Doctor Archive

Over a year and half ago i played as a master doctor and overall i found the experience very hollow. Yes i pvp'd with my guild, and I had a small stim/wound pack business. However, I always felt like this was not what i expected to do as a doctor.

Therefore, I was thinking about this tonight. What if there was An Elite Elite Doctor that uses new skills to investigate and cure unknown diseases, and heal/prevent extreme phsical conditions.

Well I just think that right now Doctors are seen as nothing more than buff monkeys to the general population. Currently doctors duplicate to an extent the role CM's are supposed to have in battle. Everyone and their mother has taken up doctor, and those of us that might want pursue Doctor for the challenge/complexity of it have been letdown by its limited scope of capablities. I just think that maybe, there are people out there who want to roleplay a Doctor to its fullest potential and this provides a means to that end.

There would be new types of diseases/ailments introduced that players could stumble across. Now if a player is infected, they can be spread , either airborn , or through physical contact. Some of these diseases might take days to manifest, however once someone is infected a normal cure will not do the trick.

The New Skills - This is how I envision the new skills for an Elite Doctor.

I. Medical Investigation Tree (1-4). These skills boxes grant this new elite doctor the ablity to examine a patient and
witness/study symptons on a patient that a normal doctor cant. Conditions might be of the following: Abnormal
heartbeat, excessive sweating, sudden weight loss (Yes I would like to see Physical Weight mean something),
and many other symptons. Also with this new tree comes the skill /remedyanalysis. This allows the doctor to analyze unseen properties of organic and inorganic material and see if they have any healing properties.

As the Doctor progresses up the tree he and see more values of resources, and diagnose more symptons. Helping
him/her in a quest for a cure. Obtaining these cures also might involve some sort of quests for npc's where the quest reward is a vital ingredient to the cure you are working on. The ablity to test potential cures on animals would be a skill also listed here. Since you dont want to harm your patientmore than needed, animal testing would make sense. (Bioengineers - would provide lab spcimen creatures)

II. Advanced Alchemy Tree (1-4) The basis of this tree would be an extension of the crafting line. Here you are awarded new experiment/assembly points. You also gain the ability to craft the equipment needed to run your experiments. The ability to actually create test cures would also be placed in this tree.

A. Creating the cure - After determining what type symptons your patient has, you would insert resources into a
device similar to Shipwright's component analysis tool. This tool would extract the healing properties of each
ingredient and combine them to make a cure component. The actual process in my mind is not finalized, but
overall I would like to see the actual crafting of these cures to be complex. Something geared to an advanced
gamer. What makes creating these new cures different than regular doc/medics is that there is no guidline
to tell the Doctor how much of each resources to insert into the anylysis tool. This would be the trial
and error portion of this profession. Therefore, the person would want to make sure this cure worked before
administering it to a real person.

B. Properties of Cures - If a cure is mixed improperly, or poor ingredients are used, there is a chance the subject
will have their aliment accelerated, or they may even suddenly die. This is why its important to take a sample of
your patient's disease, isolate it, then inject into an animal for testing. IF animal testing draws negative feedback,
Lets say hypothetically we have a computer we can use to simulate cures, sorta like practice mode.
Once a person has been innoculated with the new vaccine, then they are resistant to that strain of the virus
for XX days. However if virus mutates, then they would need to be reinnoculated. Cures/Vaccines would have ashelf life of about 30 days, which would be the annual cycle in which new diseases spawn in wild.

III. Advanced Physical Healing Tree (1-4) - This Tree would grant the new doc skills to remedy possible new body/fatigue that I will detail now.

Muscle Tears- Caused by light activity such as running, dancing, or other similar activities. An untreated
tear would result in a person being unable to burstrun, if the tear is in the leg, and inablity to hold weapons
for prolonged periods of time. Tears would be sorta random, might happen in one day, or not for 30. Muscle
tears would be healed with special bandage, and or minor surgery. If a person has surgery, then recouperation time is a bit longer.

Broken/Fractured Bones - After so much physical damage taken over the course of days/weeks/months the player
may fracture/break a bone which would further debilitate that person. If a person breaks his leg in combat
he would walk very, very slow. If he breaks both legs, then he would need to be dragged to safety. Broken
arms result in inablity to lift any item of siginficat weight, and combat become more diffiult. Accuracy is horrible
and overall this person won't win many fights. To heal broken bones, the doctors applies an advanced healing cast that takesa half hour of real game time to fully heal all breaks, and 15minutes to heal fractures. In very severe cases the doctor may have to insert metal screws to keep bones in place, and that would prevent the person from physical activity for 1hour.

Extremity Amputation - In the event the player sustains major damage over a prolonged period of time and does not seek medical attention, there may come a time when their orginal limbs become useless. This is apparent when a person can no longer burst run, nor hold a weapon, or engage in unarmed combat. With the help of bio engineers, a doctor would sample the dna of the player and grow a new limb in a special chamber created by bioengineers. This new limb would not have any special properties, but just fucntions just as a good as the orginal.

Life Threatening Wounds- Due to the nasty cuts many swords, and other sharp objects can inflict a person might sustain a wound thatjust cannont be healed with normal first aid. In this situation the person would start bleeding over a slow period until evenutally dying from the dmg taken. This elite Doctor could prevent this with his ablity to suture wounds and apply special healing bandages. Just for fun, the procedure to sew up wounds would be some sort of minigame, in which there is real time skills involved via point/click/draging mouse on the wound which is enlarged when viewed by the doctor.

And the Money Tree. You didn't think there would be a revamp without the ablity for doctors to make up for loss of buffing for money.

IV. Prevenative Medical Techniques (1-4) - This tree would basically provide Doctors with a tangible product they can offer at their clinics.

A. Strengthen Bones - With this skill and appropiate medicine, a doctor can inject his patient with compound that will strengthen the bones for a set duration.
B. Toughen Skin - This would provide extra protection to lacerations.
C. Strengthen Muscle - Protection against muscle tears.
D. Innoculate against current disease- Depending on what planet the person is traveling to, there may be several diseases out there. Therefore the doctor can offer to innoculate them. Basically this would be like the current disease/poison resist but the effects last a little longer, can innoculations are planet specific.

So that's my basic idea. What do you think? What parts of this need to be modified , and why? Is there something else that should beincluded in this. I would hope the medical community seriously consider changes of this nature if Elite Elite professions are ever introduced.

-Ho'mer (Retired MD, and current Force Monkey)
- Avenir (Future MD)