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Remulus
2019-04-22, 10:16 PM
Hey all, this is a new archetype I've been working on for the rogue class. I wanted to take a grittier approach to the healing system in 5e, creating a healer that doesn't focus as much on restoring HP, but rather on toeing the line of death. This concept is similar to the grave domain cleric, so I wanted to differentiate the two by avoiding magic entirely. Lastly, most of the mechanics and abilities that this archetype uses are drawn from other existing game features to keep it in-line with the other archetypes.

Without further ado


Adept Surgeon
Starting at 3rd level, you gain the Healer feat and can use the Healer's Kit or a Potion of Healing as a bonus action.

Medical Education
When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you gain proficiency with either the Medicine skill or Herbalism Kit. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check that uses this proficiency.

Learned Physician
Starting at 9th level, when you expend a charge of your Healer's Kit to restore hit points to a creature you may also end one condition effecting it as if by the lesser restoration spell.
Additionally, during a short rest you may spend time assembling herbs, cloth and natural ingredients to regain one charge of a Healer's Kit.

Lethal Anatomist
By 13th level, your peerless knowledge of creatures' anatomy allows you to discern their weaknesses giving you the following benefit.
As an action, choose one creature you can see within 30 feet of you. You immediately learn whether the creature has any damage immunities, resistances, or vulnerabilities and what they are. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once). You regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.

That Others May Live
When you reach 17th level, you can pull life back from the brink of death. As an action, choose one Humanoid or Beast within 5 ft of you who has died within the past minute and expend 2 charges of your Healer's Kit.
If the creature is capable of making death saving throws, it can immediately roll one additional death saving throw. This roll is made with advantage. If the creature succeeds on this saving throw, it is restored to life at zero hit points but is not stable.
If the creature is not capable of making death saving throws, the creature is immediately restored to life and falls unconscious.
A creature restored to life by this feature suffers one level of exhaustion, and cannot benefit from this feature again until it has completed a long rest.


Comments and critiques welcome :)

Arkhios
2019-04-22, 11:03 PM
I would (and do) avoid wording so that a class or subclass gains a feat, personally.

The default assumption in 5th edition is that feats are Optional Rule. In its current form, the Adept Surgeon raises a question in a game where feats are not allowed: "Do I get the feat or don't I?"

Rather, I would simply rewrite the key parts you want from Healer feat and word it fully as a class feature for the combat medic. Even if it was word for word same as the feat. Omitting any mention that these abilities came from a feat you prevent any doubts whether you get them in a featless game or not.


That said, the archetype seems fine otherwise.

Potato_Priest
2019-04-23, 12:52 AM
Rather, I would simply rewrite the key parts you want from Healer feat and word it fully as a class feature for the combat medic. Even if it was word for word same as the feat. Omitting any mention that these abilities came from a feat you remove any doubts whether you get them in a featless game or not.


Would that not allow one to also take the healer feat for double the uses?

Arkhios
2019-04-23, 02:09 AM
Would that not allow one to also take the healer feat for double the uses?

Double the uses of what, exactly? Assuming the quote below hasn't been altered by the Internet (I'm AFB myself so I can't check its accuracy at the moment), taking Healer feat would be redundant, as the feat doesn't have anything that would stack with itself. And any expendable uses for a Healer's Kit come from the kit itself, not from the feat.




When you use a healer's kit to stabilize a creature, they also regain 1 hit point
As an action, you can spend one use of a healer's kit to tend to a creature and heal 1d6+4 hit points to it, plus a number of hit points equal to the creature's maximum number of Hit Dice. That creature can't regain hit points in this way again until they finish a short or long rest.



Also, do note that the feat also confers a restriction to how often one creature can regain hit points in this way.

I'd say it's be perfectly fine to allow Combat Medic use the second bullet point as a bonus action, in the same vein with other Cunning Actions.

Besides, a Battle Master can already take the Martial Adept feat to gain two more maneuvers and 1 more use per short rest. So, even if the feat did grant some additional uses, it would hardly be broken.

MagneticKitty
2019-04-23, 11:03 AM
I like the flavor of it. I think it could have made a great reverse doctor (like kabuto from naruto) for more than one ability (uses medical knowledge for offense) maybe as the first defining ability which is usually something that defines the subclass.
Maybe some more utilization of poisons, maybe some special custom poisons they only know thanks to their medical training

Maybe look at the spellless ranger variant

I think I'd make it mostly herbalism kit, bonuses for crafting potions and poisons and using on others or self for bonus action

Remulus
2019-04-23, 11:26 AM
Thanks for the feedback all!
To address the points that have been raised, I gave the archetype the healer feat specifically to avoid redundancy. I originally wrote this after making a thief who had the healer feat. I realised that the healer feat represents the only non-magical healing system in the game and so didn't want to tread on it's toes introducing new mechanics.


The default assumption in 5th edition is that feats are Optional Rule. In its current form, the Adept Surgeon raises a question in a game where feats are not allowed: "Do I get the feat or don't I?"
This is a fair point. I've never played with a DM who doesn't allow feats, and since feats are AL legal I just operate under the assumption that this is permissible. How about if feats are not allowed the medic can instead restore 50 HP at-will ;)


I like the flavor of it. I think it could have made a great reverse doctor (like kabuto from naruto) for more than one ability (uses medical knowledge for offense) maybe as the first defining ability which is usually something that defines the subclass.
Maybe some more utilization of poisons, maybe some special custom poisons they only know thanks to their medical training
I wanted to avoid this variant becoming the Assassin, hence why i pushed the only offense ability to 13th level. Even then I re-tuned that ability many times before settling on the Monster Slayer feature. Originally I had it do something like bleeding damage equal to half sneak attack damage. But I pushed the archetype in more of a support-role direction.

Potato_Priest
2019-04-23, 11:26 AM
snip

Huh, I remembered the book saying something more like "once you gain hit points from this feature, you can't gain them from this feat until you take a long/short rest". If that's the text though that's perfectly fine.

Arkhios
2019-04-23, 12:21 PM
Huh, I remembered the book saying something more like "once you gain hit points from this feature, you can't gain them from this feat until you take a long/short rest". If that's the text though that's perfectly fine.

Finally had the chance to check it out from the book. It seems the text I found had already been afflicted by the Internet (a shame, really).

It seems your memory was more accurate, as the book does mention that the restriction does indeed refer to hit points regained from the feat.

Then again, I still think that – in the light of how Battle Master and Martial Adept interact with each other – it's not that bad if you can affect one target twice with Healer's Kit, rather than only once, if you also take the feat. That is, of course, if you worded the sub class feature so that you replace "feat" with "this feature".

Potato_Priest
2019-04-23, 09:29 PM
Finally had the chance to check it out from the book. It seems the text I found had already been afflicted by the Internet (a shame, really).

It seems your memory was more accurate, as the book does mention that the restriction does indeed refer to hit points regained from the feat.

Then again, I still think that – in the light of how Battle Master and Martial Adept interact with each other – it's not that bad if you can affect one target twice with Healer's Kit, rather than only once, if you also take the feat. That is, of course, if you worded the sub class feature so that you replace "feat" with "this feature".

That is really a shame, that internet wording was a lot better since it didn't interfere with the first part of the feat.

If we really wanted to, we could use the internet-corrupted wording for the homebrew class feature version, since that would also prevent stacking with the feat.