My group is having a difference of opinion over what a "set of wounds" means in the context of healing magic (which can be applied once for each 'set').

Option A: A set constitutes a number of injuries.
Option B: A set constitutes a number of boxes of damage from an individual injury.

Let me expound with examples:

Example A: Ronnie gets shot twice and stabbed once for a total of 6 boxes of damage. When Johnny the mage reaches him, these wounds constitute a 'set' of wounds. When Johnny works his healing mojo, he can use his spell once (healing 4 boxes of damage). Ronnie is now only 2 boxes injured. Further applications of the spell will not improve Ronnie until Ronnie gets hurt a fourth time.

Example B: Ronnie gets shot (for 2 boxes of damage), shot (for one box), and stabbed (for 3 boxes of damage). Each wound is a 'set'. Johnny can use his healing magic up to 3 times on Ronnie, once for each injury. Assuming Johnny can heal 3 boxes each casting, Johnny can completely heal Ronnie with three castings of the spell (though Johnny now has to withstand drain 3 times).

We can't find any rules or published examples that settle this argument. How does your group interpret it? (And if there is an example anywhere in the text that establishes this one way or the other, please point me towards it.)

I've been using definition 1. Term "set" typically refers to a several things grouped together.

Also, while it doesn't count towards rules per say, it makes for more dangerous encounters and that tends to make things more interesting.

I include a 'set' as a group of injuries that were sustained at roughly the same time. ie gunfight erupts and X takes Y damage, later on in the day, unable to heal himself X gets into a fight with some gangers thinking he easy to roll over, he takes Z damage. Y and Z count as sepearte sets, and therefore he can be healed 'twice'.

But others may differ.

The wording of the rule makes it feel like it's supposed to be that a "set of wounds" is the damage taken since the last time you were healed with the same type of limited healing (magic vs first aid).

This. You can only get healed by magic once (and after that you can't use First Aid, but you can First Aid first, then Heal) until you take more damage.

This. And you can't heal damage from the first set with your Heal on the second set.

YMMV, but that all seems like a massive amount of bookkeeping. I prefer OP's Example B for simplicity's sake.

YMMV indeed, because I cannot see how tracking every individual wound and its damage is in anyway less bookkeeping.

After you get magical healing, draw a line on your condition monitor at your highest remaining damage box. The next time you get healed, you can't heal anything under that line - newer damage only. That earlier damage can only be healed by rest/hospitalization. And when you heal by resting, you erase damage starting with the newest damage.

While it may be more bookkeeping option 2 does away with cutting someone again to remove the big wound.

On a related note the drain is not a function of the set of injuries but, of the total damage the patient has sustained. So even if the patient has three sets of three boxes, the drain will always be 7 for the first attempt. Not something you would normally do in a combat situation.

For what it's worth, here's a suggestion:

When you take a box of damage, put a single slash (/) in the box. When you are healed mundanely, as by a medkit, add a half-slash the other way (making something that looks like a "y") in any boxes that are [b]still damaged.[b] When you are healed magically, add a full slash the other way ("X") to any boxes [b]still damaged.[b] Now you can tell which boxes are available for healing and which are not.

Drain and Fading can be marked with a D and F, respectively, indicating that they cannot be healed by magical means. Or if you don't want to make the distinction, just make an X.

*edit for specificity

This still does not adress that sometimes several sources of injuries are merged and sometimes they are not, unless you allow the stupid cutting to heal routine.

Drain and Fading can be healed normally by First Aid or Medicine.

Um for the cutting part maybe we do it wrong but lets say someone is at 13 boxes and about to die. After first aid and the heal spell they are at 6 boxes. If you cut yourself and take 1 box all we will let you heal via first aid and the heal spell is 1 box. The rest has to be healed through long term medical care. It honestly does not make sense to us in any other way.

If you play it that way you do something different than the options of the OP. If all boxes sustained at a certain time are one set of injuries, then adding another box makes this a different set of injuries, meaning that you can heal all boxes again since the entirety is a new set. Saying that only the one additional box can be healed is dividing the entirety of the boxes, which according to the above reasoning should not be possible. Why does a new wound only become a new set, if the old wounds have already received healing?

Disjunct injuries make a whole lot more sense to me, as does the additional needed effort for a patient who has several small injuries.

You aren't wrong, Dakka is simply misunderstanding the tracking mechanic.



With Aaron's tracking mechanic damage boxes will have one of three marks in them. Fresh damage that can be healed by any means will have a \, damage remaining after treatment with first aid will be marked with a y, and damage left after magical treatment will be marked with an x. If each time you take damage is a different "set of wounds", then it would make magical healing nearly worthless if a runner comes in with a half dozen wounds were each wound is only one or two boxes, while first aid becomes a godly power.

As if it isn't that way already... First Aid is horribly overpowered in many people's opinion... A Maximized Healer can heal up to 10 Boxes of damage with a single application of First Aid (and do so failry reliably with about 30 dice or so)... At that point, there is really no nead to ever have the Medicine Skill...

Keep the Faith

True but that is a pornomancer style build. I'd say most first aid specialists still cap at 6 boxes of healing max with an average around 4-5 healed. Still a crap ton of healing but not quite the 10 boxes of doom.

6 logic, 6 skill, specialized combat wounds(it really is a suggested specialization), 6 medkit=20 dice, 6-7 hits with 2 hit threshold 4-5 boxes healed.

Now a high logic, being a physical adept etc can get this further, but I'd say that is rare.

I understood the tracking mechanic and the way you interpret the rules, I just wanted to point out that this interpretation separates one wound from another under a condition instead of considering them as separate in the first place.

