For the Heal spell on pg 200, I don't understand what the Drain Value is supposed to be. It reads "DV: (Damage Value) - 2". What exactly does "damage value" mean in this context?

If I cast Heal on my buddy who has taken 8 boxes of physical damage, rolling 3 hits on my Spellcasting+Magic roll, do I need to resist 1 drain (3 healed "damage" - 2) or 6 drain (8 total "damage" - 2)? Or am I reading something wrong?

And is Force only useful for limiting the maximum number of hits in this case?

I understood that it meant "DV per wound". For instance, if your character got shot three times, total of 9 damage - 4 damage from 1st, 3 from 2nd and 2 from 3rd - the mage character could cast a spell in any one of those three wounds, getting 2 or 1 or 1 Drain from the each respectively (DV-2). If he wants to get the character into top condition he'd need to cast Heal three times, once for each wound.

I know it increases record keeping, but I think the intent is that the spell heals one wound at a time, not total "hit points".


Wizdoc

Damage Value is (AFAIK) the total damage your buddy got. So you would need to resist 6 points. As it has been like this in SR3 I suppose it still is.
Force is not limiting the spell in any way - so we will houserule this one: Force equals the DamageValue of the target. Here Force is only used to decide wether drain is physical or stun. (Of course force would have an effect regarding counterspelling too). An alternative would be to use force as "max hits" (more friendly towards the mage)

I dont think healing wounds seperatly would make sense - heal has always healed the complete body (if casted appropriate) - not just one wound.

Heal spells (and other methods of healing) apply to a "set of injuries", not each individual wound that is taken. Thus, you'd base the DV on the total boxes of damage taken. Force always limits the number of hits on a spellcasting test, whether or not that is explicitly stated in the spell description (p171, 2nd column at the bottom, and p174, 1st column). A magician can choose a lower Force to make the drain Stun instead of Physical, but you'll probably want to make the Force as high as possible for Heal.

Ah okay, forgot the "limit hits"-rule *flush*
*erase houserule* *beeeeeeeep* *erased*

So if that's the case, why is it more difficult to heal a character for the same amount of boxes if he is simply at a later stage of pain?

For instance, my buddy has taken 8 boxes of physical damage and I roll 3 hits, and now he's down to 5.
Next time, my buddy has only taken 3 boxes of physical damage (later run), and I roll 3 hits, now his wounds are smooth as a baby's bottom.

Three hits are netted in both examples. Why does the first one require a more painful drain?

edit: I should also mention that the total wound penalty has gone down by the same amount too. 8 boxes (-2 wounds) to 5 boxes (-1 wounds), and 3 boxes (-1 wounds) to 0 boxes (0 wounds).

The first example requires more drain because you are trying to heal more damage. The fact that you fail is irrevelant.

The drain is higher because the injuries are more severe. Dropping from 8 boxes to 5 boxes is more akin to repairing broken bones and stopping internal bleeding... the target is still messed up, but the set of injuries are now more tolerable. Dropping from 3 boxes to 0 boxes is like sealing flesh wounds, minor repairs in structure and skin, etc. Shadowrun doesn't use a "Cure Light Wounds" hit point mentality, where enough Heal spells will get you back to tip-top shape... you get one chance to heal a whole set of damage, depending on the skill of the mage. The tipsheet: Heal early, heal often. Get Resist Pain in addition to Heal. Make sure you have a good field medic (for first aid) as well as magical healing.

Never forget that it's easier to heal bruised ribs than sucking chest wounds. However, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Learn not to get hit! Agility is like preventive medicine.
Realistically though, you also must protect yourself from (or mitigate) injury when you inevitably DO get hit. Armor is also like preventive medicine.

I was speaking in general terms, not just SR. Call it what you will, but the fact remains that the best defense is not to get hit.

Or to kill everything else before it gets a chance to react.

It's a slighty more aggresive tact when you do it through boosting Agility. More killing, less dodging, less fleeing.

You gotta be quick and have good aim to kill 'em all before they can react.
But you're right; dead men don't counter-attack... though UNdead ones do.

You can heal your own physical wounds from drain right?

There doesn't seem to be anything in the RAW that precludes using the Heal spell for healing Physical, or Stun, drain.

My Dark King mentor spirit bid me to perform unspeakable necromancy upon this thread. He, and the forum search function.

I've been thinking about these "set of injuries" (Heal, p.200) and "set of wounds" (Using First Aid, p.242) terms. They might seem clear to some, but there's some fuzz involved that I wanted to bring to light.

