Uses For The Medicine Skill

[JNAProductions]

According to the PHB? Without the Healer feat:

-Diagnosing diseases
-Stabilizing the dying

So I recently made a Cleric with a fantastic medicine score for an Alice In Wonderland, madhouse kind of setting. What are some ideas to do with this skill?

[Ancientchild]

Do an autopsy on a dead guy to get clues about how they died.

[JNAProductions]

I'm a Life Cleric. I'm trying to avoid people dying.

Assuming we find a corpse, though, good advice.

[Pyon]

Maybe on a high roll and in down time be able to heal a few hit points? Maybe even be able to apply temporary hit points.

[Sindeloke]

As DM, I just threw out the Healer feat entirely and let characters use a Medicine check to heal [character level * (check result/5)] once per target per short rest. If you have a kit on you you can improve that by Xd6 once per long rest, where X is your proficiency bonus. You can also treat diseases and poisons by beating the infection DC with a Medicine check, and any check over DC 10 will let you relieve pain even if you didn't achieve anything else. My first impulse as a player would just be to go to my DM and ask for something similar (even a Song of Rest type hit die improvement for out-of-combat healing would be good).

If that doesn't float, I'd probably try to argue for synergy bonuses to other checks in sort of a 4e homage. Make a Medicine check to know that all that flop sweat on the Hatter is from anxiety and improve your Insight vs Deception. Make a Medicine check to recognize "Shrink Me" addiction and improve your Persuasion via a little coercion or bribery. Make a Medicine check to know how to coax the best performance out of your muscles to help an Athletics check.

[mephnick]

I might let you identify poisons and potions or something like that.

[JNAProductions]

As DM, I just threw out the Healer feat entirely and let characters use a Medicine check to heal [character level * (check result/5)] once per target per short rest. If you have a kit on you you can improve that by Xd6 once per long rest, where X is your proficiency bonus. You can also treat diseases and poisons by beating the infection DC with a Medicine check, and any check over DC 10 will let you relieve pain even if you didn't achieve anything else. My first impulse as a player would just be to go to my DM and ask for something similar (even a Song of Rest type hit die improvement for out-of-combat healing would be good).

If that doesn't float, I'd probably try to argue for synergy bonuses to other checks in sort of a 4e homage. Make a Medicine check to know that all that flop sweat on the Hatter is from anxiety and improve your Insight vs Deception. Make a Medicine check to recognize "Shrink Me" addiction and improve your Persuasion via a little coercion or bribery. Make a Medicine check to know how to coax the best performance out of your muscles to help an Athletics check.
Medicine as Knowledge: Biology? I like. I think I'll (ab)use this wherever I can. Thanks.

Also, as a hypothetical to the DMs on this forum, what about making a healing potion out of troll bits? Since they've got great regeneration, after all. (I also have proficiency in Brewing, so I know a thing or two about making drinnks.)

[Naanomi]

I use it for anatomy stuff also, like skinning dragon hide and so on

[hymer]

I'm with Sindeloke most of the way on this. If you are proficient in Medicine in my current campaign, you get the Healer feat for free. It's a tad overpowered at level 1, but it feels right about level 3. The problem with doing autopsies, skinning and finding out what killed someone with Medicine is that those things could be covered with more useful skills, like Investigation, Survival and Nature (and proficiency in poisoner's kit to a degree). That's not to say that you shouldn't let people do those things with Medicine, merely that you can get that covered in different ways - and Medicine is such a horrible skill by pure RAW.

[Mr.Moron]

I'm with Sindeloke most of the way on this. If you are proficient in Medicine in my current campaign, you get the Healer feat for free. It's a tad overpowered at level 1, but it feels right about level 3. The problem with doing autopsies, skinning and finding out what killed someone with Medicine is that those things could be covered with more useful skills, like Investigation, Survival and Nature (and proficiency in poisoner's kit to a degree). That's not to say that you shouldn't let people do those things with Medicine, merely that you can get that covered in different ways - and Medicine is such a horrible skill by pure RAW.

There is nothing to say that skills can't overlap. I do a fair number of calls in the vein of "Roll religion or history" or "Roll medicine or nature" sometimes with slightly different DCs for each, sometimes with the same DC. At least for me the idea isn't to establish a bunch of things that are used for specific tasks but just to establish what a particular kind of training or knowledge might expose people to, and if that applies in a meaningful way to the task at hand the skill probably applies too.

[hymer]

There is nothing to say that skills can't overlap.

I agree entirely, and it's what I was trying to point towards.

