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MethodicalMeat
2007-07-31, 12:49 PM
Alright, I don't have a class chart mapped out yet, but I wanted to run the Surgeon's key ability by the community. Keep in mind that this is only the most basic use of Surgery, and is also not the only thing the Surgeon will be able to do. Suggestions for the Surgery ability as well as suggestions for other class abilties are welcome and encouraged.

HD: d6

Class Skills: Concentration, Craft, Craft (Poisonmaking), Heal, Knowledge (Herblore, Medicine), Profession, Spot

Skill Points at First Level: 2+Int modifier x 4
Skill Points at each Additional Level: 2+Int Modifier

Current Class Ability list:
Surgery (Under Construction)
Surgical Strike (Sneak Attack, perhaps at d4 bonus damage instead of d6?)
Iron Stomach (+4 on saves to resist being nauseated, sickened or otherwise affected by violent or disgusting scenes)


Surgery All surgery checks rely on the Heal skill.
Quick Surgery or Stitch 'em up
The surgeon makes a DC 15 Heal check which requires two full round actions and provokes attacks of oppurtunity. For every point by which the check exceeds the DC, the subject recovers 1 HP. The Surgeon must move into the subjects square and the subject must remain still (i.e., no moving, attacking, spell casting, etc.). Purely mental actions are allowed. The surgeon may only restore HP per surgery equal to his Surgeon level plus his ranks in Heal. The Surgeon may preform quick Surgery on himself, but he does so at a -5 penalty. A result of a natural 1 deals 2d4 points of slashing and piercing damage to the subject. Any other failure deals 1d4 damage to the subject. Subjects with natural armor or applicable damage reduction (i.e., any DR that would prevent basic piercing and slashing damage) cause the Surgeon to suffer a penalty on his heal check equal to the natural armor of DR value. Surgery cannot be performed on a subject wearing armor, so it must be removed before a subject can be worked on. Leather and hide armors can be split open, but this ruins them.
Additional surgery is possible, but risky. Each additional quick surgery perfomed causes the surgeon to suffer a cumulative -5 penalty on his heal checks on the subject (this includes basic uses, such as stabilization and caltrop wound treatment) until the subject has had a chance to heal at least one hit point naturally. Any subject raised from negatives to at least 1 HP is nauseated for 1 minute, then sickened for one hour. Additionally, any subject who recieves the full extent of a Surgeon's skills (max amount of health healed, regardless of how much the subject is missing) is sickened for one hour. A surgeon need not administer the full amount of healing form a surgery check, he may opt to instead heal less than his check would otherwise allow.

Basic Surgery or 'Ere, bite down on this stick
As Quick surgery except: Penalty for additional surgeries drops to -2, max healing per surgery is twice your level plus surgeon's heal ranks. Requires at least 1 hour, if interupted, subject takes 1d6 damage and surgery attempt counts toward cumulative penalty.

Therapy or Don't worry it's all in your 'ead
A surgeon may accelerate ability score healing by two extra points per day. This requires intensive physical or mental therapy, lasting eight hours, and uses up 50 gp worth of exotic drugs and medicines and a DC 25 heal check.


Surgical Strike
If a surgeon studies an opponent for at least three rounds without being noticed as a threat, or attacks while the opponent is helpless or prone, he does 1d4 bonus damage when wielding a light piercing or slashing weapon. This ability only works against creatures with discernable humanoid anatomies, including humanoid corporeal undead (this assumes that the surgeon is also a humanoid). This ability increases by 1d4 every four levels.

Disection
The surgeon may attempt to learn the cause of death of a humanoid corpse by making a heal check. The result of the check deterimes how much the surgeon learns. ((Table for check results forthcoming))
Okay, let the brutal criticism begin!:smalleek:

MethodicalMeat
2007-07-31, 09:48 PM
No brutal critics?
I'm shocked.

Xuincherguixe
2007-07-31, 10:01 PM
"Damn it Jim I'm a Surgeon not a Doctor!"
"Bones, I think you got that backwards."
"You try being the one unnecessarily confrontational for once!"
"Uh bones? That's every episode."
"Well you two are busy being illogical, I'm going to go roll up my character."

