The Medic / Video Games

• ARK: Survival Evolved has a Daeodon and a Snow Owl and they both have the ability to heal players and other tamed creatures.
• In the first two Commandos games, it is usually the Driver who carries the medipack. When he's not available, it's another commando who carries it. The sequels and their inventory system made every commando able to carry and use medipacks.
• Dragon Quest:
  • In Dragon Quest II, the Prince of Cannock and the Princess of Moonbrooke know curative spells, unlike the Hero who learns no magic whatsoever.
  • Dragon Quest III: The Sage learns all curative and buffing spells, and he heals even more effectively than the Cleric.
  • Dragon Quest IV:
    • During the first chapter, Healie -a Healslime- provides healing abilities for Ragnar, who has no magical abilities of his own.
    • Meena acts as the healer in Chapter 4, plus she joins party before Kiryl in Chapter 5.
  • Dragon Quest V: For most of the game, the Hero is the only party member who learns healing spells.
  • Serena in Dragon Quest XI. While other party members can learn healing spells, she is the one who specializes in them, while also sporting a large number of buff and protection spells.
• Sometimes played straight and subverted in Jagged Alliance 2. While some of the hire-able mercenaries with a high medical skill stat had relatively weak weapons, or an average marksmanship skill stat, some had either a good weapon to back them up, good marksmanship, both, or a high wisdom stat that makes marksmanship raise beyond that of dedicated sharpshooters in a in game hours of shooting crows. Nearly every medic also has a decent dexterity stat (as it is required to be a decent medic) that helps their accuracy slightly.
  • Patch 1.13 makes medics stand out even more. Any merc can learn medical skill, but those with Paramedic or Doctor talent can set up field hospitals and perform surgery, which speeds up healing.
• Battlefield:
  • The Squishy Wizard part of this trope is subverted in Battlefield: Bad Company, where the one class that can heal others actually has a light machine gun, compared to the other classes' relativly small arms (assault rifles, shotguns, and SMG's.)
  • Also subverted in Battlefield 2142. EA decided to merge some of the Battlefield 2 classes together, and that game's Assault and Medic classes were combined into the Assault kit in 2142.
    • And AGAIN in Battlefield 2. The Medic class was basically an Assault soldier, but trades his assault rifle's under-barrel grenade launcher and heavy armor for healing capability (Both Assault and Medic classes within a faction use the same base rifle).
    • The Assault's Medic Unlock Gun, the Voss however is nothing to slouch at. It is one of the most popular choices for an unlock compared to the Baur Rifle which is seen as tricky to fire.
  • And the Medic in the original Battlefield 1942 was basically 'Assault Class who can self-heal'. Nope, not overpowered at all there.
• In Phantasy Star IV, you get various Medics. Raja was an old, green-skinned alien priest with a weird sense of humor, but also the straightest example. Rika was The Heart, but also a Fragile Speedster Cat Girl with disemboweling claws — she counts because she's the first real healer your party gets and remains competitive at it till the end. Demi, who came later, matched or exceeded Rika at healing, but was also a gun-toting Robot Girl who could install a Forgotten Super Weapon into her body.
  • Main character Chaz has the entire spectrum of single-target healing spells, several status-effect removing spells, and the lower level revival spell. In addition to being a swordfighter and capable of shooting lasers from his hands.
• Republic at War: Medical droids heal nearby infantry.
• The inevitable Final Fantasy examples:
  • Of course, White Mage and White Wizard from the very first game. They're also capable of wielding hammers and maces, harming the undead and have access to the Holy Hand Grenade, thus making them probably the closest parallel to the D&D clerics of any FF game's healers.
  • Final Fantasy II's... unique approach to character growth means that of the main party, anyone could be a healer (or all of them, all at once), but of the numerous Guest Star Party Members, the one that qualifies most for it is Crutch Character Minwu the White Wizard, astonishingly powerful staff-wielding mage in general and healer in particular. Unusually for this series, Minwu's a he.
  • Rosa from Final Fantasy IV. White Mage, White Magician Girl and Team Mom.
    • Also, both Rydia and Porom, before their Plot-Relevant Age-Up and Heroic Sacrifice respectively.
  • For the first 40% or so of Final Fantasy VI, Terra and Celes alternate in this role, being the only two natural magic users in the game. Returner leader Banon also joins your party briefly, along with his amazing ability to heal everyone for free. Later on, everyone gets the power to use magic, so combat roles tend to become fuzzy at best, but most parties still include at least one designated healer (usually whoever has the worst offensive ability).
  • Given the Materia system of Final Fantasy VII, Mysterious Waif Aeris Gainsborough is the closest thing the game has to a dedicated healer. Whereas everyone else's Limit Breaks are super-attacks, Aeris' Limit Breaks exclusively consist of healing, curative, empowering, or protective effects. This may have something to do with her being the last surviving Cetra, capable of communing with The Lifestream of the Planet.
    • Note that Yuffie Kisaragi later gains a healing Limit Break.
  • Dagger/Garnet of Final Fantasy IX. The Heart, Mysterious Waif, and meekly-Rebellious Princess. There was also Eiko Carol, a Bratty Half-Pint.
  • Final Fantasy X's Yuna is your primary healer through the early sections of the game, as she is the only character that starts with White Magic. Like Dagger, she's meek and becomes a rebel, eventually.
