Medic

You fix people, reknitting their flesh, patching their ruptured organs, and coaxing their shattered bones back together. Your bedside manner doesn't really matter, especially when your skills are called on during disaster or war. And your comportment matters even less in situations when you use your medical knowledge and supplies to disable foes—sometimes, no one expects a medic to fight back.

Your role on a team that routinely encounters challenging environments or conflict is crucial. Without your expertise and care, the group's next job could prove its last. Luckily, you can also handle yourself in a fight. In fact, either hard experience or professional training means you're not someone who needs protection when the situation sours.

Background Options

  • Rebel anarchists spaced your small mining community and forcibly inducted you into their ranks. You escaped but still seek revenge on their remnants.
  • You served as a doctor in an orbital surgical hospital (OSH) until it was recently destroyed.
  • Your spacefaring clade hunted icy bodies in the Kuiper belt, but a mistake you made led to the death of the administrator's child, and now you seek absolution.
  • A doctor you worked under was charged with illegal organ sales last week.
  • Your family helped found a Mars hab, but a criminal gang cracked it and killed almost everyone. You still dream of payback.
  • Every so often, your expertise in an area of medical knowledge is requested by the military.
  • You recently finished a refresher course on space medicine at the new lunar hospital.
  • Your medical intervention saved someone who turned out to be a corrupt government official.

Medic Abilities

You gain all of the following benefits: Able to take two more minor wounds and one more moderate wound Add +1 to Speed Pool Add +3 to Intellect Pool Add +1 Edge in Pool of your choice Freely use light and medium weapons Freely use light and medium armor At tier 3 and tier 6, choose an ability from the Science Fiction Genre Abilities list

Bad Medicine (2+ Intellect or Speed): With access to a medical field kit (or similar equipment), you deliberately misuse a medication normally meant to heal, such as a skin spray, injector, or similar device. Make an attack against a creature in immediate range; the medical device is a light weapon (the attack is eased). If you succeed, they can't take any actions on their next turn. Effort: Instead make the creature unconscious until you use a recovery (requires two levels of Effort). Action.

Bad Medicine doesn't allow you to exceed your normal Effort limit.

Whenever an ability grants a choice between two Pools, each time you use that ability you can decide which of those two Pools to spend your points from. You can’t split the cost between both Pools.

> Medical field kit, page (ref)

[!info] A medical field kit allows you to treat patients quickly and efficiently. Depending on the setting (and the GM's approval), you might instead have different technology that functions the same way as a medical field kit, such as artificial organelles in your cells, subcutaneous equipment in your hands, or targeted gene editing that creates microtools and medication as needed.

Expert Doctor: You are trained in healing.

At tier 6, you can become an expert in healing if you are already specialized, but you must gain the skill normally. Enabler.

Expert, page (ref)

Prepared Medic (2+ Intellect): With access to a medical field kit (or similar equipment), you can use treatment in half the normal amount of time or treat twice as many wounds for one character in the normal time. Enabler.

Treatment is using a skill such as healing to remove a character’s wound. The time required depends on the severity of the wound. Treatment, page (ref)

[!example]

Medic Equipment Bundle

Choose the following equipment bundle to quickly outfit your character, or assemble your own starting equipment. A medical field kit, appropriate clothing, an armored bodysuit, a smart device (glasses, badge, ring, and the like), a breather, an environmental tent, a single-use vacuum suit, an everlight, two days of rations and water, a grooming and toiletry kit, and eyeshades. Your character also starts with currency equivalent to a moderately priced item.

Equipment, page (ref) Currency, page (ref) Moderately priced items, page (ref)

Part of Hard Science Fiction