Edivad
2007-07-31, 10:16 PM
Actually using the Heal skill to..you know, give people HP back is nice.

Since this is going to a be a base class - that is, 20 levels long, I think we might be a bit more generalist and assume these are Surgeons that also have other useful medical skills...Perhaps Doctor or Medic might be a better name, even though it might not fit with the setting. While "Healer"just doesn't bring Surgery to mind.
With 20 levels, there's lots of class abilities we have to make up, so I'll switch the class from being a specialist Surgeon to being a non-magical healer/primitive scientist specializzed in Medicine.

Anyway, here's some point-by-point suggestions and critics:

Surgery:
I would prefer if a result of 1 caused random damage, like 1d6 - I'm assuming the Surgeon is using something like a dagger, though as he's taking two whole rounds it makes sense that it would deal more damage than failed stab.

You placed limitations on using it on characters with natural Armor or DR. Good.
But how would the Surgeon use surgery on someone covered by full armor? That might be a problem...I'd rule that the ability can only be used on non-armored people.
I'd also give a -10 penalty or something like that if the person you perform normal, non-quick Surgery is conscious while you do it...And maybe force them to make saves against fear or something, but that might be evil.

Surgical Strike:
My suggestion: sneak attack using d4 and requiring a light weapon...however it should work against corporeal undeads, too!
Surgeons are expected to have some knowledge of how to dissect dead bodies, and so they should be good at cutting the undead up.


Iron Stomach:
I'd change the ability a bit to apply to some Fort and Will checks instead. Particularly, saves against vomiting/nausea and terror from being particularly horrible scenes, like entering a room full of mutilated corpses. That would not come up too much though...unless you are playing a horror or Ravenloft campaign!

Suggestions for New Class Abilities:

Drug Use: Learn to brew anaesthetics, antidotes and some other interesting medicines.
Anaesthetics would basically be poisons which cause unconsciousness, with the special effects that if the "victim"is willing he resists them with a Constitution check instead of a Fort save...otherwise they just wouldn't work on experienced adventurers who want to be unconscious when you use surgery on them. Some Surgeons might want to learn to use more lethal poisons, however.
At higher levels, they might learn to brew tonics that have the same effects as some magical potions.

Dissection: Make Heal checks to learn how a creature died, if it was poison, disease, shock or some other things. Higher checks can also tell you other things, maybe, like the physical ability scores of the subject - not like it's very useful now that they are dead, though!
One idea would be to link this to Surgical Strike, so before getting it's benefits they would have to learn the anatomy of the creature by having dissected it. I would assume the internal anatomies of all the major humanoid races would be quite similar, so that wouldn't be much of a problem.

Allow to use surgery to heal ability damage: But maybe they should use drugs/medicines for that...

(maybe)abilities to put grafts and the like on people and do things mad scientists who like medicine might do

Improved Heal Skilll: Character gains a bonus on his Heal skill equal to half his Surgeon level.

Some minor combat abilities: Maybe knowing where to wound someone as to stun him/make him drop unconscious? Or make him bleed a lot? Still, they are not supposed to be Fighters, so they would have the same BAB as a Wizard.
You could have them gain an increased threat range and damage multiplier when using a surgeon's scalpel or dagger to fight...

MethodicalMeat
2007-07-31, 11:58 PM
Ah, thank you Edivad, I like your ideas, I hadn't thought about the armor thing, so that's definetly going in there, the rest sounds good too. Looks like I've got some work to do!
:smallbiggrin:

Hawriel
2007-08-01, 12:20 AM
I wouldnt give a medic back stab at all. That is not fitting to there character.

surgery or any medical treatment should not provoke an attack of opportunety. after all a surgion would not stop to perform surgery at the feat of an enemy, and if they need to do it on themselves well its to late already. can you do it in a combat area? of corese. they would esentialy be prone, there attention would be on their patient, so no dex bonus they can be sneak attacked if they fail a spot check. They would also need a consentration check depending on conditions. for example, a battlefield. DC could be detarmined on what % of HP is lost or if the character suffered from a crit, at 0 HP or in the negatives. This class would be nice for games that use injuries for massive damage and crits.