[Pyon]

I also love the idea of skills overlapping. It's like Fallout, you can either go at it with Speech or Barter, Science or Repair, Skills or Gun To The Face.

[Kerleth]

I (4th?) the notion of overlapping skills. I would let medicine find herbs like survival or nature(technically not RAW, but a common request), but not track. Identifies a plagues' origin(not just it's name, but where it came from) as divine like religion, but not remember stuff about the worship of a specific deity. Perform an autopsy on a creature to get an idea of it's abilities if a character were so inclined. Notice that a creature was polymorphed by slight anatomical inconsistencies. Notice when wounds were healed by magic as opposed to naturally. Identify areas and creatures that spread disease or that are likely to have deadly toxins. Realize that someone is a vampire posing as a mortal by little signs caused by BEING A WALKING CORPSE! So on and so forth.

[ChubbyRain]

A DM who noticed the gap in powers noncasters and casters have started making skill talents for noncasters from level 11 onward. You had to be trained in the skill to use them. If I recall correctly these worked on an enemy 1/Long Rest.

A couple of my favorite medicine ones that I added to his list.

Action mostly, as you gain more levels you could use some as a bonus action (just like the DM's list).

Medicine versus Acrobatics
Vulcan Death Grip: You strike the target quickly with two fingers and your thumb on their neck. They are stunned for 1 round.

Medicine versus Insight
Web MD: You start informing your target of their medical problems. The target is poisoned for on round.

Medicine versus Medicine
Knowledge Duel: You state some crazy medical fact and, if you win the contest, you frighten your target for 1 round.

[Myzz]

I'm with Sindeloke most of the way on this. If you are proficient in Medicine in my current campaign, you get the Healer feat for free. It's a tad overpowered at level 1, but it feels right about level 3. The problem with doing autopsies, skinning and finding out what killed someone with Medicine is that those things could be covered with more useful skills, like Investigation, Survival and Nature (and proficiency in poisoner's kit to a degree). That's not to say that you shouldn't let people do those things with Medicine, merely that you can get that covered in different ways - and Medicine is such a horrible skill by pure RAW.

Intelligence (Medicine) for gaining knowledge during Autopsy
Dexterity? or perhaps Wisdom (Medicine) for the actual physical side of performing the autopsy

[ChubbyRain]

Intelligence (Medicine) for gaining knowledge during Autopsy
Dexterity? or perhaps Wisdom (Medicine) for the actual physical side of performing the autopsy


Dexterity (Medicine) for performing surgery makes sense. Unless you are a barbarian and then it would be Strength (Medicine) ;)

[Joe the Rat]

I have a "doctor" character in the party, so we're getting a lot of Medicine rolls as they fit. Using it to determine cause of death, identifying ailments, quick checks on those turns when he forgets "spare the dying" is on his cantrip list...

I've found that skill-tool synergies are also a good use for this. Developing formulas for "medicinal potions" (with Alchemy proficiency), recognizing herbs with useful pharmacology (with Herb kit proficiency), and so on. On some info checks I will either adjust the DC or give Advantage if they have two or more relevant proficiencies.


Dexterity (Medicine) for performing surgery makes sense. Unless you are a barbarian and then it would be Strength (Medicine) ;)

Strength(Medicine): Good for relocating joints, setting fractures, and the judicious and efficient creation of conditions that require such treatments.

I had a World of Darkness "legbreaker" with dots in Medicine. Good times.

[-Cor-]

I didn't read all of the responses, so not sure if someone posted similar, but one thing I allow my players to do is make a Medicine check (DC base 15 +/- conditionals) to determine someone's current and max hit point totals.

I use this to avoid the meta-gaming of "I'm at 5 HP, heal me!", or "I've got like, 40 HP left, I don't need a heal" that seems to go on in every game.

Basically, it's you looking at someone and seeing how healthy they are or not... so it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility and someone proficient in Medicine should be better at it.

In the heat of battle, it's a little harder, in downtime, it's a little easier, but there you go. Since your Medicine proficient characters tend to be the ones with some healing capabilities on average, it lets them determine the amount of care they need to give someone. My paladin especially loves it since he just has a flat pool to heal from. If he fails the check, he has to guess how many to give out, but most of the time, he makes it.

As far as failing the check is concerned I treat it like any Knowledge check in previous editions or this one... i.e. you either know it or you don't. You can't keep making the check on someone until you succeed, but if the situations changes (new info comes to light, time passes, etc...) you can check again.

Maybe your DM will let you do this.