Medtech are much more than just medics  

After a post about Style and Attitude linked to Hello Cutie firearms, I'm back to a full substance article. This time it's all about Medtech a role that offer much more possibilities than you might think. Mainly for 2 reasons :

The Role scales poorly, it's not about more power, it's all about more versatility.

Medtech and medic are two different concepts.

--> Multiclassing is definitly a thing when playing a Medtech, don't overlook the concept.

As I love Medtech, it was impossible for me to be concise, sorry for that. 

"Whenever the Medtech increases their Medicine Rank, they also choose one of the following three Medicine Specialties (Surgery, Medical Tech [Pharmaceuticals], or Medical Tech [Cryosystem Operation]) to allocate 1 point to."

You have 3 Medicine Specialties BUT only 2 Skills related to them :

• Surgery skill : to install/desintall cyberware, to treat Meat Critical injuries and to Biosculpt.

• Medical Tech skill : to produce Pharmaceuticals, to operate Cryosystems and to perform Therapy.

Skill Surgery :

• "For every point you allocate to Surgery(Medicine Specialties), you gain 2 points in the Surgery Skill (up to a maximum of 10)"

• That means you can only allocate 5 points in Medicine Specialties Surgery.

Skill Medical Tech :

• "For every point you allocate to Medical Tech (Pharmaceuticals), you gain 1 point in the Medical Tech Skill (up to a maximum of 10)" ... "You can only put a maximum of 5 points into this specialty."

• "For every point you allocate to Medical Tech (Cryosystem Operation), you gain 1 point in the Medical Tech Skill (up to a maximum of 10)" ... "You can only put a maximum of 5 points into this specialty."

• Medical Tech skill = Medical Tech (Pharmaceuticals) + Medical Tech (Cryosystem Operation) (up to a maximum of 10)

Meaning at rank 5 in Medecine, you can reach your max level in One Medecine specialties. Yeah.... it scales very poorly. More rank in Medecine doesn't mean more Power, it means more versatility. "Versatility is also power ! Yes... but no, not here (more later). A rank 10 Medtech is just 2 rank 5. Or 1 rank 5, 1 rank 3 and 1 rank 2. It's certainly the less powerful role in the game in term of scaling.

That's not cool ? At first glance you are right. Actually, it's a blessing in disguise, because you can easly multiclass your Medtech. 

Medical Tech (Cryosystem Operation)

 As a Medtech you can operate Cryostystems (Cryopump and Cryotank).

• With 1 point in Cryosystem Operation you gain one Cryopump.

• With 2 points in Cryosystem Operation you become a Registered Cryotank Technician and gain unlimited 24/7 access to 1 Cryotank at a time at any cryotank facility operated by medical corporations or government agencies.

• With 3 points in Cryosystem Operation you gain 1 Cryotank, installed in a room of your choosing.

• With 4 points in Cryosystem Operation you gain 2 more Cryotanks that can fit in the same room as your first one and your Cryopump has 2 charges and its maximum carrying capacity increases to 2 people in stasis.

• With 5 points in Cryosystem Operation you gain 3 more Cryotanks that can fit in the same room as the first three and your Cryopump has 3 charges and its maximum carrying capacity increases to three people in stasis.

Analysis

You gain "money", as a Cryopump or a Cryotank cost 5000eb.

Cryopump is a really nice item. Because it's a SURE way, with an Action, to stop a person to roll Death saves. Yes, you could directly stabilize with a First aid / Paramedic check DV15. But the cryopump doesn't require a check to "freeze" the patient. Then you can stabilize him (maybe later if you are in combat) while he is inside the Cryopump. Advantage ? You don't roll dice, you can't roll a 1.

Conclusion

Free access to Cryosystem... many of them... yeah... why not. You can open you're own Cryotank facility without spending money. But it's all GM fiat as nowhere in the rules you will find how much you can charge for this service. A night at the hospital (bed & food) is 100eb. 24 hours inside a 5000eb Cryotank, certainly more. And if you invest in it a lot, not ofr money making purpose, your GM need to have a high paced campaign with few downtime between combat. Because this is where multiple Cryotank will shine as you will provide high healing rate to many people in your team.