abilities to take treat or cure desease and poison should be added.

some class skills

knowledge: Biology, medicine, herbalism. profetion: doctor. Consintration, alchemy, gather information (it fits) sence motive, search and hide.

give the class 6 points per level. weapon proff simple.
maybe put in some 5 level presteage classes. combat medic, arcane diognestition...

well I hope I helped constructively:smallsmile:

MethodicalMeat
2007-08-01, 11:02 AM
Well Hawriel, here's the thing. Fluff is great and all, but I need the class to be both fun and functional. The surgery should provoke an attack of oppurtunity because the surgeon is undoubtedly leaving himself open to attack by crouching down and diverting his attention away from any enemies in the area. Next, a person does not have to be in critical condition to recieve surgery, it can be used just to stitch yourself up enough to keep going for another battle or two. The percentage idea is nice, but ultimately too complex for the flow of the game, it would take too much time to calculate percentages and the resulting DC. I'll probably use some of those class skills though.
Cheers, MM.

MethodicalMeat
2007-08-01, 01:45 PM
Updated Surgery a bit, added some new stuff too.

Matthew
2007-08-02, 11:59 PM
I'm confused. Is this for D20 Future?

DiscipleofBob
2007-08-03, 01:06 AM
This is an extremely good find for me, as I have to work on a similar class for the futuristic campaign setting I'm making.

My suggestions:

Do you want to the Surgeon to be able to function as a combat medic? If so, then most of his surgery checks will be near useless in a full combat. Maybe give him some defensive skills to help him not die in combat. More importantly, I think he needs some form of quick healing to help in combat, like at least being able to stabilize someone in negative hit points.

Tor the Fallen
2007-08-03, 01:21 AM
Is this an NPC class? It's very weak, unless I'm missing something.

A cleric 1/rogue 1 with a wand of cure light wounds makes this guy superfluous. It will also have more HP, wear better armor, likely use better weapons, and have more skills.

Surgical strike is absolutely useless. Just give him the sneak attack progression of a rogue, or have him add int to damage. Better yet, let him sacrifice sneak attack dice to inflict status conditions- sickness, fatigue, blindness, nasuea, daze, stun, etc. That could be exeedingly useful, especially if he could hurt corporeal undead with them (slow them down, mainly).

Give him more skill points. 4 wouldn't be amiss, though 6 treads on the bard's and rogue's toes. Note that virtually every class with a d8 or smaller HD gets more than 2 skill points/level, if it doesn't have full casting.

A small pool of int based spells, perhaps cast as the Artificer casts, would be perfect. A few times/day, he could use a spell to patch someone up, hurt something, sterilize his instruments, etc.

More interesting class abilities.
Your class needs a shtick- I think using surgical strike to inflict a variety of status effects would be good, and powerful.
It also needs a suite of mildly useful abilities, and something interesting. Using the Heal skill to patch things up is good. Perhaps make it less rule intensive by removing or simplifyinh all those penalties for failure.

MethodicalMeat
2007-08-03, 02:35 AM
Alright, some clarification seems to be needed.
This is for a standard era D&D game, however, the setting is very low magic, so no clerics, wizards, sorcerers or druids as base classes. I will have these classes, or classes like them, available, but as pretige classes.
One reason that it might seem weak is because it is unfinished, in fact, it's barely started!

Also, the power gaming "Dungeons and Diablo 2" stuff just doesn't do it for me, or my group. I don't really have to worry about people exploiting wizard or cleric characters to make them gigantic, unstoppable tanks of doom and horror. This class will essentially replace the cleric as the primary healer. My intent is not to make the weaker classes more powerful, but instead to replace or severely modify the stronger classes so they are on par with the "weak" classes.

One more thing, I could use more ideas if people have them, I liked the status inflicting idea Tor, I may use that.