    • Qualifiers: one, the Sphere Grid, which a few items help you traverse in vast, screaming gallops, meaning you can make any character into anything. Two, Yuna has the summons, which potentially makes her all in all the most purely powerful character in the game offensively. Three, healing items are powerful and in some cases plentiful, so anybody can become a healer for one turn. Four, Rikku had access to even better items of all kinds including healing. Give any character her Use ability and an item with the Alchemy property and you have an ad hoc healer; an item with Alchemy and Auto-Phoenix combined with 99 Phoenix Downs (which you can buy) on any charater gives them the ability to bring you back from anything short of a one-hit Total Party Kill without even using a turn. Long story short, with a little work, Yuna can be your DPS and a character of your choice, likely Rikku, the healer.
  • In addition to the White Mage, Final Fantasy XI has Scholars, Dancers, Red Mages and Blue Mages, and Summoners. A White Mage subjob is normally required for these jobs, but Dancer is an exception. The healer priority gets changed at the higher levels, where the TP-burn mentality is in full swing, as Red Mages suddenly get the top spot due not to having a stronger healing ability, but because they can Cast from Hit Points and be more efficient healers... which results in a "Red Mage or bust" train of thought, though less stupid parties do invite other healers when possible.
  • Medic is one of the Paradigm roles in Final Fantasy XIII, and as you might expect deals in restorative spells. Hope and Vanille are the best Medics, though Lightning also has Medic as a primary role (and Fang can learn the same Medic spellset as Lightning).
• Marle/Nadia of Chrono Trigger. Unlike Dagger and Yuna, she's a fiery chick (though not literally), and a straight-up Rebellious Princess. She is the first character to have a healing spell, and remains the strongest healer to the end. If Marle isn't in your party, Frog or Robo have to serve. Ironically, Chrono has the power to Revive fallen friends.
  • It's worth noting that Marle never acquires a single tech mass heal power, severely cutting to her utility later in the game when almost all attacks are multitargeting. Really, all the good healing available without maxing stats in the game comes from dual techs. Frog/Marle Double Cure is ok, but Slurp Kiss from Frog/Ayla is actually about equal costing in power just a fraction of Double Cure, and Frog/Ayla is a better pair offensively. Once Aura Whirl starts to lose efficiency, Marle's utility is diminished.
    • It doesn't take TOO many Magic Tabs to make Robo's Heal Beam effective enough that you don't need to worry about using healing Dual Techs. In fact, at maxed Magic, it is powerful enough to heal for over 900 every time.
    • In the endgame, Megalixers take the stage as the primary source of healing. And since you need Ayla to get an infinite supply....
• Get in the Car, Loser!: Sam is the party's main healer due to having access to the Support abilities of equippable trinkets, most of which include healing.
• Raine Sage of Tales of Symphonia. Kratos, Zelos, and Regal all also have healing abilities, but Raine is the Medic of the lot.
  • Though Raine subverts the pacifism aspect of the trope, being one of the more cold and pragmatic members of the party. Notably, the teens have to do some arm-twisting before she is willing to heal Sheena, an apparent enemy.
• Mint, from Tales of Phantasia, does next to nothing but heal Cless.
  • She even wears a nurse outfit, for crying out loud... however, she's VERY good at what she does.
• The Star Ocean games have their own healers as well: Millie, Rena and Noel, Sophia, and Sarah respectively in numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4.
• Estelle in Tales of Vesperia is clearly the Medic of the party, both plotwise and gameplay-wise (although arguably she's the actually the least effective healer because of the balance issues of spells with cast times). In a subversion of the Squishy Wizard aspect, she's actually the character with the most defense and can choose to use a sword. Well, her melee attacks are pretty awkward like throwing toy hammers at people. Slightly subverted in that with the right skills she learns the Holy Rain spell which blasts everything on the screen in a manner more associated with Black Magician Girl Rita. Estelle's mystic arte is also the only one that heals plus like Mint she too has her own nurse outfit.
• Tales of the Abyss evades this trope by providing almost every character with a self heal, and two characters who are both very powerful healers while being very different. Tear has powerful offensive 'holy' style magic and AoE healing with some wicked knife artes, while Natalia has most of the 'buff' spells, powerful single target heals, and a wide range of bow skills.
• Tales of Hearts has an odd male example in Hisui Hearts, whose personality runs very contrary to that of most of the other healers in the series.
• In Resident Evil 0, Rebecca Chambers is the only medic in S.T.A.R.S. She's either already earned her medical doctorate, or she's still working on it. During her various zombie-overun field missions, all she can do is mix herbs together to make more effective healing items. And being the smallest controllable character in any Resident Evil game, she's understandably the weakest as well.
  • In the books, as well as being the medic, she's an accomplished biochemist. Not everyone found this annoying.
  • Resident Evil: Outbreak has two medics — Cindy Lennox, who specializes in herb hoarding and usage; and George Hamilton, who can turn herbs of various combinations into pills. When File #2 came out, their abilities were diverged further, with Cindy gaining an item to let her heal partners' bleeding and George being made into a Combat Medic thanks to his new ampoule shooter.
• Ness from EarthBound (1994), who is your only psychic healer for half the game. At the endgame, he has a huge capacity of PP, and Lifeup Omega, which refreshes your entire team at once. But by then you've also got Prince Poo, whose edge over Ness is the fact that he can revive reliably via Healing Omega, and he has Magnet to replenish what he uses up when his involvement isn't necessary. It's a toss-up, really.
