I ws going to take medicine this time instead of survival, but level 12 and i still havent put points into it, i cant see how it would be better then survival which provides you with a much cheaper metod of healing plus the ability to make poisons. Im playing on hardcoe so they both heal over time anyway. Is there any reason to pick medicine? does it affect the duration of chems.. doctors bags, anything?

Medicine is a very useful skill. It affects how much HP Stimpacks heal, Rads deducted when using Rad-Away. It also helps with Medicine checks and quests where you must play the doctor. I love to make it a very high skilled skill of mine.

I never put any skill points in either on of them, to me stimpacks restore enough health as it is and if I get rad poisoning I can just go to the doctor.

Yea, the Medicine skill for me is a requirement. There's a lot of speech checks you can pass with it and it helps you heal. Must have.

Medicine has its uses, but if you are comparing survival to medicine, id say go for survival. Stimpacks are hard to come by unlike food, besides survival allows you to make other items like turbo as well.
Nothing better than a gecko kebab.

Medicine is a very useful skill, for the reasons Col. Martyr has already stated, and I always favour it over survival, if for no other reason than it has more quest applications. Investing in medicine also allows you to use the perks Chemist and Living Anatomy, I never bother with the latter but the former's quite handy if you use a lot of the likes of Turbo or Steady (incidentally, making Turbo requires science, not survival). And with a medicine skill of 40, you can make your own doctor's bags, which is (I imagine) quite handy in h/c mode.

Also, a pile of stimpaks weighs a lot less than a pile of gecko steaks and nuka-cola. So for me, medicine wins out over survival hands-down.

Turbo requires 50 science.

Medicine is very usefull during combats; If you're playing hard core; without a high medicine skill stimpaks doesn't help a bit. Also only a super stimpak can save you from most dire situations.

Lasty stimpaks are weightless even in h/c

With 100 medicine you get 90hp out of a stimpak. 108 with Arcade as a companion and 129 if you throw Fast Metabolism in there.

Stimpacks are hard to come by? Not that I've noticed.

Medicine is largely for the quests that use it, imo. Having it at 50ish is usually a good place (for quests/doc bags), if you aren't planning/don't want to max it.

I think Medicine is a good and more convinient alternative to Survival. It obviously helps with healing a lot and has the bonus of some skill checks in quests.

Survival is a bit broader though and I think it's a lot more useful. But you have to be down with the micromanaging of crafting to really make the most of it. If you like that stuff then I think Survival is the better choice.

It's better on hardcoe Mode.

Really? I find Medicine a bit better for regular, because Stims heal instantly, whereas food doesn't.

not in hardcoe

That'd be where the common idea is wrong, it is BETTER if they heal over time, say you get -1hp of damage from your maximum 1244 or something, chug 5-10 stimpacks at once and become invincible.

ok, it looked like a dud to me so i never picked it but ill go with it for a change this time then

Medicine could of been beefed up alittle on some bits but for most is pretty decent skill to invest in and does offer a decent perk what allows players to see an enemies health exatly by number not a bar and seeing the enemies damage threshold plus bonus of inflicting 5% more damage to all humans

What does it matter if I get 85 health in 10 seconds or instantly? If I am poisoned, I'm still going to lose the health regardless.

*sigh* They stack in HC mode, in Casual, they don't, they work instantly and will stop at max, but in HC, since they dont work instantly, you dont hit max, and you can stack a huge amount of stims for a powerful constant health regeneration, as in you could fight deathclaws with your bear hands because any time they hurt you your health instantly regenerates.

Okay I get your point now.

Or take survival to 70 early and get rad child. Boost your rads to near deadly and regen 6-8hp/sec. Used this tactic on my hc run and almost never used stims.

The SPECIAL stat loss hurts, but with maxed out Rad Child, you are right hand of God.

I never used stimpacks in either Fallout 3 or New Vegas. In Fallout 3 I slept the bleeding off, and in New Vegas I eat my wounds away.

ha ha ha ha you said stimpacks were hard to come by you are playing new vegas.

I gotta agree, even playing on hardcoe with the difficulty never leaving Normal I find myself never using Stimpacks

but, it just occurred to me, that if youre playing a playstyle different from the Sneaky Shooty, or Sneaky Stabby as I like to call them then you're probably taking alot more damage so perhaps Medicine would be a better skill to pump up if you were walking into piles of enemies swinging your fists or a super sledge

Lets say you keep your med. skill the way it is. You'll go through stims rather quickly with little effectiveness. Now, get your med skill to 80 or 100, not going to be using 8-10 stims for a full or decent heal.