Stretching Improved Ability, New skills for physads Options

[Luke Hardison]

One of my players is making an adept combat medic. I was thinking about offering him the option to use Improved Ability for Biotech, representing a magical attunement to the human body that allows him to treat victims better, but I wanted some opinions.

Anyone tried it before? How bad is it to have someone rolling 10-12 dice for biotech, especially compared to magical healing?

[Lilt]

I said "no because it's not canon", but that dosen't quite fit with my objection. Adepts are good at enhancing their physical abilities but Biotech is a technical skill therefore it's not the physad's domain.

[A Clockwork Lime]

I have no problem with Centering with Technical Skills, as long as their use is fully mundane (ie, non-cybernetic). Computers, Biotech, and Electronics all fall in that domain, and I've had a spy-oriented adept in our game that used the latter.

[Shadow]

It may not fall under the domain of a physad but it is a cool enough idea that you hsould let him try. Oh and if it terribly unbalances your game let us all know!

[RedmondLarry]

By all means, allow it. Every .5 put into the skill gives him one higher skill on the Biotech roll. Limit on levels is his Magic rating.

Make it every .25 gets him a level if you want, as the skill doesn't unbalance the game, mostly helps teammates, and will let him have a good set of other physad skills.

A magician does major healing with a fraction of their Spell allocation. Having a super-medic who does it with an almost magical sense of where the damage is would be a cool character and would in no-way unbalance the game.

It's almost impossible for him to change the outcome of a combat this way, he just helps get the team back on its feet for the next time.

Let him center for penalties later, after he initiates and takes it, so he can bypass terrible conditions with a good roll.

[lordsah]

If you're an adept and you'd like to burn your magic points on it, go for it. I'd have to be part of a very large party with absolutely all of their bases covered before I built a dedicated adept-medic.

[Sphynx]

[Zazen]

I think it clashes with the feel of Improved Ability; there's too much mental discipline involved in Biotech. That said, I think the idea of Biotech-enhancing powers like the aforementioned "magical damage sense" is a good one. It might even have game mechanics that are identical to those of Improved Ability :)

[snowRaven]

It's a very cool idea to have a medic adept, but I wouldn't make it an Improved Ability. Not sure exactly how else to do it, but I can think of a few ideas off the top of my head:

- Power where the adept doesn't get penalties for lacking a medkit, and maybe gets an additional -1 TN if he has a medkit, because of a magical understanding of the metahuman body and it's functions, as well as faith healing style magic to treat said damage. Cost: 0.5? 1.0?

- 'Healing hands' as opposed to killing hands - bought at levels and you make Biotech rolls to stage the existing damage down. Use a TN equal to 10-E + (BI/2) as per normal magical healing, and every two successes lower the wounds one damage level. You cannot treat anyone who has a wound level higher than what your power is. Cost: Light 0.5, Moderate 1.0, Serious 2.0, Deadly 4.0 ? Must be used within an hour for game balance?

- 'Medical sense' - each level gives you an additional die for treating wounded or sick patients. Cost: 0.5 per level. Basically the same thing as Improved Ability as far as game mechanics go, but in the way it works it is more similar to, say, Sixth Sense. This would also apply to rolls made with other skills, if it is relevant for the treatment (Medicine, for instance).

Hmm, this gives me an idea for a spell... 'Analyze Wounds' as Detection spell, where successes give extra dice for first aid.

[Siege]

Check out the "Knack" idea -- let the adept buy the spell like a power and use it as such.

Otherwise, I have to agree with all the "no" votes -- adepts are limited to motion-intensive actions when buying IA dice and Biotech doesn't (shouldn't, anyway) fall under that category.

-Siege

[snowRaven]

Side-note... did anyone else realize that most of the answers for the poll don't fit the question?

[Lilt]

[Siege]

Surgery...mastery.

Dude, if my medic reaches for my wound with a credstick in one hand and a key ring in the other...

-Siege

[Darkest Angel]

I'd allow it, at 0.25 points a level too. Sure it's a technical skill, but for an Adept who is naturally in tune with his own body, it seems very reasonable - especially with powers like Distance Stike, Killing Hands, improved healing and Missile Mastery available to him, which essentially allow him to use his powers beyond the confines of his body and/or show a tuning to living things - that he should be able to use that tuning not just for harm, but for healing too.