  • Lucas of Mother 3 is a straighter example. He's more focused on positive support and healing whereas Kumatora is more into negative support and offense.
    • Both Ness and Lucas also have the most powerful physical attacks in their parties (not to mention powerful - though PP inefficient - multi-target psychic attacks).
• The Medic from Team Fortress 2 comes across as sadistic and weird, which makes him fit right into the setting of the game.
  Medic: Eins, zwei, drei- ugh, I do not zhink we brought enough body bags...
  • Also, in something of a subversion, TF2's Medics aren't all that squishy, either. Although they're a bit low on health (but not the lowest), they have passive health regeneration, they're the second-fastest class, and that seemingly harmless syringe gun is surprisingly useful at close ranges, provided that you have good aim. The unlockable Blutsauger^note means "Blood Sucker" in German. leeches health from enemies each time it hits (though it reduces the regular health regeneration). As a character, he subverts the trope too. He considers healing to be an unintended (but useful) side-effect of his real work.
  • The Engineer of TF2 can also fill a similar role, through his Dispenser buildings that replenish health and ammo.
• The Medic from Team Fortress Classic subverted the Squishy Wizard part of this trope. He had a powerful weapon, great speed, and self-regenerating health and was generally the best offensive class. This, combined with his ability to fling himself around the map with concussion grenades, lead to a bizarre situation where the Medic was usually off running flags, rather than actually healing. Since he's the only class that can heal, though, he gets the title by default.
• Dirty Bomb:
  • Aura is one of two Mercs unlocked for everybody, for free. She carries the basic Defibrillators that revive at close range, and can deploy Health Stations for fixed-location area of effect healing. She's also the fastest Merc in the game - and the weakest, with a paltry 80 HP. She's mostly viable for area defense and getting crowds back up quickly, with speed and her shotgun to flank enemies.
  • For thirty thousand credits (or in the Starter Pack), one can acquire Sawbonez. He has average speed and 110 health, and submachine guns for short to mid range combat. Setting aside his defibrillators, Sawbonez can throw around Large Medpacks to quickly and completely restore teammates' health on the move and across large gaps. By far the most played medic in competitive settings, Sawbonez finds utility on defense and offense alike, keeping his teammates alive and around him.
  • Sparks, for 50K Credits, gets you a medic with speed and health identical to Aura. However, Sparks is limited to Machine Pistols for her primaries - weapons that would be secondaries on any other Merc. Her Medpacks are also underwhelming, as they only regain 50 HP and restart natural health regeneration. For her trouble, Sparks uses an unlimited-ammo sniper rifle that can revive teammates from afar, and insta-kill most enemies with a headshot. In fact, a Broken Base exists over whether or not her sniper and/or Medic abilities are under or over powered, and is a heated point of contention amongst the DB community; however, it's generally agreed upon that Sparks + another Medic make an amazing combo.
  • For aggressive players, Phoenix is a good option. For 50K credits, you get a Merc 10HP weaker and slightly faster than Sawbonez, with a Healing Pulse that acts as a Sawbonez medpack to everyone it hits. Phoenix can also defibrillate to revive and has a self-revive ability, allowing him to pick himself back up onto his feet.
    Phoenix: [On self-revive] "Again, I am my own savior!"
• Star Wars: Battlefront has the "Pilot" class. The CIS and Empire variants are ridiculously overpowered, with large supplies of health and ammo kits, the ability to build turrets, and frickin' grenade launchers.
  • There are also Engineers for the non space battle maps. They can also drop health/ammo kits, and repair turrets or other broken machines, and have an obscenely powerful shotgun.
• Many Real-Time Strategy games feature medics, such as the Terran Medic from StarCraft and the Monk/Priest from the Age of Empires series.
  • World in Conflict however has no dedicated medic unit. Instead, one of the squad members in the basic Infantry unit is a medic, able to heal his teammates and infantry of other squads.
  • Age of Mythology makes healing a matter of the gods. Only the Egyptians get healing by default from their priests and pharaoh, the other factions rely on myth units, god powers or god-related upgrades for healing. Depending on what minor gods you choose you might not get any means of healing your units at all.
  • Starcraft II retired the medic unit except in the single-player campaign, replacing it with the Medivac dropship, which can fly troops to the battlefield and then heal them from the air. This was done because medics, being on foot, couldn't keep up with jetpack-wielding reapers, limiting their effectiveness.
  • Medics appear in Command & Conquer, but oddly for only one side. The Allies in Command & Conquer: Red Alert get one, while the Soviets do not; GDI in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun get one, Nod does not.
  • Warcraft III has plenty.
    • The Humans have the Priest unit, with a Heal spell, and the Paladin hero, whose Holy Light can heal non-undead or damage undead.
    • Orcs have Troll Witch Doctors, which can't directly heal, but can drop Healing Wards, and Shadow Hunters, which have Chain Heal.
    • Undead get Obsidian Statues, which restore health and mana passively. Death Knights can heal undead units (or damage non-undead) with Death Coil.
    • Night Elves have Druids of the Claw with Rejuvenation, a heal-over-time, and the Keeper of the Grove, with the area-effect heal Tranquility.
  • Since all the units in Total Annihilation are giant robots, any mobile unit with a Nanolathe (construction units and the Commander) can be the Medic .
