifles) IMO should allow a +3 take aim bonus.

Rules say about adding bonus dice to dice pool, not increasing skill itself.

Wow, this is pretty much right up there with why my group house-ruled on MedKits a long time ago. There is no LISTED maximum rating to a MedKit, and I remember seeing note (in Augmented maybe?) of hostipal level MedKits being RTG 10 or higher.

So, despite the Threshold 2 of the First Aid test, you can still heal a maximum of the MedKit's Rating (and even at RTG 6 the things are so cheap as to be mandatory) since few characters are going to try to get First Aid to 7 or higher. Besides, to heal more than 6 boxes, you need a total of 24 dice on average (2 Threshold + 6 Maximum boxes healed), not even counting in the usual penalties assessed against the roll. First Aid simply becomes a modifier to the MedKit's "Skill" and if you take "trauma" as a specialization, that's two more cheap dice. So the rule about "no more than your First Aid skill" is functionally meaningless unless you're forced to make do with a really lousy MedKit.

Since First Aid takes a bare 3 seconds per box healed, in less than 20 seconds you're going to get as good as you can get, and that's true healing by the RAW. What that means is that fully trained doctors and paramedics are essentially un-necessary in all but the most extreme cases of injury, and the Medicine skill is of almost nil value. Hospitals are just sterile environments where First Aid can be performed then if absolutely needed you can lie down for a day and then walk back out fully healed.

Yes, I'm exagerating, but not by as much as you might think. Do the math. I like being able to get back in a fight "quickly", but if we're really substituting a MedKit's Rating for skill, that's nuts. The equivalent ActiveSoft would be 60,000¥ if you could get it at Rtg 6. That takes the 300¥ price of a Rtg 6 MedKit beyond bargain straight to non-sensical.

Thank you for info.
Player being real pain in *** (skill being max healable damage boxes) taking decent logic,no first aid skill, and when game begin bying rating 10 medkit
and lot of medkit supplies...

I'd say be reasonable about it. If your only source of healing is through first aid, you may want to let the Medkit act as the indicator for how much damage can be healed. However, letting people buy Rating 10 medkits is bad, not that they'll likey every get 12 successes on their check....

My personal opinion is that Kits run up to rating 6, shops are rating 7-9, and facilities are rating 10+. This is mostly tempered in that I've see the number 1-6 for kits, 8 for shop and 10 for facility, and that to go outside of those ranges with a smaller than what is listed should be significantly more expensive.

The tables in the gear chapters of both SR4 and SR4A, as well as the table in the back of Augmentation only list prices for medkits from ratings 1-6.


Actually, if you're talking about the Medical Equipment section on Augmentation p.124, those aren't "kits". Medical Shops and Medical Facilities can be used to perform first aid in the same manner as a medkit, at effective ratings of 8 and 10, due to the extra equipment available, but on the other side of the coin, that extra equipment makes them non-portable, and unsuitable for use by untrained personnel.

"Mobile" versions of both are available; in the case of the mobile medical shop, presumably it can be vehicle mounted using the workshop vehicle mod just like other 'shops' can. As for mobile medical facilities, while the rules don't specify, you're probably looking at at least a full-length cargo trailer's worth of gear -- if you've ever watched M*A*S*H on classic TV reruns, the 4077th is just a collection of mobile medical facilities for treating a high volume of patients.

Mobile medical facility?

Nah. A mobile medical facilty in SR is just enough equipment to give first aid to 4 patients at a time. That would class as multiple non-mobile facilities (allthough the rules for naval class vehicles haven't been re-introduced into SR4 yet, they typically do have enough space to let you make normally immobile things into mobile things).

Yeah, I don't like that definition. I believe a facility should also have the equipment necessary to perform most procedures. Otherwise I can rig a chinook helicopter with 4 beds and call it a medical facility.

As far as I can tell, only a patrol sub and maybe one or two other small surface vessels have been listed. Nothing huge.

Ok, but even then, most of my objections still exist, and there's still no real point in taking First Aid skill, since the MedKit replaces your skill, you're not even defaulting! It's still way underpriced if it "replaces" your skill - that's what ActiveSofts do, and they're capped at Rtg 4. It doesn't adhere to ANY of the basic limits on skills and/or equipment anywhere else in the system.

Now, if it were JUST a modifier to YOUR skill, AND it wasn't "permanent" - i.e. it lets you ignore the wound modifiers but doesn't actually heal you - then both the price and the time (modern medical tech, drugs, nanites, etc) wind up being entirely in-line with other gear and rules and something like common sense, plus the actual skills (First Aid AND Medicine) retain their own inherent values.

