House Rules For Healing Potions With the Medicine Skill
In response to the Medicine Skill in 5e being next to useless I have created the following interaction with Administering healing potions to make it more viable with strict limitations to keep it balanced I hope. Anyway Imagine there was flavor text here about a medieval surgeon about to administer a shady potion.
How this Works
On your action if you are within 5ft of a willing or unconscious ally you can make a medicine check in or out of combat, The medicine check augments the amount of healing done in the table below.
Limits
- The player administering the potion must be within 5 feet of the reciever of the potion.
- You can only do this specific action once per turn.
- If you are not proficient in the Medicine Skill any roll of 16 or higher is treated as a roll of 15
- If you roll a Nat 1 the potion bottle breaks and the recipient receives no healing.
- If you administer a potion to yourself (and are not proficient) any roll higher than 14 must be treated as a 14. If you are proficient any roll higher than a 17 must be treated as a 17.
- You can only add your proficiency bonus to your dice roll only if you have expertise in medicine.
Use your imagination.
In this entire document I haven't described how the medicine could be applied as would be described by your DM. A nat 20 could be Pulp Fiction injection to the heart or in my party's case, a health potion enema on a stabilized PC on Death's Door.
Healing amounts made with a healing potion and Medicine Checks.
| Potion Level | Base Healing (Rolling < 10 out of Combat ) | Roll < 10 in Combat | Roll = 11-12 | Roll = 13-14 | Roll = 15 | Roll = 16-17 | Roll = 18 | Roll = 19 | Roll = 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Potion of Healing | 2d4+2 | 2d4 | 2d4+4 | 3d4+4 | Potion of Greater Healing | 5d4+8 | 6d4+8 | 7d4+8 | Potion of Superior Healing |
| Potion of Greater Healing | 4d4+4 | 4d4 | 4d4+8 | 5d4+8 | 6d4+8 | 7d4+8 | Potion of Superior Healing | 9d4+16 | Potion of Supreme Healing. |
| Potion of Superior Healing | 8d4+8 | 7d4 | 8d4+16 | 9d4+16 | Potion of Supreme Healing | 11d4+35 | 12d4+35 | 13d4+35 | 14d4+40 (or half your max hp whichever is higher) |
| Potion of Supreme Healing | 10d4+20 | 9d4 | 10d4+35 | 11d4+35 | 12d4+35 | 13d4+35 | 14d4+35 | 16d4+40 | Entire HP pool |