What it says in the title. If you move your doc and fail the roll, you are still behind because you spent 1+ orders to achieve nothing, even if you don't kill the doctored troop. Would it break the game to allow a player to roll again with another order (and possibly waste that one too?)
Sorry for wrong subforum. I was vaguely aware that someone mentioned that there is a place for rules suggestions somewhere here, but I honestly was looking for it and missed it (so narrowly it appears).
Been pushing for this or a variant of this for ages. I've found healing to be pretty niche and going through all the work for often a pretty meaningful failure chance (~35% on a lot of units) is pretty rough.
Not a big fan. You cannot make the most lethal unit in the entire game....well.... un-lethal. If I remember correctly killing units with a failed doc-roll is there since N1 and I for my part excepted it for how the game/the skill works. The only change was the possibility to re-roll failed attempts on cubed units with the introduction of Command tokens. I don´t think it would break any Game, but I also think it depends hugely on which unit u gonna revive: an Alguacil isn´t nearly worth the order to spend for healing him. Achilles on the other hand... mostly it is hard enough to get such units into uncinciouse state, and reviving them just by throwing orders till it works without any risk seems....odd? Maybe thats just me liking the gamble of the usage of this skill (cause i realy do. Throwing orders till smth works without needing units beeing actually GOOD in what they do brings me vietnam-flashbacks of playing against 25++ order lists) Spoiler: Thought of the moment Writing this brings me the idea, that maybe exactly that was the reason, why you kill units with a failed doc-roll. So a good doctor becomes more valuable Novadays, with orders beeing limited to a 15 units counts the rule maybe could be changed to not killing with failed rolls. On the other hand: it´s also not possible to heal living units up when wounded but not unconscious.
On the one hand I think that even interactions that are not 112 trying to heal McMurrough needs more difference between a Medikit and an actual Doctor roll; on the other hand specifically getting the very high value stuff back into action kind of is a huge huge shift in the current in-game balance. That said, I'd note that factions do not have a choice of "good doctors". Typically you have a choice of two varieties of bad doctors or, if you are a sectorial, the better option which is a linked Paramedic that don't need even need to get into base contact. The few factions that don't have access to a variety of bad doctors can usually only choose good doctors (oh the humanity!) and typically good doctors that are linkable. What that's trying to say is that you don't typically have a choice in what degree of interaction you make; you'll only have a choice in making the interaction or not. That's fine I think. But - I do think that the differentiation between Medikit and Doctor needs to be better and I don't think Medikits need to be nerfed. Just something to make the WIP 12 and WIP 13 docs out there less of a wasted effort so that they can through gameplay efforts bridge the gap a bit to the WIP 14+3 docs. Maybe let them have an assistant bonus (same as gang-up - friends in contact increases the Doctor roll's burst)?
Well, you have a difference between medikit and Doctor: Doctors Orders can be rerolled via CT if the target has a cube. But i see your point. In my last game i saw Pandora beeing the way better option for succesful healing than a Dactyl, due to more rolls equals higher succesrate.
That's problem with Doctors; they're inherently more order intensive and potentially riskier than using a medkit for very little additional benefit. A +1B medkit is significantly less risky and order intensive than walking up to the patient and using command tokens to deal with bad rolls. The risk is somewhat mitigated with a servant, but now you're paying extra for both the Doctor skill and for the servant, and you still need to spend extra orders to get into silhouette contact first. What if you could use Doctor on patients within the Doctor's ZoC? Paramedics get medkits, but Doctors get trauma surgery drones.
I would instead make it so that using a command token on a cubed model just automaticly gets it. Meaning if you really did use a order or two to go doctor something then fail you cannot get unlucky with command tokens.
I rarely see doctors used in competitive play (B2 or B3 medkits used are used more often). I think the doctor skill could use a buff of some sort, but I don't think 'no chance to kill the target' would be enough to make it worthwhile. Doctoring outside of a link is just order prohibitive as is. I have also heard someone propose doctoring should allow you to immediately regain the order for the model you healed, but that might be too much.
With the new medkit rules doctors gets less important. Just shoot enough healing-potions on the target and it will get up ... of curse it will work only with fireteams or +B medkits. If a doc roll will not eat a LP (or STR in case of engineers) it will take the risk away, whats kinda unfunny but understandable, cause it can be frustating, that your WIP 15 Sopho rolls a 16 and you have no CT left ... so this would buff doctors and add the need to change uncon to dead for the opponent. I think this is something that CB should keep in mind for N5.
