I'm new to SR4. Been playing SR1, 2, & 3, dropped for a few years for D&D, then started reading SR4. The system seems a LOT more cleaner and simpler.

One thing (out of many) come to mind: how fast are character healing ?? Using basic math, with someone with 10 physical boxes and Body 4, and nearly dead with 8 boxes filled.

To keep this simple, let's use the automatic hit rule. In the end, after receiving several bullets, the character is on his feet, scratchless, in 4 days (2 hits per extended day test using Body x2).

Am I missing something or players are fast healers ?!?!

Thanks a bunch

You're not wrong. That's the way it works in 4th Edition!
I personally really like it this way. In a world where there are cloned replacement parts, nanotech, magical shock-healers on staff, and treatements to reset your age... Why shouldn't medical care be ridiculously effective? It helps games stay fun - no more 'I'm out for 3 months healing!' - and it adds to the awesome of the world.

Like the Daft Punk and Kanye West song goes, "Work it, make it, do it, makes us longer, better, faster, stronger."

i was about to point towards the healing modifiers, but then i spotted that the basic healing rules say nothing about those being used. only with first aid and medicine rolls does it say that the modifiers should be applied.

still, i would say that those modifiers should be used, as something simple as staying at home with no medkit will strip 4 dice out of that extended test. and if one is cybered to the max, its even worse.

optionally, one can extend the basic healing timeframe to week or month rather then the day its defined as...

They are fast healers. I consider it Fantastic, Based on or existing only in fantasy; unreal. Which suits the way I play Shadowrun; Future Fantasy

As for your example, Apply First Aid. Seriously. Run the numbers for a 4 Logic 4 First Aid character with a rating 6 medkit and 3 assistants: Insta-heal.

The other reason I love nearly instant healing, keeping everyone involved. I never want to say this "Sorry Jim, its 12 weeks to recover from a gun would. Just sit there and the rest of the group will play."

just noticed something, both glitches and critical glitches have very specific effects when healing wounds. given that, buying hits may not be applicable...

a glitch will double the healing time, and a critical glitch will add 1d3 damage to that (ouch).

and i guess its a diff between healed up to perfect health, and stitched up enough to work...

was it not in count zero that gibson described a kind of "caterpillar" that would clamp a wound shut? much less messy then modern day bandages and allowing the character to move about more...

If you want a slow-healing game, try Blue Planet. The system is closer to World of Darkness, but at least if you get the shit beaten out of you it takes 2, 4, 8 months to recover.

On the subject of healing I know its harder to do it when your filled with cyber but what if someone has the biotech skill? Have you ever house ruled it to use the biotech skill first to see how well the doc deals with it then a second test for first aid or medicine? My common sense tells me that someone who has dealt with implants before would be able to treat someone with them better then one who hasnt.

Which is seriously unrealistically long unless every injury comes complete with compound bone fractures, major nerve damage and more. I had invasive surgery and was up and moving again in two weeks and fully healed within about a month. Ditto the dislocated knee.

Four days from a near fatal gunshot may seem too fast (though again: future medicine) but 8 months represents the sort of injury that leaves you unplayable even if you live! Hell, there was a damn news story about a guy spent three weeks in a coma after a car wreck, never walk again even if he wakes up level of trauma and six months later he was training for marathons.

Depends on the injury. The game I played was modified (I won't go into details, as the modifications are irrelevant) but my character ended up getting seriously mauled by a bear. Two-three months recovery. Notably the doctor doing the healing rolls had a skill high enough to not-fail the roll (rolls are a d10 vs. attribute + skill, the lower the d10 the better, so a skill of 5 plus an attribute of 2* is 7. Roll a 6 on the d10 and you succeed. Roll a 1 and you succeed better. Doctor had like a 12 vs that d10). Some skills you roll 2 or even 3 d10s and take the best one (the skill areas that are your trained areas generally have the 3, the "I use these a lot" are the 2s, everything else gets 1).

"Taking damage" never actually kills you. A character dies when the GM declares that it's happened (or you fail a trauma roll). Damage just keeps inflicting higher and higher penalties to actions, a severe enough wound (i.e. enough damage at once) causes trauma rolls (willpower to stay conscious, if it fails and the damage is severe enough then goes to willpower to stay alive). Most PCs and NPCs won't be failing those rolls until they're so far gone they might as well be dead. You seriously have to be get yourself shot up so that you start having a -6 to rolls, and then get shot point blank with a shotgun. At -6 to rolls you can't even lift your arm, much less stand up or wield a gun. In ShadowRun you're already dead and gone, but in Blue Planet you can still be conscious.

*Human average on stats is 0, min/max of -3/+3.

Edit:
It occurs to me, that I think it's possible to get shot in the foot/leg repeatedly without ever causing the trauma rolls, thereby being effectively dead, yet never had to make a roll to stay conscious or alive, yet still sustain enough damage to spend a half dozen or more months in the hospital.

Super Glue has been vastly improved. What more do you need to know?

Walk it off!

Is the OP Pat Benatar?

I can buy the idea of high tech medicine and magical treatment vastly reducing healing time. But the mechanic disparately demands the application of GM commonsense. The rules basically state that if I pass-out in the gutter after being hit with a shotgun, and I just stay there for a couple days- no first aid, no food, no water, no shelter- I'll 'shake off' that shotgun wound just by sleeping in the gutter.

and be robbed naked by just about anything alive within 2 blocks...