Still, I'm not convince by more than 1 point into this Medecine Specialities at character creation (later it's even not relevant anymore). And you can also convince the team to share the purchase of a cryopump (1000eb/personn for a team of 5. That's doable pretty fast)

At the end of the day, it's an investment that depends on the style of the campaign you're playing and the amount of money you have at your disposal. If you play "Street level" and "High paced", 2 ranks in the skill will save you 10,000eb, which isn't bad.

Medical Tech (Pharmaceuticals)

"Each time you allocate a point into Pharmaceuticals you also gain access to one of the following pharmaceuticals, which your Character can synthesize by rolling a DV13 Medical Tech Check, wasting the materials used on a failure. A Medtech can make a number of doses from 200eb of materials equal to their Medical Tech Skill in 1 hour."

• Antibiotic : natural healing process heals an extra 2 Hit Points every day for a week. not stackable with multiple dose.

• Rapidetox : When injected with a dose of Rapidetox, immediately purged of the effects of a drug, poison, or intoxicant. If you do that before the end of a Street drug primary effect. You don't have to roll a Resist D&T for the secondary effect.

• Speedheal : if not in the Mortally Wounded Wound State, immediately heals BODY + WILL HP. Once/day.

• Stim : ignore all penalties from being in the Seriously Wounded Wound State for an hour. Once/day.

• Surge : can function unimpaired without sleep for a full 24 hours. Once/week.

• Sedative : +2 Bonus to Surgery Check when injected to a patient. Unwilling target can be injected and must succeed a DV15 Resist Torture/Drugs check or fall unconscious and be incapable of Actions for either 1 minute. (same as sleep by higher DV to resist).

• Veritas :a target must make a DV17 Resist Torture/Drugs check or be placed into a hazy, suggestive state for 10 Minutes. While in this state, the target has a hard time focusing and takes a -5 to Acting, Concentration, Conversation, Deduction, Human Perception, and Persuasion Checks

Analysis

• Speedheal is the only heal in combat, a must have.

• Rapidetox is a free pass to drug yourself without any secondary effect, meaning no risk of addiction.

• Stim is a good replacement for those who doesn't want to do drugs or to install a Pain Editor chipware.

• Sedative is good as you can use it for Surgery boost AND in combat.

• The others are more situational, they aren't bad.

The more you have in Medical Tech (Cryo+pharma) the more dose you will make per 200eb.

Conclusion

Spending 5 points in Medical Tech (Pharmaceuticals) is worth it.

Medics aren't necessarily Medtech, but Medtech are the best medics

Facts

Skills you need (p.223 Core Rule book)

Cybertech

• Not capable of Stabilizing Wound States.

• Can be used to Quick Fix and Treat Critical

• Injuries done to cyberware that have replaced meat parts like cyberlimbs or cybereyes.

First Aid

• Capable of Stabilizing Wound States and Quick

• Fixing only the most common Critical Injuries.

• Available to all Characters with minimal investment because it is always trained to at least +2.

Paramedic (x2)

• Capable of Stabilizing Wound States and Quick Fixing or Treating all but the deadliest Critical Injuries.

• Available to all Characters but is a costly investment as it is a (x2) cost Skill.

Surgery

• Capable of Treating even the deadliest Critical Injuries.

• Available only to Medtechs through their Role Ability, Medicine.

Conclusion

 Traditionnaly, it's kinda your job to be a medic in the group. Which makes sense, your the best at it, and other role have to spend IP and creation point in other place. But it's not mandatory. You can have a discussion with your fellow players during Session 0 and maybe you will decide that the Tech will have Cybertech 6 & First Aid 4.

Unfortunatly, Paramedic feels really far too expensive for what the skill provide. A Skill chip is enough, and that's a pity because the skill is supposed to be centralfor medic (not central for Medtech).

If you want to roleplay a combat medic don't forget that Cybertech is also part of your job if you want to be able to Quick Fix Critical Injuries involving cyberlimbs, cybereyes and cyberears.

