First Aid usable in combat?

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Is such a thing possible? As far as I know, skills cannot be used in combat (not from the skilldex, anyway). Is this hardcoded into the game?

It seems to me like this would go a long way toward differentiating First Aid and Doctor.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Aside from not being allowed to use in combat, First Aid costs thirty minutes, Doctor costs an hour; around 360 / 720 combat turns respectively.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Aside from not being allowed to use in combat, First Aid costs thirty minutes, Doctor costs an hour; around 360 / 720 combat turns respectively.

True. I guess I’d change it so that using First Aid takes around 20 seconds (essentially, it would cost your maximum AP to use and would skip your next turn). Or maybe there’d be a better way to do it that takes into account how many action points you have.

 

[Gizmojunk]

What's wrong with using stimpaks?

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Nothing, I was just thinking it would be cool to have the option to use First Aid in combat. I think it would make First Aid a useful skill instead of just being Doctor but worse.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Nothing, I was just thinking it would be cool to have the option to use First Aid in combat. I think it would make First Aid a useful skill instead of just being Doctor but worse.

It isn't Doctor but worse. Doctor is a career path. It requires dedicated skill point expenditures to make it useful. First Aid is open to all, and is improvable by skillbooks; leaving the skillpoints available for use on the other (harder to train) skills.

Doctor by itself takes three hours to exhaust, and is (relatively) a waste to use on mundane injuries.
First Aid is cheap; uses half of the time to treat the most common health issue.

Both together compliment each other by affording the player a total of six chances to heal using just four and a half hours, where three of those attempts can be used on seriously (crippling or blinding) injured PC/NPCs —healing hitpoints as a bonus to removing their impairing conditions.

There is even a use case for using choosing First Aid over Doctor in places that are highly radioactive; allowing them to leave the area sooner... and to choose using Doctor only after they are safe, and not being further radiated.