you can only use a spell once or conventional healing once on a wound set. ...Coulda sworn I read that a wound set was the wounds taken in a combat. Is that what a wound set is? Or is it a an attack? IE takes a 3 round burst and then another 1 round he can cast it once on each. (maybe heals a total of 2 bullet holes for example?)

"a set of wounds"

say a number of wounds taken roughly at the same time?

I would say its any wounds taken within the same encounter (which, in general, would probably be within a few minutes total.)

I don't know about that, actually.

In one combat, character X has a kneecap broken by a katana. In the same fight, he receives a shotgun slug to the shoulder.

Now this may be from a purely fluff standpoint, but I, as a GM, would consider those two seperate wounds.




~R~

Maybe he got hit in the exact same spot twice, though. It's *all* fluff and GM, really.

Well then clearly one heal spell would remove the damage from the horrible gaping slug wound, while the other would take care of the deep laceration(s) and broken bones.

But I get your point. It would be nice if the BBB had made it a bit more clear though.


~R~

I would just say any wounds taken after using the healing spell are a new set. Any boxes left unhealed by the spell will need doctor and/or good ol' rest to heal up.

dang so no one here knows either lol....... why was the book so vague....

I do remember one reference that it didn't work in the sense of one spell heals one bullet so two heals two....I think you may be right about the you can't cast the spell till you get wounded again idea.

Well, that part is certainly true: you can't Heal the same thing twice. The rules may simply mean *that*, so you don't try to Heal and Heal again.

Through all four editions in every game I've played, the 'set' is 'reset' after a Heal spell. So, for the purposes of the Heal spell, any damage that has happened since the last Heal spell is one set.

Now, was this ever written in the rules anywhere? Beats me.

I would assume all the wounds taken until you get some form of treatment.

Usually you get treatment only between combats so all the wounds in a single combat would be the same set, but if somebody throws a heal spell at you in the middle of combat and you get hit again that is a new wound set.

Yes this does mean its better to wait for a competent medic than to try to dress your own wounds.

/agree.

This is the way I've always played it as well, but I don't have a reference for it.

We simply play it, that each individual wound, counts as a would set.

I.E. The big bad evil Street Sam gets a sword cut across the chest with 4 Damage. Thats the first Woundset.
Now he gets shot in the kneecap for another 2 damage. Thats the second Woundset.
Now he gets slugged in the jugular with a ham-sized troll fist for 5 Damage. Thats the third woundset.

Now each attempt to heal magically can adress each wound set once.

So he bascially has 4/2/5 "Damage Sets" to heal.
Giving him a drain of DV-2 for each wound 2/1/3 (Since 1 is the minimum Drain)

That basically evens out to be fair to the healer and the patient.
We only treat them as one wound when the opponent uses called shots to specifically target certain areas

cheers
Wulffyre

I play it the same way with the wound sets, but the rules state that the drain for the heal spell is DV-2, not DV of a single Set -2. So in your example it would be 9 drain for the first attempt an less for the subsequent ones if the healer scored any hits.

Actually this is never specified anywhere. It could work your way or my way. And since it says that you can heal wound sets individually, we logically assigned the DV of the wound and not the entire DV. (Since we run a multi user Campaign with over 30 players and 5 STs everything is decided by majority vote of the STs)

(IMAO) ..if character have Stun damage wounds AND Physical damage wounds, u can heal
them once for each way..
= Stun Wounds (once heal spell and once mundane healing(First aid etc)
=Physical wounds (once heal spell and once Mundane healing (first aid etc)
additional healing try's (other than full bed rest) do not work)

No. There is no (stock) spell for healing stun damage.
You have to heal all stun damage before you can heal physical damage.

(emphasis mine)

Healing by spell has no such limitation.

woops. I must have remembered that wrong.

Nor does First Aid, IIRC. First aid can heal either/or with no limitations.

I know this isn't helpful, but it's generally the definition I've gone with. This is one part of the rules I don't mind being vague. The more things I can fudge to keep my players alive ,the better.

The way we play it is that each wound is a set.