For the record I love playing combat medic with Brawling, Athlectics, Linear frame Vermillon, Popup Shield, etc... The idea : Tactical possibilities. You help the people that need it the most (good movement, capable of lifting heavy weight, protection with popup shield, Speedheal, Stim) while being effective at close combat (Brawling) and up to 25m (grenade / boomerang). So much choices. That's a blast ! 

 This is a skill based system... whatever you want to be. But if we use the Medtech role and specific capabilities as guidances:

Surgeon/Ripperdoc

• Surgery DV up to 17 (easy, you have a bunch lot of bonuses)

• Need a place

Therapist

• Medical Tech DV 15 or 17 not easy at all, as you don't have any bonus for this activity), with complementary skill : Human perception, Conversation, Persuasion, etc.

• 1 week + 500eb material for a 1000eb therapy. Your client will pay you 500eb. There is a risk fo failure. Not so interesting in term of mechanism. RP wise it's another story.

Cryotechnicien

• Medical Tech DV 13 (easy)

• No rules for charging the service to NPCs.

• Need a place

Pharmacist

• Medical Tech DV 13 (easy)

• 1 hour for (Medical Tech) doses at the cost of 200eb. That's neat !

A mix of whatever combinaison

Surgery

• Raven Microcybernetics MicroWaldo (neuralware and cyberarm option) : +1 Surgery - 1000eb (put it in a Battleglove 1000eb.)

• Sedative +2 in Surgery

• Trauma Team MedScan (apps) : +1 Surgery. (interesting only with an executive Trauma Team subscription as the usage of this apps features will be free. It's worth it !)

• Medbay : +2 Surgery

That's a +6 in Surgery (3 rank of Medecine) 

Saving life and Quick fix

Saving life & Quick fix - Meat

• Medscanner : +2 First Aid and Paramedic

• Trauma Team MedScan (apps) : +1 paramedic (100eb/use)

• Skill chip : Paramedic. Huge ratio cost/efficiency cyberware in term of saving IP.

Quick fix - Cyber

• Techscanner : +2 in Cybertech will help you to quick fix cyberware.

Drugs but without addiction

Self boosting STAT & Skills without any addiction risks (cost quit a lot of money) with Rapidetox

• Prime time : +2 COOL & WILL - Emotions are repressed and 4D6 temporary humanity loss (no cyberpsychosis involved) - 4 hours - 50eb

• Synthcoke : +1 REF - prone to paranoid ideation - 4 hours - 20eb

• Boost : +2 INT - no side effect - 24 hours - 50eb

• Smash : +2 Dance, Contortionist, Conversation, Human Perception, Persuasion, and Acting - the user feels euphoric, loose, happy, and ready to party - 4 hours - 10eb

That's huge : +7 STAT points. You can build some pretty good jack of all trade or some very focused social character

• COOL 8 + Persusion 6 + Prime Time + Smash = 18 Persuasion at character creation. It's a spike in Persuasion... still you have it when needed.

• COOL 8 + Acting 6 + Audiovox 2 + Poser chip 4 + Prime Time + Smash = 24 Acting. Get a biosculpt and you ARE the person you are trying to impersonate.

• Jack of all trade STATs : INT 6(8) - REF 7(8) - DEX 8 - COOL 6(8) - TECH 7 - WILL 6(8) - LUCK 4 - BODY 4(12) - MOVE 7 - EMP 7

• Tank : INT 8(10) - REF 5(6) - DEX 8 - COOL 2(4) - TECH 8 - WILL 8(10) - LUCK 4 - BODY 4(12) - MOVE 8 - EMP 7 - you're not the fastest to react. But with the right cyberwares... gonna be hard to take you down.

Of course anybody can benefit from that if you have Rapidetox for them and if they are willing to take drugs.

You get the picture... that's a pretty potent feature you can provide to everybody in the group (it's not free of charges). You need to discuss a bit with your GM about that and to find a balance together.

Muliclassing

It's easy to build a Rank 4 very effective Medtech :

• 3 Pharma : Speedheal, Stim (or Sedative) & Rapidetox

• 1 cryosystem : Cryopump

• 0 Surgery : later when you will have Medbay, and money, you might spend IP for 1 rank in it.

