D&D 5E (2014) Where is the point of medicine as a skill?

[The Crimson Binome]

As has been said in other threads of this nature (of which there are several) the medicine skill can be used more than just strictly mechanically in a fight. It can be used to diagnose a disease, do some epidemiology on a local town, figure out how someone died, figure out an antidote for a poison, figure out any anatomical questions about a creature, etc.

The "figure out how someone died" thing is huge in my games. It's a fairly easy check to determine whether a wound was from a sword or an animal, but a tougher check will tell you if it's from a wolf or from a werewolf. Success on this sort of check can lead to an entire side-quest.

 

[Weezknight]

I really used the search engine. It is a little weird anyway. Many times I can't click on the results, but this time I got none.

Anyway you miss my point here. When 2/3 of your D&D sessions involve sick people, medicine might be your friend. And yes, these are the selected occasions I talked of. Nothing some background stuff and the perception skill couldn't handle. I still doubt a notable number of players will ever select this and ask for the point. Most of 5Es rules make sense, are great, interesting or even funny. This skill is an exception (not only for me).

Perception, however, is not going to give you the same results as using the medicine skill. That's why it is a separate entity.

As a DM, if you used perception on a sick King, I'd probably tell you, "Yup. He looks weak and sick." Maybe tell you it looks like he may have been bitten by something. But you better believe that if you don't have someone skilled in Medicine, you probably aren't going to find out how to make that King better. If that's not an option, then the players better be ready to launch a full scale investigation/interrogation of where that King has been, who he's spoken to, what he's eaten, etc... to find out. Medicine, however, would make it much quicker.

 

[Goemoe]

You're missing my point as well. I'm talking about the 3 tentpoles of 5e, namely, Combat, Exploration and Roleplaying (perhaps not in those specific words)...

I didnt read the rest of your text. If you want to talk about tentpoles, open a threat, talk about it. My threat - this one - is about the current pointless addition of a skill which prime use for most D&D players is its stabilizing of the dying. And this becomes redundant due to the healer's kit that anyone can use wihtout role, without skill.

You are laughing now, right? Because I did feed the troll again. It's been the last time, promised.

Perception, however, is not going to give you the same results as using the medicine skill. That's why it is a separate entity.

As a DM, if you used perception on a sick King, I'd probably tell you, "Yup. He looks weak and sick." Maybe tell you it looks like he may have been bitten by something. But you better believe that if you don't have someone skilled in Medicine, you probably aren't going to find out how to make that King better. If that's not an option, then the players better be ready to launch a full scale investigation/interrogation of where that King has been, who he's spoken to, what he's eaten, etc... to find out. Medicine, however, would make it much quicker.

Well, read my text again please. I wrote: "Nothing some background stuff and the perception skill couldn't handle." I am no native english speaker so I try again more clearly:

With some background stuff (i.e. physician, healer or something) and perception, you could do the trick as well. Such a background would easily provide the needed knowledge for this situation. A healers background and a healers kit as a tool is much more flexible and useful for 5E than this 'stabilizing the death' skill which central rule function is void because of a much easier to use healing kit in its current form. If you have much illness detection in your games, play a healer. I had it 2-3 times in over 30 years of DMing and playing.

And I won't answer another fluff story for this, because it simply is not the point here

 

[SilverfireSage]

I didnt read the rest of your text. If you want to talk about tentpoles, open a threat, talk about it. My threat - this one - is about the current pointless addition of a skill which prime use for most D&D players is its stabilizing of the dying. And this becomes redundant due to the healer's kit that anyone can use wihtout role, without skill.

You are laughing now, right? Because I did feed the troll again. It's been the last time, promised.

I don't think you understand what a troll is because I am certainly not one. In fact, by pointedly ignoring the rest of my post which does talk about the medicine skill and its uses outside of combat scenarios (which most skills are based on) you have more pointed out that you are the troll rather than me. It doesn't seem that you actually want to have a discussion as you continuously ignore my points and fail to refute them.

So no, I am not laughing. Not in the slightest.