Basically it comes down to another instance of inexact wording (in two places this time) that could be taken one of two ways, and neither of them seem terribly imbalancing to the game.

Standard Disclaimer for Those Who Need It: The following is, of course, the situation as I currently understand it. If you want to take it as gospel or heresy then that's your business. I don't claim that it's either, only that it's the best I have so far.

~~~~~

One interpretation is that if you are currently at X total boxes of Physical (no matter how you got them) and get magically or medically healed for Y boxes, then you're now at (X-Y) boxes of damage and have to heal the rest the old-fashioned way. We'll call that the Lump Sum interpretation.

The other is that if you take A boxes of Physical, then take B boxes, then take C boxes... you're currently at (A+B+C) damage but each of those individual wounds can be healed with separate rolls of D healing, E healing, and F healing. So at the end of it you could be at (A-D)+(B-E)+(C-F) damage with each of those parenthetical terms bottoming out at zero. We'll call that the Piecemeal interpretation.

~~~~~

Lump Sum looks at your physical condition as a whole, and determines that if you've got a broken arm, some cracked ribs, a split lip, and a concussion then holistically it's going to be harder to patch you up. It doesn't matter if the bones have been set and stitches put in, because the rules aren't going to get more exact than that.

Lump Sum also assumes that after you've had your doctoring, whatever damage is left over is now considered "Untreatable." It's recovered only through rest, even if it's medically attended rest.

This interpretation starts to get complex if you get a tooth knocked out during that rest period; then you have to track that new injury separately from your old Untreatable ones. You can get that busted jaw magically or medically healed, and any remaining damage gets lumped into the Untreatable column.

This interpretation gets extraordinarily lethal in that if your buddy gets dropped from pristine into 8 overflow (in either a series of hits or just one), then the possibility of your Magic:3 and Heal spell waking him up is nil. First Aid, even with a high-rating autodoc medkit, isn't going to do much either.

What this version means to your healer is that he's going to want to treat you immediately after each injury if he can, and at one point the overall trauma will just be too much to deal with in via the Heal spell while medics won't have that problem.

~~~~~

Piecemeal makes for more damage-tracking paperwork, but it significantly reduces downtime and lethality. If you're peppered with a series of four 2 DV hits, then you could get your lacerations individually sealed up and get back into the action quickly. You can still accumulate Untreatable damage from the leftovers that weren't able to be fixed, but it's likely not going to be much except for any big whammies you sustained.

It also means that even low-Magic healers have (more of) a chance to spellcast you back together without nearly killing themselves in the process. Since most healing efforts (First Aid or the Heal spell) will get you somewhere around 3 boxes back total and 5 if you're really lucky and/or good, it turns team healers into people with a continued function over the course of the adventure rather than just a coupon to get you out of a day or so of rest.

This interpretation starts to get complex when you look at the wound-tracking that will need to be done. If your wound chart consists of 3+5+2 boxes and your healer fixes you up for 2+3+1 boxes of damage, that's a bothersome amount of erasing you'll have to do in order to get to your end result of 4 Untreatables.

This interpretation starts to break down when, if you haven't received healing at all, you have to decide which specific injuries are going away during your rest periods. Stun damage in particular (while it CAN be healed with medicine, and not just slap patches) is annoying to track in this fashion.

What this version means to your healer is that he doesn't need to immediately fuss over you after each and every injury, no matter how minor. He can take care of them individually later when you have a few minutes. You also have a greater chance of getting brought back to consciousness if you fall over from multiple injuries. Medics and mages are on equal footing in this version.

A useful rule-of-thumb for calculating a 'set of injuries' is to total all of the (still applicable) wounds received since the last application of healing magic. This is one 'set of injuries'. After magical healing is applied, any new injuries that are incured become part of a new 'set'.

For smaller injuries, like three boxes of less, I imagine you could heal that after a fight with no risk of drain to the caster.

For more injuries, you use First Aid (which has a threshold irrespective of the actualy damage, right?) and THEN use a healing spell.

I dunno, but I have a feeling that if you kept track of each "set of wounds" seperately, you would just end up with a bunch of smaller wounds that can be healed multiple times at low drain values. That sounds like you could bring a party from near-death to tip-top shape nearly all the time, assuming they aren't taking big gushing 8+ damage box wounds. At that point you usually have bigger problems to worry about.