For that reason, I like the healing hands power idea too, but I'm not sure quite how you'd balance it, which is why I'd go for the improved biotech route - for now.

[Dissonance]

How about Healing Punch?

Sock 'em in the face, and roll your magic attribute against 10 - Essence. Keep the same costs for L through D.

Okay. So it's stupid. I just woke up.

[Cochise]

My real objection to that power is the following idea:

Adept ... little cyberware (i.e. microscopic view), Apitude (Biotech) and Improved Ability (Biotech) ... Say "Hi" to the team's new surgeon, who does anything from trauma surgery to implant surgery with ease ...

[A Clockwork Lime]

Just as a bit of a note, adepts haven't been called "physads" let alone "physical adepts" for several years now. There's a reason that stereotype-inducing name was removed in 3rd Edition, even if some of the powers still clutch on to it. For those that don't, see Astral Perception, Empathic Sense, Sixth Sense, etc.

Sure, adepts tend to focus on somantic abilities. But how anyone can say that Biotech isn't a somantic ability is beyond me. If anyone in the modern world were to be said to have "magic hands," it would be a surgeon. It's not like surgeons, doctors, or field medics just wave a wand and wounds magically heal up with no physical actions on their part, yanno.

In any case, the ease at which some of you can rationalize allowing an adept to cut-up, bruise, and otherwise disect opponents with their abilities while turning around and saying that the can't do the exact same thing in reverse just seems odd to me.

Using a knife to gut someone with style and grace falls within their domain, but using a scapel to remove an appendix isn't? I'm missing something in that reasoning process.

[Siege]

Hey, I'd love to see "physical adepts" move away from those roots and branch out into the "social" category that has been advocated here.

Improved pheremones, improved ability: social skills, the "VOICE" and so on.

I'd nix the "magician's way" adept before allowing adepts to increase mental stats, of course...:grinbig:

-Siege

Edited for typos

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Siege]

Call it a failing in my character. :grinbig:

-Siege

[Sphynx]

[Slapstick]

Do can he use distance strike and a weapon focus scaple? Get a little Blackjack action going on?

"I'll do it! For my normal fee of ten million dollars!"

-Slapstick

[A Clockwork Lime]

Interesting philosophy.

So you're also saying that since adepts can perform these functions in combat situations, they're the only types of characters combat-oriented characters will ever play? Afterall, they can offset all the penalties in a combat situation, and gain bonus dice while doing so. Given how an adept with a Smartlink-2, Centering (Ranged Weapons), and Improved Ability (Pistols) is the defacto marksman with pistols, obviously that must mean that no one would ever play anything else and that adepts are clearly unbalanced and the only pistol-using character a Runner would want next to them.

A very interesting philosophy, indeed. I guess all those other combat-oriented characters running around are an anomoly or something.

[Sphynx]

First, try avoiding sarcasm please.
Secondly, instead of putting words in my mouth, please re-read what I wrote.

I didn't say anything about being the only thing played, I said the only "surgeons a Runner would want". After all, if you knew one of these, would YOU want to go to a mundane surgeon who can't offer half of what this guy can?

I know it would unbalance because you can offset negatives in this manner. Skillz, a character in the game I run, made his character completely around the Biotech idea, he is the perfect cyber-doc, able to pump (at one point before they Errata's it to a 3 for CED) as many as 15 dice for a Surgery, the only thing that keeps it sane is the negatives he incurs. Already none of the team would consider going to an outside source for implantation.

Sphynx

[Darkest Angel]

That may be the only surgeon a runner would want, but would it be the only surgeon a runner would get?

Sure, an Adept could dedicate his abilities entirely into surgery whereupon he could implant 14 essence worth of gear into a person using a rusty toolkit on the slopes of Everest in blizzard conditions, but would the runner whos getting all that ware installed really want that same person alongside him as fire support when breaking into a triple A research compound?

Balance issues can be resolved more easily by taking a character out of his usual environment far more easily than with more firepower/more opponents/tougher opposition/worse conditions.

I mean honestly, it's not like his ub3r l337 surgery skills are going to help his first aid bring his pal down more than one damage code.