• The Golden Sun series has... a few. Water adepts make natural healers. While technically, with the right djinn, anyone can heal (in fact, when you first meet Mia, Isaac has more powerful heals), but Mia is the best choice for primary healer. In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Piers, an arrogant, Really 700 Years Old Bishounen, is the only good healer (until you meet up with the group from the original game, which includes Mia).
  • In total, there are 5 medics if you stick to base classes (i.e. all Djinn of the default element. Felix and Issac (weaker healing psyenergy with Revive ability), Piers (Stronger healing psyenergy but no revive ability), Mia (Same psyenergy as Piers as well as some weaker ones that affect the whole party), and Jenna (Slightly weaker versions of Mia's, and no single-character spells.) Ivan, Sheba and Garet all get party-healing psynergy with the right djinn combinations though.
    • Mia is always the best healer though. With the right combination of equipment, she can restore over 800 hp to each party member every turn.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has six assuming everyone is kept in their base classes. Matthew, like his father(Issac) and uncle(Felix) starts as a strong single-target healer but later only has the Revive spell going for him. Fellow Venus Adept Himi is more utilitarian due to her much higher psynergy pool and not needing any set Djinn to use Revive. Karis' unique Fresh Breeze spells are the weakest of all healing spells, but being multi-target and not requiring any set Djinn makes them extremely practical. Sveta has access to a unique line of single-target healing spells that are twice as strong as Matthew or Himi's as well as status-restoration. Rief has the strongest single-target healing spells, the strongest multi-target healing spells, and status-restoration. He tends to be put on the sidelines for being less practical than Karis early on, but like his mother(Mia) certain equipment setups allow for 800 hp to be restored to the entire party in a single casting. Amiti is largely identical to Piers.
• While several people know heal spells in Super Robot Wars Original Generation, the best one is Russel Bagman, who learns both healing spells, and is one of the best support players in the game. A Repair module can be equipped on any mech to make it a medic.
  • In other SRW titles, the party gets dedicated heal/resupply units, like Aphrodite A, Boss Borot, or the Methuss.
• Princess Peach in Super Mario RPG. The only alternative is Mallow, but he's more of a Red than a White.
• In the games, some Pokémon learn moves to heal other members on the party, like Heal Bell and Arometherapy, which heal the Status Effects. Others like the Chansey line and Miltank have the moves Softboiled and Milk Drink to heal others outside battle.
  • Generation 5 gave us our first true Pokémon that would count as the Medic, Alomomola. Two of its Abilities can heal itself while the third heals its teammates of status conditions like Sleep and Paralysis. Its moves include Heal Pulse, Protect, Wish, Safeguard, Helping Hand, Wide Guard, Healing Wish, Pain Split, and Endure. Even if you know nothing about Pokémon, this should give an idea of how Alomomola works.
  • There is also Audino, which play a similar role but on land instead. They also function as a Piñata Enemy.
• Tokyo Mew Mew never needed a medic in-series, but once it got a licensed PlayStation game, Ikumi Mia was commissioned to design one. The result was Akaii Ringo, a cutesy young penguin-girl whose powers come from the Mew Aqua instead of having special adaptable DNA. She uses apple-shaped maracas and, like the team's hyper kid Bu-ling, calls everyone "big sister". All in all, not the Team Mom.
• Persona:
  • Persona 3: While several SEES's Persona-users know healing spells, Yukari Takeba often ends up as the designated Medic whenever she's in the party, as she's the only character who learns both party-wide healing spells and revival spells. She even lampshades her role in some incidental dialog towards the beginning of the game.
  • Persona 4: Yukiko Amagi tends to serve as the team medic whenever she's not scorching the enemy with powerful fire magic, thanks to having the best healing spell in the game (Salvation, which fully heals all party members and removes status effects). Teddie's healing spells aren't quite as powerful, but he also makes for an excellent medic in a pinch.
  • Persona 5: Morgana is the best medic on your team, since he learns nearly every healing spell in the game, with Makoto Niijima also being a good team medic in a pinch.
• In Planescape: Torment, Fall-from-Grace is the only healer you can get in your team, making her quite useful. Her healing magic is even glowy. On the other hand, she is all but useless as a fighter and doesn't have many offensive spells.
• The playerbase of City of Heroes is divided on this issue. New players who import mindsets from other games assume that the Empathy powerset, which focuses on restoring HP, is an absolute must for team success, and they insist that Defenders — who can choose it as a primary powerset — should always have it. Those more familiar with the game understand that the Defender Archetype is not your typical Healer Class. Its purpose is loosely, "keep allies from dying," and all its myriad possible abilities work toward this in some fashion. Yes, this includes making enemies dea- er, "arrested" if need be, but more often involves Status Buffs and debuffs. These proactive options are generally more effective than Empathy, so the more experienced players tend to look down on the ignorant Empathy-demanders.
  • As Empathy is exclusive to the hero side of the game, villain players are very used to playing without a dedicated healer on their teams and look even more down on hero players who will not do anything without an Empathy healer standing by.
    • And the drama only got worse when the developers gave Pain Domination, an "evil" healing set, to the villain players.
  • It should be noted that the Controller Archetype on the hero side can choose Empathy as a secondary powerset, and thus serve as the "literal" Medic of a team despite being the "Mezzer" class. But furthermore, anyone — including villains — can pick the small Medicine pool of abilities as a tertiary set of powers.
