Essence of theTactician-Doctor (Arknights)

This essence comes in a bottle inside a first-aid kit. By the time you finish drinking it, you’ve already forgotten what it tastes like.

• You gain a stunning level of tactical skill, focused on using small groups of diverse units. Your commands could allow a group of a dozen operators to handle an army of 400 without any losses.

  • This starts with a solid grounding of education and experience of battlefields of all sorts.

  • This includes on-the-fly planning and replanning, as well as a good understanding of when your current plans are about to become unsalvageable.

  • You understand how to get the most out of your operators and assets, including positioning, synergies, and timing. Understanding how small details in one operator’s capabilities affects the result of pairing them up with another operator is trivial for you.

  • You have a high level of precision in the timing of your commands. This allows you time usage of skills for maximum impact, as well as retreat and deploy operators at precise moments and in large groups.

• You may view any battlefield from a bird’s-eye perspective. This also allows you to track invisible or otherwise concealed enemies.

  • You also have real-time information on the state of any operator under your command, as well as secure communications with them.

• You are aware of the enemy’s movements before they make them. This isn’t long before any maneuvers start - only thirty seconds - but it will blunt surprise attacks and allow you to lay traps more effectively.

• When a battle is about to start, you may simulate the battle up to thirty times in an instant. This will not give you all information about the enemy tactics or their responses, but any information about the enemy composition, planned tactics, or hidden abilities will be accurate.

• You may “deploy” or “retreat” operators under your command.

  • Deploying an operator puts them on the battlefield in a location and facing of your choosing.

  • Retreating an operator teleports them from the battlefield to the nearest safe space. You automatically retreat any operator as they die.

  • Both retreating and deploying grab all of an operator’s loadout. It will also reverse any injuries or aliments they picked up on the battlefield. This also refreshes expended equipment and skills. Redeploying an operator on the field will not reset any on-field buffs they have gained, but retreating will.

  • Deploying an operator costs “deployment points.” These points start at a low number at the start of any battle, and you generate them constantly during combat. Scouts, leaders, and some others under your command may also increase your DP generation when present on the battlefield. Retreating an operator before they are dying will also give DP.

  • Operators with increased power or skill require more DP to deploy, as a general rule. This amount may be reduced by effects from some operators.

  • You may only redeploy an operator after a certain period after the last time you deployed or retreated them. This is usually a minute for most operators, but stealthy and mobile operators have a decreased redeploy time. (Less mobile operators, such as wheeled robots, take longer.)

  • You may also deploy, redeploy, and retreat tactical objects and summons. These include mines, summons, traps, support equipment, and other objects that you have access to.

• You find yourself replete with opportunities to gain the loyalty of people with power, capability, or potential.

  • Optionally, if not in the Arknights universe, you may gain the ability to recruit any characters from Arknights as your operators. You may also gain the opportunity to recruit “local” expies of Arknights characters.

  • You also gain the leadership and management skills needed to keep everyone on board, on the same page, and not at each other’s throats.

  • You may also give your operators headpats at random times without real consequences.

• Trusting in you gives your operators a slight physical edge.

• You gain extensive knowledge of all commonly studied sciences, along with cutting-edge medical knowledge.

• When you go to sleep, you may choose to dream of mysterious places. A half-ruined castle, a foreign jungle, or other such places open to exploration. And in this dream, versions of your operators explore. (TLR: Play Integrated Strategies in your dreams).

  • You start with three operators of different classes, and have the opportunity to recruit one from a random class of your operators after each battle. Sometimes you will get a choice between two classes, or some random subset of all operators.

  • You require “Hope” to recruit operators into your dream-party. These versions of your operators are about two-thirds of the way to their maximum potential. With more Hope, you can “re-recruit” them to get them to their full potential.

  • You gain Hope through victories in battle.

  • Escaped enemies in battle subtract from your “Life Points.” The Expedition will end when these reach zero.

  • You have a store of “Ingots” - a more fungible representation of valuable trading materials on hand. You gain more after each battle.

  • Not all areas you explore will inevitably lead to battle - you may find safe spots to rest, meet the rogue trader to buy something, or encounter a variety of interesting characters (some of which lead to battle depending on your choices in the encounter.)

  • Only the time in battle counts towards the time the dream takes in real life.

  • During the Expedition, you will gain artifacts - occasionally from after battles, from random encounters, and from the Rogue Trader. These can provide one-time boosts (like Hope, Life Points, Ingots, or a promotion) or can provide a bonus for the rest of the Expedition. Some of them provide a deployable, but most of them are either a buff to your operators, a debuff to your enemies, or a boost to your Tactician-Doctor powers.

  • At the end of each journey lies a final boss, a powerful opponent. If you can defeat the boss and finish the fight, then you win that Expedition.

  • Once the Expedition is over, it’s like it never happened, mostly. Your Expeditions will result in slight improvements to your operators in dream-Expeditions and a slow trickle of resources in the waking world. Expeditions may also fulfill unlock conditions required to get certain encounters and artifacts in future Expeditions.

  • If you start another Expedition, your progress is reset, and you must select another three starting operators and have the same starting values of Life Points, Hope, and Ingots.

  • If you win an Expedition, then you may take one artifact and put it into your “Dream Cheat” pool, and put another in your “Tactical Cheat” pool. Artifacts in these pools that require one of the three resources of the dream-Expeditions will use a running total of all leftover amounts after each win.

  • Artifacts in your Dream Cheat pool are with you for every future Expedition, unless you chose to suppress them for a run. One-time use artifacts may be used at any time, including before the Expedition proper starts. Having multiple copies of a single artifact does nothing (with the exception of deployables.) Having an artifact in your Dream Cheat pool removes it as a possibility for getting it except from the Rogue Trader.

  • Artifacts in your Tactical Cheat pool may have their power called upon before or during an engagement, providing their effect to the battle. Once done, that individual artifact must be recharged by winning an Expedition. Calling upon multiple of the same individual artifact does nothing (with the exception of deployables.)

• Optionally, gain a landship - a mobile town, essentially. (Or, if not in the Arknights universe, a local equivalent.)

• Optionally, you may become The Doctor of Rhodes Island as of their awakening from the Chernobog Sarcophagus. This will not give you their memories but can give you their mannerisms and manner of speaking. If you took the landship, then you get Rhodes Island.

• Optionally and exclusive from the above, you may be otherwise transmigrated or reincarnated into the Arknights universe.