As a result :

• TECH 8 + Medical tech 4 = 12 for a DV13 in order to make Medical tech (4) doses of pharmaceutical in one hour. That's 50eb per dose if you don't roll a 1.

• You can save life without a check and roll First Aid later when you're not under pressure anymore.

• You can take whatever drug you need when you need it.

• Do you really need to be a surgeon ? If yes... that will cost money and HQ IP or IP your choice. But for Multiclassing purpose, I choose money and HQ IP.

Here some examples, I chose the one I would RP. You can build a lot of valuable combinaison of a Medtech(Pharmacist) + Any Role. Tech and Medtech have a great TECH synergy, that's so obvious that I'm NOT going to address it here.

>>Solo

Solo would be my first choice. Why ? Because I love the combat medic idea. You need movement to reach your friends quickly, you need to be resilient to fight in the front line, you need to cover every weaknesses possible because you are the safe guard for other and you can't afford to go down before them. As a Solo, you need freaking high perception, that's the idea behind the Solo part of this character : hyper awareness.

Each point in Combat Awareness is immediately effective and the HQ training area is a nice improvement for a Martial artist / Brawler as nothing else than Precision attack can boost your chance to hit.

INT 8(10) - REF 5(6) - DEX 8 - COOL 2(4) - TECH 8 - WILL 7(9) - LUCK 4 - BODY 4(12) - MOVE 8 - EMP 8

Skills

• Combat : Perception 6 - Concentration 6 - Resist T&D 6 - Conceal/Reveal 6 - Athletics 6 - Brawling 6 - Martial arts² 6 - Evasion 6 - Stealth 6 - Tactics 6

• Medic : Cybertech 6 - First Aid 3

• Misc : Local expert 5 - Persuasion 2 - Conversation 2 - Education 2 - Human perception 2 - English 4 - Streetlsang 2

• Medtech starting gears : Neural link + Reflex Co-processor + GMBL

Solo/Medtech future gears : Linear frame (then Vermillon linear frame), Medscanner, Chipware socket + Pain editor, Kerenzichov, Smart glass (TU +1 slot) + LL/IR/UV + Enhance image, Radar/sonar, Chipware socket + Paramedic and whatever INT skill you feel you might need for investigation purpose that's INT 8(10) + 3 = 13 at no IP cost and sometimes more like leap reading because it benefit from Enhance image.

>>Nomad

As each point in Moto is valuable from the start, that's a good combo. And let's be honest, playing a combat medic because you want to save people AND being a Nomad who think about his family first. That's a theme you can delve into. The ultimate "support" character : Saving life, boosting other capabilities, healing in combat, Quick fixing injuries, and driving the team across the dangerous Night City streets.

>>Executive and Media

Kinda the same spirit for both of them, you can build a character who is effective in Combat, Social and Investigation.

With the Prime time and Smash boost you can reach high level in Persuasion & Acting and other skills under COOL 8(10). You're teammate will benefit from such boost. especially the Cover Ops one as he is already capable int he 3 differents fields : Social, Investigation and Combat.

With INT 8(10) + Wall of evidence +2 you can quickly reach very high score in Composition, Criminology, Cryptography, Deduction, Education, Forgery, Library Search, and Photograph/Film. Remenber that you DON'T need paramedic or Cybertech and only a low level in First Aid to save people. That's a lot of point to put into COOL and INT skills while being not bad at combat.

I've got a love/hate relationship with the Role. It scales poorly, but because of it you have nice opportunities for multiclassing. Cryosystem branch is expensive for a very situational result. Surgery will save you money and give you a bit of discretion, which is nice and also work very well with a Tech fabricating Cyberwares. But you just need 1 point in it, a Medbay and a bit of money. At the end of the day, Pharma is OP and allows you to play characters that are effective in Combat, Social, and Investigation. Becareful your GM gonna use the side effects of drugs against you. That's fair.

There is a lot of RP possibilities, because of the 3 specialities. and the fact you can easly multiclass at low IP cost.

You need to work with your GM to ensure that certain paths are not ineffective and others do not break the game. Both possibilities can happen quickly.