I know how physical drain works rules-wise, however, what does it really do to a mage's body? What do the by-standers see?

I am looking for both RAW explanation (if it exists) or your fluff stories.
The "he's bleeding from his nose and ears" or "he's vomiting blood" gets a bit old after some time, so any new ideas are welcome!

I consider it mostly internal injuries, since the onslaught of mana occurs from within. Internal bleeding, torn muscles and ligaments, fractures and sprains, tissue burns, cardiac episodes, embolisms and the like, all dependent on the level of damage.

Since the caster isn't getting stabbed/shot/slapped round the face by a big knife/bullet/fish of mana the visual signs will be limited to the escape of blood from various pre-existing orifices and the caster looking a bit/lot/helluvalot worse for wear.

I suppose, with the heavy damage rule in Augmentation, 7+ boxes of physical drain might conceivably cause him to blow his own arms off or something ...

The other question (that I'd might like to piggy-back onto this thread) is how first-aid in combat would help with the wounds? It's within the mechanics to perform mundane first-aid on magical drain (just no heal spells) but our group had a hard time grasping how one does first-aid for something that simply drains energy out and causes mostly internal injuries.

Maybe it depends on the spell. For elemental combat spells, maybe they should suffer similar damage effects to whatever spell they cast, like Rosa in the magic chapter intro fluff in SR4 who overcast a lightning bolt. Burns, singes and stuff. Or maybe have the magician physically whither as they are drained of energy, maybe they appear old and weak as a magical effect, similar to a shamanic mask.

I'd say that very much relates to the topic!

The way I have always looked at it, the medkit contains a lot of useful stuff - from bandages to stop the nosebleeds to antibiotics and adrenalin shots to help out with the worse cases. Of course, I am not a doctor, so maybe I am totally wrong on this, but from my personal experience with severe brain hemorrhaging - the docs just kept IVing me with corticoids and antibiotics hoping that somehow I'd stabilize myself (and apparently it worked).

Physical drain is, IMHO, the force of mana that you're channeling ripping through your mental defenses and actually physically tearing at your body. When a mage overcasts, it's like holding a lightning rod up to the cloud of mana surrounding him and willing himself to be hit with a lightning bolt. He can channel the energy of that bolt into the enemies around him but the force itself can't be wholy focused outwards and ends up causing burns and lesions throughout his body. I figure a medkit would do the same thing to an overcasting mage as it would do to someone who'd just suffered electric damage, try and start their heart up again and do what they could about the burns.

I've never understood mana burn being able to be healed via mundane means but not by magic from a fluff point of view. Now, mechanically I understand why they didn't want magic to be used, because then a mage could just heal themselves no problem after blowing their brains out with a big spell, but they still wanted some means of a mage to be able to get back in fighting shape without having to spend a week in bed after each run. But fluff wise, I don't think that a first aid kit would have the things required to treat internal injuries. Maybe some vitamins to help blood come back faster, or platelets build up quicker or something... then again, the fact that a decent medic can heal about 5 boxes of damage with a medkit seems a bit beyond the abilities of first aid as well, but whatever.

Of course, the answer to the fluff in one form is a Savior Medkit from Augmentation (pg. 114):



It might just be that the injection of the other stimulants, coagulants, and painkillers that are what the regular medkit contains that help with internal injuries from m.burn.

Oh yeah, Savior I could totally see fixing drain damage. Maybe that should be the only way, give it some purpose, since it is otherwise just an overpriced medkit.

I'd like to point out that its six dice to save your sorry butt on its own, against a threshold of 2 - and savior restock materials are a great canditate to stick in the free autoinjector on your cyberlimbs.

See, I've seen this done alot, and even done it myself once or twice, but it seems the only use for them, and it is fairly questionable if it actually works or not. The fluff kinda seems to indicate that it might be able to operate on its own, but it also says which don't include operating independently of a person. Honestly I'm a bit hard pressed to see what a person would add to the equation, and think it might be better to have rated savior medkits that you inject someone with and then they operate as though they had skill and logic equal to their rating.

So yeah, you're right, the auto-injector is the one saving grace of Savior Medkits, but that seems to be a bit outside what they are intended for.

Tradition should be taken into account. A Theurge might manifest stigmata. A Black Mage might do the same - or he might start bleeding profusely from his eyes. A Hermetic Mage may just be knocked off his feet by a colossal backlash of magical forces. A Shaman might have the archetypal 'internal injuries' as the mana flow becomes too much. An Aboriginal magician might have his scars re-open and start spraying blood.

You get the idea.

"And NOW, for my next trick..."

KAVOOM

"Mommy...where man arm go?!?!"