  • The real issue is when players who are used to serving as this trope in other MMOs come here and think that turning 'Healing Aura' on automatic and following the tank- that's it- is contributing to a team. Also that, especially in higher levels, healing very much pales in comparison to Status Buffs: stacked buffs make characters godlike. Working as intended. We don't need your puny heals here.
    • Or more generally, the issue is that avoiding the need for a "balanced party" seems to have been an early design goal. Party competence isn't so much about organizing a group of people to fill preassigned roles as being able to figure out what the people with you are going to be doing and find a way to support them in it. This can make pickup groups either infuriating or interesting. Or both.
• Charlotte from Trials of Mana is the only character to possess healing magic for every single class of hers, and remains by far the best at it throughout the entire game. Her dark-aligned classes can also do decent damage with summons, while her light-aligned classes focus more on party buffs. Strangely enough, the only two other characters to learn healing magic, Duran and Kevin, are otherwise devoted physical powerhouses.
• The Medic unit in StarCraft: Brood War. Which revitalised infantry, since a bunch of medics made them much less squishy.
• Subverted in MS Saga: A New Dawn. Most of the characters are competent healers. However, Flitz, the machanic, happens to be a loudmouth, insensitive jerk with bad fashion sense and an annoying voice. He also tends to be really, really good at shooting stuff, depending on the particular mech setup he's given. Also, although Tristan is generally used as the tank, he gets the best healing spell in the entire game, which may or may not turn him into the Medic at the end game. The character who the player would be most likely to assume to be the Medic and White Magician Girl, personality-wise, instead is used as a buffer/de-buffer, and has powerful ranged attacks as well. Aeon is also very good at healing, but since she can't be used for a good amount of time from the middle to the final dungeon, it only makes a game even harder.
• Etrian Odyssey has a Medic Class, whose abilities are primarily steeped in healing. The Protector class can also use low-level healing spells if sufficiently levelled up. In Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City, healing is mostly divided between the Princess/Prince class (who wields a number of HP and MP-restoring effects in addition to party buffs) and the Monk class (who has scads of instant heals and status-curing moves, in addition to some fairly impressive martial arts skills).
• Any Roguelike inverts this by requiring all classes to become proficient at healing. You won't last long otherwise. In ADOM, choosing to play as a healer merely determines your class powers and starting skillset. They also gain double HP regeneration, making them effective melee fighters. A trollish healer born under the sign of the Candle is a Wolverine-class Healing Factor-equipped club-wielding melee fighter, and thus enormous fun.
• Alex Nolan from Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2. As the medic, he can fully heal squad members (whereas you or your sqaudmates can only restore a downed squadmate's condition back to red), and is the only person that can heal the player. However, he is only armed with a P90 sub-machine gun, and it thus unsuited for medium to long range engagements.
• Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood:
  • Cream the Rabbit serves this role. She is incredibly good at restoring the entire party's PP (as well as hers, and in her second and third levels of this ability, can restore more than it costs. ), can make the opposing party miss a lot more, she's the only character who can revive others, and she can heal on the off chance that your entire party isn't doing good.
  • By alternative, Tails has an ability that replenishes HP and PP simultaneously at deployment and for the next three rounds, and it STACKS! He also packs an armor debuff, an attribute debuff for organics and machines alike, a defense buff for one person, and a buff that grants the target an extra action, AND he acts twice compared to Cream's once. He's more of a Green than a White, though, but it's a good idea to have both for when the team needs to split up. Oh, did we mention Cream's optional and missable? He tends to be overshadowed though, given that he can only heal one ally at a time whereas Cream can heal the whole party, even more so if you bond her with Ferox to have her succeed in all her Action Commands.
• Knights of the Old Republic averts most of this by having the medics (read: people with Force powers) also being the best melee combatants in the party. Except for Jolee, who might count as a straight example.
• Suikoden II features the main character's Bright Shield Rune. The primary purpose of the rune is to heal and protect, and it does a better job of it than any other rune in the game, making the main character the de facto healer for the game. Which is a shame, because he eventually becomes extremely powerful. The opposite the Bright Shield Rune, the Black Sword Rune, is focused entirely on dealing damage, and does that better than any other rune in the game. Sadly, you don't control it for 95% of the game.
• In the Might and Magic series, your team would be pretty doomed without at least a capable healer (by capable, meaning at least a Paladin, Monks took too much to start first-aid duty.), but, most of the time, you could easily find yourself overwhelmed without a secondary capable healer (Cleric with Druid or Paladin makes a very survivable party). Of course, a good alchemist could take the role to an extent, making healing contraptions, but the relative rarity of ingredients made him more of an emergency last resort (since some potions healed more than any healing spell and any character could use it on any other). However, by the end-game of some installments, the Squishy Wizard far surpassed the medic in healing skills as long as he had enough victims in the screen for Soul Drinker, a top-tier Dark Magic spell.
  • Interestingly, in the Heroes of Might and Magic (sorta) spin-off, the medic-type hero had a kind of more extreme role. Instead of healing single units (which was largely useless in the scale) his role was bringing them back from the dead em-masse. The heroes of The Undead were the heroes most likely to become The Medic because of the fact that the spell to revive undead was much more accessible than the living counter-part, though both relied on Earth Magic.
    • Also, in a pinch Raise Undead even works on living units, making it possible to use them as a buffer (since they'd be lost by the end of the battle when resurrected that way).
