I'm making a former-veterinarian/street doc character for our current campaign and I'm stuck coming up with skills (beyond biotech (Veterinary)) and equipment. Does anybody have some suggestions?

You should rip off one of those mall difribulators(how the hell do you spell that? )
That would be awesome to have in your bag of tricks.

Defibrillators.

~J

Excellent, thank you. Also, I'm pretty ignorant of the rules, but how about some sort of amped up para-animal? That would be pretty cool.

Running Wild.

~J

For Critters I suggest Moonstone Spider's rules, at least until Running Wild comes out.

Active Skills: Biotech B/R, Computers(Cybernetics), Etiquette(Animal),

Knowledge Skills: Medicine (Animal), Zoology, Parazoology, Medical Suppliers (Syndicate), Drug Dealers, Safehouses (Sterile), Chemistry (Anesthesiology).

Equipment: Saviour Advanced Medkit, Supplies, RV with Medshop, Medical Softs, Stun Baton (the ultimate anesthesia).

You could reasonably add a weapons skill for the stun baton. Dealing with unruly animals can be dangerous

Also I think that in a case like this its mandatory to make him addicted to horse tranquilizers.

I could also see Orthoskin being useful, both in a runner-sense and to keep those animal's claws from digging into ya.

Dermal sheathing -- no tactile penalty and reduced scarring!

-Siege

Forensic medicine background. Also, pathology, figure out how the virus killed the neighbors cat.

Jeez my typing sucks

Pharmacology comes to mind as a useful knowledge skill, and might actually be helpful in game when using slap patches and the like. Psychology (Animals) might be fun to play with, as would taxidermy. Knowledge: Preasure Points could be a whole load of fun as well.

JaronK

Computer Skill.

Why? A good doc should have a computer with all his patient data in it. Also, in the world of SR, I imagine a lot of people can have remote docter visits by plugging their medkit / biomonitor into the home telecom and chatting with the doctor. Its not as good as a real doctor's visit, but it has a certain degree of anonymity and convenience, and beats the hell out of self-diagnosis and treatment.

I once made a doc character who made a pretty good backup decker because of that. He also had the Encephalon and Math SPU to help with his medical work, which also synergized well.

Make sure you take the college education edge (to get a medical degree) that way your buddies can use the doctoring table (pg 128 BBB) when they make their healing roles.

You don't need to take the "College Education" edge to have a college degree.

And to be a "doctor", all you really need is Biotech (Active) and Medicine (Knowledge).

-Siege

What then is the difference between a nurse and a doctor? The rating of their skills? College education doesn't cover it completely, but unless you want to invent a new edge it works better than anything else.

Cyberware that's good for a medic:

Chipjack (always needing kooky knowledge skills)
Encephalon (Task pool = good)
Datajack (much medical equipment has an ASIST interface)
Math SPU (helps calculate dosages, etc. Also good if you do decker duty)
Skillwires (for all that B/R stuff you didn't want to learn in med school)

Bioware:

Mnemonic Enhancer (helps you remember your obscure diseases)
Enhanced Articulation (helps with the joint pain... and an extra biotech die)

There is no canon distinction between a nurse and a doctor -- frag, for that matter there isn't a canon definition of a doctor.

For my character to say, "I wanna be a doctor", all I really have to do is write "College, Medical school" in my background and copy the skills listed for a Street Doc contact.

Medical license, day job, hospital privilages, etc. would have to be worked out by the GM.

The College Education edge specifically mentions that the edge is not required for a character to have a college education.

-Siege

The distinction between a doctor and a nurse should be in medicine skill level. A 6 is a doctor, a 4 is a nurse.

Actually, things would work better if traumatology, pharmacology, and the like were specialziations of the medicine knowledge skill. Then you'd have nurses with medicine/traumatology 2/5 or the like. A doctor would have a much higher base skill.

Or something.

A quick note: there is no B/R skill for Biotech. However, you can take B/R for the cybenetic specializations of both Computer and Electronics. I honestly don't see this concept as being too heavily involved in cybernetics if his main background is veterinary medicine. It's possible, though, if a lot of his work involved patching up corporate guard beasties.

Don't forget that Animal Empathy would be a great Edge to take for a veterinarian!