Coda Ship's Nurse

OK, here's something I've been toying with for a while. Redwood973 posted an ICON nursing overlay a while back, but I haven't seen a CODA equivalent yet. So I thought I'd throw one out for consideration.

Please be warned, this is a work in progress, and the professional abilities are a bit of a mishmash of proper ones, and some I've cobbled together. It's also worth pointing out that I use a psychology skill similar to the one Owen Oulten posted for ICON, since I have never liked the way either ICON or CODA have lumped psychology into medicine.

Comments please.

Coda Nursing Officer.

Prerequisites

Starship Duty
First Aid 4+
Medicine 2+
System Operation 3+
Influence 2+

Attributes.

Perception is the favoured attribute for a nurse. Being a nurse requires an awareness of the needs of others, and of ones environment. Nurses are often the first person to be aware of a problem, and must be skilled observers with a keen eye for detail. A high intellect can also be a useful attribute for a nurse. Though lacking the in depth clinical knowledge of a doctor, nurses tend to assimilate a great deal of medical knowledge, and an experienced nurse may be aware of things a newly qualified doctor is not. Presence is also a useful trait for a nurse, as they are generally required to be part Counselor, and are often the person a patient is most likely to trust.

Nursing Officer Skills

First Aid – Int
Life Science – Int
Medicine – Int
Observe - Per
System Operation – Int

Professional Abilities

Tier 1

Advocate – A nurse is often seen as the calm and supportive face of medicine, who quickly earns the patient’s trust, and can put him at ease with a kind word, or subtle gesture. The nurse automatically gains one speciality of his choice upon acquiring the influence skill. When performing any influence skill test, the nurse receives a +2 bonus to their dice roll.

Field medicine – Although the nurse prefers the luxury of a fully equipped sickbay, Starfleet service often requires the provision of medical care under less than ideal circumstances. When performing first aid or medical skill tests outside of a medical facility, the nurse may reroll one test and keep the better of the results. Field Medicine may only be used once.

Emergency Response – Starfleet nursing officers know that time is of the essence in a crisis. When performing a first aid test, the nurse performs the task in half the base time.

Tier 2

Talk to me – Part medic, part counsellor, the nurse is especially skilled at dealing with patients, be it quieting their fears, or convincing them to comply. When making any influence skill test, the nurse gains a +4 bonus to the result. Prerequisite: Advocate.

Cool under fire – Nurses learn to put their own fears aside when necessary, and are often the calm centre of a crisis. When performing any professional skill involving patient care, they ignore all test penalties from distraction. Prerequisite: Emergency response.

Trust your instincts – Nurses learn to monitor and assess their patients with or without advanced equipment, often spotting little subtleties a tricorder might miss. Whenever the nurse makes a medicine skill test, he gains an affinity bonus equal to half his observation skill, rounded down. Prerequisite: Observation or Perception 6+

Tier 3

Professional Edge – Nurses show extraordinary skill and professionalism in the performance of their duties. When spending courage to enhance a professional skill test, they receive a +5 test bonus instead of the normal +3. Prerequisite: Level-headed.

Nursing Officer professional skills

Athletics, Computer use, energy weapons, first aid, influence, knowledge*, life science, medicine, observe, repair, survival, system operation, unarmed combat

Professional Development.

Starship Science Officer

Ship’s Nurse.

Skills
Computer Use (Retrieve) +2
Energy Weapons +1
First Aid + 3
Influence +2
Inquire +1
Life Science +2
Medicine +2
Observe +2
Psychology +1
Repair +1
System operation (medical) +2

Pick 5: +1 to any professional skill
Pick 1 edge: Friendly, Likeable, Meticulous, Skill focus (compassionate), Skill focus (Keen sight)

Triage Nurse.

Skills
Athletics +2
Computer Use (Retrieve) +1
Energy Weapons +1
First Aid + 4
Influence +1
Life Science +2
Medicine +2
Observe +2
Repair +1
Survival +1
System operation (medical) +2

Pick 5: +1 to any professional skill
Pick 1 edge: Alert, Likeable, Exceptional concentration, Skill focus (compassionate), Skill focus (Keen sight)

Nice work

I'll be "erm" borrowing this one, then. :D

Renny

Hmmm, I just don't know. The writeup is good, but I would prefer to make "nurse" a Professional Development Package, rather than a profession unto itself.

I don't have my PG with me at the moment, or else I'd elaborate further.

Feel free to borrow it, but remember it's just a first pass (well actually third or fourth, I've tweaked it a couple times already) and I have no idea if it's well-balanced or not. I'm especially uncertain about the professional abilities, though I don't think they're too unreasonable.

Sea Tyger, to my mind, it should be treated as an elite profession under Starship Officer, same as Counselor and Doctor. Though I'm sure you could approach it in other ways too, such as a professional development package open to scientists, science officers, or counselors. Or perhaps as a PDP under starship medical officer, which might work quite well (if you want to treat medical officer as a catch-all). YMMV an' all that. :)

Which reminds me, I want to do a version for the scientist profession, and a field medic equivalent as well.

Have added a personal developmet package above for Triage nurse, which is intended as the nursing equivalent of the field medic (think Rapid Response Team nurse). Best name I could come up with for now I'm afraid, but I guess it'll do.

I'm with Sea Tyger on this one. In my games, I run nurses as low-rank Medical Officers (using Nurse-later-Doctor Chapel as an example and justification). However, to each their own. :)

Did you develop personal development packages, or do you just use the doctor ones?

My feeling is that nursing, while sharing certain skills with medicine, also utilises a number of different skills, and has a different enough focus to be a distinct profession. At the least, I'd say nurses deserve their own development packages to distinguish them from the medics.

Of course, I'm a nurse, so I would say that.

Doug, I'm quite interested in a professional opinion on this. Does it looks balanced to you? How about the professional abilities?

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Originally posted by Capt Daniel Hunter
Did you develop personal development packages, or do you just use the doctor ones?

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I've either used the MO ones or done a custom package.

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My feeling is that nursing, while sharing certain skills with medicine, also utilises a number of different skills, and has a different enough focus to be a distinct profession. At the least, I'd say nurses deserve their own development packages to distinguish them from the medics.

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That makes perfect sense to me. I would definitely make use of any Nurse Packages for the Medical Officer elite profession.

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Of course, I'm a nurse, so I would say that.

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I thought that you might... ;)

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Doug, I'm quite interested in a professional opinion on this. Does it looks balanced to you? How about the professional abilities?

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Looks quite reasonable. Remember that all Tier 2 Professional Abilites have Prerequisites, though. Also, you left Knowledge off the skill list before the packages... :)

In fact, on second thought, let me try makign a couple characters with it (once we have the T2 Prereqs) and I might change my mind... :)

Ah, the prerequisities, of course *slaps forehead*. I knew there was something dinky about 'em.

Time to go make some edits. :)

Right, changes made. I'm probably going to have to back and alter emergency response into a custom ability, so that it works in concert better with trust your instincts.

Anyway, I'm sure there are probably other tweaks and small problems with it, but overall I'm reasonably happy. And I think this would be a fun profession to play. :)