Doc Brody!

[Twilight_Sonata]

I have officially decided to convert all of the Townsfolk into playable Heroes one-by-one. I've been thinking about each of them on an off rather than devoting myself to doing just one at a time. Some are a lot easier than others because their card effects have a unique mechanical theme, but some are a lot harder because their mechanical themes are very generic. Anyway, this thread is for Doc Brody. Tell me what you think!


DOC BRODY
COUNTRY PHYSICIAN
Medical - Male
START: HOSPITAL

Special Rules:
IMMUNITY - Cannot be turned into a Zombie Hero.
TREATMENT - May give up his Hero Turn (he must survive any Zombie fights in his space) to Fully Heal another Hero in his space and cancel Bitten or I Feel Kinda Strange on that Hero.
3 Health Boxes


This was actually a pretty big challenge, and I'm still not sure that I have it right. Doc Brody should definitely have the ability to heal his allies, but the challenge becomes to balance his ability with Becky's without making either obsolete and without making their combination too good. I decided that I wanted Doc Brody to be better at healing (being able to heal multiple wounds from or even fully heal another hero) but that he would have to sacrifice a lot more to do it, Becky being able to simply bandage somebody up pretty quickly but Brody being much more deliberate and thorough in his practice. I think that requiring him to give up his whole Hero Turn (and fight Zombies) to fully heal and also remove Bitten or I Feel Kinda Strange sounds like a fair trade. It's certainly not something that he'll be wanting to spend his time doing every turn, like how Becky often uses her own ability, but he may be able to provide a much more significant benefit when it really counts.

Other than that, it's implied through some cards that Doc Brody has dealt with Zombies before, so I just thought that Immunity might be a cool and thematically fitting ability. I can't imagine it being that significant in play, though.

So what do you think? Treatment too good? Not good enough? Is Immunity more significant than I think that it is? Let me know. Also, first person to reply gets to pick which Townsfolk I post next!



EDIT: Most Recent Version...

DOC BRODY
COUNTRY PHYSICIAN
Medical - Male
START: HOSPITAL

Special Rules:
IMMUNITY - Cannot be turned into a Zombie Hero.
TREATMENT - May give up his Hero Turn (he must survive any Zombie fights in his space) to Fully Heal another Hero in his space.
3 Health Boxes

[mqstout]

Compared to Nurse Becky, he's more considerably more powerful. Full healing, on demand, is very useful.

Do recall how hard it can be to orchestrate Becky's healing. They have to end their turns together in the same space (since her healing happens after THE hero turn; that is, after all heroes have gone). This opens her up to all those nasty Lose a Turn cards that the zombie gets that are usually pretty weak because people don't team up often.

You might build on his Immunized ability and give him a zombie fighting ability that's linked to that creatively. Maybe one that prevents zombie spawns nearby. This would give him some tension like Stacy has to be in/near spawning pits.

[Twilight_Sonata]

(01-09-2012 12:36 PM)mqstout Wrote:  Compared to Nurse Becky, he's more considerably more powerful. Full healing, on demand, is very useful.

Yes, of course, but with a high enough cost, it should still be able to be balanced with Becky's ability. Becky's ability is pretty low-cost, only requiring that she be in the same space as another hero at the end of the Hero Turn. Brody's ability here, on the other hand, is relatively high-cost, requiring not only that he be in the same space as the other hero but also that he give up his turn (give up moving or searching, give up using ranged attacks, give up exchanging items). In other words, Becky can use her ability while still working towards whatever the scenario objective is (searching, moving, shooting, etc.) while Brody could not.

Quote:Do recall how hard it can be to orchestrate Becky's healing. They have to end their turns together in the same space (since her healing happens after THE hero turn; that is, after all heroes have gone). This opens her up to all those nasty Lose a Turn cards that the zombie gets that are usually pretty weak because people don't team up often.

However hard it is to orchestrate Becky's, I cannot imagine that it's not much harder to orchestrate Brody's. Remember that Brody cannot move in the same turn as he uses Treatment, so that leaves two possibilities for the ability to be used. The first is that another Hero moves into his space during their turn for him to use the ability; this results in both characters ending their turns in the same space as well and also being subject to those turn loss cards. The second is that another Hero started their turn in Brody's space with Brody going before them to heal them before they move away; this means that both characters had to end the previous hero turn in the same space, resulting in the same consequences as above. In other words, because Brody has to give up his movement in order to use Treatment, it leaves the relevant heroes exactly as vulnerable to turn-loss cards as as Becky's ability, because the relevant heroes will have to end a Hero turn in the same space, either immediately before or immediately after Treatment is used.