Let me put it in perspective for a second:

In Dungeons & Dragons (3.x) the average 1^st level character had 8 "boxes" of damage, and could go 10 "boxes" into the hole before dying. A 1^st level Cleric can cast Cure Light Wounds, which will heal an average of 5 points, or around 28% of the most damage the character could take before dying, and it takes 6 seconds. In Shadowrun, an average character can take 12 "boxes" of damage before dying (8+[3/2 round up]+3 overflow), and a veteran paramedic with Veteran level of skill (3) and Trauma Specialization (+2) and an above average LOGic (4) using a Rtg 6 MedKit indoors will heal on average 3 boxes most of the time. That's 25% of max, and it takes 9 seconds. Not shabby for being mundane.

Your math is wrong, slightly. A character with 8 "boxes" can take 19 points of damage before dying, not 18. You forgot about 0. So it's actually closer to 26% than 28%.

Oh, I left out 0. Ok, then it's even worse as comparisons go.

I do agree with you that there's more to a medical facility than treating 4 patients simultaneously. In addition to the number of patients to be treated, 10 dice are being added to the pool for the first aid test, and that first aid test can heal up to 10 boxes. That takes a lot of equipment, even in 2070. While I believe that the equipment could be packed for transport in such a way that it'd fit in a helicopter the size of a chinook, I wouldn't consider it usuable in that packed state.

Note that the vehicle modification rules in Arsenal do not cover mounting a facility's level of equipment in vehicles, only a shop's, and even at the shop level, they suggest reduced effectiveness while the vehicle is in motion.

Hmm, isn't a Medical Shop a Clinic and houses at least one doctor and some nurses?
At least, i think i remember it being so in SR3 . .
Medical Tool-Kit was the Med-Kit,
Shop was a Clinic and cost 25k Level 1 Standard Grade up to 4,390,400 for Level 10 Delta Grade. Think about what your todays doc has, some rooms, one floor mostly.
Medical FACILITY was a whole Hospital. Starting Standard Grade Level 1 with 9,604,000 Nuyen going up to Delta Grade level 10 for 2,097,152,000 Nuyen.
Yes, you read that last number right.

In SR4, Medical Shops and Medical Facilities come in mobile and non mobile versions per Augmentation. They can be used for first aid, providing more dice than the medkit does, but require trained personnel to use. They allow remote medical operation without penalty, and allow implant and transimplant surgery to be performed. Due to the limited number of patitents that can be treated at the same time by one set of shop or one set of facility equipment, doctors offices and hospitals typically have mutiple sets.

Yes, you could do the mobile thing in SR3 too, but it did not really change anything on the personal that was supposed to come with it, if i remember correctly.
But then, the Advanced MEdical Rules in SR3 were . . pretty much fucked up for the most part, in my eyes . .

Yeah, that's one of the things I recalled and why I am opposed to Medkits having a higher bonus than shops, let alone facilities.

Again, the highest rating medkit that SR4's ever given a price for is Rating 6. Even the Savior Medkit from Augmentation, which is supposed to be the bleeding-edge best-of-the-best incorporating the latest nanotech advances, counts only as a Rating 6. This is lower than the effective ratings of shops and facilities when those are used for first aid.

Well, rules say about "First Aid test". Nothing about defaulting or not, so by following standard rules it should be default IMHO.
And I think medkits are a bit too cheap. Or/and should have an Avaiability rating (for better ones, of course).

I agree, there should not be medkitting with more that rating 6. Just imagine if you could heal 10 boxes in 30 seconds at a hospital. Basically its an instant fix. Shotgun to the belly... no problem, just give us half a minute and you are good as new!

Barring magic, wounds should not be that easy to heal. Honestly, 6 boxes is pushing it anyway.

You missed the point of the entire discussion here, because the rules say the MedKit Rating REPLACES your skill, so it's not a default at all. It replaces the 0 you have with it's Rating. THAT's one of the things I'm all on about.

Sorry.
I still think that it should be a default test, but on the other hand - medic/healer must not be "must have" for shadowteam; if nobody wants to play a "doc", we have another option. But a PC with appropriate skills AND medkit is IMHO better then just medkit.

..looking at rules, it seems that Hackers make best medics: Logic to 4-6, give them rating 6 medkit
Cerebral Booster - bioware lvl 2 or 3, Quick Healer quality and "poor, nontrained medic" is rolling
14-17 die...