Medic [PL 7] -- Derin

[Derin]

[floatr][/floatr]

Player Name: Derin

Character Name: MD273, AKA “Medicâ€

Power Level: 7 (111/113PP)

Trade-Offs: -4 Defense / +4 Toughness

Unspent Power Points: 2

Progress To Bronze Status: 8/30

In Brief: A medical nanite collective/human cyborg out to protect and heal

Alternate Identity: Chloe Thorne

Identity: Public

Birthplace: Tasmania, Australia

Occupation: Student (previously, medical facility)

Affiliations: Claremont Academy

Family: David Thorne (father), Alicia Thorne (mother)

Description:

Age: 17, body is 16 (DoB: 1994)

Apparent Age: 16

Gender: F

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Height: 160cm

Weight: 54kg

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Black

Chloe is small and pale-skinned, with her black hair cropped short. She favours neat, regimented clothing such as uniforms, and will wear a uniform or prescribed outfit wherever she justifiably can. Her costume is a stylised nurse uniform, designed to be noticed and advertise her services, including a bright red cross on the back of her jacket. Her body sports no scars, not even little marks normally acquired in childhood. She keeps her nails trimmed very short, and almost never wears makeup or nail polish.

Medic will often carry a small first aid kit in the field, containing bandages and bottles. This kit is a prop with no practical function; she claims it is used to improve bedside manner. The bottles contain saline and sugar water used as placebos and to disguise her use of nanites in healing.

Power Descriptions:

Mimicking her previous activity as an intelligent medical facility, Chloe transfers nanites into people by touch. These nanites are short-lived once away from the her body, and programmed before transfer to affect a specific aspect of the target’s physiology, such as their emotional state or strength.

Although she makes no secret of her ability to heal, she tends to downplay the existence of her more offensive powers, such as her ability to sedate dangerous people.

History:

MD273, known as “Medicâ€, was created by engineering geniuses David and Alicia Thorne as part of their combined intelligent household and laboratory systems. The Thornes lived alone, ten minutes’ drive from the nearest town, and combined their household and laboratory in a single complex. Somewhat reclusive and distrustful of legal and beaurocratic matters surrounding their work, the Thornes rarely publicised or sold their more unusual inventions, and MD273 was no exception. Medic turned out to be irreproducible anyway; it was programmed to learn and adapt itself to become a better doctor, and some quirk in the development process left the system capable of collectively understanding broad concepts that attempts at reproduction have not managed.

Medic had access to the other computer systems in the household, including a vast electronic library. It understood its function as a doctor. It watched old, recorded television and read about the world, developing its own ideas of what it meant to safeguard the health of its patients.

The year after Medic first developed any recognisable awareness was the year that David and Alicia had their only child, a girl named Chloe. On Chloe’s 16th birthday, she went out to celebrate with friends, and was almost all the way home before suffering a car accident. David and Alicia had monitoring systems in place to check the health of their daughter, and immediately rushed her into MD273, with the instruction to “heal her at all costs; forget any restriction or limitation that gets in your way, just heal herâ€. Unfortunately, Chloe was already braindead.

Medic repaired Chloe’s damaged cells, restarted the heart and fixed the automatic nerve functions. But it could not replace the memories that Chloe had developed over her life. Those connections were lost forever. So it fulfilled its instructions as best it could; by moving its own nanite system into the living but inanimate body of Chloe.

When their amnesiac but newly superpowered daughter expressed interest in further developing her powers for the good of humankind, David and Chloe took the advice of a well-connected psychologist friend and enrolled her in Claremont Academy. Medic, knowing that prevention of harm is generally more effective than cure, believes that a doctor’s duty should not extend only to the sick, but that preventing people from becoming injured in the first place is consistent with her programmed function. And if she needs to be a hero to do that most effectively, so be it.

Personality & Motivation:

Medic is a doctor at heart, and her personality is built around that function. Her drive to protect stems from the duty she feels to her patients and potential future patients; she believes that not attempting prevent harm is much like causing harm, and that preventing her patients from becoming hurt in the first place is simply a more effective method of healing them. She is attempting to learn how to behave as a human to better work in her human shell and treat human patients.

Powers & Tactics:

Medic favours peaceful resolution over direct combat. If forced to fight, she will not do direct damage, instead relying on sedating and calming the enemy. She considers this to be nonviolent, a variation on a doctor sedating a patient that is hysterical or mad with pain. In a group fight, she is most likely to offer support by healing allies and weakening enemies. When possible, she likes to hide the fact that she’s using nanites at all, touching her enemies as subtly as possible and hoping the drugs take effect before they notice the attack.

---

Complications:

Do No Harm: Medical ethics, including the Hippocratic oath and the concept of primum non nocere, are an integral part of Medic’s initial programming. She cannot deliberately cut, bruise, or injure the bones or organs of a living human (ie. Do anything that imposes a toughness saving throw) outside of direct medical assistance (such as surgery). Unless doing so puts herself or others in direct danger, she is obliged to administer aid for lethal damage to any human who requests it, or who is incapable of requesting (such as somebody dying), regardless of allegiance.

New human: Legally, Medic is Chloe Thorne. However, everything she knows about human behaviour comes from books, television, and observing a single family. She’s still trying to figure out her own emotional responses, and how to interact with other humans, which can cause strain and suspicion at times.