Example:

The rummer gets shot in Round 1, pass 1 for 2 boxes
Then gets shot in Round 1, pass 2 for 1 box.
Then gets hit by a car in Round 2, pass 1 for 3 boxes
Then catches the edge of a grenade on Round 2, pass 2 for 2 boxes

Total damage is 8 boxes with 4 sets of wounds. Each heal attempt is localized to the specific wound and can't exceed the damage suffered for that wound. i do it this way so during down time, outside of gunfights and "on mission" time, the runners can heal a little faster while during gunfights and "on mission" time it takes longer to heal damage.

I think that everyone else agrees that all 8 boxes are one set.

Not everyone. I think Wulffyre goes along with Dragonscript's interpretation.

AFAIK, that's a house rule. Possibly a fun one. The mechanical effect is allowing many more heals, at much lower drain each (so, no net drain). It depends if you need to make healing even faster and easier in SR4.

Well, even if we assume that that a wound set is 'All boxes taken before Heal is cast', what happens if you still have some boxes of damage after being healed, and you get injured again?

Example:

After a particularly harsh combat, Joe the Gun Bunny has taken 8 boxes of physical damage. His pal Frank the Bear Shaman casts Heal on him, successfully healing 5 boxes of damage, leaving him with 3 boxes that must be healed through rest. However, on his way home to get some much needed shut eye, Joe gets shot up during a fracas with some local gangers, bringing him up to 6 boxes of physical damage (the 3 leftover from before, plus 3 new). He calls Frank, asking for another Heal. What happens when Frank casts the spell? If he scores enough successes, could he completely heal Joe? Could he only heal, at most, 3 boxes? (the new injuries taken since the last Heal was cast)

The new injuries are the 'new set', yes. I'm not sure, offhand, if the drain is for the 'new set' or for the total amount wounded. I *think* it's for just the new set.

Correct.

Is there any indication that someone can have more than one set of wounds? You could just as well argue that the entirety of the boxes (3+3) are a different and new set of wounds. Why does Magic sum the 8 initial boxes (unless they occured from a single attack) into a single set of wounds, but doesn't do so on the other two (3 residual damage and 3 from up to three attacks) ? AFAIK Magic is not intelligent.

Because the one set of 3 is from a set of wounds that already had Heal cast on it.

Otherwise you could cast Heal, then go "hey, a new set of wounds!" and cast Heal on that damage again.

It's not 'intelligence'. It's 'has magic already affected *these* wounds'? Yes or no.

The problem is that "set of wounds" or even "wound" have never been defined in SR. The "set of wounds" could just as well mean "number of boxes sustained by a single attack" and wound being a "box of damage". The check whether a set of wounds has received healing is pointless as well since a)nowhere is it said that a character can have more than one set of wounds b) as soon as his condition monitor changes for good or bad this set of wounds is different from the one before.

Once again I wish engineers/computer scientist/mathematicians would write the rules parts of RPGs

Yes, but we've already moved on from that question. The important thing (in that interpretation) is that magic can't attempt to heal the *same* thing twice.

Now, as discussed above, you can alter the parameters, but what matters is how that changes the power level. If every box, or every attack, etc. is individually Heal-able, then that makes magical healing vastly stronger (and non-magical, for that matter?). So the question is, 'do you want to make healing vastly stronger?'

If the answer is yes, then that's 100% fine. The result and the *desired result* are all that matter.

The way I always handled this in SR2/3 was to put a circle around each box of damage that remained after magical healing. Boxes of damage with circles around them can't be healed by magic (or first aid, because magic healing means no more first aid). (Same method used for physical drain, which also could not be magically healed). If you took more damage, you could still use magical healing / first aid, but it could only heal the new (uncircled) boxes. If you got some bed rest, that could heal those boxes, or uncircled boxes, or a mix of the two, as desired.

Seems like this would still work. The issue isn't really what makes up a "set" of damage. Its simply how to track treated vs. untreated damage.

Drain can be healed with First Aid though, just FYI.

So dumb...

It can? Not in my game.

(In Bill's voice) Pills here!

Pills are all that keep that old man erect. ;P

Or mine.