I addressed your listing of multiple things not covered in the realm of First Aid because it gave me the most opportunity to outline ways in which First Aid does, in fact, apply to things that you feel it does not. I do this shit for a living... trust me, "first aid" goes a long, long way beyond what people learn from Boy Scouts or an evening class at the Red Cross. The skill description in the BBB talks about it as basic medicine "as a paramedic rather than a physician." Paramedics who are just starting out usually have about two years of classroom and clinical training as paramedics, and that's not even figuring in any previous experience they may have had working in the field as an EMT-B or other provider.

I don't find the "views" of First Aid and Medicine in the BBB and Augmentation to be different in any significant way. Augmentation's mention that "Medicine is also used for treating long-term illnesses, including the effects of diseases and toxins" goes on to point the user towards the section of the BBB governing using the Medicine skill to synthesize antidotes to a toxin. While he can't synthesize an antidote, a First Aid practitioner can still administer one if he knows what toxin he's treating... determining what someone's been poisoned with is within the realm of First Aid per both the BBB and Augmentation.

The game is actually pretty clear about defining what a "set of wounds" is, in response to your post of a couple of hours ago. A "set of wounds" is any and all of the damage you've taken since the last time you recieved medical attention.



The question asked in the FAQ was "Can Physical Drain be healed by magic?" The answer was "No." They go on to explain that "Damage from Drain must be healed by regular mundane medical care and/or rest." We've only got three kinds of healing in this system... magical, mundane, and resting. How a statement forbidding magical healing of drain damage can get torqued around into "First Aid can't heal drain damage." is beyond me.

Ah a Camp 1 type.

I disagree.

WMS

The question though, remains why?

I'm still working on figuring that out, too. It might be because his game is getting broken because he's allowing a shot at healing with first aid for each time you've taken damage, rather than the RAW-specified one for each set of wounds. I haven't recieved much of a reply yet.

The FAQ question this arguement is based around has nothing to do with First Aid... it says that magical healing can't heal physical drain damage. First Aid is definitely "regular," (a synonym for "normal") it's definitely "mundane," (which means "non-magical" in SR4) and it's definitely "medical care" (being "basic medicine in a hands-on sense"). It seems likely to me that, since there's no definition of the phrase "Regular Mundane Medical Care" anywhere else in the entire game, they meant for players to interpret it using plain English, rather than as a game term with special meaning.