Confused: Healing Salves and the Healing skill

what determines one's effectiveness with healing when using Healing Salves (crafted, Herbology 1)?

Does the Heal skill affect only the use of bandages? Does it provide a bonus when healing with Salves? If not, then what does increase the amount od healing done with Salves? Is it Tech Aptitude?

If so that is bad news as Jayna Stiles tech aptitude never gets very high, but good news in that my player character can be a good healer using only purchased Healing Salves, no points in the Heal skill and a Tech Aptitude of 100?

 

Nothing, actually. A healing salve always restores 20 health points, no matter skills, expertise or aptitude.

Yes. One could also mention the effectiveness of healing received via dialogue from NPC doctors, but that's it.

 

well

I'm not sure how I feel about that news. I suppose that means that Jayna Stiles is a pretty poor tech healer and isn't going to get much better as the game progresses as 1) her healing with salves is fixed apparently and she cannot craft any of the higher healing items, and 2) her healing with bandages is limited, since she cannot be trained without the Educator background (which would be redundant since it would require you already being skilled in Heal), and tedious since without training she burns throuh bandages too quickly

on the bright side, Bandages + Heal Skill isn't very effective for healing during combat anyway which means that I could have Jayna and myself using Salves for combat healing without me spending points into Heal, albeit expensively by burning through salves twice as fast

followup question: can Heal + Bandages be used during combat? I've never noticed Jayna do it but I'm wondering how effective it would be vice Herbology + crafted healing items (especially if their heal amount is fixed). Interesting, I'm gonna have to hit the drawing board and brainstorm a new build. I think just planning the character is half the fun

pondering: hmmm, I could drop Gunsmithy 6 & 7 (as my ST isn't high enough to use the Elephant Gun anyway) and Chemistry 1, 2, and 3 and shunt those to Heal and still keep Electric 1-7 and Gunsmithy 1-5, plus 5 in Firearms would still give me a pretty high Tech Aptitude. If the bandages + Heal work well in combat I wouldn't have to sacrifice any more points for say, Herbology schematics

edit: added musing

 

Just use follower editor and Jayna will be able to make every fucking thing you want to.

 

Then why won't she make me my damn breakfast like a good woman should?! Blast the editor and this game for denying me my sexist role-playing dreams!

 

thanks for the advice but I'm not one for modding or editing in Arcanum (or any game for that matter)

im thinking that Herbology and Heal + Bandages are alternatives to each other instead of complements as I thought before.

That is, Herbology gives a character the abiity to heal without using bandages + Heal skill and gets many more options with poison cures, fatigue restorers and even a resurrect, albeit at a higher investment of IN19 (vs IN18) and 7 CPs to max instead of 5

but im thinking that if one was going for a tech character anyway then Herbology would be the way to go unless there was no room in the plan for those 7 points.

as an aside I need to test it again but I'm almost certain that tech aptitude determines how many of an object, like healing salves, you get when crafting

 

Despite sounding like some l33th4x program, follower editor just give capability to distribute follower's CPs wherever you like (considering you removed its lvl-scheme beforehand). Plus the fact that tech is overly underpowered in Arcanum and followers' AI is dumb, tech followers with this editor become more usefull.

 

It doesn't, though it would be an interesting feature if aptitude or expertise did that.