AFAIK, that's a house rule. Possibly a fun one. The mechanical effect is allowing many more heals, at much lower drain each (so, no net drain). It depends if you need to make healing even faster and easier in SR4.

Well, even if we assume that that a wound set is 'All boxes taken before Heal is cast', what happens if you still have some boxes of damage after being healed, and you get injured again?

Example:

After a particularly harsh combat, Joe the Gun Bunny has taken 8 boxes of physical damage. His pal Frank the Bear Shaman casts Heal on him, successfully healing 5 boxes of damage, leaving him with 3 boxes that must be healed through rest. However, on his way home to get some much needed shut eye, Joe gets shot up during a fracas with some local gangers, bringing him up to 6 boxes of physical damage (the 3 leftover from before, plus 3 new). He calls Frank, asking for another Heal. What happens when Frank casts the spell? If he scores enough successes, could he completely heal Joe? Could he only heal, at most, 3 boxes? (the new injuries taken since the last Heal was cast)

The new injuries are the 'new set', yes. I'm not sure, offhand, if the drain is for the 'new set' or for the total amount wounded. I *think* it's for just the new set.

Correct.

Is there any indication that someone can have more than one set of wounds? You could just as well argue that the entirety of the boxes (3+3) are a different and new set of wounds. Why does Magic sum the 8 initial boxes (unless they occured from a single attack) into a single set of wounds, but doesn't do so on the other two (3 residual damage and 3 from up to three attacks) ? AFAIK Magic is not intelligent.

Because the one set of 3 is from a set of wounds that already had Heal cast on it.

Otherwise you could cast Heal, then go "hey, a new set of wounds!" and cast Heal on that damage again.

It's not 'intelligence'. It's 'has magic already affected *these* wounds'? Yes or no. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

The problem is that "set of wounds" or even "wound" have never been defined in SR. The "set of wounds" could just as well mean "number of boxes sustained by a single attack" and wound being a "box of damage". The check whether a set of wounds has received healing is pointless as well since a)nowhere is it said that a character can have more than one set of wounds b) as soon as his condition monitor changes for good or bad this set of wounds is different from the one before.

Once again I wish engineers/computer scientist/mathematicians would write the rules parts of RPGs

Yes, but we've already moved on from that question. The important thing (in that interpretation) is that magic can't attempt to heal the *same* thing twice.

Now, as discussed above, you can alter the parameters, but what matters is how that changes the power level. If every box, or every attack, etc. is individually Heal-able, then that makes magical healing vastly stronger (and non-magical, for that matter?). So the question is, 'do you want to make healing vastly stronger?'

If the answer is yes, then that's 100% fine. The result and the *desired result* are all that matter.

The way I always handled this in SR2/3 was to put a circle around each box of damage that remained after magical healing. Boxes of damage with circles around them can't be healed by magic (or first aid, because magic healing means no more first aid). (Same method used for physical drain, which also could not be magically healed). If you took more damage, you could still use magical healing / first aid, but it could only heal the new (uncircled) boxes. If you got some bed rest, that could heal those boxes, or uncircled boxes, or a mix of the two, as desired.

Seems like this would still work. The issue isn't really what makes up a "set" of damage. Its simply how to track treated vs. untreated damage.

Drain can be healed with First Aid though, just FYI.

So dumb...

It can? Not in my game. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

(In Bill's voice) Pills here!

Pills are all that keep that old man erect. ;P

Or mine.