Street Docs, no more? Options

[Red Fox]

So I've been away from the shadows for a bit, and being back is really nice. In working my way through the new and beautiful full color rulebook with a crew of runners, I've noticed that healing in 2072 is a heck of a lot quicker and easier than in days of old. It seems that healing from a beating so severe that a runner has got a cranked out stun track and physical damage in overflow is a matter of about a weeks worth of rest (and we rolled up 300BP characters) with no need for medical care.

I've been working the huge boost in recovery speed through saying 'oh yeah, nowadays everyone has access to improved 'medicine cabinet' supplies that are made available dirt cheap just in the spirit of metahumanitarianism (and dragging my chummers who've taken headshots to the street doc anyway just because it's good roleplay).

I'm wondering if you all have some insights on the section on healing that might restore some game balance and keep the street docs from ending up with the squatter lifestyle!

[Andinel]

There's an optional rule in Augmentation to make healing slower. That might be something like what you want for your game.

[BlackJaw]

The group I play in still gets plenty of use out of Street Docs. People (Sometimes runners, sometimes NPCs we want alive) with various gunshots being rushed to a street doc to patch them up before they bleed out or die from ripped up internal organs. Even with magical healing it proves needed for nasty enough injuries.

And of course, it's always important to have someone to go to for those latest cyber, bio, nano, and gene -tech upgrades. At the very least a source of black market medkits.

[Dragnar]

The rule change is a nod to a purely game mechanical need. It's unrealistic, but useful, as being unable to participate for an ingame week because your character got shot is no fun for the player.
I happen to agree with that reasoning, but it's purely subjective.
If you think that having characters heal from serious wounds extraordinarily fast is a bigger problem than having a player twiddle his thumbs for possibly the rest of the gaming session, there are optional suggestions for harsher healing rules in Augmentation.