I have an odd question regarding the Heal spell. How much tissue/nerve/muscle/bone does it regenerate?

Ie, let's say on a nasty run I happen to lose a finger (let's consider that a light wound), and the Mage rushes over and cast's Heal on me and get's the required sucesses. What happens?

A) the damge is healed, and the new fully functioning finger literally grows in place.

OR

B) the damage is healed, the bleeding and the pain cease, but the finger is gone.

Now, what if it had been an arm, not a finger? A leg? An eye? What if the mage got to it a week later, insead of right away? A month? A year?

Can Heal repair brain damage? Damage to the senses (like blinding by a bright light, getting your eardrums blown out by a loud noise)?

Would Heal set a broken bone? Remove bullets from the wound? Treate blood loss?

Exactly how much do you let Heal get away with? Is it just for cuts, bruises, and bullet wounds... or can it regrow limbs, repair a broken spine, and reconstruct a shattered face?

Basically it'll be a GM call. Personally, I figure Heal simply accelerates natural healing. If your eardrum is blown out or your face is mangled, you can recover from this but you'll never be the same. Healed does not necessarily mean whole (or pretty).

as i recall, your basic heal spell can't regrow a limb or organ, though i can't say for certain that there aren't more specialized health spells that can do so. i would say it's easily within a heal spell's power to reattach a limb or organ that's been cleanly severed, relatively speaking.

the base heal spell can be applied at any time--once a severed limb/organ begins to rot, i'd say it's beyond reattachment i think flesh begins to necrotize in 6-12 hours, though you could freeze it and keep it pretty much as long as necessary. that'd probably raise the spell's TN, though.

i don't recall how health spells affect stress points, but i'd use that as a guideline for how they affect things like loss of hearing, eyesight, etc.

but, yes, the normal types of wounds you'd recieve on a typical shadowrun--broken bones, bullets, blood loss, yadda yadda--are fully covered by a heal spell. when the spell is finished, you can basically assume that the wound is gone as if it had never been there.

Loss of limbs and other body parts is covered in SR3 p. 127-128 and may occur as part of taking deadly damage all at once. Replacement, either grown in a vat or cyber, is the prescribed method of correcting the problem. Heal or Treat won't handle such loss.

As far as I know, any other loss is a GM call, and is used for flavor in the game. As such, it'll also be a GM call as to whether he uses similar flavor to describe the results of a Treat or Heal spell.

Personally, if I included a loss such as you describe as part of the flavor of my campaign, Heal or Treat would correct the problem unless this was a leadin to a part of the campaign. E.g. who did the ganger give the finger to, and how shall we get it back before it is used for ritual magic.

well, even if you regrow your finger, the one you left on the street is still viable as a ritual link. it's no different than if you'd left a pint of blood on the sidewalk, and then recieved healing.

Yeah, like OurTeam states, a Light wound shouldn't be losing body parts, that's a Deadly level of Damage. Sounds like your GM is trying to bring too much realism into the fantasy game. Regardless though, oncea finger is off, it's off for good, no regenerating it because it's loss isn't the health issue. A person with only 9 fingers can be at full health, the damage is from the damaged nerves, dirty air entering, and loss of blood. Once those factors are healed, then so are you.

Sphynx

Regenerate (M, Target: 10-Essence, Permanent, +2(Level))
This spell regrows lost or badly-damaged body parts. It has no effect on the condition monitor. Different body parts require higher damage levels to heal: a finger, toe, or other minor part is an L; hands, feet, eyes, ears, and the like are an M; forearms, lower legs, and internal organs which are damaged but still present are an S; full limbs and missing internal organs are a D.

a sensible house rule might be to expand the Organic Damage Table on M&M p. 130 to include loss of limbs and such. it seems silly to me that a wound effect can blow off your cyberarm, but not your meat arm--isn't cyber supposed to be more durable, what with it being made of metal and whatnot?

Note that if you use the option damage effects from M&M, successes on a "heal" spell can be allocated to reducing stress points on atributtes, or something like that. That would indicate that it takes a little extra magical "oomph" to heal "loss of function" injuries, and that they typical casting of a "heal" spell just deals with basic trauma recovery.

I was considering a regeneration spell as well, but how do you make force a neccessary component? I had considered a method similar to your severity codes but minimum force needed increases by 2 each scale and drain level was constant.
The spell would be a permanent duration, but takes (normal clonal regrowth time)/(successes) to fully recover.