What Field Medic actually does
At protectiveness +0.42, Field Medic tops the guarding ladder with the highest positive protectiveness coefficient in the data. Before you build a triage fantasy around that, two clarifications the name practically begs for.
First, the trait carries no healing numbers. There is no bonus to healing output, no extra recovery, no medical anything in the coefficients. It is a single, very large weight on “cover, guard or aid a party-mate” when the combat AI scores the hero’s options. A Field Medic with no aid options in their kit doesn’t gain any; they simply prioritise the party-first choices they already have, and position like someone whose job is keeping the others upright.
Second, the gap to the twins below is cosmetic. Loyal and Team Player both sit at +0.4, which means Field Medic’s crown is worth 0.02 of protectiveness, a difference you will never detect in a delve report. Treat all three as one top tier. The only coefficient in the game with more pull on this parameter is Lone Wolf’s −0.5, pointing the other way.
How +0.42 plays out underground
Underground, the coefficient reads as a hero whose turn belongs to whoever is worst off. When a party-mate takes a bad round, the Field Medic’s next action answers it: interposing against the attacker, holding beside the casualty, taking the aid option over the attack. On healers this is invisible, since it’s what they’d do anyway. On anyone else it’s a visible personality: the delve report fills with entries where the Field Medic breaks off from the fight to stand over someone.
Attrition floors are where the trait earns its keep. Curses that tick every round, flooded halls grinding the back line, long multi-fight conditions that punish every unanswered hit. In those environments, the hero who guarantees no party-mate ever eats a second hit while exposed converts directly into survival, and in a permadeath game survival is the whole ledger.
Delve reports make the trait unusually easy to audit. Count the rounds your Field Medic spent on covering and aid actions versus their role’s normal output, and you have a direct read on what the coefficient is charging you that week. Most traits hide in the AI’s marginal decisions, but +0.42 announces itself in nearly every fight. If the guarded parties are also the ones coming home intact, the ledger balances; if the guarding is happening in delves nobody was in danger of losing, you’re paying full price for insurance you didn’t need.
Race conditions are where it hurts. With four heroes and four actions a round, a guard action is 25% of your output, and +0.42 buys guard actions in fights that were already won. Against a boss you need dead before its mechanic lands, a Field Medic hovering over a scratched ally instead of swinging is your delve slipping away one protective instinct at a time.
Roles that want it, roles that don’t
Healers and dedicated support are the obvious home, and for once the obvious answer is right: the coefficient points their AI at exactly the decisions their kit exists for, so nothing is wasted. An anchor is the other strong fit: a +0.42 anchor is a genuine bodyguard, and it unlocks the same guardian-plus-hunter structure a Loyal anchor does: park it next to a selfish finisher and let the trait mop up the finisher’s neglect.
Keep it off damage dealers. Every point of protectiveness on your main sword is rounds donated to defence, and +0.42 donates more than any other trait in the game. And don’t pair it with another top-tier guardian; two of the three (Field Medic, Loyal, Team Player) in one four is a party that protects itself brilliantly while forgetting to win.
Recruiting and contract notes
Expect a premium, and be suspicious of it. “Field Medic” reads like a profession, and sellers price it like the hero comes with a skill attached, but the fight engine gives it 0.02 more than Loyal or Team Player, traits that routinely list cheaper. Unless the attributes justify the spread, buy the twin and bank the gold; the arithmetic of paying for names instead of coefficients is covered in the recruitment guide.
Where the premium can be worth it: insurance on irreplaceable heroes. If your roster carries a bloodline heir or an ageing legend you cannot afford to lose, a top-tier guardian in the same four is the closest thing the game sells to a life policy, and Field Medic is the strongest version of it. Behaviour coefficients don’t fade with age either, so a veteran Field Medic keeps the full bias to the end, which makes it a good trait to let grow old on your bench of minders.
Version history
Every build this wiki tracks, v1.9.6 through v2.1.8, carries the identical +0.42. No buffs, no trims, no riders added. Field Medic is settled ground. If you build a roster doctrine around a resident guardian, the patch cycle has given no reason to expect the foundation to move.