Medic Archive

Normally, I wouldn't respond to a "DO AWAY WITH MIND DAMAGE" thread, but this one's brought up a couple good points:

1) As a medic, my healing only serves to delay the mind kill, and not by that long.
2) Treating mind as a "mana pool" fueling specials and not a third incappable bar seems reasonable.

The designers have recognized the need for a medic in the field - that's what the Combat Medic is for. The lack of a Combat Entertainer leads me to believe that this sort of thing wasn't really envisioned in planning. Entertainers don't like coming out in the field. Their inability to move and heal makes them particularly vulnerable in the case of aggressive mobs. Think the drummer and fife player in revolutionary-era warfare. There's a reason they phased those positions out in combat: they were musket fodder.

It seems that a character's mind and ability to concentrate should govern a lot of what we consider to be special moves. A character deprived of mind through combat should have his ability to perform specials suspended until he gets healed. Right now, what we have is an army of highly trained commandos, marksmen, and melee fighters dying of shell shock.

This is not to say that a combatant should not be incapacitated by mind damage. Call it shell shock, mental trauma, whatever, let it simulate the fighter panicking or unable to do anything but quiver and babble. But a mind KILL seems a bit harsh.

THUS, THESE ARE MY SUGGESTIONS:

Let mind damage govern specials. It makes sense that I couldn't use my mad kung fu skillz if my mind's been beaten to hell.

If you bring somebody below zero mind, heap on the mind wounds or battle fatigue in a BIG way. I like entertainers and I'd like to think that this would help them INCREASE business. I also like roleplaying, and sitting in the cantina (or in camp if you convince an Entertainer to come with you and back off when combat starts) in spatial chat is a good time to practice that.

Do away with a mind-oriented death-blow. Now, if you want to shoot the poor **edit** in the torso while he has a panic attack, have at it. You've earned it. Let his buddies try to drag him to safety. This still makes riflemen a good PvP or support class.

THAT SAID, I don't expect any of this to be even considered by a developer, designer, or suit. Changes this drastic are not made in production, and I wasn't invited to play in Beta. Maybe in Galaxies 2.