BTW What is a healing attempt? Rolling the dice or rolling the dice and waiting till the spell is permanent? Either way opens "interesting" possibilities.

Why? Worst case scenario: 10*1 Box. Healing the first box will be draining (8 drain), but unless the mage is really bad, he will be able to heal all of the boxes, since each set needs one hit. It will take longer than 1*10 boxes but chances are he won't heal all of them anyway.
First Aid is not so easy for all but dedicated paramedics. You need three hits to heal one box, additional hits heal boxes on a one for one basis.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein: Anyone with a dice pool of 30 (36 actually to heal 10 boxes every other try) should be able to do wonders in his field of expertise.

True it is an extreme, no doubt... but when you look at that edge case, it is just disgusting...

I cede the point...

Keep the Faith

Already Ceded... It is just ridiculous in my book when you can take someone from Death's Door to Completely unharmed in a few minutes of work... Really?

Keep the Faith

The wonders of a modern first aid kit are awesome in the dystopean future apparently.

Oh and with the heal spell even non-pornomancer builds bringing people from deaths door to perfect health happens somewhat frequently. My crew does it all the time and while we have a combat medic as a player he was not a phys adept with cerebral boosters etc.

Which is again somewhat of a reality break for me (though the balance factor for the magical healing is the sometimes monstrous drain that can be involved, which First Aid does not have to worry about)... but hey, always better than waiting around for 5 days to heal so you can run again... just a small pet peeve is all...

Keep the Faith

Yeah I am not sure what I think about it. One one side it is a reality break and I think it leads to a feeling that if the GM does not kill you out right in a single fight you aren't really in much danger. But on the gameplay side of things quick healing is a solid benefit for a group game.

The Scotty of First Aid on people as opposed to starships.

I guess it depends on the game you want. In any RPG I play, a character only dies if they want to. It's the GM's job not to kill them. Downtime is often meaningless as well, so it doesn't matter if they fully heal in 7 minutes, hours, days, or weeks.

However, I know there are games (and even dramatic moments in looser games) when healing power and time do matter. In those games, it's the GM's fault for allowing stupid builds. Magic *should* be magical, so no problem there, at all, but I can certainly see how medkits could be overpowered.

For me most games aren't shadowrun. To me the almost D&D style healing does not feel right in a dystopean future setting, just like it would not feel right in a modern setting. In a D&D fantasy world fine, I've been conditioned that the cleric can wave his hands and pwang you are healed and can go out and play some more. Modern setting, dark future settings are supposed to be a bit gritty to me. Even with the pink mohawk feel I like I assume bullet holes hurt. You fight through the pain of the injury to move on. And not just slap a medkit on you and you are healed.

Indeed...

Keep the Faith

I agree. You shouldn't be healing mid-run. But, I'm always saying it doesn't matter anytime outside of the runs. And YMMV.

Yeah, once you have managed to get away, and are no longer in danger of being gunned down, then Healing times are a little more flexible... But I still like the option of having dramatic moments in your safe house where you were tracked down too (After you thought that you were safe), and you are still wounded because you have not had time to heal all the way... If you don't track such stuff, then those scenes are much harder to implement, in my opinion, without being a bit arbitrary... With the Healing times established by ruleset then you are no longer being arbitrary. Of Course, YMMV, as you may not care for such things in your game...

As a note, I like this style of play, whether I am a GM or a Player, as it tends to make you think about the consequences of your actions a bit more, at least in my opinion...

Keep the Faith

I tried to "kill" a character once (he wasn't going to die but the net effect was the same: I was swapping characters).

One of the other players didn't realize this until much much later when I had to tell him to stop trying to bargain for my life.

How you separate wounds only does not change how often such situations occur. If there is one large wound the patient may not be in top shape because the healer didn't manage to get all damage and if there are many small wounds the patient may not be healed yet even if it is within the healer's capabilities. The duration the spell needs to be sustained to become permanent is based on the drain which is not based on the size of a wound but on the total of the damage sustained.

BTW Is there an official confirmation of the FAQ's ruling that permanent spells need to meet the range condition until they are permanent i.e. the patient needs to be touched for the whole time? Scratch that, the updated FAQ no longer claims that.

Again, using your example of ten wounds with one box each, the mage will need to sustain the first heal for 16 turns, the second for 14 turns, etc., and either take a reduced number of dice to follow-up castings (giving a final penalty of -18 for the final casting), or wait to heal each wound individually (taking more than seventy combat turns). In comparison, the medic can simple spend ten combat turns, rolling their 9+ dice each time and heal the subject easily.

By grouping them all into one lump, a medic with 15 dice (5 LOG, 5 First Aid, 5 Med Kit) would only be able to heal a max of 5 boxes (limited by first aid skill) and an average of 3 boxes (the character would then either have to find magical healing or wait to heal over time). A mage with a Health spellcasting focus or power focus can also easily get the 15 dice for casting Heal, but without the threshold that first aid has, will end up with more damage healed.

While magical healing will still take longer than first aid, a skilled mage can considerably reduce the time.

You also forget the negative modifiers that apply to using first aid: depending on the conditions he is at -1 to -4. If he he for some reason does not have a medkit, there is an addition penalty of -3. This will make exceeding the threshold more difficult for the medic.

Another point for the mage is that during the sustaining time he can act, either at -2 or without a penalty if he puts the spell into a sustaining focus.

And you're omitting the damage, and associated penalty, from the drain of casting the Heal spell several times on a heavily damages subject.

Yes, but 10 one box injuries are very rare IMHO. The first wound (if the total of boxes is the same) will have the same drain in both scenarios. Subsequent healings with several sets of course may produce additional drain, but if one set is 3-4 boxes and is healed completely, chances are that the mage does not incur additional drain.