Healing Tests -- Concern/Confused Options

[Coasini]

Page 242.

Healing stun damage is a body + willpower extended test, with a duration of 1 hour. I assume this is against no threshhold, the way it is worded. This means that an average person will end up being able to fully recover their stun in about 5 hours, which I am fine with.

What I do not agree with (or perhaps simply do not understand), is that the same thing occurs with physical damage. It is a body x 2 extended with a duration of 1 day. Again, it specifies no threshhold. By my estimation, someone who has been shot to the brink of death can fully recover after just 5 days of bedrest, with no medical attention.

My personal feeling is to make the threshhold on the physical damage test against the number of boxes they have. This would cause minor injury to go away easily and quickly, but heavy damage would require medical attention to see any improvement at all.

Let me know if there's an authoritive answer to this question.

[Autarkis]

I also think that wound penalties apply. For example, a Troll will recover faster than a human, if they are both average.

So 7 Body for the Troll (14 dice) versus 3 Body for the Human (6 dice.)

If both took a hit of 10 boxes, the Troll will be rolling 10 dice (14-4) while the Human will be rolling 2 dice (6-4).

[TheJackal]

THat's an estimated 5 days if you are in a Sterilized medical facility, with proper medicine being used, are not a mage and have no implants. See page 244 for all the modifiers.

[mintcar]

You have read the rules right. The threshold is equal to the amount of boxes and the interval is 1 day. Wich means all people regenerate in SR4 ;). I envision someone with decent Body laying on a bed saying "k, time for some healing... hmpphhffffff. hmmm henhnnnnphf... There, all done" and then rising from the bed having healed a small calibre slug to the gut in 24 hours.

It´s a simple system and I like that it is. But it wont fit my campain that the maximum time a person with 12 boxes in the condition monitor will stay in bed from almost getting killed is less than 2 weeks. (because modifiers or not, it´s likely you get one hit each test with a decent attribute, especially with medical care and help from a doctor.)


The house rule that first comes to mind is to have every 3 boxes inflicted in a single blow cause more nasty wounds that you can discribe and write down. Say that you have 4 boxes of damage already, then you get 6 more in a single blow. You will have 10 boxes filled out, and your wound modifier would be -3. But you would also note a "level 2 nasty wound" or whatever you call them. For wound modifier purpouses it would be imbeded in the damage you´ve taken, but you would define what it is, like for instance a broken leg. This damage would then be harder to heal, so you would not be able to fast heal the last 6 boxes in your monitor. How long it would take to heal the nasty wound could be discussed.

[Coasini]

Jackal-
My problem with that system is that most characters will be unable to heal even one box of damage naturally, unless they are using a medkit or something.
The rules do not say to use the healing table unless you are using first aid or medicine, they don't apply to natural healing tests (from what I can tell).

Autarkis -- I think it would make more sense to use the extended rules 'threshhold' ruling as opposed to removing dice, since it's available.
The result is the same -- high body has more dice, and therefore can score more hits to heal.

mintcar -- I'm not really sure what you are suggesting.


Addendum: I'm inclined to think Jackal's interpretation of the rules are the most accurate to the intended rules. However, I did like the idea that the more damaged you were, the harder it was to heal. This view of the rules throws that out and says whether you have one box or 10 boxes of damage, it's just as easy to mend..

[mintcar]

If you get hit for 3, 6 or 9 damage respectively in one single blow, this will cause a level 1, 2 or 3 critical injury (or something). If you get one of these you simply note it on your character sheet. For flavour your GM will say what kind of injury it is. A level 1 injury could be something that´s broken or a possible infection, a level 2 injury could be something like a worse fracture or a punctured lung, a level 3 injury could be something even worse that would kill a normal man (showing how tough the troll really is, he can walk around with a broken skull without falling over). These will then stay even if the rest of the damage is healed. They require special attention and should take a long time to treat unless healed magicly or with advanced medical care.

[Coasini]

mintcar: Not a bad idea for a house ruling. Would add some fun flavor as you say, for sure.
I still wish to know how Fanpro intended this to be played out though.

[mintcar]

Propably fast and easy. It´s good rules for a no worries gamestyle. I don´t mind house ruling this from such a solid base.

[Coasini]

My interpretation I recognize now is somewhat messy.

Assuming someone has 10 boxes of damage, extended test against threshhold 10 (1 day intervals). Let's assume it takes them 5 days to get enough hits to finally heal a box.
They drop to 9 boxes of damage now. Do we restart the threshhold counter? I don't know. Bleh.

