be sure that, if CB did that, crabbots would win that rule too.... and if not, there would be claims for it to happen
If killing on failure is removed, maybe different effects may be applied for "good" docs vs "bad" docs, to compensate for the relative higher improvement of the "bad" ones, which seems unfair indeed: How about Doctor (success) applies dogged / nwi / conscious state to its patient, depending on the doctor skill? This would still benefit the better doctors and somehow ensures that you will not be fighting a zombie again and again thanks to a cheap 12WIP dude. And I'm all for "Stabilized" state on failure.
That's what I say but it never sounds good, and I agree. It never feels that way and I need to remind myself. It already works this way but without providing an order while the TAG is unconscious. I think that's fine.
They aren't vulnerable to expel like their manned counterparts, the second level unconscious means that they have a higher chance of surviving the turn to be repaired, and of course most importantly the fact that they have courage native unlike the manned TAGs where there's only 2 or 3 with the rule (anaconda, oyoroi, raicho). EDIT: turns out both the Blue Wolf and Scarface also have courage. had a game once where the beginning of every turn consisted of Machoan rezzing his entire fireteam before they all go to murder town, My opponent wasn't exactly impressed.
I like thee current system and generally consider the failed WIP roll to represent it being out of the doctor/paramedics capacity to get the downed trooper back in the fight. If the first attempt doesn't do it, another adrenaline shot isn't going to help.
I mean from an Engineer's perspective. I know that G:Remote Presence is a straight up something-for-nothing benefit to the TAG itself, but I'd rather see the Pan-O (and O-12/Aleph) Engineer keep their advantage and have the Manned TAG have a separate and different advantage in how it treats the pilot. So instead of making them more similar, I'd want to see them become more different, to achieve an asymmetrical balance. Easiest way to do that is to remove the restriction that prevents Operators from entering or leaving their TAG and have ED1 be mandatory on all Manned TAGs and for a TAG that activates ED to not get removed from table (unless it suffered enough damage to have the pilot suffer one or more damage). As a small biproduct I'd also like to see current Operators get Specialist Operative and for WIP 13 to be normalised for Remote Pilots.
I could see an option like that, still have an advantage for the doc's attempt while still representing his "failure". I like to imagine it as the healing gun is on the same belt as the regular gun and sometimes they grab the wrong one in a hurry. Technology is infallible, but humanity can still mess it up... As a new player, I don't know how common healing actually is overall (since I imagine it varies by mission/ sectorial), but some other ideas: 1) Some units can be easier to heal than others, especially synthetic folks like my ALEPH. Represented by a bonus to the doc roll. 2) A weaker form of medic that rather than healing the guy, gives him the Dogged state. 3) On a crit, get an extra wound back. 4) Maybe a failed roll moves you from Unconscious to Dying. To heal a dying guy is a full action, rather than short. Failure doesn't make him more dying, but at the end of your active turn, dying becomes dead. So next round, no more tries. 5) easist way I think, if the doc fails the medic roll, the patient makes a Phys roll, failure = dead, success=unconscious, crit =heal.
Thematically, it's not that they are killing the patient, it's that they get to them and find that the damage is too severe and can't do anything for them, or didn't get to them in time, etc. Rules-wise i agree that there's too much Shock, Viral, DT ammo, that kills outright. So I don't think a Doctor not failing will be a game changer. I will say this though, I think that it should be like discover, and the doctor can't make another roll on that patient until the next turn. He's stabilized the patient until he can heal back up. Same for an Engineer, He just doesn't have the heavy lifting equipment in order to accomplish the task. Now this is something that could make a cool change to the palbots/yaozao etc helpers. If they are also in base contact with the patient/wreak, they may ignore that and keep rolling if you have orders!
The problem with that is that the doc is rolling Willpower to save the person. They fail Willpower and the person dies. They didn't realize they couldn't save them, really. Basically rules wise, the doctor must constantly resist the urge to let people die. Sometimes they can use willpower to override their obsession with death and actually save the patient, but if they're not strong enough, they just watch them die! All Infinity doctors are secretly masochists.
That's kind of the etc. that I said. There's many reasons why the doctor couldn't save the patient. But mostly it comes down to rules for the game. I've also mentioned in the N4 rules they need to get rid of paramedic and make them all Doctors and all existing doctors get Doctor+. The paramedic rule can be used with regeneration and automedkit.