Dude, you are a shadowrunner. You are just that bad assed.

use the optional rules of damage modifiers being applied to healing tests....

I go one step further and state you cant make body healing roles unless you heal your stun...and all the physical and mental wounds apply to that roll so...

If you are a Body 3 Will Power 3 character and take 9 Physical and 9 stun...you need a doctor or you will never get a successful roll.

It's like in Lone Wolf McQuade how Chuck Norris act slightly injured in one scene and then he's ready to go to Mexico with a sawn off shotgun, a revolver, and some M72 LAWs to go and pwn David Carradine who just stole a bunch of arms shipments to the US Army.

EDIT: Apparently you can watch the film on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/lone-wolf-mcquade

How do you apply this "Common Sense" to magical healing?

As far as characters in a Fantasy setting go, I am disappointed in him for passing out. Real Characters bleed 9 pints an hour. /me spits to his left.

Exactly. Shadowrunners have some of Chuck Norris's badassery.

That's what the awakening was, right? The distribution of Chuck Norris between select members of humanity?

In my group, we've been using all the slower healing rules tweaks from augmentation (severe wounds, damage modifiers apply to healing, use body x1 for healing instead of body x2). The net effect has been to make all the characters spend more money to get medical care. Its made having a street doc as a contact immensely valuable, and made us more concerned about getting wounded. Not because we'll die, but because the medical care might end up taking all our profit from the run. Healing is still generally quick, I don't think its ever taken more than a week, and that's coming back from stabilized overflow. By and large, we've found them to be better rules. Medical care is still awesome (dying from an explosion to fully healed in a week) but people themselves are not amazing healers.

I remember back when we played SR 3, one of my players (a dwarf) went into damage overflow and had to go to the hospital (under his docwagon contract) . . . FOR A MONTH. So, basically, I said "One Month later" and all the other players moaned because they hadn't made any money in the past moth to pay for rent. (I didn't want to exclude our dwarf from any runs.) THEN re realized that he was in the hospital so long that he had lost his addiction to cigarettes.

If you want to make it better, change the rule from DAYS to WEEKS if the character goes into overflow.

But you-know-who spent 3 gaming sessions with only 1 arm! I'd say that was pretty cool.

My opinion, healing is a bit fast - would be good to be able to heal quickly down to the point where you're still injured but definitely playable, but 9 boxes in one go is a bit fast for me . Maybe if there was some cap on how many boxes you could heal at a time...meh it's not that big of a deal game goes on and it's fun =D

Actually one thing I always liked about SR was how medical costs were high, although I still believe they're less brutal than what would really happen if someone shot you to pieces and you were in the hospital for a month. LOL at dystopian cyberpunk world having better health care than the current American system.

But I always felt it helped to make the world tough and gritty. In my first SR games that I played in my character's income was almost universally wiped out by medical costs in each game.

While I agree that medical care should be expensive to a point where the players try not to get wounded on a regular basis, I also think healing time should be somewhat short so that every player can participate in every game though some negative modifiers for a little bit longer (or crippled limbs) are a nice flavour.
Playability beats realism, especially in a world with dragons, elves and magic.

or the tech to rebuild you from the gene up...

tech = magic at some point...

I always felt that if I suddenly had unlimited money, I'd commission the best role playing FPS game ever, where the engine would be frustratingly realistic and simulationistic (like the mods of Operation Flashpoint which made it even more realistic), but that the premise of the storyline would be concerning the breakthrough development of nanite healing which could physically repair traumatized tissues, reattach severed limbs, etc. Maybe some terrorists, MJ12, or whoever stole the tech and you have to go kick their ass, but then it turns out that your boss is really the Jolly Green Giant. So you could have all this realism, but due to the premise of the magical "future tech" nanite miracle healing, you would still have the ability for your character to make a rapid and complete recovery from fatal crippling injuries from time to time during gameplay.

Only if you have to go to the hospital. In counterveil's game as he mentioned we did have someone heal from 9 boxes to full health in basically one go, no expensive hospital stay needed. One of the characters is playing a combat medic, with basically a 5 in al the biotech skills and a specialization in combat wounds for first aid, a rating 6 medikit and a high Logic, he rolls enough dice that even under penalties we heal 5 boxes routinely. Then its up to the mage to polish us off. And even if the mage can't fully heal us, we don't really need to go into the hospital for 1 or 2 boxes of damage. What disturbs me more about first aid combined with fast healing, is how much more powerful it makes overcasting. In another game I overcast like mad because I know the medic will patch 90% to all of that up in one go. Force 11 fireball no problem, I go from coughing up blood to full health in no time.

Yeah but routinely throwing around force 11 fireballs will get you on the corps radars faster than you can say "kentycky fried chicken with coca cola and a side order of honey roasted ribbs with fries and spam!"..

But yeah aint future tech great with these fast healings ?

What if the 11 Force fireballs are helping the cops?

But honestly, they don't even have the courage to leave survivors. Wussies. I give my enemies a chance to bow down and recognize my greatness.

Sorry about that folks, its game night and I am already monologue (ing).

BlueMax
About to run an EASY adventure... honest