Granted, Female characters are inherently more vulnerable to those turn-loss cards as a whole, simply because there are fewer female characters and because there is one such card that targets female characters exclusively, but that is a coincidence that I don't think should need to be balanced around, especially not in games that include home-brew characters.

Quote:You might build on his Immunized ability and give him a zombie fighting ability that's linked to that creatively. Maybe one that prevents zombie spawns nearby. This would give him some tension like Stacy has to be in/near spawning pits.

Huh? Is there a problem with Immunity? Or are you suggesting that such a feature be in addition to Immunity and in place of Treatment? Because I would have a really hard time conceptually justifying Doc Brody as a character without any ability to heal.

[PJON]

Hi

TREATMENT - May give up his Hero Turn (he must survive any Zombie fights in his space) to Fully Heal another Hero in his space and cancel Bitten or I Feel Kinda Strange on that Hero.

I think it should be an OR not an and.

How did Doc Brody get the ability to cancel a Zombie Card ? He is a small town Doctor, not a bio-researcher with a cure.

[Twilight_Sonata]

(01-09-2012 02:33 PM)PJON Wrote:  I think it should be an OR not an and.

How did Doc Brody get the ability to cancel a Zombie Card ? He is a small town Doctor, not a bio-researcher with a cure.

My thinking was that he's experienced the outbreak before and, being a medical professional, probably has at least some idea of how it might be treated. You may be right that just automatically cancelling the effects may be a bit out of theme, but I could for example instead require a roll and have the zombie card cancelled on a 4+ or something... Then again, maybe being able to fully heal is a groundbreaking enough ability that I really don't need to be trying to spice it up with even more useful effects. Really, the ability to fully heal another hero and immunity from becoming a zombie hero are probably potent enough on their own. For all of the Townsfolk conversions, I do want to do a little something original in addition to something directly inspired by their card, but Immunity is probably enough in this case.

. . . Like this, how powerful he is as a character seems like it will depend on what other characters are being played. If they're mostly student heroes, then Treatment probably won't get much of any use at all; giving up a turn to heal one wound just doesn't seem worth it, especially not when those character can just spend their own move action. On the other hand, with heroes like Father Joseph, Sam, Victor, or some of the other adults on his team, he could be very useful indeed. Though, again that will also depend on whether the specific scenario is one where Heroes can afford to give up a hero turn every now and again. For something like "We've Got To Go Back!", he won't have much opportunity to bring his abilities into play because of all of the movement required, but it would be great for something else like "Escape in The Truck" where Heroes can get away with remaining more sedentary, especially if they have somebody like Jake or Stacy or even both to get them more draws.

[mqstout]

Mine was a suggested replacement for treatment that works thematically in parallel to immunity.

[Twilight_Sonata]

(01-09-2012 04:04 PM)mqstout Wrote:  Mine was a suggested replacement for treatment that works thematically in parallel to immunity.

Like I said, it's pretty hard to justify conceptually not giving Brody at least some ability to heal, and it's even pretty hard to justify mechanically considering that's all that his event card does.

EDIT: Also, sad nobody has any request for the next Townsfolk Hero.

[mqstout]

The shop teacher.

True on the healing from his card. I do feel full healing and removing those cards is quite strong.

Make him immune to those cards only (but can't remove them from foes)?

[Twilight_Sonata]

All right, the current version removed the ability to get rid of those cards on his allies. Now, are you additionally suggestion that he should only be immune to those specific cards and not to becoming a zombie hero in general? Because I'm not sure that such a nerf is necessary.

I really want to compare to Becky again. The difference is basically that Becky can heal 1 wound without that costing her anything but Brody can heal 1-3 wounds by giving up his entire hero turn, so what the really makes the difference is that Brody has to give up his entire hero turn to heal 0-2 (but most often just 1) more wounds than Becky. The comparative cost of a whole turn to heal 1 wound sounds really high to me. Sam existing is the only thing holding me back from insisting that it needs to be able to do more (like remove Bitten or I Feel Kinda Strange) to be worth it. I wanted to give him an additional ability in Immunity exactly because I think that Becky is going to remain the go-to healer in more cases due to her not needing to expend any resources to do what she does... This may be the sort of thing that I'm actually going to need to work out by play-testing rather than just being able to get away with comparing to existing abilities.

Anyway, I'd be glad to do Mr. Hyde next. I already have an idea for one of his abilities, so now I just need to figure out exactly what I want to do for the other.

[mqstout]

I would make those in addition -- or at least attach FAQ with him that those cards don't still kill.

As written right now, it seems like it could work.