Pretty much, any army that has access to AD/infiltration doctors/engineers or can embed them in fireteams will be doing it with some regularity as they dont have deal with the massive order sink of getting a doc or a bot up into position without them getting their brains blown out to help. otherwise its a case of wheather or not you have something that you REALLY need to keep alive that would be worth that level of order sink, or you have an obnoxious defensive piece you want to keep getting up every time it gets put down.
It’s exactly that. Before the medic makes its roll, the wounded unit is in a Schrödinger’s state, either save-able or dying. When you make the roll, you get to see which it is. I actually like the current rule purely because of this fluff. The idea that a medic will be able to put a soldier back on their feet given enough time/orders/rolls feels weird. I’m happy with a system where trying to treat on field a soldier that took some futuristic high-velocity ammo in the head might actually result in a laconic “sorry, he’s gone”.
Except you treat the rules as if their design for cause, while they look very much to be design for effect to me - and I think it’s a brilliant piece of design for effect, at that. The rules as they are give you three specific effects: various degrees of wounds, uncertainty as to the severity of the wounds, capacity to treat the wound dependent on the individual medic (and as a perk, that depends on the faction the medic belongs to). All that baked into one single roll you only need to take when you actually attempt to heal the unit. It does not matter that the roll does not effectively simulate each step, it’s darn efficient when it comes to getting the right effect. If there is one thing that is actually weird rule wise, it’s medics requiring an order to move in the first place, and their ability to move where they want. I don’t think it’s a concern, Infinity is not actually a simulation, but if wanted to sort that out for fun, I’d make them impetuous - move towards the closest wounded ally, with a side of religious-style ruling to make them impetuous only once an ally has actually been wounded. They are not necessarily killing anyone, failing a roll just means the wounded unit is out for the duration of the game. See it like this: a unit is wounded, a doctor comes to treat them. Either the doctor puts them back on their feet, or they don’t. In the latter case, either it’s because the injuries are so severe they will die soon, or maybe they’re stabilized, but aren’t going back to the fight. Either way, the game considers them “dead”. That should be fine, there is no need to have a useless “will be ok after extensive surgery and 6 months rest” state that has no bearing on the game. It’s much more illogical to have a doctor finally managing to put a unit back on its feet simply because they got 6 consecutive orders to do so. Especially in Infinity, where time is not properly defined.
Do you think the same rationale holds for an engineer repairing a TAG that's taken only a point of damage, or should it be treated differently?
I've known "engineers" who suffered from "Errol Syndrome"* who couldn't fix something without breaking it further first. I've also known engineers who couldn't change a light bulb without blowing a fuse.
I think the engineer situation is daft, but I understand the rational to simplify things by having doctors and engineers behave similarly. I’m not sure how I weight the cognitive dissonance versus needing more rules.
I like the current system. I only recommended change would be a global rule ("Focus") that would allow non-shooting rolls with +3 bonus if you did them as long skills. I think that would help with engineering/doctoring/any objective interactions.
Doesn't that entirely remove that it's a Willpower roll at all? If the chance of healing is entirely the state of the patient, than as I suggested earlier, it would make more sense for the roll to be Phys of the patient, perhaps with a modifier for the doc. Of course, Willpower is skill in the game, so what you are rolling is the application of high tech pharmaceuticals and nanohealbots (and quantronic something too I guess) in order to get the guy back on his feet, overdose pushes the guy over the edge from knocked out into coma. You know how you tell if the guy is beyond the help of the drugs? He's in a Dead state rather than an Unconscious state... Totally true, of course. Well, that's why a lot of alternate suggestions are put up here in the thread. Most don't really want a doc standing there and trying over and over again, though an order is a resource as it were.
Except PH does not represent a unit’s resistance or capacity to endure punishment (in fact, that’s what the Wound attribute is for). The quality of the doctor is still a component, so it’s fine to have a WiP roll (which is an attribute by the way, not a skill). Edit: you could of course rejig the whole thing to be a roll under the patient’s PH. But if we’re going by effect, I’m not sure it changes anything.
I'm just saying that the doctor's willpower attribute doesn't reflect the patients health. Willpower IS used to represent your ability to perform a skill, whether that be engineering, doctoring, pushing a button or whatever. My original suggestion was to use a phys roll after a failed wip roll to not die, vs the current no roll after failed wip, but if folks want to thematically say it's really just the patients condition, then it should just be the patient roll, not the doc's. By contrast, a medikit is a ballistic shot as you fire a syringe of drugs into the target, followed by a phys roll to ride out the chemical cocktail.
