Optional rule I was going to work into my last campaign would have had First Aid not heal boxes but rather add one extra die / hit to the next healing test. If the next healing test was a spell, the caster would gain those dice.

Finding out you apparently dislike First Aid isn't bad compared to "making up bullshit houserules" (official DS term for disagreeing with someone's interpretation of the rules).

????? Huh? Did I miss something?

Don't forget that First Aid healing caps at skill, so unless the character is a specialist, they're going to max out at 2-4 boxes. Even a specialist will max out at 7-8 even with a shiny DP. This is unless it's been revised somewhere I haven't seen.

On another note, I'm curious if anyone actually uses the RAW that you don't heal at all unless you deliberately and completely stop the mission for 1 (stun) / 24 (phys) hrs and the GM lets you?

Indeed, except that you heal up to your Skill or the Rating of the Med Kit you are using, whichever is higher. *shrug*

And Uber Healers (Adept types) can jack their Skill to 10; and since they are running DP's in the low 30's, that is a LOT of Immediate Healing capability. Better even than a Mage can do, really, since they do not suffer any drain for doing so.

Our Primary GM does indeed enforce the resting periods for healing. Which is why First Aid and Magical Healing are so important. I just wish more of the characters actually had the skill (or a good DP with the Attribute + Medkit) so that we could benefit from it more often.

Does the GM allow you to pause the plot? I can't remember the last run I was on where the group didn't have something to do every day.

EDIT: There's always time between scenes, but 12-20 hours is at least 10x as common as 24+.

No, not unless we want the plot to run away with us. In our current game, we have been running with Damage most of the time (in the important parts anyways). We have had a few instances where some downtime was warranted while other things were happening, but for the most part, we are constantly active, at least for this mission. My character has been suffering the effects of Nausea and Disorientation almost the entire scenario (4 Sessions, duration of about 1 Week's game time) because I have YET to kick the disease I am suffering from.

After some consideration I made some slight changes. Mostly that it will heal stun damage but not drain. Made no sense whatsoever that hand to hand damage (Stun) would heal slower than getting shot. Ideas?

Regeneration (Adept Metamagic)

Prerequisite: Adept Centering, Rapid Healing

A character with regeneration rapidly heals any Physical and Stun damage. At the end of each Combat Turn the character makes a Magic + Rapid Healing test. The threshold is 2 + 1 for every three full boxes of damage sustained. Damage boxes healed is equal to the net hits. Damage level does not subtract dice from the pool, it is only a threshold modifier. Pain tolerance and other abilities to manage pain do not help with the threshold. It's not about pain, but the damage severity.

If the character has taken enough damage to enter Overflow, they are not considered dead until they have had a chance to make a Regeneration Test. If after the test the overflow is still greater than the body test then they are dead. They must spend a point of Edge to use this ability.

Certain types of damage cannot be regenerated from. Damage to the brain or spinal cord cannot be healed likewise; magical damage from weapon foci, combat spells, critter/adept powers, or other magic, including drain, may not be healed.

They may still take cyber and bioware. Implants they received before hand are unaffected.

Seems fair enough. You may want to specify if wound modifiers affect the Regeneration dice pool. I would assume not, but including that as a blurb might be a good idea.

Wound modifiers don't affect regeneration except in the number of hits needed, but I'll put that disclaimer in. It also explains why pain tolerance has no effect, its not about pain, but about the severity of the wound.

And thank you for the input.