 

[Desdichado]

There might be selected occasions... yes, but no player would ever choose this skill normally. They should have just made this one a toolset thingy as they did with pick locks, use poison and such. Why adding redundant medicine?

Isn't the point of 5e (or at least one of them) supposed to be that it's modular? If so, you should expect redundancies so people can slip other modules out and still have the ability to heal, for example.

Heal or Treat Injury or whatever it was called (depended on the specific iteration) was a significantly important skill in a lot of other d20 games, for instance, that didn't necessarily assume D&D magical healing was freely and readily available--or even available at all.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I didnt read the rest of your text. If you want to talk about tentpoles, open a threat, talk about it. My threat - this one - is about the current pointless addition of a skill which prime use for most D&D players is its stabilizing of the dying. And this becomes redundant due to the healer's kit that anyone can use wihtout role, without skill.

You are laughing now, right? Because I did feed the troll again. It's been the last time, promised.


Well, read my text again please. I wrote: "Nothing some background stuff and the perception skill couldn't handle." I am no native english speaker so I try again more clearly:

With some background stuff (i.e. physician, healer or something) and perception, you could do the trick as well. Such a background would easily provide the needed knowledge for this situation. A healers background and a healers kit as a tool is much more flexible and useful for 5E than this 'stabilizing the death' skill which central rule function is void because of a much easier to use healing kit in its current form. If you have much illness detection in your games, play a healer. I had it 2-3 times in over 30 years of DMing and playing.

And I won't answer another fluff story for this, because it simply is not the point here

Using the Medicine skill to diagnose an illness is no more "fluff" than using the investigation skill to find a hidden door. It is a mechanical use of the skill to further game play.

My anecdotal evidence of it's use, which is what any evidence about the use of medicine in this thread is, is that it is used quite a bit. We often need to figure out how someone has died, or encounter illnesses, or need to verify if a creature's condition is medical in nature. It is used much more for investigative purposes, mechanical investigative purposes, than for stabilizing the dying.

I take issue with any use of the skill being fluff. If you're rolling the dice to achieve an end, it's not fluff.

 

[Goemoe]

I don't think you understand what a troll is because I am certainly not one. In fact, by pointedly ignoring the rest of my post which does talk about the medicine skill and its uses outside of combat scenarios (which most skills are based on) you have more pointed out that you are the troll rather than me. It doesn't seem that you actually want to have a discussion as you continuously ignore my points and fail to refute them.

So no, I am not laughing. Not in the slightest.

Your vision of a discussion is to insist on something which is way of the topic - your point. You ignore the topic and my point as do trolls to heat and flame. I put you on my ignore list, so answering is pointless.

Heal or Treat Injury or whatever it was called (depended on the specific iteration) was a significantly important skill in a lot of other d20 games, for instance, that didn't necessarily assume D&D magical healing was freely and readily available--or even available at all.

Yes, of course, I never told something different. In fact I actually try to figure out how it would work properly, as the current skill lacks deeply. As someone pointed out, there are many threads discussing this topic and nearly all share my view. Why are all nitpickers jumping on me?

Most of the comments indicate they did not read what I wrote, or only parts of it. Do it again, it will answer your questions. Mine has been answered, the current rule is pointless, it needs an errata or houserule to properly treat wounds with skills or tools.

Thread can be closed, it seems to attract to much noise.

 

[SilverfireSage]

Well just because he can't see this, doesn't mean anyone else can't. I wholeheartedly hope people read these posts and decide to continue the discussion instead of closing it down, regardless of whatever ill feelings may have illogically spawned from certain posts.

 

[Agamon]

As Yoda would say, what has been learned must be unlearned. There are some people that expect things to work the way they did in older editions. The medicine (heal) skill is one of those, I think.

If you want it to work like it used to, get rid of the healing kit and just have the medicine skill do what it does.

I like how it works, personally, and don't really need to see any changes to it.

 

[Desdichado]

Thread can be closed, it seems to attract to much noise.

Instead of validation, people are actually disagreeing with me. Shut down discussion! Shut it down!

Just out of curiosity, have you ever taken an AQ test?