    • Archangels qualify as a unit variation, being able to resurrect allies once per battle. First Aid tents with the appropriate skill can do so aswell, but they heal for meager amounts.
• Valkyria Chronicles has the unnamed Medic from Skies of Arcadia, who is later revealed to be a set of triplets who are all serving as medics in the militia.
  • In a broader gameplay sense, there's the Engineers, who carry enhanced healing items, tank repair tools, and a couple of ways to help protect their comrades.
• Mega Man X: Command Mission has Cinnamon, whose Action Trigger healed the whole party by an amount largely determined by your ability to spin the second analog stick in a circle. She also had an exclusive Sub Weapon, Energy Field, which increased the amount of weapon energy all characters gained on their next turn (characters regenerate weapon energy each turn in Command Mission). Being a Sub Weapon, it could be used on the same turn as an attack or (if you had enough WE) the healing move. With a relatively easily obtained set of equipment, she could alternate between the two each turn.
• The Magician->Cleric->Priest->Bishop Job branch in MapleStory. No party in its right mind faces any boss without at least one unless they're way over the required level. To elaborate: The Cleric can heal, the Priest can give a huge stat boost, boost Exp gains, and make a two way door to the nearest town to restock, and the Bishop gets the single most powerful attack spell in the game.
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Ms. Mowz has an ability called Smootch. When done correctly, Mario can heal up to 10 HP.
• The Overlord series has the Blues. They are the most fragile of the Minions and are rather useless in battle. They make up for it by being able to revive dead Minions and by being able to swim. And in the sequel they can clean up the magical ooze that hurts you and mutates your other minions into enemies.
• Touhou Project's Eirin Yagokoro is Gensokyo's resident doctor (technically a pharmacist). Fanon (and, at times, canon) sometimes skews this into Mad Doctor territory.
• Any mage in Dragon Age: Origins can learn healing spells, but the Spirit Healer specialization is all about healing. In particular, Origins had Wynne as your designated party healer, while Anders fulfilled the role in Awakening and Dragon Age II. With Skill Point Resets in Awakening, you could retrain Velanna and the mage PC into a Spirit Healer; DA2 disallowed that, and the only mages who could specialize in Spirit Healer were Mage Hawke and Anders (Bethany only has basic healing spells and Merrill has no healing spells at all).
• The Killmaster from Brütal Legend, who uses healing bass chords to keep your friends fighting fit. And he's Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister. Yes, it's awesome.
• Half-Life:
  • The original game has scientists that can follow Gordon around and give him injections of some sort of healing... stuff.
    • Half-Life: Opposing Force introduces the HECU Medic as a class of soldier that can accompany Corporal Shephard and heal him, identifiable by the white band with a red cross on their helmets.
    • Black Mesa places medics among the ranks of the HECU soldiers fought in Half-Life. It helps to take them down before they get a chance to heal their squadmates.
  • Half-Life 2 has resistance fighters who wear special uniforms identifying them as medics and have the ability to pull medkits out of thin air to give to Gordon or their fellow rebels.
• Alien Swarm has the Medic class. The medics here are more like Combat Medics since they can use almost any weapon like everyone else can and dish out as much pain. However, only Medics have access to two items that are exclusive to their class. The Healing Beacon heals all players that step into its radius while the Healgun works just like the one used by a certain other Medic by healing others on the go. The Healgun can also be used on yourself. These items are the only things that can save teammates from being killed by the parasites, making Medics an extremely valuable ally.
• Odium has the team medic Joan McFadden, who restores 15% more HP when she uses healing items on herself or party members.
• Killing Floor has the Medic perk. Like Battlefield above, the Squishy Wizard part is averted - Medics get cheaper, more resilient armor, and the perk-specific MP7M fires faster than anything else in the game. Along with the syringe they can also heal using a medic guns Secondary Fire, the perk also grants them healing grenades that heal team mates but also damage specimens as a bonus.
  • Also has two characters who are mentioned to be doctors in their flavor text (although you don't have to play the Medic perk if you play them). One is a paramedic and the other is Doctor Dave, a Steampunk Deadly Doctor.
• The Breath of Fire series loved giving this role to the characters you'd least expect to have it. In two out of five games in the series, your sword-wielding hero is one of the characters in this niche... and others have included a fist-fighting armadillo and a dog-girl with a BFG.
• Kaidan in Mass Effect is the only squadmate with the Medicine section of the skill tree, and is also the most merciful/compassionate of the group.
  • Averted in the multiplayer of Mass Effect 3 - all classes can heal their allies. The best "medics" are actually the Infiltrators, who can use their Invisibility Cloak to help wounded allies with no risk to themselves. The different volus characters also make excellent medics thanks to their Shield Boost power, which lets them instantly recharge the shields of all nearby allies.
• Lost Odyssey's Cooke specialises in White Magic, with barely any offensive spells. However, she lacks the pacifist side of the trope entirely, being a short-tempered, Bratty Half-Pint, who likes to beat up the team pervert and dreams of becoming a pirate like Action Girl Seth. The immortals can learn white magic from Cooke/accessories, while the mortals can use them with the appropriate accessory equipped.
• In Disgaea and other Nippon Ichi titles, the Healer and Medic classes gain healing spells as they level up. Some storyline characters also naturally learn healing spells, but the games generally have a method to give any spell to any class, including reincarnation, apprentices, and item/character fusion.
