Hi everyone.
I'm trying to wrap my head around Surgical Host. In particular, what it does at level 8.
While your sheath array is active, you can perform Medicine checks on creatures within your reach. While you’re within reach of your cloud array, you can also perform Medicine checks on creatures in or adjacent to the cloud as though they were within your reach. For both forms, you perform Medicine checks as though you’re using a basic medkit; at 5th level, you instead perform Medicine checks as though you’re using an advanced medkit. At 8th level, you can select a medical lab as one of your minor forms known
Does this construct an entire medical lab around you when you boot up this gear array? Walls and all? Am I looking at this the wrong way?
At first I thought perhaps it applied the effects of a Medical Lab (treat 3 targets at once, and treat deadly wounds twice in a day) to the rest of the ability, but then that didn't make sense, since the rest of the ability utilizes your Sheath or Cloud arrays, but the level 8 portion makes the Medical Lab a minor form, meaning you bring it up with a Gear array.
I would love to see others' thoughts on this, or if there has been anything official said on it that I didn't see.
The reason I want to sort of break it down as to what it entails is to address ramifications of it.
If it does just construct a whole room full of beds and equipment for medical procedures, how does it interact with the available space to construct such a thing? Does it form it the space available? And if there are walls and the like, what would be a reasonable size and hardness for them be?
It's such a fascinating ability over all, I just want to figure out how that last part is intended to work in more detail.
It makes the lab yeah, it's fun as a thing you can just do flavourful wise. Only used it once in the game I played, being it was an amusing moment when I did.
It makes the lab yeah, it's fun as a thing you can just do flavourful wise. Only used it once in the game I played, being it was an amusing moment when I did.
When you used it, did you have like, a whole room full of equipment pop up? How big was the room? Or was it in a situation where the size didn't really matter?
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Someone in one of the Discords pointed out how the write-up for Surgical Host in Tech Rev looks truncated, in that there's no further guidance on how manifesting the medical lab works, as well as it ending without a period (as if there was more written there that was cut.) It looks like the lack of closing period is even reproduced on AoN.
Anyways - I think the intent is that your nanites can create exactly whatever you need to accomplish the task at hand (that you would normally need a med lab for) without going beyond that. Like your nanites can form whatever Space-gurneys, Space-Erlenmeyer flasks or Space-magnetic stir bars you need to treat people more effectively than you usually can in the field, in a hand-wave-y sort of way. To say it creates a structure, room, or walls you can take cover behind, or other things clearly beyond the intent of "you gain the benefits of having a med lab without actually having a med lab" is a stretch, I think.
I agree, absolutely love the idea and the flavour behind it, though. Same with Instant Architect - just pulling a 40 ft bridge out of your nano-pocket is so good :D
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Anyways - I think the intent is that your nanites can create exactly whatever you need to accomplish the task at hand (that you would normally need a med lab for) without going beyond that. Like your nanites can form whatever Space-gurneys, Space-Erlenmeyer flasks or Space-magnetic stir bars you need to treat people more effectively than you usually can in the field, in a hand-wave-y sort of way. To say it creates a structure, room, or walls you can take cover behind, or other things clearly beyond the intent of "you gain the benefits of having a med lab without actually having a med lab" is a stretch, I think.
I sort of lean this way as well. Creating an entire room and trappings does seem extreme. I could see as most maybe a bubble to sterilize an area to operate, maybe not even a tangible, solid bubble, but something like zone of truth, but it sterilizes a space and keeps it that way as long as nothing new is introduced, just to simulate the surgery theater that is normally part of a medical lab, and then as you say, producing things like gurneys, tools and monitoring equipment as needed, maybe even in minature or as part of an AR HUD while you have the array manifested.
It creates a cool sort of imagery for sure. I really like the nanocyte in general, just for how versatile it is for building different roles. There's not a lot it can't do if you build in any particular direction.