D&D 5E And now for something completely useless...

[Andor]

Medicine.
A Wisdom (Medicine) check lets you try to stabilize a dying companion or diagnose an illness.

Stabilizing a Creature
The best way to save a creature with 0 hit points is to heal it. If healing is unavailable, the creature can at least be stabilized so that it isn’t killed by a failed death saving throw.
You can use your action to administer first aid to an unconscious creature and attempt to stabilize it, which requires a successful DC 10 Wisdom (Medicine) check.

Healer’s Kit.
This kit is a leather pouch containing bandages, salves, and splints. The kit has ten uses. As an action, you can expend one use of the kit to stabilize a creature that has 0 hit points, without needing to make a Wisdom (Medicine) check.

*emphasis added.

So... does the healing skill actually do anything worthwhile? You can stabilize a dyding friend sure, but it's only adding your proficiency bonus to what is already a very easy roll. And by spending 5 gp you can completely negate the need to make a check entirely. And that's not even mentioning that there is a cantrip that also auto-stabilizes someone without a roll.

I hate to use the term system trap but the medicine skill, as is, looks extremely weak, especially compared to say Proficiency: Herbalism Kit.

I'm in a 2e darksun game right now and my Water Cleric has healing and herbailsm proficiencies and the party leans on that non-magical healing as a boost to my few spells per day.

Non-magical healing in 5e is actually pretty strong, but it feels weird that the Medicine skill is useless to help with it. Does that feel right to you guys? What (if anything) should be done to fix it?

I think, at a minimun I would allow someone with the Healing skill to craft healing kits using the standard rules. That's probably okay RAW but it's not spelled out. The next obvious boost is to allow a wisdom (medicine) check to boost short rest healing by tending wounds, say DC 15 to treat rolled 1s as 2s. But then that steps on the toes of the already iffy durable feat so...

 

[KarinsDad]

The medicine skill is worthless.

I already decided to add a houserule that makes it worthwhile and give players an incentive to use it. I just haven't yet thought of what that might be.

I do want it to give back a few hit points, especially during a short rest, just how many is TBD.

I also will be ruling that it has to be a trained skill (used with the healers kit) to get that benefit.

 

[FadedC]

Looking at the basic guide, the medicine skill's description could certainly benefit from being fleshed out a bit. I don't think it really needs to be able to restore hit points on adventures, that seems somewhat outside of the realm of what a 5e skill should be able to do. But more description about using it for things like forensic information and other information gathering purposes would help it seem less narrow.

 

[billd91]

The Medicine skill may have relatively little mechanical effect that can't be beat by the use of a mundane item, but the skill could still be useful. We haven't seen much about diseases yet, have we? There may be additional information in the PH or DMG that tap into the Medicine skill. And then there are other uses that may come up while playing such as trying to figure out the cause of a prominent NPC's death.

I wouldn't write Medicine off just yet.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The part of the medicine skill will be played by Alec Baldwin.

 

[jadrax]

So... does the healing skill actually do anything worthwhile?

Well for starters you can always use Medicine. It's not guaranteed you will always be somewhere you can buy a Healer's Kit, or indeed will always have one to hand.

Secondly, we don't know the rules for Disease right now, it might be useful for that.

Finally, Medicine pretty much cannot ever be a decent skill when you have clerics and paladins wandering around your setting. It doesn't really matter what you do, if you have a Cleric in the party it is not a very good choice.


Appendix A: Also note that the Alpha Leak has a Healer Feat that made Healer's Kits better, but did nothing for Medicine.

 

[GrumpyGamer]

For me the more interesting part of the skill is the diagnosing of injuries and illnesses. I see this as having roleplaying opportunity and also gives the DM story hooks when you come across a corpse.

 

[bganon]

It is pretty weak, but I think linking it to the healer's kit or hit point recovery isn't quite what the skill is meant to handle.

Someone proficient with the healer's kit is an EMT. They know the tools, they know how to apply them, and can even mix stuff in an emergency.

Someone proficient in the medicine skill is a trained doctor. They've studied all sorts of diseases, can diagnose them, and prescribe treatment. They may not actually be the best person to provide treatment unless they're also trained with a healer's kit.

So I guess I'd try to treat the medicine skill as a health/disease-related version of Perception or Investigate, basically. Need to determine cause of death? Unless it's sword-to-the-face obvious, this'll need training in Medicine. Same with determining whether someone's been poisoned, determining the type of poison, and knowing the antidote. I'd definitely allow this to work with magical poisons/diseases as well, just like Investigate/Perception can find magical traps. Still not such a great skill, but situationally useful like History or Religion, depending on the campaign.

 

[jgsugden]

I think the last poster hit it: Although they only list one thing in the description, there is more to being proficient in medicine than knowing how to stabilize a downed ally. Areas where I'd have PCs make a medicine check (although some of these could also be achieved via other checks, such as survival checks):

* To determine the effects of a poison without suffering the effects.
* To determine what is causing an ailment that is impacting an entire villiage.
* To determine how long the PCs can survive without fresh water.
* To determine the effects of a disease.
* To determine cause of death.
* To overbill.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It is a medieval world. Maybe they're just being selectively-realistic, again.
Those leaches really aren't going to help that much.