• In Town of Salem the Doctor heals those who are attacked at night, having one self-heal for himself and spends the rest of his time healing important roles, should they be attacked.
• Anna from Valiant Hearts is a Belgian nurse who tends to the wounded soldiers on the battlefield.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Dr. Amersfield will heal Father Aville if you bring him fast enough, and he'll heal you back to full health if you talk to him in the Sanctuary.
• The Hero and Jerin share this role in Lufia & The Fortress of Doom. Both learn the best healing spells, including the full-party-full-heal Valor and the full-revive Rally. The Hero is also second in physical offense, while Jerin's more of a Red Mage.
• Most spellcasters in Lufia: The Legend Returns can use healing spells or IP abilities, but Melphis specializes in playing the Medic. She's the first character who can learn the multi-target-heal Champion spells, which are quite invaluable to your party of up to nine members. Yurist and Milka also can learn Champion, but they lean more towards The Red Mage.
• Fräulein Eleonore in Die Reise ins All is closest to this in the group of heroes.
• Stronghold Kingdoms has the Captain unit's Rallying Cry, which is the only source of healing in the game.
• Telepath RPG.
  • Set in Telepath RPG: Servants of God can't even attack! In exchange, he gets more capabilities than Festus or Anya did, such as the ability to place obstacles or increase max health.
  • The psy healer class in Telepath Tactics, natch. Early in the campaign, Louise serves this role (by dint of being the only character with any healing ability), but she grows out of it later, and never gets anything better than the basic healing skill. Harynx properly takes the role later on; despite being a shadowling, her moveset is nearly identical to a psy healer's. You do eventually get an actual psy healer, but only in the final arc.
• Clash of Clans has the appropriately named Healer whose role is to be a flying medic towards any ground-based units that are injured. However, she can't heal air units. Also, she's available only in the main village; the Builder Base has no equivalent.
• The equivalent character in another Supercell game, Boom Beach, is called the Medic. Unlike the Clash healer, he's present both in the main game mode and in the newer Warships mode. Since all units in the main mode are ground-based, he can heal all of them, including other Medics. However, he can't heal the flying units found only in Warships mode.
  • Boom Beach also has Dr. Kavan, one of four hero units available in both game modes. He's a native healer, essentially a super-Medic, who not only heals nearby troops, but also temporarily reduces the damage those troops take after healing. He also has special abilities that can provide extra healing, temporary shields, or resurrection of fallen troops.
• The Medic class in Evolve. Each medic character has some way of keeping the team alive, including deployable healing buoys, a healing drone, healing grenades, a resurrection device, or a TF2 style healing gun. They avert the Squishy Wizard part by having just as much health as the other classes and carrying some useful weapons.
• Saki in Uncommon Time. Though in a twist, he's actually a dark mage, giving him decent offensive potential as well.
• Multiple in Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass:
  • Jimmy's Happy Little Sunflower form. Its skillset is comprised mainly of healing abilities; its one offensive skill is an anti-undead light spell.,
  • Helga becomes the dedicated healer for the party, with access to both High Five and Comforting Smile. She even has exclusive access to the best group healing skill in the game.
  • Jonathon Bear is mostly support — he comes with his own healing and curing skills, his passive makes him an Item Caddy, and his unique equipment can augment how he can support the party.
  • Jimmy's Phoenix form, unlockable by completing the volcano dungeon, is also a powerful healer with access to the strongest revival skill in the game. He can also sacrifice himself once per battle to completely heal the rest of the party.
• Sharla in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has many healing and support arts, and is referred to as medic by Otharon. Unusually for this character archetype, she wields a BFG which is what she uses to heal.
• In Sunrider, the medic role is split between two of the player’s Ryders. The Liberty can heal and buff an ally’s accuracy, but it can’t remove status effects (inflicting them on enemies instead). The Bianca can’t heal, but it can remove status effects and buff an ally’s attack power, debuff an enemy’s accuracy (the one thing the Liberty can’t do), and use its gravity gun to shift both friendly and enemy Ryders around the battlefield. Both of them are armed, but they don’t fit the Combat Medic trope since their weapons aren’t very efficient^note (the Liberty’s laser has great range and accuracy, but isn’t very powerful; the Bianca’s kinetic gun is very powerful, but its accuracy is terrible at anything but point-blank range. Both Ryders also project Deflector Shields that will protect any adjacent friendlies from laser weapons.
  • On the enemy side of things, PACT Support Ryders combine the Liberty’s ability to heal and inflict status effects with the Bianca’s ability to remove status effects, and they can also shield adjacent allies. They’re completely unarmed, but their ability to screw you over by shutting off your shields or flak right before the rest of the enemy formation opens fire on you makes them high-priority targets.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In the series' mythology, the Aedric Divines pantheon is heavily associated with healing. Visiting the shrines (or in some cases, the priests) of any of the Nine Divines will cure diseases and heal damaged attributes. In particular, Stendarr, the God of Mercy, Justice, and Compassion, has a strong association with Restoration magic as well as healing in general. The followers of Kynareth, the Goddess of the Air and Heavens, are also renowned for their healing abilities. The blessing from the shrine of Arkay, the God of Life and Death, serves as a minor version as it temporarily fortifies your maximum health.
