As it is, I think FA is a pretty borked skill. So. Sure.

>>I would rather see the skill developed into a more meaningful skill instead of being pushed aside.

What did you think of the idea I tossed out in the teaching thread? Analyzing wounds in combat to learn First Aid? On top of the other traditional methods or new and as-of-yet brainstormed methods? I'm mainly asking the question regarding the hard requirement because Empaths are the only guild, to my knowledge, who have it as a hard requirement and there are no other guilds who are required to train it as a soft requirement. It's Survival skill set and we're Lore primary, so while First Aid certainly fits our bill in terms of what-we-do and who-we-are it falls flat in favor of magical intervention such as the Blood Staunch spell, Fountain of Creation spell, Regenerate cyclic and individual spells to heal internal and external wounds. I literally only bandage to learn it because I have to learn it, which seems awful to admit and I'm sorry! This discussion is really about ideas and thoughts rather than to complain about the skill itself, I promise.

<<so while First Aid certainly fits our bill in terms of what-we-do and who-we-are it falls flat in favor of magical intervention such as the Blood Staunch spell, Fountain of Creation spell, Regenerate cyclic and individual spells to heal internal and external wounds. I literally only bandage to learn it because I have to learn it, which seems awful to admit and I'm sorry!>>

This is pretty much my take on it too. In order for First Aid to be useful to an Empath, it has to do something fundamentally different than the current wound wrapping function for us. Here's an idea that just occurred to me. How about a REDIRECT option that attempts to use First Aid to actually change the location of an existing wound on ourselves? It sounds like an interesting mechanic, but I'm having trouble coming up with "the lore" for it.

Really it would make more sense as a "pick where incoming wounds land on you" thing (besides the ones you transfer...it obviously does that already) instead of moving already-established ones, where you're sacrificing a limb to take a hit for some more important body part. But that starts getting into the realm of making it a combat skill, and my impression is that they don't want to do that with more skills. This makes it hard to think of stuff for First Aid though, since by its very nature it wants to be applied as a "first response" to wound creation and wounds tend to be created in combat.

So every time I think about First Aid I keep coming back to the Bloodsucker system or lodged foreign objects. At this point it stops being Empath-specific though, so I'm not sure how far down that rabbit hole I want to go here.

Thanks,
-Life Sustainer Karthor

>>Being a huge hypocrite here, but I would rather it not be folded into the "more skills in combat" world. I really like the efforts to reduce the "All-Father of skill training" that combat is, so I doubt they would add more to this. I wouldn't even completely care if they removed FA learning from rituals as long as there was a way to actually train it out of combat for guilds that aren't Lore > Survival pools with compendiums.

I wouldn't mind it so much if the compendiums trained well. Especially since the anatomy charts required for higher learning are available only once a year--guildfest sees mid-range and hallow's eve fest sees the high-range. It still wouldn't change the current situation regarding First Aid and its non-scaling usefulness. I'm really on the fence about how I feel about First Aid as a hard requirement for the Empath guild. I completely understand why it would be necessary and yet it becomes completely non-essential as soon as they learn to blood staunch. Nor are they Survival prime skill set, but that's not a catch-all since Barbarians have a Tactics hard requirement and they're certainly not Lore primary. See? This is why I go around and around. I do see First Aid as something a "field Empath" should be able to train in combat. Every time I look at the titles in the Empath category and see Field Surgeon, Battlefront Medic and Battle Empath, I'm reminded that someone else felt it wasn't unusual for healing, even bandaging, to occur in the middle of battle.

> I wouldn't mind it so much if the compendiums trained well.

This sort of thing feels like a natural extension of the research system. Researching an anatomy chart.

I agree with Sijan so much. When I found out that a lore-secondary character of mine couldn't learn from the racial anatomy charts, in spite of a really miserable FA skill at the time, I was confused/baffled/pretty dang annoyed.

I mean, if I'm so great at scholarship that I already know everything on those charts, then apparently I should be so great at scholarship that it supplements my first aid skill and I can bandage gushing bleeders with <100 ranks of FA. No? Huh! ;P

Standard request to have First Aid turn into a more encompassing skill known as Chirgurgy. This skill would allow the treatment of alot more then just your wounds by wrapping them up.

Treatment of diseases, with the addition of rememdies.

Treatment of internal bleeders perhaps turning them into external bleeders.

Quicker and more whole body removal of lodged weapons, perhaps with chances of reducing injuries even more.

More permanent means for wounds.

Additional protection for a body still wounded, for when it is resurrected, for vitality issues and what not.

Charts and Compendiums would still be useful, but there are some of my ideas.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

I'm sure this has been suggested at some point, but how about a system analogous to Arcana/Enchanting where Alchemy creates the potions, remedies, poisons, explosive materials, etc. and First Aid becomes the skill required to make effective use of these items. I can't really think of a good name to rename First Aid to in order to encompass all aspects of this concept... maybe Treatment?

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