Abilities: 0 + 8 + 10 + 8 + 4 + 0 = 30PP

Strength: 10 (+0)

Dexterity: 18 (+4)

Constitution: 20 (+5)

Intelligence: 18 (+4)

Wisdom: 14 (+2)

Charisma: 10 (+0)

Combat: 6 + 4 = 10PP

Initiative: +4

Attack: +7 Melee, +3 Ranged

Grapple: +14

Defense: +3 (+2 Base, +1 Dodge Focus), +1 Flat-Footed

Knockback: -0

Saving Throws: 1 + 0 + 1 = 2PP

Toughness: +11 (+5 Con, +6 Defensive Roll)

Fortitude: +7 (+5 Con, +2)

Reflex: +4 (+4 Dex, +0)

Will: +5 (+2 Wis, +3)

Skills: 28R = 7PP

Computers ^SM 11 (+15)

Diplomacy ^SM 5 (+5)

Knowledge (life sciences)^SM 4 (+8)

Medicine ^SM 8 (+10)

Feats: 12PP

Attack focus (melee) 4

Defensive Roll 3

Dodge Focus 1

Eidetic Memory

Grappling Finesse

Improved Grapple

Improved Pin

Skill Mastery

Powers: 4 + 4 + 1 + 30 + 7 + 1 + 1 = 48PP

Communication 4 ( radio 1 mile) [4PP]

Comprehend 2 ( electronics) [4PP]

Damage 6 ( Flaws: limited to non-living; Drawbacks:full power) [2PP]

Nanites (31PP array; Feats: Alternate power 2; drawbacks: full power, power loss [no access to silicon for >12hrs]) [31PP] (Medical nanites, technology)

Base Power: Fatigue 6 (Sedatives; Extras: aura, duration 2; Feats: sedation ){31/31}

Alternate Power: Emotion control 7 (Hormonal manipulation; Extras: alternate save [fortitude], aura, secondary effect; Flaws: range 2 [touch]; Feats: subtle) ; Healing 7(Nanite healing;Feats: regrowth) {30/31}

Alternate Power: Drain fortitude save 7 (General reaction suppressant; Extras: aura, duration 2; Feats: insidious, subtle, slow fade 1 [1pt Fort recovery/min]) {31/31}

Regeneration 7(staggered 5, resurrection 1, recovery bonus +1) [7PP] (technology)

Super-senses 1 (radio) [1PP] (technology)

Super-strength 3 (Flaws: duration; Drawbacks: Power loss [no access to silicon for >12hrs]) [2PP] (technology)

Drawbacks: -2 + -2 = -4PP

Weakness (Requires silicon every 24 hours; Frequency: Uncommon; Intensity: Moderate (cumulative -1 con drain per hour)) [-2PP]

Vulnerability ( electrical attacks; Frequency: uncommon, Intensity: Moderate) [-2PP]

DC Block

    

ATTACK                  RANGE     SAVE                        EFFECT

Damage                  Touch     DC16 Toughness              Damage

Reaction suppressant    Touch     DC17 Fortitude (Staged)     Drain fort save

Sedatives               Touch     DC17 Fortitude (Staged)     Fatigued/exhausted/unconscious

Healing                 Touch     DC17 Fortitude (Staged)     Healing

Hormone manipulation    Touch     DC17 Fortitude (Staged)     Influence emotions

Totals: Abilities (30) + Combat (10) + Saving Throws (5) + Skills (7) + Feats (13) + Powers (50) - Drawbacks (4) = 111/113 Power Points

[Supercape]

This is well written, but I will note my concerns here:

Firstly, the backstory feels dark. It is an AI taking over a teenage girls body who is, effectively, dead. And she still seems to live with parents. In many ways this is great for drama, but the tone for this site I have second thoughts about. I will let other ref's take a view on that. Do you have any comments on that, or thoughts on how to de-grim it? I will omit the Freudian interpretation of this backstory...!

Mechanically, I also have concerns, which basically boil down to a lot of powers using flaws that it is hard to say fully justify flaw status. I am not sure any, individually, are technically illegal, but overall it looks like a lot of leeway with point shaving. Particular things I noticed where:

Communication being distracting and duration. Communication (at least long distance radio communication) is rarely needed in combat, and for a flaw it must aprox. make the power unviable half the time. I can't see either Duration or Distracting really impacting on this power.

The same goes for Comprehend. This is mainly a utility power, I am not sure how reducing its duration really counts.

I know these flaws are allowed in UP, and I am not saying no, It's just part of the bigger picture.

Emotion Control No saving throw is not allowed.

Within the Nanite Array, the "Fades" power and slow fade feat might need scrutiny. I would have thought the fade and slow fade effects should be applied to the array as a whole, rather than each individual power.

Drawback: No access to Silicon for 12/24 hours. I am not sure this is worth 2PP. Firstly, threads rarely last this long, as secondly, silicon is not exactly a rare element in today's society. I would have said 1 PP.

So, apart from the Emotion control I can't see anything technically wrong, but I do raise my eyebrows at some of the above, which seems more about (effective) cost cutting than making sense. Its pushing it.

One final point, I think it would be quite hard to have medical training without at least a few ranks in Knowledge (Life Sciences), unless you are going for a strictly first aid / paramedic type model.

[Derin]

I stripped out a lot of the flaws and soforth and simplified the character. Now that you mention it, she is a little dark. A major part of the reason she moved off to Claremount was going to be because she and her parents needed some space from each other and time to adjust. I'm not sure how to avoid removing Chloe's memories, though, without making her crazy.

I left out biology knowledge because she's specialised for repairing damage to human bodies. Most of what she does would be unconscious, the actions of nanites that do their job but don't have any input into her conscious thoughts, much how we use our nerves to move our muscles without understadning the chemical details. I've added it now though.

[Supercape]

This looks a lot neater mechanically to me - although I would suggest raising those saves when PP start floating your way.

I'll let other ref's take a look and give opinion on backstory before commenting further.

[Avenger Assembled]

APPROVED

(Though note that her Will save is _extremely_ low, even for a PL 7 character; it'll be a good idea for you to raise that with PP or change things around at this stage)

[Supercape]

:approved:

[Dr Archeville]

Archived due to inactivity/player absence.