Incapacitation (XC2)

For other articles titled "Incapacitation", see Incapacitation (disambiguation).

Rex is incapacitated

Incapacitation (often informally referred to as death) is a mechanic in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna ~ The Golden Country. If a character's HP is reduced to 0, they become incapacitated. Incapacitated characters are unable to move or otherwise act in any capacity. Visually, they appear to have fainted, with a pillar of light rising from their body.

Overview

Nia revives an incapacitated Rex

Incapacitation is mostly relevant during combat. Characters can revive incapacitated characters during combat by standing above them and pressing A to consume one bar of the Party Gauge, which revives the character with partial HP and everything on cooldown. AI-controlled party members will always attempt to do this if the player-controlled character is incapacitated, but not for other AI-controlled party members. Incapacitation reduces Affinity by 400 (almost half of the full range of affinity), to a minimum of 1; it also resets Aggro. If all directly-controllable characters are incapacitated, or if the player-controlled character is incapacitated and the Party Gauge is at less than 1 full bar, the fight ends as a failure; the screen fades to black and the party is warped back to the last Landmark or Secret Area visited.

Incapacitation primarily visually occurs to the player-controlled party members (Drivers in main-game Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Vanguard characters in Torna ~ The Golden Country), but it prevents the entire team from acting; the Blade/Rear Guard is unable to perform Blade Arts/Rear Guard Arts, Specials, or reposition.

If an AI-controlled party member is incapacitated a significant distance away from the player-controlled party member, they may warp to the player-controlled member's position. This allows for bringing characters back into the fight even if they were launched off cliffs.

Incapacitation can also occur out of combat, either by taking enough damage to reduce HP to zero (via fall damage or environmental hazards) or by falling to the death barrier, an invisible floor below the edge of most maps. If the player-controlled character is incapacitated in this way, the party will be warped to the last landmark/secret area even if the Party Gauge is at or above 1 full bar. Incapacitation by fall damage or environmental hazards cannot occur to AI-controlled party members or if the Zombie Hover glitch is active; the character will remain at 1 HP instead.

Enemies cannot be incapacitated; standard enemies with 0 HP are defeated and fade into ether, with colour corresponding to the element of the attack which did the deadly blow. Bosses are usually defeated by reducing their HP to zero, at which point they take an incapacitation-like stance before the next cutscene or section of gameplay loads. Some bosses (e.g. Akhos (Olethro Ruins) (part 1)) are defeated by reducing their HP to a nonzero value; these remain standing while the next section loads.

Strategy

When it comes to death, prevention is better than cure. Besides momentarily taking a party member out of the fight and requiring another to go out of their way to help them, the huge loss in affinity drastically reduces the incapacitated party member's abilities for long after they are revived. The loss of Party Gauge can also be bad, especially in common strategies which work towards a big Chain Attack to end fights. If the party setup includes a single tanking-focused character, and this character becomes incapacitated, the enemy will often target another character for quite some time due to the aggro resetting; this can cause a chain reaction where one character's incapacitation leads to the death of another (much less tanky) character, which can easily cause continued problems if the targeted character was a healer.

Several effects provide benefits upon incapacitation of the affected character and/or other party members, but in general, these act less to make incapacitation desirable and more to lessen the sting. However, there are a select few that are worth it. Some, such as Heaven's Tracker, grant large boosts in damage upon incapacitation. It is still generally suboptimal to go for this in the midst of tough fights, but it can be done in preparation for them; one can use nearby enemies to become incapacitated and revived before engaging in battle with a difficult enemy (e.g. the Ignas next to Tyrannotitan Kurodil), and as long as combat was continuously maintained, the damage increases will persist.

Effects that increase damage while allies are incapacitated, such as Defender, can also be situationally useful, although such situations are rare because the loss of an entire party member is often not worth it. One use case is in speedkills that involve Chain Attacks: if the majority of damage is coming from one or two characters, then having a character with relatively low damage be incapacitated during the Chain Attack may substantially speed up the process. This can even have direct benefits other than speed: if the Chain Attack is Fusion Combo-boosted, then removing an unwanted character from the equation means that more precious Fusion Combo time will be spent on Specials that do proportionally more damage. This can mean the difference between successfully killing vs. not killing an enemy. However, such situations must be carefully planned out beforehand, as with only two characters it is more difficult to guarantee that the necessary Element orbs are burst.

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Gallery

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

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  Incapacitation Tutorial part 1

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  Incapacitation Tutorial part 2

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  Incapacitation Tutorial part 3

Torna ~ The Golden Country

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  Healing Tutorial detailing Incapacitation

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  Incapacitation in the Healing Tutorial Tip