  • Given the nature of Nirn, Healers (practitioners of the Restoration school of magic) are understandably necessary. They've served in (mostly) non-combat roles in militaries throughout Tamriellic history healing wounded soldiers. However, given that very same nature of the world, they almost always need some means of defending themselves, pushing them closer to Combat Medics.
  • In Skyrim, one can find members of the Vigil of Stendarr wandering the roads of Skyrim. They are a Church Militant organization dedicated to hunting down supernatural threats. They also serve as healers, and will happily cure any diseases you may have if you encounter them.
• The Support class in League of Legends is home to a host of potent healers, such as:
  • Sona, the Maven of the Strings. While only one of her abilities directly heals (as well as giving a shield to herself and all allied champions around her) almost all of her abilities are support-oriented; the only damaging abilities in her entire kit are her Hymn of Valor and her Crescendo. Those are balanced out by her incredibly low health pool and her healing spell having a low cooldown and mana cost, making her one of the most well-known medics in the roster.
  • Another well-recognized support character is Soraka, the Starchild, a Champion based so purely around supporting that she sacrifices her own health to heal others, moves faster towards gravely injured enemies, and her only offensive ability does laughable damage but provides her with a sizable amount of health regeneration.
• Heroes of the Storm takes the usual MOBA team and adds this class as a requirement, since healers are common, varied, and very good at their job. Some of them fall more into Combat Medic or Red Mage, but many of them play this straight. Lt. Morales is probably the biggest example, since she has the best single-target healing-per-second but sacrifices all of her combat skills for it.
• Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon has the Tender class of ships, which are poorly armed (except for the Procyon Tender) but have the ability to repair allied ships if they dock next to them for repairs.
• There are currently six healer heroes in Overwatch, although the amount and methods they use to heal vary wildly:
  • Mercy, an angel-themed medic whose primary function is healing and powering up allies. She does have a surprisingly strong pistol that she can use in sticky situations, but the character herself is a canon pacifist and tends to stick to healing. She also has the ability to resurrect downed allies, the effectiveness of which has varied wildly through the game's lifetime (it began as her ultimate, and could resurrect the whole team at once, but at writing, it is on a 30 second cooldown and can only bring back one person at a time).
  • Lucio, a DJ and revolutionary from Brazil whose music can either speed up or heal nearby allies. His ultimate provides allies with a large shield added to their health that drains quickly.
  • Ana, a sniper whose gun harms enemies and helps allies. Her gun was developed from Mercy's technology, which displeased the doctor.
  • Zenyatta, a Nepalese Omnic (read: robot) monk who, through the powers of ... something, can apply a healing orb to allies or a debuff to enemies. His ultimate provides the most healing per second in the game (300 - most characters have a base health of 200).
  • Moira, an Irish Mad Scientist for whom morality is a deterrent of progress. She can heal two ways: through a healing spray that requires her to deal damage to recharge, or a healing orb on a cooldown (she can also heal herself via life-drain). In-universe, however, it's implied that she was the one who brought Reaper back from the dead in his half-living state, so it's probably not wise to accept first-aid from her.
  • Brigitte, who functions more similarly to The Paladin than a straight healer. She can heal allies or overheal by adding armor, and heals nearby allies when she attacks enemies, making her more of a Combat Medic than even Moira. Her ultimate heals 30 health per second, even overhealing as necessary.
• Aya Hinomoto of Bullet Girls Phantasia is the medic for the Ranger Club, doing all the medical treatments off the battlefield and having the only Limit Break and perks that can heal both her and her partner at once. Notably, she was supposed to be part of the First Aid Club before accidentally misfiling her application and having an incredibly unhelpful supervisor, at that.
• Yes, Your Grace: Many petitioners demands involve very sick or badly wounded people. For many of them, the options to help them are to give them the money for a healer or sending them the Court Mage, resulting in the game treating the Court Mage as this trope.
• The Goonies II: Konami Man heals you when you visit him, but if you punch him or hit him with your hammer, he won't heal you again for the rest of the game.
• In the interactive romance novel Moonrise, Ishara offers healing at any sign of distress. If the player is injured, expect Ishara's glowing Healing Hands.
• In The Finals, the Medium class is best suited to be the team medic, as the Healing Beam and Defibrillator are among their default equipment.
• In Plants vs. Zombies
  • It's About Time has the Aloe and the Heavenly Peach (Chinese exclusive) with the former healing one plant to the right and both plants healing all allies in a 3x3 area in the Chinese version. There's also a Healer Zombie who heals all zombies for a large amount of health and cures any status effects. If defeated, it drops its staff which continues to heal zombies until destroyed.
  • Heroes has the Solar class for the Plants and the Hearty Class for the Zombies which have cards that can restore health such as 2nd Best Taco of All Time and Medic respectively.
  • Garden Warfare and its sequels have the Sunflower for the Plants and the Scientist for the Zombies. The Sunflower wields a Heal Beam while the Scientist can drop a Heal Station in the first game or use his own Heal Ray in the later games. In 2 and Battle for Neighborville, Plants can summon Heal Weeds.
  • 3 had Aloe Vera in the original version who steadily healed all surrounding plants, but was cut in the later releases.
  • All-Stars (Chinese only) had the Sunflower, Radish and Hazlenut lines with the former being able to give more sun and make their heals twice or three times as effective, the Radish ones bring back beaten allies and can heal allies upon death and Hazlenut cures status effects.

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