While this would complete the goal of putting someone out for a few weeks, it becomes very confusing / convoluted.

[Crusher Bob]

I would guess that you restart the thresthold counter each time.

So healing from 10 boxes rolling 6 dice would take:

10 5 days
9 5 days
8 4 days
7 4 days
6 3 days
5 3 days
4 2 days
3 2 days
2 1 day
1 1 day

or about 30 days in total

Of course, the body 9 troll bounces back from that in 14 days...

[Coasini]

Crusher: That's what I was thinking.
I think it makes a rough amount of sense. I may stick with that.

[mintcar]

And I´m going to go with mine. So we´re all happy now, how nice :D

[Spider]

Yep, pretty neat.

I like that idea! Nice.

-Spider

[blakkie]

The way the rules reads it clearly has no initial threshhold, it just heals a box for each Hit. That i'm not crazy about that at all. Better than SR3 IMO for gaming. But it has gone to the other extreme for speed....though you'd need a lot of effort, Body, or luck to heal a previously untreated handgun wound (DV5+? ) in a single interval.

A possibility is to increase the interval to something like 3 to 4 days. But the lack of granularity is kinda crappy.

The idea of the current boxes as the Threshhold to heal one box has some merits. It makes it easier to allow someone to try heal a box or two mid-assignment. But at very high Bodies you are looking at as much as mid-teens for the walking wounded.

If you were going to the trouble of house ruling that anyway i'd make it heal up to 3 boxes each time you reached the Threshhold to make it worth while taking the time mid-assignment. Or maybe 2 boxes. That's still pretty stiff for a Body (3) in a hospital paying for private care of a professional (extra two or four dice per roll) recovering from the brink of 10 boxes. That's 6 + 3ish - 3, the better part of the week to heal down to 7 boxes. This would also help keep the rolling down a bit.

EDIT: That is also assuming a non-awakened, non-techno, with no 'ware. Unlikely for sure, but then i'm not sure how common Body as low as (3) is going to be either for PCs.

To totally heal up it would take them close to 2 weeks (ok week and a half). Short by current medical standards? Ya, current medical standards are a lot better than 50 years ago too.

I know it always sucked to have a player off at the end of the table reenacting Waterloo with Napolean as the cheezy puffs and the gummi bears as Wellington because their PC is in the hospital for a month while the rest of the team was busy doing stuff.

[mfb]

heh. the rules are almost as bad as SR3. my adept (no healing powers) once completely recovered from S+3 damage in about 36 hours. crazy.

[blakkie]

[mfb]

this was several years ago, but as i recall, it was a beta-grade facility with magical care.

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

Why is this so bad? There are modifiers you can apply.

In SR3, I've seen a decker who completely recovered from at-home brain surgery in a day...in SR4 it would take much longer.


And then on the other side of things there's Ars Magica (in one of the older editions, you got one attempt to heal for every 3 months of complete bedrest - whee! fun! :please:).

[mintcar]

It´s not so bad for most situations, IMO. I only want there to be a much worse worst case scenario, so that getting hurt isn´t trivial.

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

Worst case is still the fact that you left your DNA/ritual link all over the crime scene - same as it's always been.

It's not like you're going to heal from anything more than stun or a very light wound before the opposition can track you down (assuming they bother).

[blakkie]

[FrankTrollman]

[blakkie]

...until Street Magic comes out some time next year. They didn't manage to fit that bit of MitS into the SR4 BBB, but i'd be more than surprised if it didn't show up in Street Magic as extra Ritual Magic option. Or perhaps as a meta magic.

EDIT: Er, actually i correct myself. For mundane purposes as well you'll not want to be spanking the monkey on someoen's doorstep. That part is in the BBB, but primarily only if you have a SIN or are worried about some point in the future having your DNA sampled and having that incident traced back to you. If you wonder why the SINner quality gets you bonus BP, wonder no more......

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

Thus why I said DNA as well as ritual link (though I hadn't read the magic system in enough detail to notice that the link was removed...wasn't expecting that)

[wagnern]

Well, we are tempted to house rule that the physical healing is with proper medical attention. It is, after all, the Fraging Future.

While SR doctors are thankfully far away from the magic salt shaker of startrek, they do have advance medicine.

You do want PC to recover in a reasonalbe time. If every injury resulted in 6 to 10 months of recovery and physical therapy it would slow games down. But as it sounds, injuries will hang around for a while, (which makes sence) but not force players to esentualy retire charictors after one good hit.