Someone who is defeated no longer gets a turn, it seems. That may sound obvious and silly, but I have seen this show up a few times and it finally clicked for me what was going on.
So I'm playing with a partner and we are in a boss fight. I'm Balance, they are Death. I'm in position 1, they are in position 2, my Mander is in position 3.
My Death buddy is getting beat on badly, and doesn't manage to draw a heal in time. They go to 0 and are marked as 'defeated'. Next turn, I queue up Helping Hands and target him. It goes off, and the HoT mark starts to spin around him. My turn ends, skips position 2 and jumps to my Mander, who happens to cast Donate Pip on him as well. The globe lights up over his head.
The nest several turns, he is in the fight but the Helping Hands never goes off. It stays spinning around him for 5 rounds before he Flees. He teleports to me and rejoins the fight.
If this is working as intended, that means that only heals which can be cast on another player and work *right then* will help a teammate who is defeated. I can't see why this should be the case.. if they are a valid target for a spell (he was already at 0 when I cast HH), they should be a valid target for the spells effect.
Combat in The Spiral has always been a complex affair and even veteran wizards forget some of the finer points. Heal over time spells are always removed from a target at the moment he / she has been defeated in combat; even when that healing spell would result in the target returning to combat to fight. This rule applies even when the wizard in trouble has teammates remaining who haven’t been defeated yet. Be careful in your future duels!
If you want the prize, you have to build the ladder rung by rung. There are no shortcuts.
As far as being able to target the defeated player, as long as they stay in the circle they can be chosen as the target for beneficial spells. Since the only beneficial spell that would work on a defeated player is a proper heal spell, you would think that KI would make it so that they can't be the target of the other beneficial spells.
However, here is an example of why they left it alone: Let's have the same setup as your incident. The difference is that you are casting Sprite instead of Helping Hands, and the mander is casting a shield instead of a Donate Pip. Your Sprite revives your death friend with the 30 points of healing. This now makes the death wizard an active player, so on his turn (which, as a previously defeated player, he has auto-passed) he gets the first of the three 90 points of healing, making his total health 120. The mander casts a shield on the death wizard.
Now, the bad guys are just as likely to continue to target your friend. 120 points of health isn't going to be enough to live thru a hit from the bad guys, but now that mader has put a shield on him his chances of survival just doubled. So, without the ability to select a defeated wizard in order for the mader to cast the shield on him he most likely would have died again the next round.
While you can't control your minions, it is up to you pay attention to what you are trying to cast on a defeated player.
Here is your problem. Helping hands can only work on wizards who aren't defeated yet because it doesn't have that tiny amount of health it gives you to start out. Since helping hands only does turns it only works on players that haven't been defeated.
