Frontier Doc

A field physician trained to work without hospital, without scanner, and without backup on planets that do not want them.

Frontier docs are generalists by necessity. They diagnose, set, suture, vaccinate, deliver, and bury. The training is uneven and the equipment is whatever will fit in a medkit and survive an atmospheric re-entry. A good frontier doc is the most trusted person in any settlement under fifty families and the second-most distrusted person in any settlement over five hundred.

Rules Reference

Field	Value
Archetype Combinations / Academic	Workable fit. The doc who studies what kills frontier people becomes a credible researcher.
Archetype Combinations / Chaplain	Good fit. The frontier doc and the frontier chaplain share geography and overlapping networks.
Archetype Combinations / Face	Workable fit. Patient-ledger favours are a quiet currency; the Face can spend them.
Archetype Combinations / Officer	Awkward fit. Officer's authority cannot command a sickbed.
Archetype Combinations / Operative	Awkward fit. Operative tradecraft and Hippocratic obligation tend to pull in opposite directions.
Archetype Combinations / Psion	Workable fit. Gene-psi healers are valued on the frontier; the doc-psi has unusual reach.
Archetype Combinations / Sawbones	Best fit. Sawbones chassis plus field-medicine ranks produces the most competent healer in the setting.
Archetype Combinations / Scout	Workable fit. Range plus medical skill makes the scout-doc a long-range rescue asset.
Archetype Combinations / Soldier	Good fit. Combat medic work is a natural extension of field medicine; many frontier docs started in the Legion.
Background Trait / Name	Field Medicine
Background Trait / Trigger	Passive; situational bonus plus once-per-rest re-roll.
Starting Rek	200
Verse Anchor	Frontier Doc

Notes

Background Trait / Cause: Because the frontier doc has learned to work with what is in the kit and the patient on the table; speed matters more than polish and second chances matter most when there is no third one.

Background Trait / Effect: +2 circumstance bonus to Medicine checks made without access to a proper medical facility (no surgery suite, no scanner, no pharmaceutical synthesiser). May stabilise a dying ally (0 or fewer HP, not yet at -10) as a move action instead of a standard action. Once per long rest, may re-roll a failed Medicine check and keep the second result.

Social Hook: Frontier docs keep a ledger of favours. Patients pay when they can, in cash, labour, or silence. A doc who travels knows which settlement owes what and which one is about to need service. They are welcome at the bedside and at the wedding; less welcome at the political meeting and at the customs desk.

Starting Gear: Field medkit, advanced (15 uses; Medicine heal 1d8+3 with proper application), Manual surgical kit (clamps, retractors, bone saw, sutures, two sizes of stapler), Stimulant doses (3; grants +2 to one d20 roll for 1 hour, then -2 to all rolls for the next hour), Personal comm unit (low-power; reaches next settlement or relay), Herbarium kit (12 sample vials of local plant medicines; GM selects which are useful), Diagnostic reference card (handwritten; +2 to Medicine for diagnosis of three common regional conditions), Rek chip, 200 rek balance, Patient ledger (lists every patient treated and every favour owed, in ink)

Trained Skills

Skill	Ranks	Note
Medicine	4	Class skill for Chaplain and Academic; treated as class skill for this profession.
Perception	2	Reading symptoms before the scanner can be powered.
Survival	2	Reaching the patient is half the job.