Surgeon (non-magical healing feat)

[Fortinbro]

Surgeon

New feat: Surgeon
Prerequisite: Heal 5 ranks

You get a +2 bonus to heal checks.
You may also use the heal skill to cure hit point damage on an unconscious or otherwise immobile patient. The surgery requires use of a healer's kit and takes 10 minutes per 10% of the patient's full HP you are attempting to heal in damage (A full heal from 0 taking 100% health taking 100 minutes). The heal check DC is equal to 15+1 for each 10% you're attempting to heal (Full heal = DC: 25). A failed heal check/ interrupted surgery cures no HP and causes the subject to begin bleeding 1d6 per HD/round.

[PeacefulOak]

This looks potentially subject to silly abuse. Assuming you can get your heal skill sufficiently high to be able to confidently roll a 25, the potential healing from this would greatly outweigh the value of a night's rest.

As a result, if I am injured sufficiently that a night's rest would not bring me to full HP, I am better off cutting myself until I drop to -1 hp, then having you use surgery on me to heal me to full within 2 hours.

Or knocking me unconcious with a magic effect. Or using subdual damage to knock me out. Or... etc.

On the other hand, if you're running a -very- low magic game, this feat could see significant use and benefit. To avoid the above silliness, I would add the stipulation that the recipient of Surgery is Weakened (the same as a Barbarian after raging) until they have had 8 hours uninterupted rest.

[JeenLeen]

The failure/interruption risk is pretty bad. Although realistic if you are considering actual surgery, it would veer some players away from it, I reckon. Maybe failure does nothing but consume the time and healer's kit, but if you fail by 5 or more it starts bleed?

Also, as worded, it's unclear if a healing attempt uses 1 use of a Healer's Kit regardless of how much % is healed, or if it's 1 use per 10%. It's implied strongly it is one use, since there's one roll, but I would spell it out. Also, how does that work with low-level people with less than 10 HP?

If you can gravitate away from using percentages while not losing the idea you are going for, I would recommend that. Although it's not hard to calculate 10%, it leaves room for rounding and is extra thought. It'd be a radical change to the feat's design, but I would recommend something like you heal 1d6 (or whatever size seems appropriate) per full-round action, but your target must take no actions or be restrained. Maybe you use 1 charge of a healer's kit, but make as many rolls as you have rounds. It only requires an additional charge if you have to stop / are interrupted / the guy you are treating takes an action.

This does make it heal a lot faster (well, depending on max HP, but in most cases), so maybe that goes away from the flavor or purpose you want.

I could also see you healing your Heal skill in HP per minute, to get away from percentages but avoid dice or faster heal times.

[Fortinbro]

I had in mind that doing this would consume one charge of the healer kit.

[UglyPanda]

Surgery exists in other d20 games, but there is a major difference. In other d20 games, healing is not really freaking easy. Before anyone would take this feat, they'd remember that healing is really freaking easy.

Maybe you want some sort of gritty game where there are no healing spells or items or class features whatsoever, that's fine. The rules for surgery already exist in d20 modern, Star Wars SAGA, lots of stuff if you want inspiration or just want to transplant it; It's much more detailed and useful. But in vanilla D&D, healing is really freaking easy.

That said, mechanical stuff:
Healer's kits are inexpensive, it's hardly a downside unless you're in some type of game where nobody has any money whatsoever (which I do not recommend)
The prereq is 5 ranks. That's level 2. Most people don't get feats at level 2, they'd have to wait until they hit level 3. Either lower it to 4 (level 1) or raise it to 6 (level 3).
There seems to be no difference in benefit between using surgery once for 100% over 5 times for 20% other than the kit uses (and I already mentioned they're cheap), however the DC for the latter can easily be made just by qualifying for the feat and taking 10.
There is no benefit for cranking up your skill check really high (Though not like it's a big deal since there isn't much benefit for having the skill check anything other than the minimum for that feat).

[Fortinbro]

Surgery exists in other d20 games, but there is a major difference. In other d20 games, healing is not really freaking easy. Before anyone would take this feat, they'd remember that healing is really freaking easy.

Maybe you want some sort of gritty game where there are no healing spells or items or class features whatsoever, that's fine. The rules for surgery already exist in d20 modern, Star Wars SAGA, lots of stuff if you want inspiration or just want to transplant it; It's much more detailed and useful. But in vanilla D&D, healing is really freaking easy.

That said, mechanical stuff:
Healer's kits are inexpensive, it's hardly a downside unless you're in some type of game where nobody has any money whatsoever (which I do not recommend)
The prereq is 5 ranks. That's level 2. Most people don't get feats at level 2, they'd have to wait until they hit level 3. Either lower it to 4 (level 1) or raise it to 6 (level 3).
There seems to be no difference in benefit between using surgery once for 100% over 5 times for 20% other than the kit uses (and I already mentioned they're cheap), however the DC for the latter can easily be made just by qualifying for the feat and taking 10.
There is no benefit for cranking up your skill check really high (Though not like it's a big deal since there isn't much benefit for having the skill check anything other than the minimum for that feat).


Not sure if I'd allow people to take 10 on freakin' surgery. I designed this with the idea of battlefield medics in large scale combat in mind. Cure spells, wands, potions, etc do eventually run out when working with hundreds or thousands of people.

[UglyPanda]

You did not address any of my misgivings or comments.

And to reiterate some of my earlier points:
Healing is really freaking easy. (http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-champion--57/touch-of-healing--2940/)
Surgery exists in other d20 games, you just need to transfer it. (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/modern/smack/featorder.html#surgery)
Healers kits are really cheap at 50 gp each, a single use of a healer's kit is 5 gp, less than many players spend on drinks.

[Carl]

@UglyPanda: He may not be aware of that feat, in the kind of situation he described healing is not "really freaking easy" as you put it with just core, or in fact any form of splat book that doesn't give you an at will to cast healing spell.

[UglyPanda]

I posted the link precisely in case he wasn't aware of it. And I already mentioned I'm fine with gritty situations with no magic. But he said that the situation did have magic, thus I felt the need to link.

[iTookUrNick]

If I might interject, I believe it's not the intent of the feat, but rather its execution, that does not really fly here.

How about this :
A Heal check with a DC of 15 will net you a potential healing effect of 1d8 HPs + 1 HP/Hit Dice of the target creature. For every 5 points by which you beat this DC you heal an additional 1d8. Failing the check by less than 5 does nothing but wasting time and healing kit uses. Failing by 5 or more damages the patient by 1d8 for each full 5 points of difference from the target DC.

It takes 3d8*10 minutes to treat a patient. However, the healing effect of the procedure takes time to set in. The total healing is equal to 1/3 after 8 hours, 1/2 after 24, 2/3 after 3 days and gradually completes in a week of rest.

Thus, skilled surgeons are not only able to heal graver injuries, but their patients regain full health more quickly.

Edit: Saw the link to the d20 version. Similar concept. The recovery time from surgery is ludicrous, but whatever.

[Carl]

@UglyPanda: That one feat you linked aside healing on the scale he's talking about is always going to be impossible to pull of entirely through the use of magic, high or low magic. Low level Clerics just don't get enough mass healing ability to really patch a large number of men up.

[UglyPanda]

What iTookUrNick said.

I really don't care that much about the intent of the feat. The execution is just screwy.

[Fortinbro]

I didn't post an immediate reply to the other grievances because I wanted to consider them for a while. I did decide to change the 5 ranks to 4 ranks for a requirement.