But does the reshaping happen only when it becomes permanent, or immediately? In which case the spell becomes useful for creating temporary holes in walls, or throttling guns for only a few moments, enough to disarm people and yet loot the guns afterwards..

It reshapes immediately and is temporary (i.e. stops when the spell ends) until it becomes permanent (drain * 2 rounds after it's cast).

That is the beauty of permanent spells. You can cause permantent effects and use them briefly like sustained spells.

The only unresolved issue with this mechanism is what happens if you do not sustain the heal spell long enough. Is it a healing attempt or can you cast the spell again until you get the desired hits, if you can deal with the drain.

Or can you use Heal offensively, to lock someone out of future healing attempts?

Nasty bugger, aren't you?

Both yes and no i'd think.
Each set of wounds can only be healed once.
But as soon as he gets hurt again, that damage can be healed again.

That's the old 'set of wounds' question. Anyway, seems like a pretty niche use. And probably metagaming.

Are you saying that a guy with 10 boxes of wounds can have 3 of them magically healed, have 1 box inflicted, then 3 magically healed again (over and over until he's hale and healthy)?

Because it most certainly doesn't work that way.

Let's no start that old debate - at least not in this thread.

Courtesy of the abstract nature of the rules, it most definitely does work that way. Damage isn't tracked and recorded separately. Wounds are not distinguished in any way whatsoever, aside from Stun, Physical, or Overflow. You have 5 boxes of damage. You get hit again for three boxes, and you now have 8 boxes of damage, not 5+3.

Alright then, due to the abstract nature of the rules, why then could you not just cast Heal twice without adding 1 box first? Same effect, less stupidity.

That is: what is it about that "inflict 1 box" step that turns one set of wounds (healed) into another set of wounds (unhealed)?

Courtesy, you mean, of the broken and badly-written nature of the rules.

That'd be the RAW not the RAI.

If it was intended that you be able to cast Heal twice on the same boxes, then you'd be able to cast Heal twice without needing to inflict more damage.

Duh.

The problem is that wounds are never defined in the rulebook. A set means that it can contain one or more wounds. Any not completely soaked attack should cause at least one wound (however you may define it). If you heal any boxes and then add another or several wounds the result is a different set than before the addition. As such you get another attempt.

The other problem with interpreting the wording as "you cannot heal any of the remaining boxes form a previous attempt even if new damage was inflicted" is that this would have to make magic intelligent. It then has to choose which boxes may be healed and which may not.

SCNR

I'd never quite caught this before but that really does seem to be the problem, to be fair Shadowrun isn't the only ones with this problem the NFL did a pretty poor job defining what a football move was for purposes of determining if a dropped ball is an incomplete pass or a fumble.