In a game with both mechanical repair skill and medical skills (it's science fiction); would it make sense to put the...

From personal experience I can tell you that you don't need to be empathic to be a good doctor.

It has less to do with direct doctoring and more to do with abstract HP and/or 'fighting spirit' sort of stuff. It gives charismatic characters more presence in fighting scenarios and is an interesting ability to give the stat.

You kind of do to be a GP. Everyone is going to go to the guy who is both on top of his doctoring game and a nice person to be around, while nobody is going to go to the best GP ever who is an asshole.

For surgeons and other specialists it doesn't matter as much because the people you're taking care of is usually unconscious most of the time.

If your game is so much about combat that you're seriously trying to shoehorn in Charisma as a combat stat, you're way better off just focusing on the actual combat stats.

Beyond the obvious problems with immersion and how it's ruined by ham-fisted "ALL STATS MUST BE VIABLE FOR COMBAT!" thinking, why do you even bother with stats if ALL of them are going to be useful for fighting?

At that point you're better off just giving every character a stat called FIGHT and leaving it up to them how they flavor it and what they name their attacks for sake of variety.

With that level of abstraction why are you even bothering with 5 stats?

You're mistaking being good at something with being good at fitting in with other people who do something.

Being charismatic makes you better at advancing in your job, to a point, not better at the job itself, except management where asking people to do stuff without them getting pissy is actually useful.

But then the job isn't your job any more, the people doing the job are your job.

Why are you being so overly critical/slippery slope?

The ability to spur on people to keep fighting is both a combat viable thing as well as being tied very innately to charisma. You're going overboard for no reason here, I'm not sure what got stuck up your ass.

I'd just fluff it as inspiration rather than healing. Temporary stat bonuses and health I think.

Healing should be intelligence.

If the level of realism you're going for is basically "I cast battle shout!" then why are we even having a discussion about it? Just do it. Give everyone cooldown timers while you're at it.

Having medical skill be tied to charisma is still weird as hell. Forcing variety that way is about as smooth as using weapon restrictions based on class, which belongs in videogames.

Bedside manner is overrated. Empathy and nurturing are so much hogwash and have no place in evidence-based medicine.

And the sad thing is, we're seeing a shift toward more charisma-based medicine (i.e. telling the patients exactly what they want to hear and prescribing whatever they ask for, even if it's not good for the patient, just to increase the doctor's feedback rating.) If you want to include that in your game, please remember that it may temporarily placate the patient but is not a substitute for actual expertise.

That's right, hospitals shouldn't be a place of healing. The Hippocratic Oath is for pussies.

Hospitals should exclusively be a place of healing. Hospitals should not be a place of telling people what they want to hear and worrying about everyone's feelings. They're a place for hard truths and the triumph of evidence and reason over bias and emotion.

And though it hasn't held up terribly well with time, the Hippocratic Oath does require physicians to not just do whatever the patient wants. Patients are too dumb to know what's best for themselves. That's why they come to experts when they need help.

I think the reason user is being critical is because saying an inspiring speech doesn't put a leg back on a body. That person may want to fight, but they still won't have a leg. A knife wound on a major artery won't get knitted back together by someone saying "Soldier, soldier." Their intestines won't get put back in or blood stopped from flowing out because you slapped them on their back and told them a funny story.

Yes, charisma can help ignore wounds and help fight on, but those wounds are still there. It takes knowledge and experience in treating the wounds to make someone physically better again. If you still want healing to be tied to comvat, remember that combat medics and First-Aid is a thing. Spray on synth skin, advanced Band-Aids, self-closing staples, etc. Get inventive with the tools that can be used to heal people.

If this was all bait, 7/10 because I responded.

>would it make sense to put the 'repair' skill tied to intelligence but the 'medical' skill tied to Charisma?
Frankly, it doesn't make whole lot of sense, but it's not horrible. As long as your group agrees, it's fine.

Makes no sense.
Add a morale stat that can be healed by charisma. Low morale debuffs, high morale buffs, add in morale attacks.

That's not really a fair comparison. Of course you'd rather go to the doctor who has every possible virtue over the doctor who has less. The question is, would a kindly but incompetent doctor be preferable to a skilled but acerbic one?

And what if you're unconscious at the time? A lot of medicine happens when the patient is not conscious, not present, or otherwise unable to see or hear the practitioner. Charisma means nothing at all in those cases.

Being charismatic however has absolutely zero impact on medical skill
Like you just said, at tem start of your post, carisma is useless without medical knowledge

If it's startrek style space opera, totally.

This sounds like the best solution

It would make sense to have a caveat that lets you use charisma when treating psychological problems, as treating psychological issues requires a great deal of empathy.

en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Healer's_Tale

>The question is, would a kindly but incompetent doctor be preferable to a skilled but acerbic one?
no, definitely not. it may be more enjoyable.
but i don't go to the doctor for enjoyment.

>That's not really a fair comparison. Of course you'd rather go to the doctor who has every possible virtue over the doctor who has less. The question is, would a kindly but incompetent doctor be preferable to a skilled but acerbic one?

Yes. Just ask the homeopathic movement.

Now imagine a world where potions, healing crystals, herbal cleanses, and chakrah purification is *real*.

No, it doesn't make sense. Because it doesn't matter if you're a charming motherfucker, if you don't know how to stick that airway into someone they're going to be worse off for it when you try.

Why tie them together that strongly? Have a Medicine skill, roll it with Intelligence for diagnosis and determining correct treatments, Agility for surgery and first aid, Charisma for keeping patients' morale up, maybe Senses for being able to tell at a glance if someone's unwell, and so on.

If you have to link skills to attributes, maybe medicine would be intelligence, but have some other skill cover bedside manner and nursing. Like Steward in Traveller.

Bedside manner has actually been documented to be the most significant factor in a patient's recovery absent the quality of medical care received.

>Why tie them together that strongly? Have a Medicine skill, roll it with Intelligence for diagnosis and determining correct treatments, Agility for surgery and first aid, Charisma for keeping patients' morale up, maybe Senses for being able to tell at a glance if someone's unwell, and so on.

Shut up with your common sense. This is D&D style skill checks we're talking about here.

No, but if you change 'medical' skill for 'morale', then you're ready to go

>implying a world where that stuff was valid would be exactly the same

The reason the con artists shilling that shit are always friendly is because they have to push a product on you, and when that product is so fucking worthless that its only tangible benefit is a few good feelings it helps when the person selling you those good feelings also gives you the good feefees.

Worst way to justify literal healsluts.

>The reason the con artists shilling that shit are always friendly is because they have to push a product on you, and when that product is so fucking worthless that its only tangible benefit is a few good feelings it helps when the person selling you those good feelings also gives you the good feefees.

You don't even have to be friendly. People come to you looking for that stuff. You just have to be competent enough not to offend them. The worst thing you can do is try to push something they already don't believe in.

I know a lot of hippies and they all pretty much indoctrinate themselves. They didn't need any charming guy using high pressure sales tactics to get them to believe in Reiki healing or tarot card readings.

It's not just hippies buying into it though, i know plenty of women in their late 20s who see their thirties creeping up on them and suddenly clamor for some miracle juice to stay young.

My mom is one of them. And she's a fucking nurse.

But I just used hippies because I know a lot of them, and I've been to the places they go to and see all the other people who use it. All of them came in of their own free will because the kinds of places they go into aren't really advertised and it's not like someone is out there trying to lure you inside with promises. You have to usually know somebody, been in some kind of group where a meme was going around, or have done a google search to look these places/services up.