Cascade MEDIC skill?

[legozhodani]

As our group is medic heavy and was thinking of doing a bit of MSF on the edge of the 3I I have deceided to cascade the skill to make everyone a little different and give them a few more challenges.

Medic- Trauma aid
medic- Diagnosis
medic- care.

Also I have them as individual Profession skills. This can represent care staff, first aiders and some pharmacists .

Thought that would cover most options and not make it too complicated. Without going into crazy detail, any ideas?

Cheers.

 

[mancerbear]

How about breaking it down into Races. Each race being a specialisation?

Medic (Human)
Medic (Aslan)
Medic (Vargr)
Etc

This will give it a more sci-fi feel. In fact, I like that breakdown a lot.

 

[hivemindx]

I think I would prefer a species breakdown like Medic (Own Species) and Medic (Xeno). I realise it is not very realistic to lump Vargr and Hiver together in the one skill but I find too many cascades to be frustrating.

If you wanted to achieve the same thing you could say that Medic (Xeno) is like Jack of All Trades for Medic. By default any medic roll on a different species to your own (including animals, why not) is at -3 and every level of Medic (Xeno) offsets one of those.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I would let a Medic (Human) have Level-0 skill in any other species. Stopping bloodflow is going to be relatively universal (put pressure on the hole and bandage it. How to surgically remove the bullet is a bit more complicated and would need above Level-0 unless it was simply "reach inside and pull it out with tweezers".

Similar to a Veterinary skill allows a Vet to work on multiple animal species (but all with the same basica chemistry, from the same planet) you can use Medic the same way with species.

Thus Medic (human) would work for just about any of the sub-species out there, Solomani, Vilan, Zhodani, Sylean, and Darrian.

 

[legozhodani]

To be honest I'm not too bothered about aliens so much. I would put all alien medical skills as specialist extra stuff. Tech and such is your friend here. My focus is mainly on the separating the basic use of the skill with humans. It just stikes me as odd that electronics has a cascade but the very regular universal skill of medic is one skill, as dull and generic as gamble? Animals gets the cascade even engines do, poor old organic mechanics don't.

Sod the aliens, what about humanitii? *the rest was edited by Imperial sources due to Sol propaganda*

 

[Condottiere]

Biology would need some form of commonality.

For species that have a common origin, most of humaniti and the Woofs, a doctor or a veterinarian could probably figure it out, eventually; after all, that's what you have WebMD for.

 

[steve98052]

The right answer for realism is that humans, Vargr, and other uplifted Earth species get one skill, since they share the same general biochemistry, vertebrate body plan, etc. (An uplifted invertebrate, such as an octopus, would share a lot of chemistry, but not body plan, but I don't recall Traveller mentioning any invertebrate uplifts.) Sentients from other home worlds would each be a different skill, though a medic for Earth sentients would know some skills that would be applicable to unfamiliar chemistry and structure.

The things that set veterinary skill apart from human medicine are that they practice medicine on creatures that can't communicate their needs effectively, that can't make their own decisions with informed consent, and that they're legally property rather than sentient beings. Their inability to communicate requires a vet to diagnose by measurements and observed behavior, but not conversation. Their legal status changes the goals of treatment, which is dependent on the animal's economic value -- a champion stud race horse gets a higher standard of care than a riding horse, and a wealthy cat-lover's cat gets better treatment than a capture-neuter-release stray. By contrast, human standard of care is supposed to aim for best quality of life for the patient.

In game terms, realism may need to take a back seat to practical play. Rather than writing a realistic rule set, the goal is practicality.

 

[Condottiere]