Image Copyright 2015 Linda Whitson
A Human and a Gand, hired for an extraction, slip into a building–and are confronted by a pair of men firing disruptor pistols…a few hours later, a fugitive Doctor grimaces behind her surgical mask at the human merc’s horrific wound.
A fierce felinoid, spitting fury, lunges at the teen who just shot at it…her equally protective Twi’lek guardian attacks the creature viciously, pulls his ward out of reach and sees to her clawed leg, while their companions finish it off.
Yes, combat in Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars RPG is not only fast and fun, it’s sometimes deadly. Thus, the small but useful collection of medical gear in Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny (beta).
Synthskin, Synthflesh and Hand Scanners (Scanning and Surveillance Gear subsection) optimized for vital signs do not have mechanical effects and seem to be in the books for completeness or flavor. GMs might consider allowing some small bonus for creative use of these. Synthskin/Synthflesh might also be useful in conjunction with Deception checks for disguise in a pinch. Or even permanently? The text does mention those products are used in cosmetic surgery, after all.
Bacta’s mechanical effects are covered in the respective Combat chapters of the core (or beta) books. If the party doesn’t have someone trained in Medicine skill or any of the portable medical gear, getting a friend who has taken a lot of wounds to a hospital or sickbay with a bacta tank is a fast way to get them back to health. Ten wounds–just under most PCs’ Wound Thresholds–can be healed in as few as 5 hours, compared to 10 days for natural healing, or however often the GM will allow Medicine checks in non-combat play. The best use of a tank is probably for critical injuries, particularly multiples, as those can be healed as fast as one per day. A PC or NPC with ranks in the Bacta Specialist talent can increase the rate of healing in a bacta tank (or long-term care) even more. Using bacta tanks doesn’t seem to happen often in game sessions, in my experience, probably because there isn’t a tank available or multiple Medicine checks are handled between scenes or sessions.
The three major items that are likely to be used for patching up PCs in AoR and EotE are Stimpacks, Emergency Medpacs and Medpacs, which can all be carried by PCs. Stimpacks are the quickest and easiest to use since there is no Medicine check, only spending a Maneuver to inject. You might have a Maneuver or Action still free. This will depend on circumstances–did you have to engage with the patient &/or get the stimpack out? It also depends on whether your GM counts drawing and injecting as one Maneuver or two. (I rule it as one.) The biggest drawback is the limited number of uses represented by the lessened effects of repeated doses for the same character. On the other hand, they can be easily used by the untrained, although a Doctor or Medic character can get more out of a stimpack, since they have access to the Stimpack Specialization talent.
Emergency Medpacs and Medpacs both require a Medicine check to use but work slightly differently. Either eliminates the +1 Difficulty added to a Medicine dice pool for not having proper equipment. This is all the Emergency version offers. The standard Medpac also adds a Boost die to all Medicine checks.
The Force and Destiny beta doesn’t have the two Medpac options, but does include other medical gear. Instead of Emergency and (standard) Medpacs, there are two new items, a Portable Healing Kit and the Physician’s Kit. The fluff gives these new items a somewhat lower-tech, “backwater worlds” flavor and either one counts as proper gear to avoid the Difficulty penalty. The Healing Kit is a reskin of an Emergency Medpac. The Physician’s Kit isn’t a reskinned Medpac, though. Like the Medpac, it provides a Boost die on all Medicine checks, but not the extra Stimpack per scene. Instead, it adds +1 Advantage to successful Medicine checks. This increases the chance that medical treatment will heal at least 1 Strain in addition to Wounds. The possibility of extra Strain healing may be a good tradeoff for many groups, since that is harder to come by than Wound healing during many combat encounters.
All five of these items are also bargains for debt-ridden smugglers, desperate Rebel agents or fugitive would-be Jedi. Stimpacks are only 25 credits each and a Healing Kit or Emergency Medpac for 100. The most expensive items, the Medpac and Physician’s Kit are only 400 credits apiece, easily afforded by taking an option to start with additional credits. Alternatively, if no one PC can afford the credits, the players might consider all pitching in towards the 100 or 400 credit cost.
Linda Whitson
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